The University faculty, a thousand or more Ph.Ds, meets today to “legislate” against war. Their aggregrate wisdom will not amount to much more than the modest wisdom of any single one of them, or of the janitors who clean the place afterward. But all of us have a right and a duty to express our political opinions. No dispute there.
It is dubious, however, that an assembly of professors, as such, has any business collectively expressing a view about foreign affairs, or even domestic policy. Doing so also creates a dangerous precedent of claiming urgent need for faculty resolutions that defend the integrity of American democracy and the well-being of the people.
We academics have no higher moral quality or deeper human wisdom, none beyond what can be found at any church potluck. When it comes to relevant personal experience, in international diplomacy or military strategy, we’re also not special. Even great knowledge does not alone determine what is right. Hitler knew more about German history than does any of us.
The author of the resolution uses the same absolutist, apocalyptic rhetoric that people of his persuasion decry in Bush-Republican Washington: “The university must stand opposed to an unconstitutional war of aggression, which will destroy its very soul. If we do not, who will?”
The answer is, look around you, professor, and not just during your meeting. Freedom of expression and the integrity of higher education are already being vigorously asserted by just about anyone and everyone, from the thugs of anarchism and the extreme left (God save us!), to moderate and conservative politicians. Indeed, the latter, rather than a hall full of professors, are the more effective counterweight to executive excess, since the dogmatic left has made it clear that the president can never win their support and therefore has nothing to lose by ignoring them.
Academics, like all citizens, should energetically exercise their right and responsibility to express their political opinions, but as individual citizens or in groups that exist for the express purpose of political activism. It undermines democracy and the legitimacy of academe to co-opt, as the Nazis did, bodies that were created for other, specifically defined purposes, whether they are faculty assemblies, garden clubs, scouting organizations or sports teams.
To my academic colleagues who believe that a faculty assembly has no business legislating about war and peace, I suggest: There are probably more of you than Professor Frank Stahl thinks. Some of you, including some with bitter experience in other societies, may support the war. Maybe you think, as I do, that the academic left poses as much of a threat to free expression on our campuses as Professor Stahl claims the “present federal administration” poses from outside them.
But you have no prospect of advancing your views in a close-minded assembly. Voting, even against the resolution, legitimizes the “legislation.” So boycott. Walk out before the voting begins. If you thwart a quorum, that sends one message. If not, and those who are left pass their resolution, the lopsided total sends another, sadder message that the public will understand: History repeats itself — first as tragedy, in sham elections in Iraq — and then, in Eugene, as farce.