COLLEGE is a strange place, and college students are strange beings. Most of us are nominally adults, yet people in the "real world" frequently treat us like babies in incubators. As extremists on both ends of the political spectrum attempt to limit what goes into our bubbles, they threaten the purpose of a university education.
Leftists have developed campus speech codes, which prohibit the kind of hate speech the American Civil Liberties Union often defends in court. Such codes imply that students will be incapable of dealing with verbal attacks on their sex, race, religion or other potentially sensitive characteristics. We have to be protected from the big bad bigots.
Those on the far right try to curb academia's liberal bias, fearing that it pollutes the minds of students who cannot think for themselves. Without these ultra-conservatives to look after us, we would mindlessly accept everything our professors say.
Post-Sept. 11 tensions have spotlighted each kind of suppression. Last week, the conservative American Council of Trustees and Alumni issued a report called "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It" (www.goacta.org/Reports/defciv.pdf). The report criticizes professors and students for failing to rally "behind the president wholeheartedly."
In this view, campus peace rallies indicate the deterioration of education. Academics' foolishness in noting America's imperfections can be reversed by requiring more Western civilization classes and creating fewer courses on Islamic and Asian cultures.
Founded by vice-presidential wife Lynne Cheney, ACTA already wields strong influence in higher-education circles. It advised searches for the president of Virginia State University and the chancellor of the Virginia Community College System. Florida Governor Jeb Bush selected ACTA to train newly-appointed trustees.
But with a war on and patriotism back in fashion, accusations of being anti-American have an unsettling new power, echoing the McCarthyism of the Cold War era. The report quotes remarks made by professors like, "This country does wonderful things for its citizens, but we must acknowledge the terrible things it often does to the citizens of other countries" as evidence that professors and students are bad Americans.
"Defending Civilization" did not mention the University of Virginia, but peer institutions including the University of California-Berkeley made the list. Although many of the 116 citations of unpatriotic behavior evidence ACTA's antipathy to any discussion of American mistakes, others justify worries that colleges quash particular viewpoints.
For example, Berkeley's Student Senate adopted a resolution demanding a front-page apology from the student newspaper and diversity training for its staff after the Daily Californian ran a cartoon depicting the terrorists in hell. It offended many students, and the Senate has threatened to raise the Daily Cal's rent.
More disturbingly, Orange Coast Community College suspended a professor after Muslim students complained that he called them terrorists. Certainly, with dozens of Middle Eastern and South Asian people being physically assaulted in the weeks following the attacks, professors have a responsibility not to encourage bigotry against Muslim students.
Professor Ken Hearlson's remarks, however, were not incitement to riot. His provocative questions about the silence of Muslim intellectuals dared his listeners to consider how those who ignore evil become complicit in it. Moreover, he specifically said that he was not talking about any student but about the actions of Arab nations. As a tenured political science instructor, he had not only the right but also the responsibility to discuss failures by Arab nations to prevent terrorism - just as the professors disparaged by ACTA have the right and responsibility to discuss motivations for terrorism.
To understand what happened Sept. 11, what is happening at this moment, and what we want to happen in the future, students must receive as much information as possible. Calling critiques of American foreign policy "unpatriotic" uses a shallow, superficial concept of patriotism, one that prizes flags over ideas and blindness over honesty.
A serious patriot wants America to be above censure, not because people are afraid to criticize, but because America always acts rightly. For the U.S. to approach this ideal, we need to understand, even if we do not like, the perspectives of non-Americans. As Rudyard Kipling said of his compatriots in England, what know we of America who only America know?
At the same time, shutting down criticism of other nations keeps us from understanding the responsibility of the rest of the world. If America is guilty of supporting regimes oppressive to women, the men living under those regimes are guilty of not pushing their governments to do better.
No one of any political stripe should eliminate challenging thoughts from our campuses. Bring on the flag-wavers, flag-burners, and reasoned arguments of all kinds - we are here to learn.
(Pallavi Guniganti's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at pguniganti@cavalierdaily.com.)
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