Open Dialogue at NWC?

1. A respected member of the faculty, speaking in a public forum attended by the President and the VPAA, expresses the concern that there has been a “pattern of control,” censorship, and the suppression of dialogue at the college. The lack of a public response to, or even acknowledgment of, this concern can only tend to substantiate it.

I share Prof. Trapp’s concerns. (See her post below, October 24.) Indeed, she refers to only a few of the reasons why many of the faculty currently suspect that the expression of views unpopular with certain constituencies, both on and off campus, is likely to engender reprisals. As Prof. Trapp notes, we should not automatically infer malign intent from actions that may well have been well-intentioned. But the reality is that a faculty that believes that it cannot safely speak freely has no free speech.

2. I believe that we all intend to do everything we can to welcome our new president, to make him and his family feel at home, and to ensure his success, whatever our opinion of his qualifications for the post. However, I also believe that what transpired on campus in the period between his interview and his being offered the position was deplorable, and that it would be a dangerous precedent for it to pass without objection. There was no faculty-wide discussion of the candidacy during this crucial period, yet the faculty and staff were summoned together and collectively admonished for something unspecified someone allegedly said to someone on the search committee that was allegedly inappropriate. It is hard to imagine that the administration, whatever its reasons for doing this, could have been oblivious to the fact that the faculty could hear this only as a command to “shut up” and not interfere in matters that do not concern them. Feelings of anger and resentment were only exacerbated when, not long thereafter, we learned that, while the opinion of the faculty on the presidency of the college is of little account, the opinions of persons not directly connected to the college about an art exhibit were of such weight as to dictate college policy.

3. A signal event in the recent past was the administration’s response to Prof. Monsma’s chapel address or, more accurately, its response to the hostile reaction it engendered in certain quarters. This has had a chilling effect on the discussion of controversial issues. The public scolding of Monsma was bad enough, but to my mind more egregious was the bizarre assertion that the college has an official view on the matters he addressed in his chapel talk. It is, frankly, fatuous for an administration to inform us that Northwestern College has a position on these issues and then tell us that as its faculty we are encouraged freely to debate them. What reaction can a faculty member--an employee of the college--expect if she expresses a view contrary to the college's view? Indeed, many faculty now feel that it has become institutionally unacceptable to express any view that deviates from the consensus of the evangelical subculture.

One might have thought that while the various individuals who comprise the college have views on various controversial issues, there is no such thing as the college’s view on any matter not explicitly set out in the statement of its purposes and goals. There are, in the fundamentalist world, many institutions that purport to be colleges, but which are committed to defending and propagating particular views on all kinds of controverted matters. Their raison d'etre, in large measure, is to offer the semblance of an education in an environment in which students need not be troubled by certain ideas. At some such places, signing a document indicating concurrence with the official views is a precondition of employment. At others, faculty are permitted to hold contrary views, so long as they refrain from giving voice to them. In either case, the institution has little credibility as a college. Rather than being committed to seeking truth by way of free debate, it is a creature of a particular ideology. Its faculty are merely “hired hands,” who with their academic credentials are a necessary evil, lending it whatever minimal respectability it has, but who are expected to keep quiet so that the beliefs of those who know better—trustees, administrators, students, parents, actual donors, prospective donors—can prevail. These are the sort of places where, for instance, even if an entire religion department were to express itself unequivocally on some issue, it would be outweighed by trustees who regard themselves as having superior theological understanding or a better grasp of the identity of the college. It has long struck me as ironic that these institutions, which style themselves “spiritual” in opposition to the “world,” are at bottom more secular than mainstream, non-religious, institutions, insofar as they act on the tacit assumption that those who have money and power, not those who have spent years learning about and reflecting on a subject, know better and have the right to pronounce on some complex issue.

4. With hope and skepticism we read in the Beacon, “the college intends to create ongoing venues that will allow students to challenge themselves to pursue truth faithfully as they listen to ideas and contribute their own on important and controversial issues that call for Christian discussion” (2 November 2007). May it be so. But pronouncements that institutionally we value open debate and the free expression of opinion on matters of controversy are typically conjoined with qualifications about the need to choose the “proper venue” and for the audience to be “properly prepared.” These qualifications, however well-meaning and reasonable in the abstract, have in our context the effect of reminding us that while views may be expressed, they must not be expressed if they offend, anger, upset, or confuse anyone. That is to say that views on controversial issues should not be expressed, since these by definition are issues on which it is impossible to say anything of substance without offending, angering, upsetting or confusing someone.

5. The fate of open dialogue and free speech at Northwestern has a clear connection to the question of the college’s identity. There have been some bright spots over the last few years, e.g., a panel discussion on evolution and a forum on the doctrine of hell and damnation. I value Northwestern’s unique identity as a college where we can be at once authentically Christian and intellectually honest, freely discussing such matters, despite the fact that the expression of the “wrong” views on them offends many Christians of an evangelical or fundamentalist orientation. But too often, discussion of controversial issues here has been managed so as to render it innocuous. Sustained, serious debate on the issues of the day remains eschatological.

We are entitled to hope for better from a putatively Reformed institution of higher learning. Are our claims about the value Northwestern places on its Reformed tradition in danger of becoming no more that a rhetorical veneer for a college that is increasingly dominated by the values of the "evangelical subculture,” of a local "civil religion," or even of an anti-intellectual fundamentalism? Are we, and do we intend to be, Reformed in any way that matters to our educational mission? Do we believe that faith is God’s gracious gift to us, or do we see it as a fragile ideology we must preserve by paternalistic and authoritarian methods?

-Don Wacome

Professor of Philosophy