“Liberalism isn’t a sin”

THIS HEARTWARMING STORY was mentioned in yesterday's Inside Higher Ed: Regent student gets flak for Robertson photo on Web site:

Regent University officials have threatened to discipline a law student for posting on his Facebook page an unflattering photo of Regent President Pat Robertson. [See below.] ¶ The student, Adam M. Key, defended his action as constitutionally protected free speech in a 14-page legal brief he presented to the dean of the law school. ¶ …Key, a second-year law student, said he refused to apologize and “be muzzled” by the university, so he composed the document, which includes citations from noted First Amendment cases. ¶ …Key said that Jeffrey Brauch, dean of the law school, rejected his brief and that he now awaits disciplinary action under the university’s Standard of Personal Conduct. At one point during the controversy, Key said, he was escorted by three armed security guards from the university’s public relations office. ¶ …In earlier Internet postings, Key has criticized public statements Robertson has made, including a suggestion in 2005 that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be assassinated. He said he posted the Robertson photo in the spirit of satire and is protected under the First Amendment. ¶ …Unlike public institutions, private universities do not have to adhere to First Amendment guarantees in enacting codes of student conduct, said Howard Wasserman, visiting associate professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law.

“But in my view, any university, in its role as a place for robust and uninhibited debate, should commit itself to the principles of the First Amendment, even if it offends the president,” said Wasserman, who has written about free-speech issues. He noted that Regent, as a Christian school, “may have a different view of how the speech issue fits into its mission.” ¶ …Wasserman said Harvard University, like Regent a private institution, probably wouldn’t take such an action against a student “because they know faculty members would be outraged and there would be public ridicule.” ¶ He characterized a university punishing a student for posting satire on his personal Web page as “a dangerous action.”…“The more the power structure starts to get at private expression, the more it looks like they’re engaging in thought control,” he said. ¶ Key, a bearded 23-year-old with a tableau of tattoos, would seem an odd fit at the evangelical Christian institution Robertson founded in 1978…[He]…describes himself as a “liberal Christian” who heads the campus’ small “Christian Left” organization. ¶ …Key, who is from Texas, said he had wanted to attend a Christian institution with a law school accredited by the American Bar Association, such as Regent. One motivating factor, he said, was “the opportunity to show people that liberalism isn’t a sin.” ¶ ...“A lot of people at Regent are afraid to speak out,” [Key]…said. “They’re fearful of criticizing Pat. They know that if they did, they’d be gone. … “At the point in time where we become afraid, we start losing the things that make us Americans.”

See also:
BNP leader and Holocaust denier invited to Oxford Union

A female president at Harvard

From the New York Times: First Woman Takes Reins at Harvard:

Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard University’s first female president, was inaugurated Friday and offered a spirited defense of American higher education against demands that it quantify what it is teaching and focus primarily on training a global work force. ¶ … “A university is not about results in the next quarter,” Dr. Faust said. “It is not even about who a student has become by graduation. It is about learning that molds a lifetime, learning that transmits the heritage of millennia; learning that shapes the future.” ¶ In clear opposition to pressure from the federal government for universities to prove they are accountable by quantifying how well they teach, she called on higher education institutions themselves “to seize the initiative in defining what we are accountable for.” ¶ In an interview before the inauguration ceremony, Dr. Faust faulted a federal Commission on the future of Higher Education empanelled by the Bush administration for its focus on training a competitive work force for the global economy. While higher education makes “a fundamental contribution to training a work force,” she said, it should strive to be far more than that. ¶ She paraphrased W. E. B. DuBois: “Education is not to make men carpenters so much as to make carpenters men.” ¶ …Dr. Faust’s speech offered a ringing defense of the traditional role of universities as “stewards of living tradition,” as places for “philosophers as well as scientists,” where learning and knowledge are pursued in part “because they define what has over centuries made us human, not because they can enhance our global competitiveness.”….