This morning, in my email, I received a reminder with a list of things for faculty and staff to consider as the new semester begins. Right next to each other were these two bullets:
Instructors should proctor examinations diligently and should investigate all cases of suspected or alleged dishonesty, including plagiarism, in their classes.
These words are pretty straightforward. No stealing. No cheating. No lying. Do your own work.
Do not leave bicycles in entryways or hallways, and keep dogs out of university buildings.
Loose bikes and dogs can be obnoxious and distracting at best and dangerous to some at worst. Keep them outside. OK.
Under University’s charter, “no instruction either sectarian in religion or partisan in politics shall ever be allowed in any department of the university.”
Ah, interesting. So you can talk about religion, as long as it’s not “sectarian”. And you can talk about politics, as long as it’s not “partisan”. To do so is forbidden – no exceptions for your department.
What would a lecture on politics look like if it were not partisan? You could, perhaps, read the constitution out loud, and then a recent bill from congress and compare the language. Not a bad exercise actually. You could discuss the mechanics of the branches of government, though that would be utterly boring.
You could weight the pros and cons of the conservatives position. No wait! That could turn partisan very quickly – probably within the tone of voice of the first sentence. You could do the same with the liberal position, but how far can you go without making some (at least implicit) value judgements about the things you are discussing? Surely, there is more than one student in your class who may hold different views entirely. Do you try to represent them too? Ignore them in favor of a progressive vs. conservative dichotomy?
These sorts of discussions always flare up when religion is discussed in the modern public square. A frequent solution is to try and represent everyone and their dog equally. This leads to a wild display in the city park where you have a Nativity display next to a menorah next to a Christmas tree next to Atheist billboard next to a Wells Fargo billboard featuring Santa Clause. The next day, the city is sued for lack of a proper Hindu display. How could they be left out? Or what about reading a prayer over the loudspeaker at school? For some reason, certain fundamentalists are always campaigning to do this. Government administrators are quick to reply that, to be properly inclusive – they would have to read about 20 different prayers. Then, just maybe, it wouldn’t be “sectarian”.
The oft passed over detail is that not having ANY prayer is also making a very sectarian statement. A public square sanitized of religion is not something that occurs freely and naturally. It requires strong chemicals and harsh disinfectants, applied frequently with vigorous scrubbing.
The same is true for politics. Have the government hire teachers to talk about the government in public schools and universities. By nature, can they bite the hand that feeds them? They may think they flaunt their ability to do so, but only so much. They are already in chains held by partisans.
As Chesterton said in The Everlasting Man, regarding Christianity:
It is a stark hypocrisy to pretend that nine-tenths of the higher critics and scientific evolutionists and professors of comparative religion are in the least impartial. Why should they be impartial, what is being impartial, when the whole world is at war about whether one thing is a devouring superstition or a divine hope?
The same can be said about a thousand other topics, though not in as strong of language.
But I am not advocating war. What then is the alternative to impossibly inclusive mushy PC nonsense? Love. Fierce allegiance to truth as best as you can grasp it. Fierce selfless maximum appraisal of your neighbor (and even enemy), valuing his life and value as you do your own. This can’t be done by us – broken and petty people. But we have a forgiving model that has already done it for us. He asks us to do likewise.