"[T]he pressing question is not what should befall Churchill, but what kind of educational system hires a man like him in the first place?"

an editorial by Stephen H. Balch, President, National Association of Scholars


"Have you no shame?" cried Joseph Welch in his legendary retort to Joe McCarthy. Having artfully provoked a crude act of bullying, Welch forever broke McCarthy's power to intimidate. Censure and irrelevancy soon followed.

Harvard president Larry Summers's recent collision with political correctness offered a similar opportunity. But instead of shaming the hounding mob, Summers collapsed in shame himself.

What a chance lost for our country's leading educator! What a simple thing to have said, "the university is about reasoned discourse, and if the president of Harvard can't take part, who can? If my critics wish to debate the merits of my statements about sex and career choice, they have my welcome. But a university is no place for intimidation, and I won't submit to it." The verdict of public opinion—even of university opinion once coaxed from hiding—would have been overwhelmingly on his side. And with his baiter buried in ridicule and obloquy, American higher education would now be a better place.

Why Summers didn't see this opportunity is a mystery. He clearly missed rendering the greatest service to academe in his power. Early episodes in his presidency gave hope that he understood the university's pathologies. But altogether blindsided by the furor over his commonsensical speculations, he chose, instead, a crawling supplication.

Perhaps Summers never viewed his presidency other than in the most conventional terms, that is, as an exercise in fundraising and institutional development. He also appears to have been persuaded that, as Harvard's CEO, his comments would keep women from pursuing university careers—although one might better suspect that discrimination's omnipresence (the politically correct thesis), not the notion that career differentials reflect female choice (Summers's argument), would be the more effective deterrent. In any event, by ingloriously fleeing when he could have won, Summers assured that his presidency would be chiefly remembered for its pathetic spectacle.

By contrast, the Ward Churchill story is yet to be fully told. The outrage felt at his celebration of mass murder is natural, as is the desire for punishment. Yet the pressing question is not what should befall Churchill, but what kind of educational system hires a man like him in the first place? Academic freedom is only justified on the assumption of rigorous intellectual quality controls that give short shift to cranks posing as scholars. Defenders of the academic status-quo must squirm in their realization that, if not typical, Churchill isn't anomalous either.

No one should lose a faculty post because his views offend. That's never a legitimate academic test. In the case of Churchill, of course, there are also allegations of fraud and plagiarism which, if proven, could justify dismissal. But short of that, or something comparable, the University of Colorado is stuck with its history. Tenure is a contract, and, unfortunately, no specifications were made in Churchill's about reasonableness, rigor, temperateness, or other intellectual qualities foreign to his rabble-rouser's métier. Contracts may not be sacred, but they are enforceable in courts of law. And there, indeed, lies a lesson that may lead to opportunity. If mistakes can't be undone, make sure they're not repeated.

Tenure, of course, was once more than contract, it was high principle—a principle that assured those who possessed specialized knowledge, mastery of method, and a commitment to dispassionate inquiry, that they would not have to suffer from ignorant meddling. But this was an immunity to be earned through an exacting apprenticeship under seniors for whom the preservation of standards was of transcending importance. To the extent that causes and livings, instead of inquiry and understanding, are what academics now favor, to that same extent they no longer deserve tenure's protections.

But there is an even more disturbing implication. Tenure was not just a privilege for the individually worthy, it was designed to be a cornerstone of academic governance—a key guarantor that the ideals of knowledge, method, and dispassion would remain sacrosanct. Because tenure would effectively neutralize external pressure, each scholarly generation would be free to pass its high ideals inviolate to its successors. Yet, as the Churchill affair helps illustrate, outside the natural sciences, this succession has been gravely compromised. Tenure's failure is thus more than just the bestowal of undeserved prizes; it is deeply systemic, reaching to the heart of the assumptions on which academic governance is based.

In the wake of the Churchill affair, the Regents of the University of Colorado intend to oversee a comprehensive review of the workings of the tenure process, probably the first within a major university since the formalization of the modern system in 1940. Their opportunity is not simply to avoid being stuck with more Churchills, but to restore to the process the integrity it was originally supposed to possess, or to change it as necessary. Tenure's weak point has always been its susceptibility to favor-trading—the all-too-human inclination to help the other guy if he'll be equally nice in return. Academe was once thought too high-minded for such cheapening accommodations, but apparently that is no longer so. If tenure is to be preserved in its present form, means need to be found for restoring the primacy of intellectual criteria over political ones, and frustrating the reciprocal "rent seeking" that drives down all standards. Given the strength of vested interests, this won't be easy to do. But it is an opportunity that still beckons.

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Originally published in Vol. 14, Number 3 of NAS Update, The Newsletter of the National Association of Scholars. Reprinted here with permission.


Our thanks to PB reader 'Retired Bill' for alerting us to this article