Combating Academic Political Correctnessby Steven YatesThe battle for freedom of speech in colleges and universities goes on. Legal action is now underway against a number of administrators at or associated with North Hennepin Community College near Minneapolis, Minnesota, because of a number of suppression incidents dating back to the middle of the last decade. The action was brought by Jon Willand, a professor of history at the college since it opened its doors. For a couple of years, it seems, Professor Willand had had on his office door a poster depicting General George Custer inviting the public to enlist in the cavalry to "help put down the Militant Sioux." The poster is an obvious send-up of World War I-era "Uncle Sam Wants You" posters. No reasonable person would think Professor Willand hated American Indians because of a poster on his office door. Robert Alexander, Interim Dean of Institutional Services at North Hennepin, removed the poster, however, without telling Willand in advance. He followed up by issuing a directing citing an unspecified complaint and expressed a desire to "avoid students, employees or visitors being offended." Alexander issued two more directives, ordering Willand not to put the Custer "poster back up, either in [his] office, on [his] door, or in any other location on campus." The other directive told him not to "post any other materials which may be offensive to others." Alexander also tried to suspend Willand "without pay for ten days as a disciplinary action based on offensive comments made in your class." It seems Willand had on various occasions told students the following:
The college’s effort to suspend Willand ultimately failed, but not before a protracted and professionally damaging internal appeals process, and he remained under the sway of a set of directives that clearly hampered his freedom to present his understanding of history in his own classroom. The directives included the following:
These remarks, of course, are administratese for, "Don’t say or do anything in class that any member of any government-designated victim group might find offensive." Professor Willand was also forbidden to access a website that provided the source for his remarks about Pocahontas, raising additional issues about the college’s computer policy and uses of the Internet as a source of materials for the classroom more generally. Professor Willand did what more and more people in his situation are doing. Having exhausted the internal appeals process, operating in the face of administrators who couldn’t care less about free speech, and with his professional reputation at stake, he filed suit. He named Alexander, North Hennepin president Ann Wynia, members of the Board of Trustees of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, and two state commissioners. He contacted the Washington, D.C. based Center For Individual Rights (CIR) and challenged the ban on his speech and Internet activities on First Amendment grounds. According to its complaint, "Willand’s statements for which he was discplined were all made in teaching the curriculum he is assigned to teach, specifically, American history and the history of World War II. He was disciplined for those statements because they all contradict a political orthodoxy known as ‘political correctness.’" Willand is also being represented by attorney Dan Rosen of the Minneapolis-based Rosen & Rosen firm. The latter’s statement begins, "This case is a fight against the enforcement of what is known as ‘political correctness’ in a Minnesota college. A professor of history who has been on the faculty of the North Hennepin Community College since the day that college opened in 1966 has been muzzled and had his reputation injured becaseu he has not tailored his speech to comport with the politically correct way of discussing U.S. History, particularly in matters relating to American Indians." Rosen also remarked in the CIR press release that "Political correctness may be a powerful force in academia … but it does not trump the First Amendment." Curt Levey, CIR's Director of Legal & Public Affairs, continued in the same release that "viewpoint-based restrictions on speech, such as those imposed on Professor Willand, are viewed with great suspicion by the law and are simply not permitted…. We brought this lawsuit not only to vindicate Professor Willand's rights, but also to strengthen the First Amendment protection of academics everywhere." The Minnesota Civil Liberties Union has gotten involved, and promised to file a brief supporting Willand’s lawsuit. The CIR has been the organization most at the forefront of the legal end of the struggle against political correctness. It has far more victories than losses, with a number of cases pending. The CIR represented Donald Silva in his successful fight against the University of New Hampshire after a "sexual harassment" complaint was lodged against him by feminists there. The CIR was victorious against the University of Texas School of Law in Hopwood, its most famous case to date and the most important attempt to end racial preferences in universities. Last year, CIR efforts led the University of Oklahoma to back down from censoring a geology professor, David Deming, who had published a letter to the editor in the student newspaper that offended the delicate sensibilities of that school’s feminist thought police. The plain truth is, suppression on a college or university campus in the name of political correctness violates the First Amendment, pure and simple. While the First Amendment does not protect just any sort of speech whatsoever (insert here that chestnut about shouting fire in a crowded theater) it surely protects the activities of scholars and teachers at public institutions. It may also be invoked to protect the open discussion of the multitude of issues on the public table that are affecting millions of people’s lives. In a word, it is designed to ensure that the flow of information throughout society is free, and not constrained by a political orthodoxy. A free society cannot guarantee that no one will ever get her toes stepped on. There is no Constitutional guarantee of "freedom from offense." There are things that offend me (rap "music," for instance), but I am not lobbying to have them removed from society. Unfortunately, the First Amendment only works if those with power (1) know something about it and (2) agree to respect it and restrain themselves accordingly, or (3) can be brought under control by those who do honor it. Today, we are at the tail end of the rapid ascent to power of "scholars" who have no concept of anything beyond power and "social constructions," and are willing to enforce conformity by any means necessary. Politically correctness has moved from colleges and universities through every sector of government and the legal system and now controls large corporations who see pandering to minority-sensitivities as "good for business" (and as a way of avoiding damaging lawsuits by the NAACP and other radical groups). It remains strongest in colleges and universities, however, and has almost destroyed the curriculum at many institutions. Let us consider just one example of the damaging effects of political correctness and its rejection of anything even remotely resembling traditional higher education. Roger Kimball observed in a recent article in American Legion magazine entitled "Higher Education’s Left Turn" that one can peruse course offerings and find courses with names like "Pornography: Writing of Prostitutes." This particular academic wonder delves into the deep insights on the subject available in Hustler, considered in light of the works of the Marquis de Sade. Offered at the prestigious Wesleyan University (Hillary Clinton’s alma mater), this course calls on students to write their own pornography, having delved into the writings of others on voyeurism, sadism, masochism, bestiality, and so on. One can also find courses on the lyrics of, say, Bruce Springsteen and other rock stars, on how Star Trek exemplifies diversity, etc. However, two areas continue to fascinate the politically correct ultraradicals: sexuality and racial resentment. Expressions of the former are getting increasingly perverse in their efforts to "shock the bourgeousie." The latter, as everyone by now knows, are leading to potentially disastrous calls for reparations for a practice that hasn’t existed in this country for over 135 years now (aside from the slavery of the income tax system, of course). These things, Kimball observes, are no longer exceptions; they have become the norm. Kimball, in his book Tenured Radicals (the original edition of which was published over ten years ago) and numerous other writings by numerous other authors, have shown that this sort of rubbish has become standard fare. Despite all the warnings, colleges and universities have fallen under the complete sway of politically correct orthodoxy. University students now graduate knowing more about the underground railroad, the history of the women’s movement and sexual fetishes than they will the country’s founding principles. One of the chief tenets of political correctness is that both the Constitution and the traditional literary canon are optional products of "white, male, heterosexist elitists" who were only protecting their class interests. To this way of thinking, there is no such thing as intrinsic literary or philosophical value, and Constitutional principles are a delusion that "privileges" the values of the white male elite (it is a mark of contemporary academese to use the word privilege as a verb instead of a noun). Thus the traditional canon including, say Shakespeare, has no special advantages over Hustler besides the preferences of those stodgy old white male elitists. Kimball wrote that "The very idea that the works of … Shakespeare might be indisputably greater than the collected cartoons of Bugs Bunny is often rejected as ‘antidemocratic’ and ‘elitist,’ an imposition on the freedom and political interests of various groups." The same kinds of professors will teach Karl Marx as gospel despite the manifest failure of Marxist ideology all over the world. This illustrates a related point about what the politically correct really excel at: staring facts in the face and rationalizing them out of sight. In the last analysis, this is what happens when you abandon objectively-knowable truth and objectively-knowable canons of value – especially moral value. You end up with the relativistic notion that one cultural form of life is as good as any other, with the only difference being which orthodoxy ends up running the various cultures. Of course, once a society accepts these premises, power gets the last word. The politically correct, if we observe them carefully in their activities as deans, radical professors, prominent political agitators of the Johnny Cochran stripe or sometimes as activist-turned-politician (think of Hillary Clinton), leave us with no doubt that they understand this perfectly. So what, if anything, can be done to stop this runaway train? The lawsuits the Center For Individual Rights is handling are providing a valuable service, and reminding us that there are good people in the legal system willing to stand up for the Constitutional rights of individuals. We would be much, much worse off without such organizations. But lawsuits aren’t enough. This is clear from the fact that despite a number of highly visible CIR victories, political correctness still maintains a firm grip on the vast majority of educational institutions in this country. Despite cases like Hopwood, racial preferences continue in different guises. "Diversity" continues to be the official code word, despite the evidence that its actual referent is uniformity in the realm of ideas. Radical feminists dominate many departments in the humanities; it is clear that many male professors are either afraid of them (for the most part, their fears are justified) or essentially on their side, politically. Kimball, in the above mentioned article, has what seems to me a useful idea. That is for parents to get involved, and refuse to pay tuition money when they learn that Johnny or Jane is learning more about the underground railroad or the sex lives of prostitutes than the countries Founders or the Constitution. Today a four-year education at a reputable university costs tens of thousands of dollars – and at a so-called elite institution, the amount can easily surpass six figures. Of course, a lot of students obtain scholarships, loans or both; it has become impossible for many families to pay college tuition. The response here is that the money must still come from somewhere; many scholarships come from businesses, others from foundations, still others from other sources. It is time for the donors of this money to get involved, and to withdraw their support from institutions that have filled up with faculty members who see their mission as to "shock the bourgeousie" instead of educate, or who wish to "transform" of Western culture into their vision of a race-and-gender socialist utopia. Moreover, people must stop electing politicians whose song and dance is "more money for education, more money for education." Too many taxpayer dollars are simply being thrown down rat-holes. It is time to start supporting independent political movements who will free us from political straitjackets ranging from the income tax to diversity mandates. Freedom from the former in particular will make it easier to start up new endeavors, ranging from news publications to entirely new universities making use of the tremendous possibilities of the Internet, as well as defunding the bureaucracy necessary to enforce the mandates. This will be the most immediate way to undo the damage that has been done in just the past 20 years of academic radicalism, should it turn out (as seems likely in many instances) that the old ones cannot be saved. This is, after all, the only language college and university administrators appear to understand. If the financial well starts drying up, they may eventually figure out that something is wrong, and that their agendas do not have the support of the tuition-paying and taxpaying public. But the latter must act. Parents and alumni must get involved. Donors to scholarship funds must get involved. They must pay attention to where their money is going, and what students are being told in their classes. If they continue to do nothing beyond cheering for school’s sports teams, the situation regarding political correctness in this country will worsen until we wake up one day and discover that it is actually an illegal, jailable offense to utter statements that may be construed as "offensive" to government-designated victim groups; or to criticize official government policies of affirmative action, whether we call them that or hide them behind code words such as diversity. There are places in the world that have for all practical purposes reached that point. If we do nothing, we will not be far behind.
August 4, 2001
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