The war on academic freedom

Imagine if Gov. Mike Pence rallied the state legislature to slash IU’s funding because the IU Art Museum displayed a painting he found offensive.

Such action would be antithetical to the very idea of a public university.

But Brooklyn College in New York City is facing exactly that sort of political extortion.

Glenn Greenwald reported in The Guardian that New York City officials, led by famed lawyer Alan Dershowitz, are threatening BC’s funding because its political science department is sponsoring an event that features two members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is critical of Israel.

While I’d love to use this column to talk about blind jingoes who believe Israel can do no wrong or rabid anti-Semites who believe it can do no right, I’m much more inclined to criticize the 10 members of the New York City Council who sent a letter to BC President Karen Gould threatening her school with funding cuts on account of an event they find to be “offensive” as well as “odious and wrong.”

We Hoosiers should care about this, because any school that receives public funding is subject to the same kind of threat.

Whether in Indiana or New York, governments ostensibly fund higher education in part because they deem it beneficial for their constituents to be exposed to differing viewpoints and cutting-edge research in the pursuit of truth.

Universities also serve as incubators for dissent that would be steamrolled in other public venues.

The work carried out by universities may not always please a majority of the public. It may shock and offend those of certain religious and political sensibilities.

But universities help facilitate important public conversations, including conversations on uncomfortable subjects. They are not supposed to be echo chambers that parrot the majority opinion and refuse to push people out of their comfort zones.

Yet that is precisely what some legislators believe they should be. In 2009, the Oklahoma state legislature investigated the University of Oklahoma for hosting a speech by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

The same year, Maryland senators stopped University of Maryland students from screening an adult film that was to be followed by a discussion of First Amendment rights and pornography.

Are some politicians so afraid of bespectacled professors discussing international relations, grey-haired scientists talking about animals and pimply kids talking about sex that they are willing to use state leverage to stifle them?

It would seem a petty and immature way to express disagreement, and it defeats the idea that universities should be venues of open discussion where adults can live and learn.

IU was famously home to Alfred Kinsey while he researched human sexuality during an era in which the topic was taboo.

Herman B Wells was IU’s president at the time of the controversy.

Wells said, “I had early made up my mind that a university that bows to the wishes of a person, group or segment of society is not free and that a state university in particular cannot expect to command the support of the public if it is captive to any group.”

Dershowitz should know better. He is a political liberal and serves on the board of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education — an outspoken defender of First Amendment rights on campus.

He should heed Wells’ words, as should the New York City Council.

IU students should stand in solidarity not with supporters or detractors of Israel, but with those who stand up for American principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech.

Politicians all too often show their willingness to use their power to silence those they disagree with.

And if it can happen in New York, it can happen here.

­— danoconn@indiana.edu