The Corrupted University

ONE THING ABOUT big business. Whenever some CEO steps out of line, the whole nation descends on him in unison. Americans are shocked, shocked, by corporate malfeasance.

But suppose there is corruption and malfeasance at a government university? What then? For some reason, nobody cares.

So when a bright young law professor gets the shaft on tenure from his department because he failed to sign a petition supporting the rights of the notorious plagiarist Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado, we don’t get to hear about department heads being terminated and Vice Chancellors resigning. Indeed, if anyone attacks the university they get the treatment. McCarthyism! Freedom of Speech! And the rest of the liberal attack arsenal.

According to Professor X William Bradford is an untenured associate professor of law at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis with “ a stunning record of publication, including a book, a forthcoming book, and 21 articles in law reviews or in books.” But one third of the faculty of law recently voted against awarding tenure and against continuing his position as untenured faculty.

Bradford believes that he was denied tenure because he refused to sign a petition circulated in the law school this spring which supported Ward Churchill, the Professor of Ethnic Studies at Colorado who described the victims of 9/11 as "little Eichmanns" deserving what they got. The petition was circulated by Florence Roisman, who is a full professor holding a prestigious Chair in Law at the school.

Of course Florence Roisman is a left-wing professor with close ties to the administration. She is a part of the march through the institutions that have reduced so much of academe to a left-wing echo chamber. And the university administration is supporting her in the interests of “protecting the institution.”

For us ordinary mortals that don’t get to play around with other peoples’ money in this way, there are two sad aspects to this sorry affair. The first is the position of Professor Bradford, and his victimization by the left-wing totalitarians. It is wrong for a government university to deny anyone due process like this.

But the bigger issue is the damage that this sort of institutional decadence does to the nation. Everybody gets worked up when a CEO betrays his trust, and rightly so. But the damage done by 10,000 university professors abusing our trust is as bad or worse. After all, nobody thinks of corporate executives as moral exemplars. But we do expect teachers and professors to rise above petty politics and political agendas; that is why we privilege them with titles and with tenure. Instead they have turned the university into a cesspool of politics and intellectual marginalization

Eventually the university radicals will get their comeuppance. But not before they do a lot more damage.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

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The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

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Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

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[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

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The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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