Let UD shake her head a bit here, try to clear things out… Okay. A Harvard professor, attacked in the last few days as a bigot because he wrote an opinion piece in an Indian newspaper containing a variety of intensely bigoted statements, as well as outrageous policy proposals, relative to Muslims, responds that his attackers are pro-Soviet.
I understand that the guy only teaches summer school, but shouldn’t there be minimal standards – of political understanding, and of responsible public statements – for summer as well as non-summer teaching? At Harvard?
Two Harvard students have started a petition calling for Subramanian Swamy’s ouster:
“Swamy draws a lot of prestige and legitimacy from his position at Harvard,” [one of the petition-writers] said. “If the Hindu right were to come into power in India, he could very well be someone who takes up a position in government, so I think it’s important for members of this community to play a part in discrediting him and saying, ‘No, he does not represent us.’”
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As current events at the University of North Carolina demonstrate, all serious universities guard their reputations, and all know that reputation can be undone in any number of ways. Slimy big-time sports programs are the fastest route to perdition, obviously; but industry-compromised professors on your medical faculty (an ongoing news story in the United States) can move you in that direction too, as can lots of other forms of financial corruption.
The problem with professors who express disastrously illiberal views – Ward Churchill’s writings on the ‘little Eichmanns’ who died in the Twin Towers, for instance – is that these people are terrible embarrassments to liberal arts institutions. They harbor precisely the ignorant, cruel fanaticism against which the university, above all human institutions, stands. What to do?
You certainly want to do something. It’s important to say out loud, one way or another, that you’re not, for instance, University College London, which has hosted speakers who call for the killing of homosexuals.
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Unless they’re truly – like the UCL speaker – inciting violence, professors with extreme and inhumane political views shouldn’t necessarily be fired. Universities should go to great lengths to protect speech.
But these people should certainly be fought, fiercely. Petitions of the sort the Harvard students are circulating don’t, I think, need to issue in expulsion. They need to issue in exposure (and indeed the Swamy story is all over the news today). Boycotts are also fine. Encourage students not to take classes with such people. Marginalize them in every possible way. Plaster their vile writings all over campus. Hold protests.
If, after investigating what is angering students, a university indeed decides that its reputation as a place of reasoned and humane discourse is imperiled by this faculty member, the school can punish that person in a variety of ways — all the way up, on occasion, to dismissal.
July 29th, 2011 at 12:48AM
What you’re recommending is exactly why so many academics use pseudonyms when they comment on blogs. Say something that offends the dominant ideology and the lynch mob gets loose. (And by the way the problem with Ward Churchill wasn’t just his comment about the little Eichmanns. There were more substantial charges.)
What you’re saying can apply just as well if a prof were to write a disastrously illiberal pro-Bachmann op ed and the school decides that the op ed imperils the school’s reputation as a place of reasoned and humane discourse? (Not that anyone who is seeking tenure would ever do such a thing, but you never know what you might be getting with the summer help.)
For all we know the prof might be a much better econ teacher than the experts who don’t espouse those views. Boycotting, or sanctioning him in the way you mention could be doing a disservice to his students. Anyone who doesn’t agree with the prof’s op ed can write his own op ed.
July 29th, 2011 at 7:07AM
missed by a mile, UD
if the reputation is harmed, punishment is in order?
that is what you appear to be saying, and it is equivalent to “mob rule” or the “tyranny of the majority”.
To quote Metallica,
“Doesn’t Matter What You See
Or into it What You Read
You Can Do it Your Own Way
If It’s Done Just How I Say
Independence Limited
Freedom of Choice
Choice Is Made for You My Friend
Freedom of Speech
Speech Is Words That They Will Bend
Freedom with Their Exception”
Harvard is bound by its self-promoted image as a place that cherishes, even existentially depends on, vigorous defense of free speech. Legally they can’t touch him, see the link.
http://thefire.org/torch/#13427
July 29th, 2011 at 8:18AM
I think Metallica should be punished for ruining music’s reputation.
December 7th, 2011 at 8:03PM
[…] July, UD noted the presence, on Harvard’s summer school faculty, of an economist with scandalously bigoted views. […]