In praise of my university

Joshua Katz was a classics professor at Princeton until May of this year, when he was summarily fired for having a consensual relationship with an undergraduate at his school. As this article the NY Times recounts, the circumstances of Katz’s being fired were murky and controversial, as apparently he had already been punished for this relationship 15 years ago and some think that his firing was due to more recent ideological views that contravened Princeton’s “official” views. As the NYT reported on May 23:

The occasion for Katz’s article was his receipt of a book from a colleague, which used to be a common event before his demonization. Now, after two years, only one lone book arrived—from a colleague at the University of Chicago. Katz writes:

Since becoming a non-person in the eyes of the intelligentsia, however, I have received nearly nothing. This was the first book an American academic had sent to me in over two years.

Here’s why this is interesting: the author teaches at the University of Chicago. If you have been paying attention to the debacle that is American higher education these days, you will know that Chicago is the one elite university with a good record of resisting the worst impulses of society.

Chicago’s presidents have been outspoken champions of free expression. Would that every university were led by a Hanna Holborn Gray or a Robert Zimmer! Administrators and faculty at Chicago have worked together to create three of the most important policy documents in academia today: the Kalven Report (1967), which insists on institutional neutrality on political and social issues; the Shils Report (1972), which bars “consideration of sex, ethnic or national characteristics, or political or religious beliefs or affiliations in any decision regarding appointment, promotion, or reappointment at any level of the academic staff”; and the robust guardian of free speech known as the “Chicago Principles” (2015). As for Chicago’s heterodox students, they have for the past few years been putting out the excellent  Chicago Thinker (motto: “Outthink the Mob”). Few were surprised when the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) last month crowned Chicago number one in the 2022–2023 College Free Speech Rankings.

It’s not quite as rosy here as Katz makes out, as some students and faculty are constantly pushing against our Chicago Principles and the Kalven Report, and those principles have to be defended. So far so good, though: Chicago didn’t lift a finger when students and faculty in Geophysical Sciences, as well as alumni, urged punishments be inflicted on Professor Dorian Abbot for taking stands against DEI initiatives. And over 80 schools have adopted our Principles of Free Speech, though just one, UNC at Chapel Hill, has adopted our Kalven Report mandating institutional neutrality. More schools need to become institutionally neutral, for the taking of “official” political, moral, or ideological positions by departments or university administration serves to chill the speech of those who could suffer for dissenting (as Abbot might have were he another school and as perhaps Katz did).

Katz continues:

No other university has close to as many faculty members who have been supportive of me—and supportive of a good number of others who have fallen afoul of the new academic commissars. You might say “So what?” and accuse me of egotistically pretending an anecdote is data. But given the media attention my story has received, I suppose I’ve become something of a Rorschach test.

Although I have never had any formal ties to the Windy City, over a dozen humanists, social scientists, and scientists in a range of departments and schools at the University of Chicago have written op-eds and blogs (here are three), permitted themselves to be seen with me, or at least checked in regularly to make sure I’m OK. None of these people believes I am a saint or never did anything wrong, as of course I did. But, well, John 8:7, for starters.

I am aware that the University of Chicago is not paradise. Even in the Maroon world, according to FIRE, “42% of students say shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is never acceptable”—which leaves the other 58 percent. Worse, there’s actual violence: fatal shootings of students around campus don’t stop zealots from demanding that the university’s police force be defunded.

Furthermore, a couple of years back, the department of English decided that it would accept “only [graduate] applicants interested in working in and with Black Studies.” The geophysicist Dorian Abbot has been a regular target of attacks, internal as well as external, for speaking up—in a way that a majority of Americans would find wholly reasonable—about the problems with “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Earlier this year, the new department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity came into existence. And, sure, some faculty members, including one with a high public profile, have gone out of their way to denounce me.

Still, Chicago clearly is different from everywhere else, and we should all ask why. In my case, I am led to inquire what gives so many Chicago professors the courage to stand up to injustice, even when the injustice is to someone to whom they owe nothing—someone at a different institution, in a different field—and even when their actions could well come at a personal cost.

I think the main reason is one of our Presidents—Robert Maynard Hutchins (served 1929 to 1945)—who made freedom of speech, including his refusal to fire Communist professors, a centerpiece of his program. Since then, other Presidents have taken care to uphold our principles of free speech. It is a selling point to those students and parents who prize free expression. But even here, as I said, our professed Foundational Principles are constantly under assault. In the end, Katz calls on our new President, Paul Alivisatos, to continue the tradition:

There is a lesson here for Robert Zimmer’s successor, Paul Alivisatos: he must take care to safeguard the wisdom and excellence of the university he has had the privilege to lead for a little over a year.

I’m hopeful Alivisatos will do the right thing. For now, at least, I give thanks for the University of Chicago: My kind of town, Chicago is/ My kind of people too/ People who smile at you.

Perhaps I’m in a college bubble here, constantly banging on about issues that don’t affect the wider society—yet. But this one does, and will continue to do so. As Andrew Sullivan wrote, “We’re all on campus now.”  Alas, ’tis true. The ideological currents of elite American universities are flowing downstream, and will eventually empty their contents into society at large. For today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders.