I am moved to write this piece out of my particular dismay for the fact that four of the five full-time instructors in my major department, law, jurisprudence and social thought (LJST), lent their names to the aforementioned letter. I am troubled that, but for Professor Lawrence Douglas, the LJST department spoke with one voice in declaring Justice Scalia's mere presence on campus censurable. Not only is a visit by a sitting justice of the Supreme Court a rare privilege that ought to be embraced by both students and scholars of the law, but the substance of the professors' argument was sloppy at best, specious at worst.
The apparent crux of the professors' charge was that Scalia "indulge[s] in vitriolic name-calling" and is incapable of engaging in respectful dialogue with those who disagree with him. Such an indictment is a curious one, for the professors, in turning their backs on Scalia, are guilty of precisely this offense. Nonetheless, the evidence presented by the professors fails to support their claims. Indeed, the campaign to decriminalize sodomy and assign gay sex constitutional protection is part of a "homosexual agenda." To say so isn't tantamount to name-calling; it's merely a matter of observation. Similarly, despite what Hussain et al. purport, Scalia's observation that the movement to abolish the death penalty "has taken its firmest hold in post-Christian Europe and has least support in the church-going United States" doesn't amount to a denigration of the Christian or European character of capital punishment's opponents, but rather is a cross-cultural explanation of a modern legal phenomenon. Are these examples of Scalia's jurisprudence really so extreme as to warrant a faculty protest?
Last Wednesday, protester and Professor of LJST Austin Sarat clarified his position. President Marx should not have even invited Scalia to campus, Sarat stated, because Scalia's decisions regarding discrimination against homosexuals on the basis of "sexual orientation" run counter to the values articulated in the College's Statement on Respect for Persons. "The scope of legitimate debate on a college campus is narrower than in the world at-large," Sarat claimed. A disciple of Sarat's gospel, Russell Kornblith '06, argues in this issue of The Student that the College "should not invite into our sphere people who step beyond our realm of discourse." Kornblith's contention and Sarat's perspective are openly hostile to the values of free expression and open dialogue that are vital to a liberal arts college.
In 1996, the board of trustees reaffirmed its commitment to diversity, explaining that "teaching and learning at their best are conversations with persons other than ourselves about ideas other than our own." Even if one were to concede to Kornblith that Justice Scalia resides outside "our sphere," we should embrace-for that very reason-the opportunity to hear from him for the sake of our own enrichment.
However, the very notion that there are such things as "the realm of legitimate debate" and "our sphere" when it comes to the expression of ideas on campus is quite disturbing. I would hope that the nation's colleges could be counted among the freest places in the world, where all things can be discussed by all people. Sarat, Kornblith and the signatories to the protest letter envision something totally different, where only certain ideas are worthy of discussion and only when expressed by certain individuals.
That is a strange position to take in an academic community where, at least theoretically, free expression and dissent are prized. It is all the more strange coming from a man who told The New York Times that in his graduate days at Wisconsin "there was a certain nobility in being gassed." The left has often sought the protection of a broad understanding of the free speech guarantee. Professor of Political Science Pavel Machala wasn't cited by Sarat's speech police when, in 2002, he compared the United States to Nazi Germany, and I suspect that they won't censure Kornblith for implying today that Antonin Scalia is no better than Adolf Hitler. Barbara Ehrenreich wasn't outside "our sphere" when she called President Bush a "moron" who would use Sept. 11 as "an excuse to bomb a bunch of brown people," and apparently Amiri Baraka, the anti-Semitic poet who was honored by the English, music, and black studies departments in April 2002 with a symposium on his "legacy," wasn't making claims outside the "scope of legitimate debate" when he suggested that Jews had advance warning of the World Trade Center attacks and purposely stayed home on 9/11.
Machala, Ehrenreich and Baraka all have a right to speak and contribute to the marketplace of ideas, regardless of the weightiness of their contributions. Indeed, confrontations with ideas other than our own-even when ill-formed and repulsive-don't only deepen our knowledge and strengthen our community, but they help us define who we are and what we believe by contrasting our values with those which we may find abhorrent. I chose to come to Amherst College knowing that it was a liberal liberal arts college, confident that I would be challenged by my professors and peers. As a result, I have become a stronger thinker, a more skilled writer and-I hope-a better person. I owe my development to the diversity and challenges of Amherst.
The professors' opposition to Scalia is symptomatic of a much larger issue that threatens the very foundations of the College. In his inauguration speech, President Marx extolled the values of freedom and openness when he asserted, "It is the enlightenment ideal that all can learn and participate. If this society's commitment to that ideal wavers, we must not acquiesce. As our founders intended, we must resist ephemeral trends toward isolation and self-indulgence." Sarat and Kornblith's suggestion that Scalia's very presence on campus is illegitimate demonstrates the inclination toward isolation and self-indulgence that Marx warned against.
However, the real issue isn't about Scalia. Of far greater importance is the impact that the position of Hussain, Sarat et al. may have on hiring. If it is illegitimate for Scalia to be here for 90 minutes, it must be even worse to have someone of Scalia's perspective speaking here day in and day out as a member of the faculty. Again, four out of five LJST professors held to the view that Scalia should not have been on campus, and so we can presume that a Scalia could not be hired by the department.
As an LJST major, I'm concerned about how the law is taught in the face of such one-sidedness. The quality of the legal education here suffers if the faculty refuses to grapple with Scalia's opinions. Eighty percent of the LJST department has expressed that unwillingness, and Sarat went even further last week when he said Justice Scalia lacks "an interesting mind." Although he may represent the Court's right wing, Scalia is a distinguished jurist, not an extremist. Our professors may disagree with him, and we will surely benefit from the discussion borne of those disagreements, but they shouldn't just write the guy off. To do so would violate the principles of the College as articulated a century ago by President George Harris: the principles of freedom and justice, fair play, and democracy. I fear that the 16 signatories of the protest letter have already perpetrated that betrayal, but I fear even more what Amherst will become if we neglect to meet the suggestions of Sarat and Kornblith with fierce opposition.