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Friday, February 04, 2005
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PASSIONATE INTENSITY
There’s a situation roughly parallel to the Churchill thing taking place in England. A group of students at St. Andrew’s University invited the leader of a neo-fascist party to debate immigration with the lads. An outcry ensued, and the invitation was withdrawn. The problem we seem to be running into, at Hamilton College and St. Andrew’s, involves, UD thinks, an inability to distinguish between performance and interchange. Fanatics do not debate; they exhibit their beliefs. The place for them to exhibit their beliefs is at a rally with fellow fanatics. Universities are not exhibition halls. They are small enclaves of reasoned discourse. When the dean at the University of Colorado said that he didn’t know where the boundary beyond which Ward Churchill’s ideas were unacceptable might be (see UD, "Ward Churchill Update," 1/31/05), he was admitting that he didn’t know the difference between the university and the street. The walls of the university exist to keep out barbaric passions. The reason people all over the country have responded strongly to Churchill’s body of work is that they recognize its barbarism. But the university also exists to remind us that there are proper and improper ways to respond to barbarism. You do not holler at a hater. Nor do you invite him to your symposium. You cast a cold eye. |