Thursday, May 27, 2010
Comment on Michael P’s post and the Marquette Controversy
As Michael P. reports, critics of Marquette’s decision to rescind the offer to Prof. O’Brien claim that the decision “puts academic freedom at risk at Marquette University.” They “reject an intellectual ‘litmus test’ for our faculty, staff, and leaders in the administration.” This high-minded appeal to “academic freedom” strikes me as disingenuous. I suspect that the critics are driven by ideology rather than principles of academic freedom.
If an offer had been extended by Marquette to someone whose academic career centered seriously but mistakenly around the notion (a) that the poor across the globe are largely responsible for their own impoverishment and that, therefore, the preferential option for the poor is not only mistaken but positively harmful or (b) that women are inferior in some way to men, I suspect that these same individuals would be calling for the university president’s head. These may be inadequate examples, but I think the point is clear. A Catholic university – like any university - ought to have the institutional academic freedom to form its own identity within which individual academic freedom can flourish. And, I suspect that these critics don’t disagree with this notion. Rather they disagree with its application in this particular case because they wish that the Catholic Church taught something different than what it does on matters of human sexuality.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/05/comment-on-michael-ps-post-and-the-marquette-controversy.html
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Bingo, Michael. I would add to your litany of examples belief in a geocentric universe and white supremacy.
My Touchstone piece on Obama and Notre Dame draws similar analogies:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=23-03-030-f
We have gone from affirming that "error has no rights" to denying that "error has no lefts." :-)
My own experience seems to confirm Michael's thoughts. When I first arrived at Baylor, I was set upon by the most liberal members of the faculty and alumni because I had written on the question of intelligent design and public education and had concluded that ID could be taught in public schools without violating the Constitution. They called for my removal! (It turns out, ironically, that I have grave theological and philosophical doubts about ID as a theory, but that didn't matter. see http://biologos.org/blog/author/francis-beckwith/ ) What mattered was that I was giving aid and comfort to the evil "theocrats."
Clearly, it is more likely that a Catholic dissenter will have an easier time getting hired by an elite Catholic institution than would a dissenter to liberal orthodoxy at a non-Catholic school. This is so undeniably true it seems as though Prof. O'Brien's options were enhanced and not harmed by Marquette's actions. Imagine the reverse. Does anyone seriously believe that a prolife, anti-SSM, Catholic would be professionally helped if such an "outing" of her views had resulted in her, let's say, losing a deanship of Harvard Law School? It would be the proverbial kiss of death. What we would see on full display is the secular version of "error has no rights."
"Academic freedom" is like patriotism. It sounds good in the abstract. But uncontextualized it's just sentimental drivel.