Public statements vs. private sentiments

The IU faculty council is set to vote next Tuesday on a resolution that would criticize the Kelley School of Business’s October decision to award General Peter Pace the school’s honorary Poling Chair.

This decision would join the chorus of opposition to the appointment of Pace, who remarked that he believed “homosexual acts between individuals are immoral,” offending many at IU.

Responding to the public outcry, business school Dean Dan Smith pointed to Pace’s qualifications to discuss leadership as sufficient reason for his appointment to Poling Chair, dismissing the general’s offensive comments.

In fact, Smith said he would not act differently in appointing Pace, but added that he would abide by University restrictions on appointments if such rules were issued in the future.

“If the University is going to adopt a formal policy that requires administrators to, number one, screen all candidates for endowed chairs on their personal beliefs and, number two, submit that data to groups on campus for approval,” Smith said, “then we would certainly abide by that.”

And while we appreciate Smith’s cooperative spirit, we don’t accept his dismissal of the Pace appointment or his implication that personal beliefs are irrelevant to public appointment.

Clearly, it would be absurd for the University to establish the policies that Smith supposes.

Institutionalized screening of candidates on the basis of private, personal beliefs could lead to vigilantism, and prying investigations into the backgrounds of nominees could squander time and resources while opening the private lives of candidates to public scrutiny.

But this was not the case with Pace.

Pace’s anti-gay statements were uttered publicly in a recorded interview with the Chicago Tribune.

They were not covertly uncovered or slyly discovered. They were made to a printed newspaper in an arranged interview.

Public statements are, by definition, public. This is especially true for prominent members of society.

Words they utter in the public arena will most surely be disseminated, read, debated and reviewed.

Individuals must be held accountable for what they say. Committees need not pry into the private lives of the individuals they are considering for hire, but they cannot ignore their public statements.

While the faculty council’s initiative will not bring about substantive changes in policy, its condemnation of the circumstances under which Pace was brought to IU is quite valid.

If you can’t say anything nice, certainly don’t say it in a recorded, public interview.