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Professor Downs Statement: June, 2013 Intellectual Diversity and the University

The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities. Allan Bloom A great university has two basic moral charters: to pursue truth and knowledge in a professionally responsible and qualified manner, and to teach young adults. Successful teaching has many aspects, including presenting students with the best works and ideas in a subject or field; instilling habits of critical thought and respect for knowledge and truth; and preparing students for the demands of intellectual citizenship in a free society. Three connected intellectual virtues are necessary conditions in order to achieve these estimable ends: reliance upon reason and objectivity; intellectual honesty; and intellectual freedom. (Jarislov Pelikan, The Idea of the University: A Reexamination) Reason and objectivity are vital to the pursuit of truth because they entail respect for evidence and the need to justify conclusions rather than asserting them in an authoritarian fashion. Intellectual honesty is important in two respects, one self-evident. Intellectual honesty obviously means the absence of intellectual fraud. Fraud is selfevidently harmful to truth. Another aspect of intellectual honesty is equally important: honestly speaking ones truth. Truth suffers when one is reluctant or afraid to conclude what one truly believes is true because of political or social pressure. All great dissenters who eventually changed the course of history have had the courage of their beliefs. Without intellectual honesty, the pall of orthodoxy can reign, which is the end of truth. Intellectual freedom is the linchpin virtue. The most profound and experienced thinkers agree that the pursuit of truth is as much a matter of disagreement as of agreement. Intellectual freedom is vital not only as an end in itself, but also because truth is not possible without it. As John Stuart Mill, Alexander Meiklejohn, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and a host of other influential thinkers have taught, no one possesses the whole truth, and no one is without some error. We are all fallible, so the pursuit of truth requires the questioning and checking of all viewpoints, however sacred or consensual they may be. This is true for all disciplines, but especially so in the social sciences and humanities, which entail more interpretation and judgment. As Mill wrote, even accepted truth requires questioning. However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth. Now, these three intellectual virtues can only thrive in an environment in which numerous viewpointsincluding dissenting viewpointsare encouraged and thrive. Intellectual diversity (including political and moral diversity) is not only a condition for the achievement of the universitys purposes; it is also a product ofevidence ofthe university successfully pursuing its purposes. The presence of intellectual diversity is a

sign that intellectual freedom, intellectual honesty, and a commitment to reason are alive and well at the university. A university without meaningful intellectual diversity is, in Mills words, not a living truth. All relevant viewpoints must have presence regardless of political or normative orientation. Without intellectual diversity, students are shortchanged. Their exposure to differing ideas is limited, making their education less challenging, less truthful, and simply less interesting. They receive Education Light rather than a full and real education.

Numerous students have told me over the years how they wished they had received a more intellectually diverse, challenging, and adventurous education. Learning should be an adventure that prepares one for the adventure of life in the adult world. But there can be no intellectual adventure when only certain ideas and beliefs hold sway or are tolerated. Nor does an education without intellectual diversity prepare students for the rigors and challenges of constitutional citizenship, for it does not reflect the actual diversity of viewpoints that exist in our democracy, and it does not prepare students for the clash of ideas and conflicts that exist in the real world. Accordingly, intellectual diversity should be strongly encouraged and fostered in higher education. But the means that one uses to promote intellectual diversity must respect intellectual and institutional academic freedom. Academic freedom entails the right of departments and faculty to make professional judgments about whom to hire and what and how to teach. Academic freedom and intellectual freedom are two sides of the same coin. Prohibiting discriminatory conduct based on political affiliation or views is clearly consistent with the principles of academic freedom and intellectual diversity. So are public pronouncements of university personnel and leaders in support of intellectual diversity, as well as appropriate efforts to ensure and promote it. But coercive measures designed to promote intellectual diversity run afoul of academic freedom, posing both normative and constitutional problems. Coercive policies would include such things as speech codes that prohibit speech that offends on grounds of political affiliation (speech codes are always wrong); requirements that departments hire individuals based on political criteria that balance the scales (what could be called affirmative action for conservatives and other nonmajoritarian views on campus); and inquiries that delve into the political ideas or orientations of faculty in manners, for such inquiries raise the specter of guilt by association and witch hunts. These and related policies are counter to basic principles of academic freedom, and risk unintended consequences.

Thus, intellectual diversity is a vital principle for a great university. But how it is pursued is equally important. It is essential to pursue intellectual diversity. It is equally essential to pursue it in a way that is consistent with the principles of academic freedom.

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