Yesterday the provost of Vanderbilt wrote a letter to the student body about the growing controversy over Professor Carol Swain, the conservative African-American who teaches politics at Vanderbilt Law School and has dared to criticize Islam and gay marriage. In retaliation a petition calling for her ouster has gathered more than 1500 signatures.
The provost wrote, “Freedom to share ideas . . . is not the freedom to take actions that discriminate against or threaten others.” She did not qualify her words. As a result, readers could get the impression that Swain’s words were “actions” that are guilty of discrimination, and therefore that the crybullies are justified to call for her suspension.
Let’s think about what provost Susan Wente is saying. Is it wrong to say or write things that discriminate? Or threaten others?
All true discourse discriminates between what is true and false, good and evil. Without discrimination in thinking, there is no good judgment.
This provost’s statement is what truly threatens. Issued without precision, it threatens speech and freedom. For it suggests that any public declaration that distinguishes between good religion and bad religion, healthy social practice and unhealthy social practice, should not be tolerated. This is the antithesis of what a good university stands for—freedom to share ideas that threaten previous thinking. Or that threaten the status quo.
Of course all of us should be against threatening the physical person of others.
But what if our ideas threaten the thinking and feelings of others? All important intellectual exchange threatens the thinking and feelings of others, especially if that thinking is new and different.
A university that stands by that provost’s statement is embracing fear and mediocrity, and has instantly disqualified itself from the roster of world-class institutions of free learning.
“The petition to force a conservative black woman to undergo diversity training
comes from Nick Goldbach, a white hipster student and self-described ‘urban enthusiast’ who claims that working as a waiter at a ‘sustainable’ luxury urban resort in Connecticut taught him about ‘common humanity.'”
“Emmie, who isn’t even at Vanderbilt, has accused Dr. Swain of creating an ‘unsafe environment for students who face enough danger off campus.’ What danger does a 61-year-old African-American PhD pose to Vanderbilt students? Does she beat them up in hallways? Does she secretly tempt them with gluten? Does she menace them with sharp objects while they sip Organic Kale Tonic from Whole Foods?”
“When Dr. Swain responded to their insulting racist petition by saying that ‘[o]nly an idiot would think a 61-year-old black woman who has spent most of her life in academia would benefit from sensitivity training,’ she was accused of ableism.”
“The professor had committed the ultimate hate crime. She had been insensitive to idiots.”
“Alyssa Janco, another white Vanderbilt student targeting Dr. Swain, barks, ‘Professor Swain is free to believe and say whatever she’d like; but freedom of speech does not equate to freedom from consequences.’ That exact argument has been used by every totalitarian regime in the world. It is telling that the left has embraced the argument that it once rejected simply because it is in power now.”
The Northampton Seminar
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