Free Inquiry Suffers as War Fever Grips Harvard
Wall Street Journal | M. Todd Henderson
“A university’s purpose isn’t to rally support. It’s to provide a haven for debate, including dissent.”
In this piece, University of Chicago law professor M. Todd Henderson takes issue with Harvard President Lawrence Bacow’s statement on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, arguing that such a statement is “antithetical to the mission of a university to take a position on the war—even if everyone on campus opposes it.”
Henderson takes us back to 1966 and the Vietnam War protests which raised the vital question of the role universities should take in support or protest, if any. At the University of Chicago, this question spawned the important Kalven Report, the founding document on freedom of inquiry at University of Chicago. The report states that “the university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic, “ i.e. that “neither the university nor any of its parts may take any positions on matters of public concern, unless they threaten the university itself.”
Henderson goes on to say that “Not taking official positions is essential to a university’s mission as a place where ideas and theories are developed and tested…Perhaps someone on campus has a dissenting view about the attempted takeover of Ukraine, and official positions might chill that view. That view may be wrong, but it should be proved so, not silenced.”
In closing, Henderson argues that “Scholars and students should be free to think and say what they believe rather than have to follow the orthodoxy of university presidents. If faculty and students want to stand with Ukraine, that is their right. Telling them that they must do so is not only contrary to the mission of universities, it is un-American.”
