I want to draw additional attention to the case of Steven Salaita, because it poses a threat to academic freedom. Here is the Change.org petition to reinstate him, which I have signed.

Last year, the University of Illinois granted professor Salaita a tenured faculty position as a professor of American Indian Studies, subject only to a vote of the Board of Trustees, which was described to him as a formality. He did what you’re supposed to do and resigned his position at Virginia Tech as he prepared to move to Illinois to start teaching this fall. He then composed a series of tweets against the Israeli invasion of Gaza.

With support of the Board of Trustees, the Illinois Chancellor revoked the position offered to Prof. Salaita. They made no bones about the fact that his tweets were the reason for their decision. In an explanatory letter, the Trustees endorsed freedom of speech but went on to say:

Our campuses must be safe harbors where students and faculty from all backgrounds and cultures feel valued, respected and comfortable expressing their views.  We … write today to add our collective and unwavering support of Chancellor Wise and her philosophy of academic freedom and free speech tempered in respect for human rights – these are the same core values which have guided this institution since its founding. … The University of Illinois must shape men and women who will contribute as citizens in a diverse and multi-cultural democracy. To succeed in this mission, we must constantly reinforce our expectation of a university community that values civility as much as scholarship.

Disrespectful and demeaning speech that promotes malice is not an acceptable form of civil argument if we wish to ensure that students, faculty and staff are comfortable in a place of scholarship and education. If we educate a generation of students to believe otherwise, we will have jeopardized the very system that so many have made such great sacrifices to defend. There can be no place for that in our democracy, and therefore, there will be no place for it in our university [emphasis added].

I have argued that a university may assess the quality and content of a professor’s public communications in deciding whether to hire her, publish her, or invite her to speak. “Civility” could be relevant to those judgments. (Jennifer Saul makes that point well.) However, it is very hard to see Prof. Salaita’s tweets as uncharacteristically lacking in civility or as especially demeaning. What they are is critical of Israel.

The Brown University professor Bonnie Honig interprets his tweets as the opposite of uncivil:

Here is a man of Palestinian descent watching people he may know, perhaps friends, colleagues, or relatives, bombed to bits while a seemingly uncaring or powerless world watched. He was touched by violence and responded in a way that showed it. In one of the tweets that was most objected to (Netanyahu, necklace, children’s teeth), Salaita commented on a public figure who is fair game and who was promoting acts of terrible violence against a mostly civilian population. I found that tweet painful and painfully funny. It struck home with me, a Jew raised as a Zionist. Too many of us are too committed to being uncritical of Israel. Perhaps tweets like Prof. Salaita’s, along with images of violence from Gaza and our innate sense of fair play, could wake us from our uncritical slumbers. It certainly provoked ME, and I say “provoked” in the best way – awakened to thinking.

Prof. Salaita is also a strong supporter of the “boycott of Israeli academic institutions,” which I happen to oppose. I would reject any academic boycott, and I disagree that the one country in the world to single out this way is Israel. But if Prof. Salaita was “unhired” because he supports the boycott, that is a clear violation of his freedom of speech and association. He is entitled to advocate a boycott; I just don’t endorse it.

As Michael Dorf explains, it’s a little bit complicated whether Prof. Salaita had a legal right to his position. Illinois was not obligated to hire him in the first place. It did, however, extend him an offer. He was told that the Trustees’ vote was a formality, and, as Brian Leiter writes, “Such approval clauses … had, previously, been pro forma at Illinois, as they are at all serious universities: it is not the job of the Board of Trustees of a research institution to second-guess the judgment of academics and scholars.” Thus, arguably, the University was constrained to hire him.

One could argue the reverse–that the Trustees’ vote is precisely meant to be a check on the decisions of the faculty and administration, to be used rarely but at the Board’s discretion. That would be a legal defense of the Trustees’ decision (I cannot say how plausible), but it is not a moral justification of this particular choice, whose basis appears clear enough.

I am not sure I would go far as to say that the University of Illinois has “repealed the First Amendment for its faculty.” Professors already in place there cannot be unhired. This case actually reinforces the value of tenure. But it is a problem if you can lose your academic freedom during a period of transition. And the bigger problem is: a major state university cannot seem to tolerate criticism of Israel.

A university provides amazing resources and assets. I would even defend its overall structure to a degree. For one thing, it is robust against faddish ideas. If a university could change more easily, then a discipline like classics would have been shut down long ago. But classics is an exciting and generative field today (see this and this). It has survived the tough times because universities have institutionalized tenure, credentials, and departments to resist change.

Still, these structures frustrate many valuable innovations, especially when academia might interact better with the outside world. Courses must last for about 13 weeks even though real-life projects continue far longer than that. Professors must demonstrate regular results, but some especially worthy projects cannot yield publications quickly enough. Faculty must teach students who happen to be enrolled at their own institutions, even if more appropriate groups could be assembled by drawing on many colleges and including non-students.

These are just examples of the ways in which academia is “kludgy.” When you face a jury-rigged mechanism that still works for many purposes, you can just go with it, you can reject it and try to build something new, or you can add hacks: “inelegant but effective solutions.” Many of my favorite academics make hacks because they love the university but don’t think it quite works for their purposes. For instance, they teach their classes in state prisons. Or they assemble a set of “semi-formal learning groups” within a large state university and actually name it “hackademia.” Or they start meeting weekly for discussions of political economy and 30 years later have a virtual international network. Or they build tools with and for lay partners and reflect critically on the results. Or they create a Summer Institute without tuition, grades, credits, or official enrollment, and teach it off season at (for example) Tufts.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde, former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Colorado state Sen. Michael Johnston (D) are among the commencement speakers who have drawn objections from students this year. Several have withdrawn from speaking or been disinvited in the face of such criticism.

Compared to the people who decry student bigotry in these cases, I take a relatively complex, three-part view.

First, protesting a commencement speaker is not a violation of free speech; it is an act of free speech. Joel Whitney argues that point well in The New Republic. A commencement podium is not an open forum like Hyde Park Corner or a public access cable channel. It is allocated as a high honor to one person whom the institution explicitly endorses. Students may contest that endorsement.

For example, in announcing the choice of Johnston to be the Harvard Ed. School’s speaker, the dean said, “As a teacher, principal, and entrepreneur, Mike’s leadership has made a real difference in the lives of countless students.” (I can’t resist noting that the previous sentence contains a dangling modifier.) Dean Ryan continued, “As a legislator in the Colorado State Senate, [Johnston] is a nationally recognized advocate for school finance reform, fair teacher evaluations, and education equity. I believe that our community will be inspired, as I have been, by his passion and his willingness to find solutions to notoriously difficult challenges in education.”

That was a substantive statement and a prediction. The dean stated that the invitee was great and the whole community would be inspired by him. I have no objection to Sen. Johnston, but students are entitled to contest these claims.

Smith President Kathleen McCartney is right that “an invitation to speak at a commencement is not an endorsement of all views or policies of an individual or the institution she or he leads. … Such a test would preclude virtually anyone in public office or position of influence. Moreover, such a test would seem anathema to our core values of free thought and diversity of opinion.” But an invitation to speak at a commencement is a claim that the invitee is excellent in some respect, and the institution should expect objections if members of the community are known to disagree.

Second, when students protest a commencement speaker, neither the invitee nor the institution should back down. To withdraw in the face of criticism is to frustrate free speech. After Smith College invitee Lagarde, and some students objected, the IMF chief withdrew, saying, “In the last few days, … it has become evident that a number of students and faculty members would not welcome me as a commencement speaker. I respect their views, and I understand the vital importance of academic freedom. However, to preserve the celebratory spirit of commencement day, I believe it is best to withdraw my participation.”

If a commencement is just a celebratory occasion, spoiled by controversy as easily as a picnic by rain, then colleges should invite completely uncontroversial figures to share pabulum from the podium. If a commencement is an opportunity for learning, then it will draw dissent, and both the institution and the speaker should expect that. If they drop the speaker to avoid controversy, they don’t care about free speech.

Third, being exposed to views you disagree with is valuable. It’s educational and challenging. It is most valuable when the views are forcefully expressed by someone who genuinely holds them. Thus liberal students may benefit from hearing Lagarde, Rice, Ali, and Johnston, even if they don’t enjoy these talks all that much on their graduation day. There is a valid principle implied in the claim that these speakers have “free speech,” even if it’s wrongly interpreted to mean that they have some kind of individual right to give a commencement address. (If we have such a right, I’m cashing mine in and speaking next year at the University of Hawaii). “Free speech” doesn’t mean a right to give a commencement address, but it is shorthand for the value of exposure to challenging views.

Therefore, I don’t think students should express their objections in this form: “We despise the invitee and demand that she not speak here at all.” Instead, I think they should say, “We despise the views of the invitee for the following reasons and plan to make our arguments known during commencement.” That reflects an embrace of free speech rather than a fear of it. One model is the critical letter that Catholic University professors wrote to John Boehner after he was invited to speak there. They first offered a strong, substantive, moral critique:

Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings. From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.

That was actually a devastating rebuke. But the professors went on to welcome him to campus and held out hope that the interchange might influence him:

We congratulate you on the occasion of your commencement address to The Catholic University of America. It is good for Catholic universities to host and engage the thoughts of powerful public figures, even Catholics such as yourself who fail to recognize (whether out of a lack of awareness or dissent) important aspects of Catholic teaching. We write in the hope that this visit will reawaken your familiarity with the teachings of your Church on matters of faith and morals as they relate to governance.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that every group of angry students must use exactly this model, but it is one worth considering. And then they should get their money’s worth on graduation day by engaging an interesting speaker, actively and critically.

They say that academia is an ivory tower, sheltered from the tumult of human experience. But I’m fortunate, thanks to my job, to meet a very wide range of people in highly diverse settings. In fact, I don’t think many people in other walks of life are as fortunate in that respect. Within the past month, in the line of duty (so to speak), I have

• Heard a “legalese-hatin’, cowboy-boot-wearin’, unafraid-to-admihuit-it liberal judge who rules from the [Arkansas federal] bench in a rocking chair” tell hootin’-and-hollerin’ jokes at the expense of his own profession.
• Done a windshield tour of the poorest neighborhood in Champaign (IL), where the small decaying frame houses are scattered on the edge of the prairie.
• Sat in the hushed office of the president of Duke, amid rubber trees, leaded Gothic windows, and framed honors, discussing the place of the humanities in public life.
• Visited a game-design studio in Madison, WI, where hip young coders sit on stools of different heights and take breaks playing with Nerf balls and huge inflatable bowling pins.
• Lectured in the Grecian rotunda of Mr. Jefferson’s University, a World Heritage Site.
• And heard up-and-coming country singers in a bona fide Nashville honky-tonk on a Friday night.

We may be on the verge of wrecking it–and we certainly need better institutions to govern it–but it’s still a great country and a privilege to be able to see so many facets of it.

(On to DC this evening.)