Are faith-based universities intrinsically incompatible with the hallowed principle of academic freedom? The Canadian Association of University Teachers thinks so: CAUT versus Trinity Western. Against the homogenizing efforts of the CAUT, Regent College’s John Stackhouse commendably defends British Columbia’s Trinity Western University and similar institutions. However, his defence turns out to be a weak one at best:
To be sure, anyone who has actually worked in a secular university for more than about two weeks recognizes that there are ideological pressures there, too: to conform to the preferences of one’s departmental superiors who will be deciding on one’s tenure and promotion, to the fads of one’s discipline and to the priorities of granting agencies. Still, however compromised academic freedom might be, it is an ideal to be cherished and protected.
At the same time, however, I want to urge my fellow Canadian scholars to leave a space for the alternative of a community of scholars that can take a number of basic assumptions for granted and go on together to analyze a wide range of important questions. The synergy that comes from such shared intellectual commitments is simply not to be found in the secular university.
It is an obvious and yet important trade-off: the exciting stimulation of radical plurality versus the reinforcing energy of coherent perspectives. Both are truly educational and both therefore deserve the support of the academy and the Canadian public.
Stackhouse admits that there are constraints on academic freedom at a secular university, but he seems to view these as incidental and in principle capable of being dimished in the interest of seeking to implement this “ideal to be cherished and protected.”
Nevertheless, I think the constraints are more deeply rooted than he lets on here. I cannot imagine a scenario in which I would be permitted to teach my own Political Visions and Illusions at one of Ontario’s provincial universities, principally because I use the categories of religion and idolatry to understand ideology. It is possible to conceive of a university in which Christians, Jews and Muslims could teach out of their own perspectives, but this would necessitate a radical reorientation of its mission, I should think. Moreover, even in such an apparently ideal institution there would be no getting away from the reality of “a number of basic assumptions [being taken] for granted,” these assumptions undergirding the educational enterprise as a whole.
Contra Stackhouse, the crucial difference is not between “radical plurality versus the reinforcing energy of coherent perspectives.” Indeed what goes by the label of radical plurality inevitably finds its home in a controlling context of nonfalsifiable pre-theoretical presuppositions, or what might be called a basic worldview. Of course, Stackhouse may well understand this but sees fit to tone it down for the readership of University Affairs, judging it more politic to argue for tolerance of dissent, so as better to resonate with his audience.
January 16th, 2010 | 3:53 pm | #1
Dr. Koyzis,
I suspect the problem here is one of defining the “freedom” part of “academic freedom.”
If one comes to the argument with a libertarian definition of freedom, then CAUT and others who make similar claims are correct: faith-based universities are inherently incompatible with academic freedom. If the central aspect of the definition of “freedom” is that one begins from a neutral position, then a school which requires its faculty and students to sign a statement of faith would obviously not meet the definition.
And of course you’re right to point out that secular/state/provincial universities fail to meet this criteria just as clearly as faith-based ones do, since no one works from a neutral standpoint.
But I’m not sure the proper way to engage in this discussion is on the issue of freedom (and if I’m wrong, please do correct me- I teach as an adjunct at both sorts of schools, and don’t want to approach my work with the wrong worldview :), I think it might be better for us to engage the “academic” part of “academic freedom.” After all, admitting one’s bias, even institutionalizing it, need not automatically mean that the education the students are receiving is automatically suspect. If a non-Christian can be expect to teach Christianity at a state school without it being a problem, I see no reason a Christian shouldn’t be able to teach someone we disagree with at a private school in exactly the same way. For example, I don’t know why the fact that I am a Calvinist and hence disagree with much of what Hegel has to say (not “all,” just “much”) automatically means that my teaching of his ideas is “supect.” At least, I don’t see why it’s any more suspect than a Marxist teaching Christianity would be…
Anyway, that’s my idea on the issue. Corrections are much appreciated :)
January 16th, 2010 | 4:10 pm | #2
Coyle,
There is one common answer to this question that is used everywhere. And we’re all guilty. You’re a racist. So am I. Get it?
January 16th, 2010 | 10:25 pm | #3
Clearly that’s the only possible answer :)
January 20th, 2010 | 1:13 pm | #4
David, sometimes I wonder about that last paragraph. That is, I wonder whether the fiction of tolerance/neutrality is a small mercy, in the same way the irrational belief of an atheist in meaning is a mercy, for them and for those around them.
Perhaps, then, it is as important to make a case for the truth of the Gospel as it is to tear down the fiction of neutrality, lest the consequences of Matthew 12:43-45bear out.
January 20th, 2010 | 2:33 pm | #5
Albert, in retrospect I probably should have added a closing paragraph, as it ends on something of an abrupt note. I think you are to some extent right that “the fiction of tolerance/neutrality is a small mercy.” But it can also be a way of disguising an agenda that is likely to be destructive of Christian faith over the long term. At the end of Rousseau’s Social Contract, the author comes up with an apparently tolerant civil religion promising to support and maintain the general will against the apparent fissiparousness of traditional religions. As it turns out, however, this tolerant civil religion is anything but. Anyone believing that God has revealed himself to specific people in specific ways is intrinsically dangerous to the general will. Current appeals to tolerance in the public realm owe much to Rousseau.
Where I think you are right, Albert, is that we can make use of this professed belief in tolerance to make a place for ourselves. This is what Stackhouse is trying to do, and I commend him for this. In fact, I have thanked him personally for doing this in a publication that’s part of the academic mainstream.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact