In the week since I published a piece criticizing a Berkeley instructor's exclusion of pro-Israel students from his class -- but defending his right to teach from a pro-Palestinian point of view -- I have heard the same criticisms again and again. The following letter is typical:
Writing about the controversy at the University of California, Berkeley, Richard Just ("Enroll") asserts that it may be perfectly proper for a professor "to use his course as a bully pulpit for his controversial views." To the contrary, it is perfectly improper for a professor to use the classroom as a bully pulpit, or any advantageous position from which to make known his own views or to rally support. That Mr. Just thinks otherwise only demonstrates a profound lack of understanding on his part of the nature and purposes of a university.
As an undergraduate, Mr. Just may have learned something of the subject matter and sharpened his own skills as a polemicist in a course taught by someone who used the classroom as a bully pulpit. Whether he did or not is of little or no relevance here, however. One might learn a great deal about the eugenics movement from an unrepentant Nazi and also become a better debater, but that would not justify empowering the Nazi by permitting him use of the classroom as a bully pulpit. It would not justify it even if the Nazi's views were arguably "founded in serious academic inquiry and scholarship," as Mr. Just would require.
The classroom is not the place for political advocacy, and the university that allows it to be used for such deserves only scorn as an academic institution.
M. Louis Offen, MD, MPH, JD
Rockville, Maryland
I have heard Dr. Offen's argument, in one form or another, from a number of friends. Most of these critics have also contended that my positive experience studying the Middle East with a pro-Palestinian professor, as described in the original article, should be viewed as an exception rather than a rule: Because I came into the class with a strong background in Middle East politics, I was armed with the tools necessary to challenge my professor's interpretations. But what about those students with neither the background knowledge nor the inclination to discern where the facts end and a professor's opinions begin?
My response to this complaint is, first, to acknowledge that college is indeed a gray area, and one that we need to think closely about. Clearly we should not allow high-school teachers to use their classrooms to advance a specific political view. That's because we assume their students lack a knowledge base sufficient to allow them to distinguish fact from opinion, or to challenge their teachers thoughtfully. But it is equally clear that graduate-level professors ought to be able to construct classes based on their own historical, ethical, legal, or political interpretations, as their students are expected to have enough background in the field to handle such material in an intellectually mature matter.
The question is, where do undergraduate classes fit into this scheme? The test ought to hinge on a rough estimation of how much students already know about a given field before entering a class. In this respect some undergraduate classes are more similar to high-school classes, while some are closer to graduate school classes. Those in the former category are, as both Dr. Offen and my friends have suggested, inappropriate places for professors to advance politicized opinions. But those in the latter category -- such as Snehal Shingavi's class at Berkeley and my class at Princeton -- are perfectly appropriate places for professors to argue for their views.
Identifying which classes can expect students to have a sufficient knowledge base to handle politicized material is obviously an imperfect science, but we can imagine a list of rough criteria. For example, highly selective schools (such as Berkeley and Princeton) are probably safer having such classes than non-selective ones because chances are good that their students will arrive on campus better prepared to distinguish between fact and opinion, at least if better grades and higher standardized test scores are any indication. Another rule is that introductory classes should stick to more balanced presentations of material, while upper-level classes can venture into more politicized territory. Finally, professors who teach classes from a particular point of view have an obligation to encourage that a broad array of opinions be expressed in their classrooms (as Shingavi did not but my professor at Princeton did).
Even beyond Dr. Offen's unwillingness to distinguish between different types of classes -- and students -- his argument has flaws. He no doubt wishes to tar me as a moral relativist by implying that I would support the right of a Nazi eugenicist to teach undergraduate classes (I emphatically do not). It is, in fact, Dr. Offen who is the moral relativist. He argues that if we let professors teach from a variety of legitimate academic and political viewpoints, we have to let professors teach from all viewpoints, no matter how ridiculous. In other words, by allowing a pro-Palestinian professor to teach the Arab narrative of Middle Eastern history you are by necessity permitting a Nazi eugenicist to teach his or her version of bioethics. I certainly disdain Snehal Shingavi's pro-Palestinian views, but they are within the bounds of reasonable professorial argument, whereas Nazi eugenics are not. Dr. Offen may not be willing -- or able -- to draw a clear moral line between the two, but most people are. That's not to say that there aren't far less clear-cut examples, and some tough judgment calls to be made in this area. But it's the job of universities to make them.
Indeed, universities make those judgment calls every day. Few college-level humanities or social-science classes are not colored by the professor's individual point of view. Does a British historian rely on a great-man-in-history approach or a more broad-based interpretation? Does a Civil War historian teach that slavery or states rights was the root cause of the conflict? Does a historian attribute the 1974 Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus to imperial ambition or to concern for a bullied Turkish Cypriot minority?
These questions may seem innocent matters of objective historical research, but they are in fact profoundly politicized. Professors implicitly choose sides a debate whenever they tackle such issues in front of a class; it's simply unavoidable. The challenge for universities is to articulate under which circumstances it is appropriate for professors to take sides, and to lay down rules for those classes. That was where Berkeley failed to do its job.
In practice, acting on Dr. Offen's views would mean turning social science curricula at universities into the equivalent of high-school history textbooks -- with their endless pages of perfectly balanced phrases that begin with "on the one hand," tritely invoke "the other hand," and end by asking teens to "decide for themselves." That may work fine for introductory-level courses freshman or sophomore year. But upperclassmen have the right to expect more -- and, one hopes, the ability to "decide for themselves" without being asked.
