One Cheer for the Academy

Over 100 people rallied in support of Israel on College Walk last Thursday. The next day, a smaller but equally vocal group rallied in support of the Palestinian cause. Both groups gathered as a war wages a world away, and neither gathering ended in chaos or violence. Civil society is a marvelous thing.

That said, the lack of any resolution on behalf of the University condemning terrorism is troubling. The administration has a duty to promote certain moral norms, like the preservation of innocent life and the right to self-defense, and to applaud groups, like the Israeli people, that uphold those norms. Instead, the University allowed both groups to gesticulate wildly and speak loudly into megaphones, on the assumption that spectators would magically apprehend the truth of the debate.

The peaceful expression of opposing views on a private campus is a consequence of academic freedom, which holds that teachers should not advocate a particular set of values to students. Academic freedom is a utopian idea, as it assumes that undergraduates can effectively judge the worth of propositions without any guidance from a higher power. Moreover, academic freedom banishes universal values from the academy. Rather than promote what is good, professors must not distinguish among the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But academic freedom is a myth, because abstention from all forms of judgment is itself a form of judgment. Fifty years ago, William F. Buckley, Jr., pointed out that the proponents of academic freedom, while saying they advocated no specific ideas, were in fact advocating two particular ideas, atheism and collectivism. One of Buckley's thought experiments proves his argument: if all viewpoints are equally valid, why aren't there pro-fascist lecture classes? Of course there are no such classes, because civilized society views fascism as reprehensible. Thus academic relativists advocate something, even if that something is not clearly defined.

But in order to make a judgment, one must have a benchmark, or rule, to judge by. Instead of providing the rule, the administration provides the student body with two different ready-made world views. The student need only choose, or not, as Israel's right to self-defense does not seem to be of great importance. If it were, wouldn't the University administration voice its opinion on the matter?

The lack of clear guidance is why the student body was largely apathetic to the rallies. Students take cues from their superiors, and in this case the University elders fall into two camps: either they are reflexively pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, or they believe that both positions are equally valid. Both Israeli and Palestinian ideologues believe the issue is a prelude to Apocalypse, and for the postmodernists, the debate is emptied of all moral content. The everyday Columbian, a student not intimately connected with the war in the Middle East but who has a reasonably intact moral compass, is thus excused from judgment.

And that is pitiable, because America needs a moral foreign policy, one that places the preservation of innocent life above all things. President Bush is right when he says terror must be fought on all fronts and that no distinction should be made between terrorists and the governments that harbor them. The result of this moralist foreign policy can be seen in Afghanistan, where an oppressive government now lays dormant and a just, progressive regime rules from Kabul.

In contrast, the Bush Doctrine met its match in the Middle East morass, where moral equivalence holds sway. When asked about the Palestinian response to terror, PLO spokesmen reflexively answer, "but what of Israeli terror?" as if a just war is a terrorist act. At the Arab League's conference in Beirut, delegates debated the question of whether suicide bombers were terrorists or martyrs. The matter was left unresolved.

The moral doublethink perpetuated by the myth of academic freedom results in all sorts of false parallels about the Middle East. Campus activists now draw an analogy between democratic Israel and apartheid South Africa, arguing for American divestment from Israeli businesses. The analogy is suspicious from the get-go: apartheid South Africa did not allow blacks to take part in any form of public life, whereas the only democratically elected Arab leaders in the Middle East are members of the Knesset. But such intellectual dishonesty does not stop the left from engaging in more grotesque displays of moral equivalence. It is now acceptable in some quarters to draw parallels between Operation Defensive Shield and the Nazi final solution. In the absence of any defining rule, up becomes down, right becomes wrong, and, as in the rhetoric of Hamas and al-Aqsa, life becomes death, and murder becomes martyrdom.

I am all for apathy. But only when one has no control over the matter, as in the case of global climate change, material inequality, or risk. Rallies should not end in violence or heckling, but the University has a sacred trust to promote certain norms, primarily the preservation of innocent life. Any philosophy that allows enemies to live side by side in peace deserves applause. So give one cheer for academic freedom. But only one.

Matt Continetti is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.