TEMPERING PRINCIPLE WITH PRACTICALITY.

I suspect that no matter how careful, or how active, university presidents are in performing their Public Intellectual role and Issuing Earnest Statements about the Latest Bad Thing (because what's the point of weighing in on the Latest Good Thing?) somebody is going to carp.

So mote it be with Northwestern president Michael Schill, for after recognizing that discretion might have been the better part of valor, decides to Perform That Public Intellectual role.  "Our Northwestern Values" follows.

Earlier this week, I circulated a communication to our senior leadership stating my view that I should not as the president of Northwestern make statements on behalf of the entire University on “political, geopolitical or social issues that do not directly impact the core mission of our University.” This belief is based upon the principles of academic freedom and free expression that undergird our institution and allow for a multiplicity of views on these types of matters.

I also wrote in my message that “I am deeply repulsed, sickened and disappointed by what Hamas has done. Kidnapping, beheading, murdering people — children and adults, civilians and people in the armed forces — is horrific and inhuman, pure and simple.”

Some members of our community have read my communication to suggest that I believe that the University as an entity should not be governed by a set of values … that everything is relative. Let me be very clear — we are absolutely guided by a set of shared values. Among the values at Northwestern that we all share and embrace individually and collectively are commitments to free speech, rational discourse, scientific inquiry, diversity, the dignity of humanity and an abhorrence of antisemitism and racism. The abhorrent and horrific actions of Hamas on Saturday are clearly antithetical to Northwestern’s values — as well as my own. Whatever we might feel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, our shared humanity should lead us all to condemn these barbaric acts.

It might have been better for him to have kept his counsel.  The first two guiding principles of that mission-vision-values statement (the latest management fad) are "We transform society" and "We grow leaders."  What are political organizations, whether Hamas or the Libertarian Party, if not people bent on transforming society?  How easy is it to interpret "grow leaders" as "cultivate a vanguard?"

Moreover, mightn't there be professional protest communities, whether in the diversity offices or the victim studies departments, that would trash those notions of rational discourse and scientific inquiry as hegemonic biases?  Might there be scholars in the Barrington Moore tradition who would see Hamas's actions as relative to their perceptions of ongoing oppression?

We're right back where we were twenty years ago.