Harvard Law School hates God

They are trying to frighten me.

They are trying to scare me away. They are trying to convince me that an evangelical Christian is totally unwelcome. They are trying to persuade me that I am going to be harassed, intimidated, even professionally destroyed. They want my family to despair for my very soul.

They are not radicalfeministhomosexualsocialistatheistabortionistterroristdemocrats.

They are my fellow evangelicals. And they want me to tremble.

When I received the 30 April issue of World Magazine, one of the leading publications of American evangelicalism, I opened it to find an article entitled "Uncongeniality contest: Two views of elite academia from Harvard Law School."

I smirked.

Right away, of course, the title suggests that there are at least two parties vying for control of academia -- those "uncongenial" to evangelicals, and those even less congenial to evangelicals. The headline admits no possibility of welcome or even indifference; clearly, academia is actively trying to make me feel unwanted.

Now, before I go on, I should say that this is not an entirely unfounded opinion on World's part -- but it is being presented in a simplistic and recklessly political way. A rough equivalent would be for a university's student newspaper to tell its constituents that evangelical churches do not welcome liberals.

Fortunately -- and to my pleasant surprise -- this article (written by Marvin Olasky, himself a journalism professor at the University of Texas) is not merely an editorial. It is a pair of interviews, reproduced in question/answer format.

The first interviewee is an evangelical Christian, William Stuntz, who is a professor at Harvard Law School. Guess what? He wasn't playing along with World at all.

The first question was loaded for bear:

WORLD: Many Christian professors report that deviations from political correctness bring out a professorial lynch mob. What has been your experience with Christophobia?

Ah, the nuanced approach. Always a crowd-pleaser. Here's how Stuntz fielded it:

STUNTZ: I can honestly say that I've never been the target of any professional nastiness because of my faith. Maybe that means I'm not living a Christian life; I'm not sure. I am sure that there have been times when I've been cowardly, times when I've avoided identifying with my Redeemer for fear that someone would think I was crazy or dumb. But I think that was cowardice, not rational fear.

As for political correctness, I think that's a problem in all sectors of our culture—very much including churches. One of the great underrated problems of our time is the tendency to talk only with those who share one's views. That's a terrible disease, and it goes on everywhere. I think it goes on less in universities than in most places.

Pardon the italics.

The "questions" that follow are similar to the one reproduced above. World asked Stuntz why "most professors oppose the war in Iraq" (apparently, Olasky thinks that opposing that invasion constitutes hostility to Christianity). It tried to get him to say that government subsidies of academia have created "an economic reason to stay with liberalism" (relevance? anyone?). It asserted that universities are full of arrogance and thus atheism (Stuntz countered that arrogance is common but places the intellectual at a professional disadvantage).

Here's how this embarrassing spectacle ended:

WORLD: Concerning the possibility of a meeting of many university and church minds, aren't liberal academic presuppositions so opposed to Christian basics (such as original sin) that such a meeting is very difficult?

STUNTZ: The defining feature of the secular academic world today is the absence of orthodoxy. There is no fixed, universally accepted conventional wisdom—and no clear, agreed-on method of reasoning or argument. Which makes this a great time to be a Christian in a secular university. It's a wide-open intellectual environment where people are willing to listen and interested in different ideas.

So ... um ... where did the title of the article come from, again?

Ah, wait. I forgot. There's more on the next page. The magazine did not stop with Stuntz, who seems so oblivious to the rampant "Christophobia" in our universities. It got a second opinion. It interviewed Andrew Peyton Thomas, a Harvard Law graduate and the author of The People v. Harvard Law: How America's Oldest Law School Turned Its Back on Free Speech. This man would deliver "a different view of the influential school."

Oddly, though, almost none of this interview has anything to do with Christianity.

Instead, World asked Thomas to describe the case of David Rosenberg, a law professor who got in trouble with the Black Law Students Association for saying in class that "Feminists, Marxists, and the blacks have contributed nothing to torts."

This is not "Christophobia." This is your garden-variety dispute over insensitive speech ("the blacks have contributed nothing to torts") and academic freedom. Among those who have made statements that seem to be critical of the school's handling of the case is Alan Dershowitz, a member of the school's diversity committee (and a bête noire of the Right).* Yet World frames the issue as a demonstration that Marxism reigns at Harvard Law and thus that Christians are unwelcome. I count that as two non sequiturs in a row.

Thomas did say that conservatives "are made to suffer ... social persecutions" at Harvard Law. The interview provides no specific evidence; the Rosenberg case is the only particular instance cited, and Rosenberg is not a conservative. Apparently, World considers this good enough proof that Harvard Law is "uncongenial" to Christians in general.

So how does the interview with Thomas end?

WORLD: Should conservative students go to Harvard Law?

THOMAS: Yes, assuming they know what they are in for. Harvard Law remains America's most famous law school, and because of this status, future lawyers seeking to make a difference cannot afford to shun the school. Yet it also remains a law school in which conservatives are routinely hissed at in class (hissing being the Ivy League substitute for booing) and made to suffer other social persecutions.

Conservative viewpoints are almost completely absent from the Harvard Law faculty. But by the same token, conservatives who graduate from Harvard Law emerge with no intellectual flabbiness, having spent three years repeatedly defending their most basic beliefs in class and out. Put another way, what Frank Sinatra sang of New York is true of conservatives at Harvard Law: If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.

To Olasky's credit, he is using these interviews to make a case for intellectual engagement. This article is not arguing that evangelical Christians should avoid going to Harvard Law School or other elite academic institutions; quite the contrary. But it is still nurturing an old insecurity among evangelicals and encouraging the further politicization of academia. Instead of encouraging readers to embrace the best practices of the academy, this article encourages them to adopt its weaknesses.

Evangelicals have already spent far too long brooding over how unfair the academy is. I have news for members of my faith: the academy has always been a difficult place for everyone. The graduate student's job is to put his brain through the wringer, testing his own presuppositions. That's why graduate students spend years writing freakishly long papers that incorporate research into ideas that differ from their own. And yes, the academy is unfair. It is full of fallen people just like every other field, and the intensity and subjectivity and importance of its work means that failures will be spectacular (just as failures in, say, churches and other Christian ministries can be spectacular).

Please stop whining about it. There's nothing worse than an intellectual with a martyr complex. It poisons everything he produces; this article, for example, is simply incoherent and self-stultifying.

Be very afraid.

| Posted by Wilson at 16:04 Central | TrackBack
| Report submitted to the Education Desk