So, would a university be remiss not to force its students to read "Mein
Kampf"?
Are you intentionally not understanding?
If you read what I said carefully, the answer clearly is no.
But the university WOULD be remiss if it taught a course in 20th century European History and because it didn't like Hitler's ideas omitted any mention of Hitler or mention that he laid out his story in Mein Kampf, and the book is available in the library if you want to read it, or at least list it in a bibiliography of supplemental materials.
Would it be remiss to favor the values of a liberal democracy, for example, by encouraging voter registration or providing candidate forums?
I don't think it's the role of the college as an institution to encourage voter registration, but I wouldn't be outraged if they did. As to candidate forums, certainly it's appropriate to hold them as long as ALL candidates are invited and given equal time, so that there is no favoritism based on ideas or platform. If only certain candidates are invited because the college thinks the others don't have mainstream ideas, or for whatever over reason, that's educationally inappropriate, IMO. And I think under the precepts of the duties of institutions of higher education.
s it necessary to
remain neutral when teaching about the Second World War, and to present the Holocaust as an interesting notion?
There is not, IMO, as much clarity of belief, and therefore not as much clarity of duty and blameworthiness, about that. IMO, it is necessary to be factually accurate and as factually complete as possible. And if one is going to discuss the Holocaust, I think one has the obligation to present the ideas which lay behind the decision of the German goverenment to carry out their policies. I don't think it is wrong to say, what is factually true, that most civilized nations deplored the practices of the Holocaust, and that it violated the accepted norms of Western civilization. But one should, IMO, be careful not to make a blanket and unequivocal statement simply that it was wrong, or unjustified, or bad, because those statements are only true within certain contexts. The accurate thing is to say that within the generally accepted norms of Western civilized thought it was evil and wicked and inexcusable. But if one has a totally different value system, it could, I suppose, be defended as good and just and a failure only because the war ended before the Nazi government was able to succeed in obliterating the Jewish race from the face of the earth. Not my view, I trust it is unnecessary to say. But that is a view which students are, if they wish to, IMO, entitled to adopt if that's where their moral and intellectual development leads them. |
