"the professoriate and the truth"

After a week of following the news much less closely than is my wont, I am a little slow on getting back into a daily posting rhythm. So tonight I'll start with an easy one.

Last week at the unfortunately named Tech Central Station, John Kekes offered the text of his March lecture before the North American Philosophy of Education Society meeting in Toronto. It's long, but worth the read.

Here is part of Keke's opening remarks:

I now ask you to consider the stifling of opinions on our campuses. When did you last hear of anyone defending fundamentalist Christianity or the superiority of Western civilization? Who has been allowed to express the opinion on our campuses that homosexuality is a perversion, that there exist racial differences in intelligence, that women's place is in the home, that the Holocaust is a fiction, or that America is a force for the good in a corrupt world?

You may say that such opinions are justly stifled because their expression harms others. But if you thought that, you would be well-advised to think again. For if by harm you mean, narrowly, serious injury, such as murder, torture, or battery, then neither the opinions nor their expression harms others. And if by harm you mean, broadly, injury to the interest of the people affected, then you would have to be opposed to all laws and regulations which prohibit people from doing what they want or place burden on them that they do not wish to bear. You would, then, be committed to the absurdity of having to oppose laws about taxation, social security, immigration, and health care, since they injure the interests of those who are forced to pay for them. The truth of the matter is that the opinions stifled on our campuses run counter to a prevailing orthodoxy that abuses its power and prevents the expression of opinions it opposes. […]

What makes this coercive moralizing even worse is the hypocritical double-talk by which it is presented. For the stifling of opinions is said to be required by toleration. Its defenders advocate toleration of discrimination in favor of minorities and women (but not against them); of obscenity that offends religious believers and patriots (but not African-Americans and Jews); of unions' spending large sums in support of political causes (but not corporations' doing the same); of pot smoking (but not cigarette smoking); of abortion (but not capital punishment); of the public lies of Clinton (but not of Nixon); of hate speech against fundamentalists (but not homosexuals); of sex education in elementary schools (but not prayer); of jobs open only to union members (but not private clubs open only to males); of lies about American imperialism (but not the Holocaust); of sacrilegious of language (but not of language that uses “he” to refer to all human beings); of scientific research into just about anything (except racial differences in intelligence); and so on and on. We are awash in this ocean of hypocrisy, lies, and falsifications.

Strong stuff, though with the considerable virtue of being true. Kekes is to be commended for taking his message before his fellow educators. I imagine that it didn't go over altogether well.

Yet not all news is grim. In some places, the rot has not penetrated to the core, even on a campus as stultifyingly correct as that of Indiana University. Consider my department: History and Philosophy of Science. I'm better acquainted with the professors on the philosophy side, although some of the following applies to our historians as well.

Philosophy of science is arguably the closest of all disciplines within the humanities to science proper. (I'll address what exactly philosophy of science is in an essay this summer.) Indeed, it's not unheard of for our faculty to publish in science journals, or to work jointly on theoretical problems with researchers in (say) physics or biology. But being a natural scientist, or a professor in a field that falls close to the sciences, does not in itself guarantee immunity to the stifling groupthink that Kekes describes, even though the very nature of these disciplines can provide perspective often lacking in the core humanities.

Which is why I consider myself so fortunate. I've no doubt that most of my professors are politically liberal; that is, after all, the default orientation within academia. Yet several are at least vaguely aware of my religious and political inclinations, in particular those who I asked to provide recommendation letters in support of a fellowship application at a certain (conservative) think tank. But insofar as I can tell my personal beliefs have mattered not a whit.

Anecdotal evidence? Well, yeah. And as a good friend remarked over the weekend, things might have turned out differently had my thesis proposal been a robust defense of Intelligent Design. Nonetheless, in my little corner of the humanities it seems that research is still appraised on its merits, and not by adherence to some totalitarian academic code.