Democracy and the Role of Academia as Baghdad Bombs Take Sixty
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published January 17, 2007, 6:46 pm in News, Ethics, Morality, & Justice.
It's probably one of the most disturbing reports to come from Iraq, at least for me. Suicide bombs, roadside bombs, and hangings of deposed dictators don't disturb me that much. But bombing a university does.
I'm referring to this report, which was featured in The Washington Post on Tuesday, January 17:
"The coordinated detonation of two bombs during the after-school rush at a Baghdad university killed at least 60 people Tuesday and wounded more than 140 in what university officials described as one of the deadliest attacks on academia since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion."
A later report says that 70 people were killed. Why does the report have to say that it is "one of the deadliest attacks on academia since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion," though? Does it matter that it was an attack on academia? Why does that make a difference?
The Prime Minister summed it up, I think, although I don't really agree with him. It's because of the death of Saddam Hussein:
"'The followers of the ousted regime have been dealt a blow and their dreams buried forever,' Maliki said in a statement. 'So Saddamists and terrorists now target the world of knowledge and committed this act today against the innocent students of Mustansiriya University.'"
All of this is pretty much a statement of facts, but that idea that "Saddamists and terrorists now target the world of knowledge" makes me fearful, and I wonder why.
It's about the university or University, if you want to capitalize the general word to make it more important. It's the academy, the place of ideas, or the "world of knowledge." There's something about this place that is sacred. It's what I have devoted my life to, of course, so there's my own bias here, but I believe that the academy holds a sacred place in our pursuit of knowledge.
Let me state three things at the outset:
1. I don't know much about Al-Mustansiriya University. I have tried searching for a website, and I can't really find it. I'm sure there's information out there, but I can't seem to find it. It's a pretty big school, and it was established as a Sunni school. Now, however, it is mainly attended by Shiite Muslims.
2. I am a university professor. I am biased. I want everyone to feel the same way I do about "the idea of a university" (to quote Cardinal Newman).
3. I'm a conservative liberal or a liberal conservative, depending on how you look at it. I think that makes me a moderate.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, it's about academic freedom. The idea of the university has to be based on academic freedom. That's what learning and education is all about. What is academic freedom? It is the ability of members of the academy to act independent of outside political pressures. And I mean "political" here in its definition of authority or power.
What does this mean for members of the academy, both students and professors?
Students and professors have the right to pursue research and teaching without pressure from university administrators, other students, parents, congress, or whatever else may want to pressure them. The only entity they are accountable to is the field of study. So if a person wants to study something controversial such as Islam and terrorism, then they have to right to make an anthropological study, as long as the follow accepted guidelines within anthropology. If that person attempts to publish a paper and the other experts in the field deny that it is real scholarship, then the person has failed and the research is not valid. But the fact that the university president happens to be Muslim makes no difference. The fact that the research is conducted in East or West Jerusalem makes no difference. It is the field of study that determines what is accepted or not. Beyond that, professors have absolute freedom.
There are some qualifications here, mind you.
Professors are also paid to teach, you see. If a person is paid to teach electrical engineering and instead spends all of the time teaching about The Sound and the Fury and the students learn nothing about electrical engineering, then the professor has failed and should be fired. Professors are generally paid to do two job--teach and research. The research is qualified only by the field, as I said, but the teaching is subject to assessment by officials. But if a professor of electrical engineering teaches his class and discusses how electric cars work, it would be appropriate to discuss the effects that electric cars could have on the world political and economic stage. And if he happens to say something crazy such as "X President is a jerk," well, he's protected by tenure as well as academic freedom.
It's this idea of academic freedom of study that makes the university so liberating for students and faculty.
But there is a rift here, too. Some find it stifling. Consider this, from my own experience: a student wants to write an argumentative paper in freshman composition. He chooses the death penalty as his topic and wants to argue that the death penalty should be legal. His primary argument? The Bible says it should be. All of his evidence comes from the Bible.
Is that scholarly?
It could be, depending on how the student defined his audience. If the student claimed that he was writing for members of his religious group to convince them to support the death penalty, then the argument could work.
But if the student claimed that he was writing for the other people in our large state university, then he would have failed. People who don't believe the Bible won't buy the claim no matter how well it's stated. The academic community would see the argument based on flawed evidence.
Let's assume that the latter scenario occured and the student received a "D" on what was otherwise a well-written paper. He comes in to complain and ask why he received a "D." I say that his audience would buy the argument because they don't agree with the assumption that the Bible is evidence that should be used to dictate governmental policy.
The student counters with a gem like this: "You just hate Christians!"
This didn't actually happen, and I can usually persuade students against making these kinds of arguments. Nevermind that I am a Christian and I myself would buy the argument. It depends on to whom one is writing (curse that preposition ending!).
Some liberals would say that we're talking about an academic setting and "serious" academics would never buy a Biblical argument. The student then claims academic freedom and says that the professor is attempting a kind of censorship by dismissing the argument. The professor says he is just submitting the student to the same kind of rigorous peer review that he himself would be put to if he tried to publish the paper. The field of study would then determine whether it is appropriate scholarship or not.
So both sides claim the concept of "academic freedom" as their own, and love it!
The very controversy means that academia is one of those unrestrained places where things can be discussed openly. Now don't get me wrong here. The fact is that faculty members can be some of the most reactionary people in the world, completely resistant to change despite their generally liberal bias. But the kinds of arguments they have are wonderful. Competely egotistic, sure, but wonderful nonetheless.
That's why it bothers me that people would attack a university. An attack on a university is at once an attack on democracy, progress, education, free speech, health, and nearly every other concept that most people admire and desire.
It angers me above all else.
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