Self Destruction of the American University

THE SELF-DESTRUCTION OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: Bill Kristol begins his look at the American university system’s unraveling this week with a pair of quotes:

“To give oneself the law is the highest freedom. The much-lauded ‘academic freedom’ will be expelled from the German university; for this freedom was not genuine because it was only negative. It primarily meant lack of concern, arbitrariness of intentions and inclinations, lack of restraint in what was done and left undone. The concept of the freedom of the German student is now brought back to its truth. Henceforth, the bond and service of German students will unfold from this truth.”
Martin Heidegger 
“The Self-Assertion of the German University,” May 27, 1933
“If I am right in believing that Heidegger’s teachings are the most powerful intellectual force in our times, then the crisis of the German university, which everyone saw, is the crisis of the university everywhere.” *
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

As Kristol writes, “Let’s be clear about what is happening at Yale and Missouri, and at colleges and universities all across the nation: Freedom is under assault.” Read the whole thing.

* Curious isn’t it, that even as it defeated National Socialism, post-war America became an intellectual outpost of its predecessor, the Weimar Republic?

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“To give oneself the law is the highest freedom. The much-lauded ‘academic freedom’ will be expelled from the German university; for this freedom was not genuine because it was only negative. It primarily meant lack of concern, arbitrariness of intentions and inclinations, lack of restraint in what was done and left undone. The concept of the freedom of the German student is now brought back to its truth. Henceforth, the bond and service of German students will unfold from this truth.”

Martin Heidegger “The Self-Assertion of the German University,” May 27, 1933

“If I am right in believing that Heidegger’s teachings are the most powerful intellectual force in our times, then the crisis of the German university, which everyone saw, is the crisis of the university everywhere.”

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

It’s in a way ludicrous to mention in the same breath the childish idiocy at Yale, the Lord-of-the-Flies frenzy at the University of Missouri, and the embrace of National Socialism by the great philosopher Martin Heidegger. We’re tempted to say, “First time tragedy, second time farce,” and leave it at that.

But isn’t farce sometimes a kind of sugar-coated tragedy? Farcical illiberalism is still illiberal. Soft nihilism is less intimidating than hard nihilism. Self-pity is less threatening than self-assertion. But the damage to the American university—and to America—can still be great.

Let’s be clear about what is happening at Yale and Missouri, and at colleges and universities all across the nation: Freedom is under assault.

It’s actually been under assault for quite a while. But the attack has intensified in recent years, aided and abetted by the Obama Department of Education and its 2011 re-interpretation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The assault has been, in the manner of today’s liberalism, somewhat erratic and intermittent, enveloped in gauzy clouds of grievance and pious protestations of victimhood. The assault has been primarily on academic freedom—but not just academic freedom. For what is the limiting principle that would constrain the assault to the university campuses?

What is to be done? We could begin from the observation that the Education Amendments of 1972 were passed by the United States Congress. The University of Missouri is a public institution, funded by taxpayers and operated under the authority of the legislature of that state. Yale is governed by a corporate body whose membership is a matter of public record. The responsibility for acting to defend freedom on campus falls to our elected officials and to those with a responsibility for these institutions. Academic freedom, it is now clear, is too important to be left to academics.

In The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom recounts an incident from almost a half-century ago:

“You don’t have to intimidate us,” said the famous professor of philosophy in April 1969, to ten thousand triumphant students supporting a group of black students who had just persuaded “us,” the faculty of Cornell University, to do their will by threatening the use of firearms as well as threatening the lives of individual professors. A member of the ample press corps newly specialized in reporting the hottest item of the day, the university, muttered, “You said it, brother.” The reporter had learned a proper contempt for the moral and intellectual qualities of professors. Servility, vanity and lack of conviction are not difficult to discern.

Plus ça change .  .  .

But no serious actions were taken after those manifestations of illiberalism. The threats seemed to subside. The academic rot was gradual enough to be tolerated. Islands of intellectual excellence, liberal education, and academic freedom could be defended. The efforts by defenders of academic freedom were mostly focused on slowing the closing down.

But things have gotten bad enough, the situation has become dire enough, the decadence is now obvious enough that civic and political leaders can no longer watch from the sidelines. It’s time to add the defense of intellectual freedom, of freedom of speech and of the mind, to the more familiar agenda—economic freedom, social and religious freedom, the defense of freedom abroad—that the party of freedom intends to place before the American electorate in 2016.