ND Administration: Who do they follow?

Blaze991
Sun, 17 Jun 2007 21:12:02 +0000

When you get driven away from an institution for speaking a truth that is quite obvious to even the most casual observer–simply because it doesn’t fit into some elitist, politically correct view of how things are supposed to be (i.e. that there are no inherent differences in women and man, only cultural ones superimposed by some invisible patriarchy)—that doesn’t fit my idea of academic freedom, either.



That is brilliantly said.

The typical elite university is composed of intelligent students, administrators, and professors who are either indifferent to, or hostile towards religion. In their view, the mix of religion and academics is frightening, for it is taking something they love (academics) and mixing it with something they don’t love (religion).

But it is not so clear why the two should necessarily be seperated, and in defense of the seperation, what is cited is the virtue of “academic freedom”, as if religion’s influence is anti-intellectual and tyrannical. And there is a point here. Galileo, a Catholic, was threatened and suppressed by the Catholic Church because, through his studies, he discovered the taboo-fact that the Earth revolves around the sun. In this case, organized religion smothered any academic freedom.

That was about 400 years ago. Times have changed. The 1960’s happened. The current threat to academic freedom is no longer religion, but rather it is political correctness. And political correctness is rampant at elite universities, which are almost always very secular and politically liberal.

In the words of sociology Paul Hollander:

“There are at least five areas to which PC applies and where it succeeded in imposing a fair amount of conformity. They are: 1) race-minority relations 2) sexual and gener relations; 3) homosexuality; 4) American society as a whole; 5) Western culture and values… Deviation from the norms of PC may result in public abuse, ostracism, formal or informal sanctions, administrative reproach, delayed promotion, difficulty of finding a job, being sentenced to sensitivty training, etc.”

So, if Notre Dame truly did want to ensure academic freedom, they would be mistaken to follow the lead of Harvard, Yale, etc. because these universities are plauged by political correctness.

I am genuinely interested in seeing what will happen to Notre Dame in the next forty years, seeing whether or not it will maintain its Catholic identity, which it has more or less maintained over the years in spite of being surrounded by a time and country dominated by a secular intellectual class.