BY STEVE MUMME

This guest post is by Steve Mumme of the Colorado Conference. 

Knowledgeable observers of the higher education landscape will have noticed the dilemma that university presidents now suffer in the face of the Trump administration’s recent executive orders banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations. The U.S. President’s discriminatory hard line on immigration, other inflammatory utterances targeting foreign nationals, his criticism of the media and factual indifference put university leaders in the hot seat, juggling their charge to defend academic freedom and advance the life of the mind—to  rise above partisanship, promote civility and maintain a campus environment conducive to scholarly dialogue—with the need to respect if not please university stakeholders and avoid offenses that would compromise access to federal funds and alumni support.

These tensions are recently seen in various letters and public statements by university presidents addressing the Trump administration’s discriminatory actions. The latest missive, by Donald J. Farish, president of Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island takes to task those university presidents that have directly criticized the President, singling out two of his peers for special criticism, Macalester University’s Brian Rosenberg and Trinity Washington University’s Patricia McGuire. Rosenberg’s widely circulated letter famously called out Trump’s executive order as “cowardly and cruel.” President McGuire fingered the President’s advisor, Kellyanne Conway, for “facilitating the manipulation of facts” among other sins.

In his March 3, 2017 Inside Higher Education article, Farish takes these views to task arguing that with freedom of speech comes a “responsibility to recognize that, however much we [university presidents] want to speak only for ourselves, we nevertheless do so with the title ‘President’ in front of our names—which means our comments will be linked to our campus.” University presidents, says Farish, should avoid “speak[ing] out in judgmental terms about the wisdom of administrative action because we will be seen as effectively endeavoring to end the debate before it begins.” He continues, “America has not ceded to academics the right to decide unilaterally on the wisdom or folly of particular political actions—and we should stop acting as if they have.” Instead, presidents should advance dialogue and debate, creating forums for reasoned discussion of controversial issues. Controversial issues are “learning moments . . . for our students—not soapboxes from which we [university presidents] can proclaim our personal opinions.”

These views fall fairly close to the posture my university’s leadership team has adopted in response to recent events and they would, I believe, capture the sentiments of many faculty on campus. One of the earliest expressions from Colorado State University’s Provost’s Office was a “Principles of Community” statement which has been widely disseminated and posted in every unit on campus. The statement is well in line with Farish’s admonition for university leadership. CSU president Anthony Frank has commendably sought to offer assurances to students and faculty and encourage every member of the CSU community to engage in thoughtful and constructive dialogue on the contentious issues facing our community, our state, and the nation at large.

And yet, this stance of reasoned neutrality will and should strike some faculty as fundamentally insufficient to the challenge universities now face. It bears more than a family resemblance to the well-recognized problem that philosopher Herbert Marcuse once labeled as “repressive tolerance.” To quote a few lines of Marcuse’s famous essay,

“The conclusion reached is that the realization of the objective of tolerance would call for intolerance towards prevailing policies, attitudes, opinion, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed.”

“Tolerance [as an end in itself] strengthens the tyranny  of the majority . . . Tolerance is turned from an active to a passive state, from practice to non-practice:  laizze-faire the constituted authorities.”

“Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now appears as good because it serves the cohesion of the whole on the road to affluence or more affluence.” 

Marcuse’s point, of course, is that practiced neutrality is inherently problematic, a moral retreat from actions that must be taken to achieve a just society. Anent Farish’s dictum, Marcuse is sure to say university presidents should not be exonerated, or off the hook, by simply abjuring discrimination on campus and positioning the university as a neutral arena for reasoned debate. That is not enough.

The fact remains that university leaders, just as do citizens, have a duty to resist injustice.  Passivity is not a morally credible option. The president’s dilemma should be understood not as Farish frames it, as advancing the pursuit of truth and justice while avoiding offense, but as advancing the pursuit of truth and justice no matter the offense.   Speaking out on the most compelling issues confronting society, on climate change, veracity, racism, or a rush to war is indeed a university president’s responsibility. Call it the civic obligation of leadership. On these issues, a university president has the opportunity to leverage her or his scholarly distinction to advance the greater good.

Resolving the president’s dilemma requires understanding that the duty to provide a safe haven, to encourage dialogue and reasoned debate while resisting discrimination is not inherently contradictory or diminished by speaking out. The two postures are not incompatible as Farish claims; indeed, they are complementary. Though presidential voice may offend some, and not in the moment change many minds, an opinion grounded in reason and fact represents the best of the life of the mind. It reminds students that certain standards exist and must be sustained for the sake of reason and the betterment of society.  And if that means calling out demonstrable mendacity and injustice, then that, truly, is the greater task at hand.

We can learn a lot from the civil rights movement in this respect. I’m reminded that Dr. Lucius Pitts at Miles College in Alabama regularly condemned racial injustice and Dr. Adam Beittel of Tougaloo College in Mississippi regularly bailed his students out of jail when they were incarcerated for protesting segregation in Mississippi.  Both are venerated today for their wisdom and their courage.