BY JOHN K. WILSON
DePaul ethics professor Jason Hill has sparked controversy with an essay harshly denouncing Palestinians. You might think this is the point where we start talking about protesters demanding his firing, but the reality is quite different.
One radio show host denounced the “DePaul weak-minded students calling for censorship of a respected and popular philosophy professor.” But in reality, the students at DePaul aren’t calling for censorship.
The petition against Hill, written by various student groups, declares, “We, the students of DePaul University call upon the administration to censure Professor Hill for his heinous statements against marginalized communities. His comments create unsafe and uncomfortable spaces for everyone, especially Palestinian and Muslim students who now all refuse to enroll in a class that is taught by Professor Hill. We are not only seeking censure, but for Professor Hill to commit to racial sensitivity training and to release a public apology for his immoral conduct.”
There is no call for censorship here. The petition asks for the university to censure Hill, which means criticizing him, not silencing anyone. It also asks for Hill to voluntarily take sensitivity training and apologize. While there have been many leftist professors (wrongly) fired for far less radical comments (including Norman Finkelstein at DePaul), so far no group is demanding that Hill be fired, and that’s a very good thing.
There’s no question that Hill’s essay was deeply offensive. In the op-ed published in The Federalist, Hill declared that the only “viable option” for a policy toward the Palestinians is “radical containment or expulsion.” Hill argued that “a strong argument can and ought to be made to strip Palestinians of their right to vote—period.”
A Palestinian DePaul student, Sumaya Haydar, tweeted that Hill’s article argued in favor of the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians. Hill claimed, “I have never used the term. Those are nefarious conclusions that people are drawing from a misreading of this article.” In reality, the critique of Hill seems both fair and accurate. Hill wrote about Gaza, “Israel has every moral right to wage a ruthless and unrelenting war against Hamas and to re-settle the land if it ever so desires.” That sounds a lot like ethnic cleansing. Hill’s claim that “a moral goal would be to reverse the potential sovereignty of every Palestinian movement in the region” sounds like ethnic cleansing, too. And Hill’s assertion about the Palestinian people that “Whatever actions Israel or any of her allies take against them in a war against terror are their responsibility, and are moral,” is literally an argument that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is moral.
A DePaul spokesperson noted, “Protecting academic freedom requires that we maintain an environment where the members of our university community articulate, challenge and defend their ideas; however, that does not eliminate the need for empathy and concern.” That’s a valuable expression of support for academic freedom at DePaul.
Interestingly, it’s an idea that Hill completely rejects. In an essay last year, Hill declared: “The gravest internal threat to this country is not illegal aliens; it is leftist professors who are waging a war against America and teaching our young people to hate this country.” Hill wrote about universities, “We need to defund them, disband and rebuild them with conservative principles — that is, values advocating individualism, capitalism, Americanism, free speech, self-reliance and the morality of wealth creation.” He denounced “today’s scholars in humanities and social sciences” and added, “One cannot argue with such people. The only alternative is to shut them down.”
So it’s Hill, and not his critics, who demands censorship of ideological enemies. He wants existing universities destroyed and rebuilt according to his conservative views, and literally says about left-wing professors, “shut them down.” But academic freedom protects everyone, including those who advocate the destruction of academic freedom, as Hill does.
At a time when leftist students are regularly denounced as oppressive totalitarian censors, it’s important to pay attention to a case like this where a professor has expressed deeply offensive and stupid ideas, and yet the left-wing students are not responding with calls for censorship, but with more speech. By contrast, the conservative professor is the one who advocates repression of academic freedom on a massive scale.
Opposing views is what made this country great.
John Wilson: I find Hill’s article abhorrent. However, it’s not really clear he is calling for ethnic cleansing. For the sake of argument, let’s say he does imply as such. Okay, yes, the students are not asking for him to be fired or censored. They are asking for censure. Yet I doubt ANYONE would have demanded censure for something like this 5 or 10 years ago. What is the justification for doing so now? Is this really a sign of moral or political progress? As for “at a time when leftist students are regularly denounced as oppressive totalitarian censors,” well, yes, this is not an example of that. BUT American students are increasingly censorious. And they are influenced by censorious professors. Judith Butler, who wrote the explicitly anti-censorship book Excitable Speech over 20 years ago, signed the petition asking Tuvel’s transgender/transracial article to be retracted. She has not publicly given any explanation for her about face. To suggest leftist censorship is a myth is plainly belied by the facts.
On ethnic cleansing, it depends on how you define that. But Hill seems to argue that expelling Palestinians from Palestine and re-settling the land with Israelis is morally right, and that sounds like ethnic cleansing. Historically, I think you are simply wrong. People have been demanding that colleges denounce (and fire) professors since colleges were invented. Now, there’s an online petition site and AcademeBlog and you hear about things that would never make the news in the past. There’s no evidence it’s increasing. As for Butler, people can change their minds or even reveal hypocrisies. The other version of this is Stanley Fish, who was hated by the right in the 1990s for his support of leftist free speech (and published my first book, The Myth of Political Correctness). Now he’s beloved by the right for attacking political speech by professors. Leftist censors are quite real. But it’s a myth to say that leftist censorship is only kind of repression on campus, when in reality the left, right, and center all suppress free speech at times.
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I’m fairly familiar with DePaul and have published regularly in one of its journals (IALP by the Law School) over the last 15 years. It is a fine institution and one of the country’s most notable Catholic universities. It is somewhat puzzling as to the basis of contentions in free speech doctrine cited here, and the professor that is at the center of this issue seems to be facing a fairly common response to provocative language. It is important to keep in mind that provocation is part of his pedagogic job. In that regard this is a synthetic complaint. A constructive observation that he does make, in my view, concerns the general political ideology of the modern university academy. In this regard he is credible, and raising a fundamental question. It is one invoked by former Princeton philosophy professor Richard Rorty in an unusual NYT op–ed from 1994; it is short, instructive, to the point–and quite prescient:
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/13/opinion/the-unpatriotic-academy.html
With Regards.
I must have missed Richard Rorty’s 1994 essay at the time, because re-reading it lowers my opinion of him substantially. It’s basically a grumpy old man demanding that everyone be patriotic, and an awful piece of philosophical reasoning. Actually, I think it’s relevant now because some people today think all professors should share a common love of diversity, just as some (then and now) think all professors should share a love of America. I think it’s valuable to have some dissenters on the left and the right on campus, even if some (like Hill) say very offensive and stupid things. A professor can be provocative without being deeply and intentionally offensive, and I think Hill deserves the criticism he gets. But it’s important to protect offensive professors in order to defend provocative professors.
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I’ve read Dr. Hill’s piece in The Federalist. It does not matter what one’s position is on that issue. We must be able to debate the issue, NOT try to fire (which students were initially demanding) or “censure” those whose ideas offend us. I can’t believe DePaul University professors just voted to censure Hill. I hope he sues those pseudo-intellects so they learn something about the 1st Amendment and the purpose of a university. Charles Negy, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Central Florida
Hill has an argument. Whatever you think of his conclusion, it is his reasoning that needs to be addressed. Wilson does not do that here. Nor, apparently, do his other critics. This is basic Philosophy 101: don’t attack the conclusion; wrestle with the reasoning that supports it. Wilson’s article and other attacks on Hill support the point Hill makes: even academics are no longer able to engage arguments. Can there be clearly evidence of the failure of University education?