In December, Inside Higher Education published a profile of the new School of Civic Life and Leadership (SCiLL) at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The essay examines the research specialties and intellectual affiliations of several faculty who had been hired for this new school, all with the aim of answering the question: “Has Chapel Hill’s ‘Civic Life’ School Become a Conservative Center?” Obviously, as the title implied, the answer is yes. And, as the title also hinted, this is most definitely bad.
The particular essay offered commentary on one specific institution—a topic sufficiently narrow at first glance to not require further reflection. And yet, that essay, which has been living now in my head rent-free for some time, deserves further scrutiny precisely for the way it ‘says the quiet part out loud’ about mainstream academia’s assumptions around judging not only such new schools and civic centers as the one at UNC-Chapel Hill, but also broader issues about conservatives in academia.
The examination requires us to define some terms: What is a conservative? And what is the opposite of a conservative—a ‘liberal,’ presumably. The essay does not use the latter term, though a clear division implied. The sheep must be separated from the goats. But how?
Here is the definition that is offered:
“What’s considered ‘conservative’ is debatable and evolving. But the new School of Civic Life faculty does include outspoken critics of diversity, equity and inclusion and other causes associated with the left. It features those who allege there’s widespread viewpoint discrimination in academe and seek to combat it. It includes researchers and proponents of Christian ethics. And in another sense of ‘conservative,’ it includes scholars who study and teach about ancient philosophers and the Western literary canon.”
The definition is, needless to say, nebulous. It is also remarkably reductive: After acknowledging that any definition of “conservative” is “debatable and evolving,” the essay’s author profiles several individual faculty members of the School and concludes that since (obviously) this is a conservative institution (an axiom, not a theory to prove), its faculty must be conservative. And so, whatever they study must reflect exactly what it means to be a conservative—and those fields, therefore, are bad.
No less telling is the author’s implicit definition of the opposite of conservatism: If faculty at SCiLL are associated with First Things—a well-known journal of religion and public life known for its opposition to gay marriage, then the opposite of conservative means providing unabashed support for gay marriage, and let’s throw in polyamory too, maybe, for good measure—the clearly not-conservative New York Times would approve. And if another faculty member is affiliated with another publication (Fairer Disputations) opposed to the equation of transgender self-identification with biological sex, then the opposite of conservatism means the unequivocal promotion of transgenderism.
Most important, if the School’s faculty include “researchers and proponents of Christian ethics” and “scholars who study and teach about ancient philosophers and the Western literary canon,” then apparently the study of Christianity (in a non-critical way) and the Western canon must be ghettoized as “conservative.” Although, if we’re going to criticize faculty in this center based on their publications, perhaps it’s also appropriate for Oxford University Press to take some heat too for publishing them. In fact, as a long-time “gold standard” for publishing books in the fields of Christian ethics, ancient philosophy, and Classical literature, OUP is clearly a closet conservative press, really not that different from an outfit like Regnery Publishing if one just looks close enough.
To be clear, these definitions make sense at some basic level. Conservatives do, generally, stand for traditional values when it comes to promoting marriage, family, and the integrity of the human body. The liberal opposition to these values is not surprising. But as the catch-all definition of conservatism expands over the course of the article, something curious becomes apparent besides. You see, “researchers and proponents of Christian ethics” and “scholars who study and teach about ancient philosophers and the Western literary canon” have been an accepted feature of universities for a very long time—since the Middle Ages.
Furthermore, while originally embedded in universities as Christian institutions, the study of subjects like ancient philosophy and Western literature continued to be integral to modern universities even after they shed their religious heritage. I would know—I received all of my degrees in Classics from secular universities, and as far as I know, none of my professors were dyed-in-the-wool conservatives. My own conservative turn came later and was the result of a theological conversion and concomitant alarm over the erosion in the past decade and a half of basic human values over matters of human life, sexuality, and the family. My faith leads me to believe that all human beings, from conception, are precious image bearers of a loving God.
While these were not the aims of the original essay under discussion, its line of argumentation displays the growing animosity of the modern secular university towards practically all premodern fields—literature, philosophy, art, politics, and history—if they concern topics pertaining to Western civilization, very broadly defined. The modern secular university, in other words, has become shockingly anti-West, declaring the fields up until recently considered indispensable for any respectable educational institution to be, instead, scandalous subjects of reproach. Greek philosophy? Christian ethics? In the twenty-first century? Inconceivable. Worse yet, any scholars specializing in these fields are dubbed conservatives by default—meaning, of course, despicable people who ought to be publicly tarred and feathered or at least subjected to ad hominem attacks in one of the most widely read publications about issues in higher education.
Anti-intellectualism of this sort is not a good look at this day and age, when American reading habits are collectively at their worst while social media consumption is at its highest and most destructive. We are living, I argued a few months ago, through a civilization-destroying crisis. At the same time, however, I see encouraging signs of hunger for knowledge and truth not only in some corners of the academy but also (or perhaps especially) outside of it. Such grassroots community learning institutions as Catherine Project and Interintellect remind us of what is possible: the pursuit of knowledge, of beauty and of truth. But we need scholars such as those profiled in the Inside Higher Education piece to guide us on the journey.
And in the meanwhile, it’s a new year. Go read an old book.