Dartmouth University is the latest of the American colleges to step back from issuing position statements on the varied controversies that seize the popular imagination. The University of Chicago, with its Vietnam-era Kalven Report, embraced a posture of neutrality in the interest of preventing institutions of higher learning from being turned away from education and toward political activism. Over half a century later, more schools are beginning to see the wisdom of such an approach. Dartmouth’s “institutional restraint” policy opens the door slightly further to universities taking stands, but adopts a kind of presumption against doing so. To the extent that momentum builds in favor of remaining at a remove from retail politics and fevered organizing, higher education in the United States will benefit.
When I came of age in the 1980s, the American left was a free speech left. It was common to hear slogans such as, “I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll die to protect your right to say it.” The American Civil Liberties Union was so committed to its free speech values that the organization defended American Nazis who wanted to assemble for purposes of expression. A massive college campus such as the Florida State University I attended could host a wide spectrum of speakers ranging from far left to Phyllis Schlafly (the traditionalist Catholic conservative) on the right without groups shouting over invited guests and committing assault. All of this was part of how Americans understood their country to be superior to its ideological competitor, the Soviet Union, which vigorously policed expression. Freedom involved a free market of ideas that Americans were largely determined to protect.
Postmodernism, however, captured the imagination of the intellectual vanguard in the United States. While the Enlightenment valued free speech and free inquiry as the surest path to discovering truth, postmoderns emphasized power rather than persuasion as the final decider of disputes. Accordingly, the game moved from debate to displays of strength. If a speaker could be prevented from speaking, then the group that blocked the message could claim victory for its point of view. The group had successfully treated an opposing point of view as so outrageous, so unacceptable, so bigoted and benighted that it should not even be heard. Christians experienced this treatment when various elite figures argued that the case against gay marriage deserved no respect. Ryan Anderson saw his book When Harry became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement removed from Amazon’s offerings for similar reasons. There was no real debate for exactly the reason that the American left refused to countenance the existence of one.
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Hunter (J.D., Ph.D.) is the provost and dean of faculty at North Greenville University in South Carolina. He is the author of The End of Secularism, Political Thought: A Student’s Guide and The System Has a Soul. His work has appeared in a wide variety of other books and journals. He is formally affiliated with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; Touchstone, the Journal of Markets and Morality; the Center for Religion, Culture, and Democracy; and the Land Center at Southwestern Seminary.