What a great post! In this culture, we so seldom hear any references whatever to the events and norms of just a few decades ago. Anything that happened more than a decade ago is prima facie inapplicable if not wrong outright. "Forget about it: it's 90s now" (respectively, replace with 80s, etc.) is used with confidence in an argument. As if it is the human experience rather than the calendar that is neatly partitioned into decades. This is uniquely American: even before the radicalism 1960s, to which you refer, we have developed unshakable belief that as a nation we progress linearly --- from worse to better. This is one of the sources for our unabashed optimism so evident to the outsiders. It also leads, unfortunately, to premature discarding of valuable assets acquired at great cost --- such as the liberal education in our colleges, for instance, abandoned in the 1950s.
Human experience is indeed cumulative. Thank you for reminding us all.
However, you may be aware that it is only 40-year-old wisdom. Prior to the 1960s, students were not allowed to say anything they wished. Indeed, look even at the origin of the universities, which began as decidedly Christian schools. The students were not free to adopt a viewpoint --- it had to be within the realm of possibilities adopted by the Church, which famously maintained an official opinion about the shape of the Earth.
We need not go far into the Dark Ages, however. Until relatively recently, one of the requirements for a Ph.D. in Oxford was a public declaration of acceptance of Christ. There was a justification: just like to many participants on this thread, acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior was considered the minimal intelligence of a person --- certainly needed for an advanced degree. Sylvester --- a prominent mathematician of the second half of the XIX century --- refused to make the pronouncement becasue he was a Jew; having completed the rest of the requirements, he was deprived of the degree. If I recall correctly, he subsequently received his degree from the Trinity College in Dublin --- a detail directly relevant to this thread (acceptance of descent vs. tolerance). Once again, our own religious tolerance has benefited us greatly: circa 1880, Sylvester was invited to Baltimore and became the first chairman of the first department of mathematics in this country.
It appears that, indeed, an open-ended discourse is a relatively new artifact in the academe.
Prior to that conclusion, you have eloquently argued that: (i) this was an expansive act in that it increased the field of discourse, and (ii) such expansion was at best needless and probably harmful. No need, you say, to bring back the notions that, once debated, have already been found faulty.
Please allow me to offer some observations that are at odds with these conclusions. Firstly, the “free speech” movement at Berkeley does not appear in retrospect to be an expansion. Rather, it was the act of replacement of one ideology with another, with the sum total, so to speak, remaining intact. Were this movement just a loosening of restrictions, we would witness today some form of coexistence of conservative and leftist views on campus. The realm of “allowed” possibilities would be expanded from then extant conservative views to include what is now called liberal, and are often just leftist, views.
The happy coexistence of viewpoints appears to be entirely absent on the American campus today, however. The conservative viewpoint has been driven out form not only discourse but also the curriculum. This is a measurable phenomenon --- just look at the proportions of faculty registered as Republicans and Democrats, for instance. I have seen (bat had no chance to verify this myself) data that among about 1000 faculty members at Yale, only three are registered Republicans. This lack of balance may not be as great as stated, but even the anecdotal evidence shows that the misbalance is extreme. Inside the classroom, witness numerous courses that are designed as overviews of American history, yet the syllabi indicate that two thirds of time is devoted to the Vietnam War. In sharp contrast to the 1960s, the conservative speakers are threatened and sometimes subjected to violent protest. And they are chased not by police but by the fellow students. In sum, the conservative point of view was largely replaced by, rather than expanded to accommodate, the liberal agenda.
Secondly, the progressively greater scope of debate is far from being needless. Not is it harmful. There is a reason for the previously discarded notions to reappear: the continually changing environment, and the evolution of moral sensibilities. What was considered a bad fit might no longer be such due to the technological and scientific progress; the question must therefore be posed anew. Consider, for instance, a conflict between the communism and capitalism, which is a tension between equity (distribution of wealth) and incentives (creation of wealth) in society. It may seem surprising that, just as the Eastern Europeans were running from and ultimately discarding communism, the Peoples Republic of Northern California embraced it more than ever. It is not surprising, however, when you observe that poverty is concerned with making a pie bigger, and wealth may pose the question of how to cut up the existing, large pie. It may be expected, therefore, that in wealthy America, the liberal guilt will make the “pie-cutting problem” acute, and lead to the re-emergence of socialist doctrines. Once discarded, these notions are appealing again because the technological progress has put “chicken in every pot.” In the Soviet Union, too, a previously discarded notion --- that of free markets --- is revived: the purposefully uniform distribution of wealth has removed all incentives from production, and made the previously appealing Marxism laughable.
Like you, I do not accept the present-day state of the academe as normal. I attribute it to a different factor: it is not that the scope of discourse has become unacceptable wide; rather, it is the process of discourse that has become unacceptably weak. On most important topics, we do not have any discourse at all. Not unlike the Church in Dark Ages, we replaced it with a set of dogmas, which the elite refines from time to time. We all are familiar with the tools of political correctness (PC): raise a question about homosexuality, and you are called a bigot; question the measures directed at improvements in our inner cities, and you are called racist; and, the mere supposition that high crime may be related to the lack of nurture from the mothers who work outside the home, and you are in trouble with “women.”
It would be tempting to think of PC as the artifact of the left, and many people do so. I am dismayed to observe the discussion on this very thread, which is as PC, as the Berkeleites: once a disagreement, even minor, is detected, name-calling is employed within a sentence. You disagree with the famed pastor? You must be non-Christian. Now that I think of this, you must be anti-Christian. No, no: you must be the anti-Christ itself! This all within just a few sentences.
By allowing the radicals of the 1960s we lost something more precious than our agenda, whatever our favorite causes may be. We lost the discourse itself, the very ability to discuss without fighting. The conservatives are as afflicted as the leftists are, and this enemy within is more dangerous than the opposition.
Bring back the civility of discourse. The broadening of scope will then be far from costly --- it will be beneficial.
Thank you again for your interesting post.