[From today's online Chronicle of Higher Education:]
A glance at the January-February issue of Academe: Statements of faith
Many private colleges today make professorships contingent upon making a statement of religious faith, but are such oaths appropriate?
Supporters of the practice defend it in part by calling colleges that embrace faith statements a healthy reflection of America's pluralism, explains Kenneth Wagner, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Radford University, a public institution in Virginia. Mr. Wagner calls them "restrictions on academic freedom," though, and says that theologically conservative associations "inhibit the building of social capital and the strengthening of civil society."
In a separate article, Peter J. Hill, a professor of economics at Wheaton College, a Christian liberal-arts institution in Illinois, writes that a faith statement is an acknowledgment of a worldview, and that secular colleges embrace worldviews just as faith-based universities do. Secular colleges, though, take as a premise that "there are no moral absolutes or organizing principles for life."
"Both positions are value-laden," says Mr. Hill, "and I think both should be options for organizing academic life."
Mr. Hill adds that faith statements do not necessarily affect scholarship, and that those who make them do so voluntarily. Mr. Wagner balks at the latter of those claims, though, saying that "you need have only a basic knowledge of the academic job market to know that many new Ph.D.'s take positions with institutions whose values they might not wholly endorse." He notes that violating such statements through pedagogy, research, or activism can be grounds for punitive action, even termination.
"What of the faculty member who comes to an institution fully subscribing to the statement of faith but who then finds a different view of the truth?" he asks. "Must this person either suppress these new ideas or resign?"
Mr. Wagner's article, "Faith Statements Do Restrict Academic Freedom," is available here.
Mr. Hill's article, "My Religious College, My Secular Profession," is available here.
--Jason M. Breslow
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Friday, January 27, 2006
Statements of Faith: Are They Appropriate?
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Recent Catholic Responses to Genocide in Darfur
Michael Perry reminded us just a few days ago (link) of the ongoing genocide in Darfur in the Sudan, while the world community continues to wring its hands (despite the promise by world governments at the end of World War II to genocide of "never again").
Three recent items may be of interest to those who wonder about the Catholic response to this ongoing crime against humanity. First, in his “State of the World” annual address to the diplomatic corps assigned to the Holy See (link), Pope Benedict XVI in speaking of about peace and forgiveness, referred to “the defenceless people of Darfur, subjected to deplorable violence, with dangerous international repercussions.” While words alone are not enough, we should not underestimate the power of religious witness in awakening conscience, as we saw with the prior Pope and his prophetic words in the face of tyranny and injustice through the world and in his native Poland.
Second, Keith Cardinal O’Brien, the leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, is presently on a two week visit to the Sudan, including Darfur. To make clear that he is on a religious mission, he is wearing white robes and cardinal red during the visit. The full story is here and here. We should keep his safety in our prayers, as he also has refused to wear a flak jacket during this trip.
Finally, members of the Catholic Worker movement are planning a demonstration at the Sudan Embassy in Washington, D.C. for March 29, carrying large signs appealing for an end to genocide and displaying the victims in Darfur, with some risking arrest for civil disobedience (link). While I tend to be rather critical of those who break the law, not to protest a law that is unjust in itself (the traditional justification for civil disobedience), but to draw attention through the act of lawbreaking itself, standing against genocide and doing so in a provocative manner when public interest has been too small is about as good an argument for that tactic as I’ve seen.
Greg Sisk
"Pro-Life Progressivism" Symposium Issue Coming Soon
The published papers from the "Pro-Life Progressivism" symposium last year at St. Thomas will be out soon, in the new issue of the University of St. Thomas Law Journal -- in a couple weeks, the editors tell me. They'll include Mark's fine piece on "The Coherence and Importance of Pro-Life Progressivism," posted on the right.
To whet your appetite, I've posted my short foreword to the symposium here (with an abstract, and the paper alone to the right). It's not a substantive argument, but a summary of some of the issues and background and of the symposium papers. (If the summary sounds interesting, ask for the book! I can pass on requests to the editors.)
Tom B.
CST and Law & Economics at Yale
Like Michael, I am so pleased and inspired to hear about the response at Yale Law School to Eduardo's Catholic Social Thought class. (During my three years at Yale, there were no law-and-religion classes -- not even from Stephen Carter -- taught).
With respect to Eduardo's question about Law & Econ:
Is it appropriate to use utilitarian analysis as part of one's process of reasoning towards the common good, or does doing so inevitably involve adopting the morally problematic underpinnings of utilitarianism, which seem to me to be wholly inconsistent with a Catholic approach?
I guess my answer would be "yes." Then again, I do not share the view of many of my friends here at MOJ that Law & Econ needs to be framed as standing in opposition to a Catholic approach. Certainly, Eduardo and I agree that utilitarianism cannot supply the fundamental moral principles that constrain our treatment of one another and that should guide our pursuit of the common good, properly understood. But I think it is not only permissible, but important, to evaluate the costs and benefits of rules and policies, if only to assist us in prudential judgments about permissible options. "Efficiency" is not the controlling principle, and being "efficient" does not excuse a policy's being contrary to human dignity. That said, there is no virtue, it seems to me, in inefficiency and waste.
Oakes on Higher Ed. and Religious Identity
In light of the posts in recent days on academic freedom and the "Vagina Monologues" at Notre Dame, and the Hochschild dust-up at Wheaton, this NRO essay, "Keeping the Faith," by J. Stanley Oakes, might be of interest. He writes:
[A] religious college that sticks to its traditions is not — or at least not automatically — guilty of intolerance. Is it really intolerance . . . when Notre Dame's new president, Rev. John Jenkins, worries that almost half of the professors at his Catholic university are non-Catholic? Doesn't the institution, at some point, morph into a different school, either secular or something else, if most of its professors reject Catholic teachings? . . .
Later, after defending religious schools that seek to preserve their religious identity, he has some criticism for Hochschild, and for those who criticized Wheaton for its decision to fire him:
In 1994, while still a Yale undergraduate, Professor Hochschild wrote an elegant and perceptive article for The Yale Free Press entitled "Corpus Yalensis," in which he portrayed Yale as little more than a corpse, with its buildings bereft of its mission. "She is destroyed," Hochschild lamented, "her spirit separated from her body. Those who remember her life are left to wonder whether her spirit could survive the separation, and, if so immortal, whether the body will admit to resurrection."
If Hochschild concluded that Yale should be criticized for abandoning its ancient purpose, one might think that he would, despite losing his job over it, stand behind Wheaton for courageously affirming its commitment to its own founding principles. Unfortunately, Hochschild doesn't see it that way. He told Golden, "I see no reason why I should be dismissed from the College upon joining the Roman Catholic church." Not so long ago, he could think of one.
The Mass. church-disclosure bill, cont'd
I appreciate RJA S.J.'s post about the defeat in Massachusetts of the proposed church-disclosure bill. This is great news. In other great news, on the same day that the House defeated the bill, it ordered to a third reading a more worthy bill, i.e., one declaring Taj Mahal the official blues musician of Massachusetts.
It is worth noting that Gov. Romney's veto threat, and active opposition from a wide range of (non-Catholic) religious organizations, were instrumental in defeating the bill.
Off to Yale Law School
I didn't attend Yale Law School (though I did teach there, in 1978-79). But that's about to change. After reading Eduardo's posting below, I've decided to cancel my classes for the rest of the semester, take up residence in New Haven, and audit Eduardo's CST seminar. Anyone want to join me? (Ah, if only my fantasies--some of them, anyhow--would come true!)
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CST at Yale, Week 1
On Monday, we had our first CST class at Yale. As I suspected, the students were almost (but not quite) exclusively active Catholics, including one ordained Jesuit priest (!). (I had joked with my wife about one of the dangers of teaching at Yale being the risk of having students with doctorates in the subject you're trying to teach. I had noticed in one of the Dean's letters that one of the second year students was a Jesuit, and I joked to my wife that he would probably end up in may class. Sure enough...) We spent a bit of time at the beginning of class talking about why it might make sense to study CST in a secular law school, as an intellectual (as opposed to devotional) endeavor. One thing that came up was the dominance of law and economics analysis in the first year curriculum, and the perception by these Catholic students that the methodology of law and economics was both unsatisfying on some level and fundamentally inconsistent with their own moral commitments. I think the hope was that studying CST might give them some alternative tools of legal analysis.
Being new to this blog, I'm wondering what others think of this point. I for one find it the hegemony of law and economics in legal scholarship very frustrating. That said, I struggle when I try to come up with better ways (particualrly in the absence of moral side-constraints) to think about how to make rational policy choices at the collective level. This seems to me to be particularly relevant to discussions about the meaning of the "common good," which comes up over and over again in CST. Clearly, the "common good" is not the same as "aggregate utility." But, as Aquinas's discussion of the need for private ownership suggests, the two are not wholly unrelated either. Is it appropriate to use utilitarian analysis as part of one's process of reasoning towards the common good, or does doing so inevitably involve adopting the morally problematic underpinnings of utilitarianism, which seem to me to be wholly inconsistent with a Catholic approach?
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Massachusetts Disclosure Legislation
The House of Representatives of the General Court (legislature) of Massachusetts defeated yesterday [147-3] the proposed legislation requiring churches and other religious organizations to report annually financial matters to Commonwealth officials. The Boston Globe report is Here. A number of MOJ'ers have addressed this issue in the past, including yours truly in an August post.
At that time I made a comparison between Old England and New England. To reiterate the points I made on that occasion, I conclude this post with a portion of the screenplay from the film version of "A Man for All Seasons"-- the dialogue is between the Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey and Sir/Saint Thomas More:
More
Then, clearly all we have to do is to approach His Holiness and ask him.
Wolsey
I think we might influence the decision of His Holiness.
More
By argument?
Wolsey
Argument certainly. And pressure.
More
Pressure, applied to the Church? The Church has its church property.
Wolsey
Pressure!
RJA sj
Google, business, and morality
Professor Tom Smith reports, and regrets, that Google has caved to the "Great Firewall of China":
Google has launched a Chinese version of its search engine, but is censoring key search items which it believes will annoy the Chinese government.
The move comes after a year of deliberation and means that Google joins Microsoft and Yahoo in using servers hosted in China. This will give it a significant speed advantage over uncensored search engines.
Such external sites have to pass through the 'Great firewall of China', a network of government servers used to determine what Chinese internet users are allowed to see.
"This was a difficult decision for Google. On balance we believe that having a service with links that work and omit a fractional number is better than having a service that is not available at all," said the company on its blog.
"It was a difficult trade-off for us to make, but one that we felt ultimately serves the best interests of our users in China."
I have never understood why so many appear to believe that being willing to characterize one's decision as "difficult" should protect one from the discomfort of having others point out that the decision was a bad one.
UPDATE: Here is an interesting contrast:
BB&T, the nation’s ninth largest financial holdings company with $109.2 billion in assets, announced today that it “will not lend to commercial developers that plan to build condominiums, shopping malls and other private projects on land taken from private citizens by government entities using eminent domain.”
In a press release issued today by the bank, BB&T Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Allison, said, “The idea that a citizen’s property can be taken by the government solely for private use is extremely misguided, in fact it’s just plain wrong. One of the most basic rights of every citizen is to keep what they own. As an institution dedicated to helping our clients achieve economic success and financial security, we won’t help any entity or company that would undermine that mission and threaten the hard-earned American dream of property ownership.”
I am not claiming, by the way, that Kelo-style eminent domain is as bad as China's statist hostility to free speech. I am just suggesting that if BB & T can exercise moral judgment, why not Google? (Of course, it could well be that BB & T simply knows that Americans appear to be angry about Kelo, but not so angry about China's lack of interest in free speech.)
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