Stanley Fish on education, law and society.
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On May 5, the historian Ellen Schrecker of Yeshiva University gave back an honorary degree she had received from John Jay College because the playwright Tony Kushner had been denied the same honor by the CUNY Board of Trustees. At the urging of a trustee who objected to Kushner’s views on Israel, the nomination, which had been forwarded by the faculty and administration of John Jay, was tabled. (Kushner had been informed of the impending honor.)
Professor Schrecker explained in a letter to the board’s chairman, Benno Schmidt, that she “could not remain silent when the very institution that once recognized the value of academic freedom now demeans it.” That doesn’t sound right. Kushner is not an academic and so he has no academic freedom that can be demeaned. And his more general freedom — his freedom as an artist and a citizen — has not been infringed on by what the board did. He can still write and speak and say pretty much what he wants. He just won’t be saying it at a CUNY graduation ceremony this spring.
Schrecker anticipates the point and moves to pre-empt it by offering an expansive definition of academic freedom: “That freedom is more than just the protection of the teaching, research and public activities of college and university teachers. It also extends to the entire campus, fostering the openness and creativity that allow American higher education to flourish.” But a freedom spread so generously over the entire campus loses its contact with the limiting adjective “academic.” No longer tied to the performance of specific tasks it isn’t clear what this freedom protects unless we are to understand (and this seems to be Schrecker’s understanding) that it protects everything that goes on. A concept of freedom so diffuse loses its usefulness because it becomes hard to say with any precision where and when it has been abridged. What is required if the concept is to have any cogency are distinctions that allow us to say one thing is a matter of academic freedom and another is not.
The scholarly literature on academic freedom identifies four locations or arenas where it can properly be invoked: the classroom, the research library or laboratory, off-campus pronouncements on matters of public concern (extramural expression), and on-campus criticism of the university’s policies (intramural expression). Other things that go on in a university fall under the category “extra-curricular” — that is, to the side of the core academic enterprise although related to it. The category includes lectures by outside speakers, noon-time rallies, graduation ceremonies, athletic events and, yes, the awarding of honorary degrees. No doubt these extra-academic activities take place in the context of rules and protocols (although Rutgers’ recent invitation to Snooki tests the outer limits), but the rules are rules of thumb and the protocols are more prudential than principled.
Take honorary degrees. I have been fortunate enough to have received them, and I have served on a committee charged with the responsibility of evaluating nominations. Schrecker complains that the CUNY trustees “let extraneous political considerations override educational priorities,” but in the meetings I attended “extraneous” considerations governed the conversation. What sector of society or industry has not been represented in recent years? Which of the nominees has a connection with the university? Which are donors? Which are politically connected in ways that might benefit the university? And which are controversial in ways that might generate unwelcome publicity? There were, I recall, differences of opinion of the kind that apparently marked the CUNY trustees’ meetings (seven trustees voted to approve Kushner). I remember political and ideological objections to some candidates, and in such cases the wisdom of consensus was invoked and contested candidacies were put to one side, perhaps to be revisited in another year. The uproar surrounding the tabling of Kushner’s nominations suggests that something remarkable and untoward had been done, but my experience indicates that there was nothing exceptional about the board’s action, which, while it may have been unwise, is pretty much business as usual.
Thinking clearly about this matter requires making the distinctions Schrecker blurs when she declares that “censoring outside speakers, including honorary degree recipients, is like refusing to hire instructors or firing them because of their reputed political views.” No, it isn’t. Refusing to hire or firing instructors because of their political views is against the law; anyone who could show in a court of law that he or she had been a victim of such treatment would get both a job and a large settlement in the bargain. Refusing to award an honorary degree even for political reasons involves no penalties — the disappointed non-honoree doesn’t have a case — except for the penalty of looking small-minded, biased and stupid. (More about that later.) And besides, no honorary degree recipient has been censored. To claim that Kushner has been censored is to say that getting an honorary degree is a right like the right of free expression and that not getting one is a First Amendment cause of action. The only aggrieved parties here are the faculty and administration of John Jay and they haven’t been censored either; they have been overridden.
Almost everything said about this brouhaha is beside the point. Some, including Kushner, complained that he was not given a chance for rebuttal, as if an honorary degree were something you stand for at an open meeting. Dr. Barbara Bowen, the president of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), calls the failure to honor Kushner “an attempt to close off and narrow public debate.” If that was the board’s purpose, it certainly failed; public debate now surrounds its action. But in fact the board has no obligation to the state of public debate. Its only obligation is to decide whom to honor, and that decision is one it makes in private according to criteria it alone establishes. Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, the fiercely anti-Kushner trustee, got it right when he declared that “An honorary degree is wholly within the discretion of the board to grant.”
This does not mean that the board’s action is immune from criticism. A good case could be made for saying that it was dumb. It is or should be a rule of thumb that in matters like this, you don’t ask for trouble. No recommendation by a college for an honorary degree has been turned down in the CUNY system since 1961. Turning down this one, especially in the explosive context of opposing views of Israel, would seem to be courting trouble and the courtship has been all too successful. (Of course, approving Kushner’s nomination would have also caused a furor, but the trustees could have said they were deferring to John Jay and thus spread the blame.) Now the board is poised to generate additional flak by changing its mind at a meeting called for Monday at 6 p.m. Having offended a number of constituencies already, the trustees now have a chance to offend the rest by flip-flopping. A lamentable spectacle may get more lamentable still.
But, someone might object, maybe they’ll get it right this time. There is no right to be gotten. To make the point once again, this is not an academic, a moral, a philosophical or an educational moment; it is a moment of ceremony and self-presentation. The goal is to do what you do with as little fuss and fallout as possible. That’s getting it right and the possibility of doing that has long since gone with the wind.
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