Well, you didn't ask for an authority, as I read it. You asked for an opinion.
Competent authority as to educational content? Only, I suppose, the board of governors and the accrediting body.
What is truly fitting on campus, of a private college, only such contractual or legal obligations as they take on by accepting restricted donations or federal or state funds.
But of course there are societal expectations in our society which have developed which, in the view of some people would create a duty. This duty is to teach responsibly, fairly, educate and not indoctrinate, teach a variety of viewpoints, be objective, challenge students to learn to think, not just memorize facts, and the like. Those are not laws or legal obligations, but IMO are more serious duties that that of, say, oh, tipping a waiter, and the college which does not follow those standards is, IMO, blameworthy.
why should
the university incur the expense of security, donor resignation, and general ill- will for ignorant racists?
First, ignorant is a judgmental and perjorative term. They may actually be quite intelligent and well educated. You shouldn't be so prejudgmental. IMO, of course.
Second, the simple answer is: because you are an educational institution, not a school of indoctrination. In the society of highly educated and learned people (which does not equate to intelligent, don't make that mistake, I know cabinet makers and carpenters who are smarter than some PhDs) there is, IMO, a societal consensus that the role of education is to give students exposure to a wide range of ideas and beliefs and help them work out their responses to them. Because the whole concept of censorship is alien to the concept of a free and open exchange of ideas. Because the answer to what one considers bad speech is not censorship of the speech but more speech. Those are ethical values which are ingrained in me by my years in the educational system and the society of learned men and women, and I believe in them. I believe Voltaire was right. I believe that if we insist on the right to ban the ideas of the KKK from campus, we set the stage for the right of those who might take over control of the University in future to ban the ideas of Plato, or Gandhi, or Martin Luther King. Those who believe in free speech must, I believe, defend the right of free speech for all, not just for those one agrees with.
Those are, to me, duties of educational institutions. Duties founded on the agreed societal values established over the centuries by learned and well educated men and women. |
