Like many others, I have been watching the response of America's great universities to the pro-Gaza student protests with some consternation. I cannot imagine how disallowing peaceful student protests can be consistent with the spirit of academic freedom at all. Several universities have had students evicted by police from the camps that had set up on the campus. Students have been suspended, expelled, arrested.
One of the things I find disconcerting is that America's star faculty have not been sufficiently forthcoming in defence of the students. There is the odd vote of no-confidence from a section of the faculty in some universities (eg. School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia university) but these are few and far between. There has not been the sort of unequivocal defence of students' right to peaceful protest that one would have expected of American faculty.
My latest article in BS is on this subject, US protests: why are faculty voices muted?
Here is the full text:
FINGER ON THE PULSE
T T RAM MOHAN
US protests: Why are faculty voices muted?
American university campuses erupted in protest last month over the
conflict in Gaza. The pro-Palestine protests are still on and have since spread
to Europe. These protests have raised fundamental questions about freedom of
expression at universities. University administrators (often distinguished
academics) have not been able to withstand pressure to silence the protestors.
The voices of faculty, too, have been strangely muted.
In dealing with such protests, universities obviously need to strike a
balance between allowing freedom of expression and maintaining order on campus. The American Civil Liberties Union
has spelt out ground rules that nobody can quarrel with.
First, no viewpoint, however offensive, must be censored or
disciplined. Secondly, no student or group should be targeted or
intimidated in any way in the name of free speech. Thirdly, universities can
place restrictions on the time and place of protests so that the functioning of
the university is not disrupted. Fourthly, the police must be called in only as
a last resort. Lastly, campus leaders must not yield to political
pressures.
It should not have been difficult for the university authorities to have
allowed the protests subject to these rules. Sadly, the situation has got out
of hand at many American universities, such as Columbia in New York. Police
(including anti-terrorist squads in combat gear) have been called in to clear
out encampments of students even where they were not disruptive of normal
activities. The universities’ response to the protests may be
disappointing, but nobody should be overly surprised.
The United States is almost unique in the scale of philanthropic
contributions to universities. Donor contributions are typically the single
biggest source of finance for universities. Student fees don’t even cover
operational costs, let alone capital expenditure. The more funds a
university or college can raise by way of donations, the more it can invest in
infrastructure, research, and faculty and hence the greater its stature.
Annoying donors is a terrible idea for any university.
In addition, universities get large funds for research projects from the
government. The US Defence Department, for instance, has historically
been a major source of funds. Corporations, too, fund research projects. Universities,
in turn, invest their endowment funds in corporations.
Leading donors, major corporations and politicians have not cared to
conceal their displeasure over the pro-Palestinian protests on campuses. Many
tend to reflexively label the pro-Palestinian protests as anti-Semitism.
America’s donors and politicians have been keen to oblige Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who has called on the universities to shut down
the protests.
So deep are the links between universities on one side and the
government and the private sector on the other that the universities can’t
afford to antagonise either. The students’ demand that the universities divest
from corporates with links to Israel is thus a non-starter for most
universities. A crackdown on the protestors was inevitable.
It’s not just university administrators who have been timid in responding
to outside pressures. Faculty have not been sufficiently forthcoming in support
of the students’ right to legitimate protest. At Columbia university, the
111-member university senate considered but did not pursue a vote to censure
the university president for her decision to call in the police, among other
things.
At Harvard, about 300 faculty have signed a letter urging the president
to negotiate with the student protesters. That is a relatively small number out
of the 2400 faculty the university boasts of. Most of the signatories are from
the humanities departments. Faculty at Harvard’s famous schools of law,
business, medicine, and the departments of physics, chemistry and economics
appear largely absent from the list. At a few universities, faculty have passed
a vote of no-confidence in the leadership. Such faculty actions have been
pretty rare.
Where, one wonders, are America’s many Nobel Laureates and other thought
leaders? Columbia University’s Joseph Stiglitz, himself a Jew, has decried the
“interference in academic freedom”. He has said in an interview, “They (the
students) had empathy for what was going on in the world. How could anybody not
react after seeing the pictures, after seeing the numbers of people dying,
being injured?” Professor Stiglitz is a distinguished exception to the silence
of the leaders of America’s academic community. How come?
Faculty in the US comprise two groups: clinical or adjunct faculty and
tenured faculty. Clinical faculty do mostly teaching and are on contract. They
would be reluctant to put their jobs on the line by taking a position on such
issues. Tenured faculty enjoy complete job security and are not subject to any
retirement age. With that sort of protection, people would expect tenured
faculty to speak up on issues of academic freedom.
Alas, that doesn’t happen. For one thing, governance in American
academia has changed quite a bit over the decades. American universities are
said to be “faculty governed”; that is, faculty are supposed to play an active
role in the running of colleges and universities. Over the last two or three
decades, however, American colleges have tended to become Dean-centric, which
means more power has come to be concentrated in the office of the Dean.
Finance, faculty appointment and confirmation, and faculty compensation
(including annual increments) are all matters on which Deans have come to have the larger
say.
The “incentives” that have caused academic administrators to fall in in line
with donors and politicians also operate to keep faculty on a leash.
Distinguished faculty hold Chairs that are endowed by wealthy donors, whether
individuals or companies. Funding for research projects and, broadly, power and
influence within the college or university are contingent on faculty keeping
administrators and donors happy.
So faculty may hold forth on human rights abuses and limits on freedom
of speech in China, Russia, Myanmar and other places. They may sit on
government and regulatory bodies and record stirring notes of dissent. They may
write searing critiques of political parties succumbing to powerful lobbies.
They may exhort graduating students to stand by the “values” of the university
and to speak truth to power.
Within their own colleges or universities and in their dealings with
Deans and Presidents, however, faculty know how to lie low on issues that
matter- and not just in the US. Your columnist, who has had a long stint in
academia, is happy to share a little secret: The internal culture of academia
is not all that different from that of the typical corporation (whose
authoritarian culture academics are apt to decry).
Academics, like sensible people everywhere, know which side their bread
is buttered. They understand that the price of annoying administrative leaders
and powerful external lobbies is steep. Freedom of expression, “governance” and
“values”, then, are strictly for the birds.
