Say a lot, say it carefully and never say what you mean. It’s a ploy that’s worked in politics for years, and there’s a group that is bringing that philosophy to the world of academic censorship. Say hello to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
The group was founded in 1995 by Lynne Cheney – Dick’s wife – and lists among its goals “the free exchange of ideas on campus” and the assurance that we all receive “a philosophically-balanced, open-minded, high-quality education at an affordable price.”
Stick to those platitudes, and there’s a lot to like about the ACTA. Unravel them, and you’re in for a heap of trouble.
Oh, the ACTA is all for free speech and open-mindedness. But the free speech they’re most interested in protecting comes out of the wallets of wealthy alumni donors, not the mouths of professors and students. And Allah help you if your open mind wanders away from the White House party line on issues of national import – like the tragedies of Sept. 11 or the ensuing U.S. military action in Central Asia.
That all came to bear in November, when the group released a special report entitled “Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It.” The 21-page report is simple in tone and clear in its focus: Some students and faculty don’t agree with President George W. Bush about the Sept. 11 attacks, and some oppose “America’s New (undeclared) War.”
It then goes on to innocently list 115 instances of such dissent at colleges and universities across the country. Their crime, according to the report, that “many invoked tolerance and diversity as antidotes to evil,” while “some even pointed accusatory fingers, not at the terrorists, but at America itself.”
The report doesn’t name individual speakers, just institutions. It doesn’t call for resignations, book burnings or community boycotts. Beyond suggesting that campuses invite pro-war guest speakers and institute survey courses in Western civilization, the report never actually tells the reader “What Can Be Done About It.”
But another volume in the ACTA’s library does. It’s called the “Intelligent Donor’s Guide to College Giving,” a pamphlet that teaches rich alumni how to target their donations to specific programs – or, in other words, how to cut off the blood supply to ideas they don’t like while strengthening the ones they do.
So all the November report does is subtly and politely tap a few donors and right-thinking trustees on the shoulder and suggest that maybe a few eggheads up in the ivory tower somewhere are turning a little pink these days. All ACTA is doing is giving the Rottweiler a shirt to smell – no harm in that – and if a few freethinking, less-than-jingoistic professors or departments get bit along the way, well, that’s just free speech running its course.
Jerry L. Martin, ACTA president, co-author of the report, and proud owner of a Northwestern doctorate in philosophy, is adamant in his allegiance to the marketplace of ideas. But he knows full well that, as with any market, everything in it has its price.
It’s up to those of us who still believe that universities should be home to dissent and open discussion to see that our right to challenge policy and think for ourselves will never be bought or sold.
