This past February, the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln extended an invitation to William Ayers (Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago) to speak at its annual student research conference — an event which, this year, corresponds with the 100th anniversary of the College. Ayers was thought a good choice by the faculty committee charged with selecting a speaker. He is an internationally known scholar — the author of 17 books and more than 100 articles in his field — and an authority on urban educational reform. His talk was to be about qualitative research methods in education.

A week or so ago, that offer was rescinded. The official explanation is that Ayers's visit represented an unacceptable security risk for the University. The risk, however, was not posed by Ayers himself, but by the thousands of Nebraskans (I infer that number from the number of emails the University received) who were incensed by the decision of the College. Over the course of the last week, I have read impassioned denouncements of the University written by citizens of Nebraska, alumni, and prominent donors. The governor of the state has called the faculty's decision an embarrassment. Even those entrusted with the administration of the University — the President and the Chair of the Board of Regents — have criticized the choice of Bill Ayers as a speaker. One Regent has condemned my colleagues in Education for their arrogance. The University's threat assessment committee was able to cite evidence that some were moved to such anger over this invitation, that they appeared to be contemplating violent acts against people attending the symposium and Ayers himself.

I find all of this deeply troubling. Like many, I am inclined to use the term "academic freedom" as an alias for my frustration and outrage over what has just occurred. But in reality, I feel that something deeper and more vital has been attacked and denigrated by these events. This deeper thing is the idea of the university itself — an idea to which I have literally devoted my life. As a citizen, I can easily withstand the will of the majority being contrary to my own. I might even be able to carry on as a scholar and an intellectual without exposure to Bill Ayers's ideas. But as a professor at the University, I cannot do my work — which, I would like to argue, is also the people's work — without the social contract that allows universities to exist. If the people of Nebraska, their Governor, and the University's own administrators do not believe in that contract, then I believe we run the risk of having a university only in name.

Bill Ayers provides an apt occasion for talking about this contract and about the consequent notion of a university. So let me stipulate a few things about Bill Ayers for the sake of argument. Let me first assume that Bill Ayers purposefully advocated and participated in direct, violent action against the United States in order to protest the Vietnam War. Let me further suppose him to be — as many have charged — wholly unrepentant toward these acts. We will, for the sake of this discussion, assume only that he is not now a violent criminal or a fugitive from the law.

The question is this: Should the faculty of the College of Education — or, for that matter, any faculty at any reputable institution of higher learning — be permitted to invite such a person to speak?

I believe that the answer to this question must be "yes." I further believe that this answer is basic to the definition of a university, explanatory of the university's role in society, and essential for the health of a civilized society. I believe that answering "no" to this question introduces intolerable restrictions on the intellectual life of a nation (this one, or any other), and that it has dangerous consequences for democracy and freedom.

These are bold claims. I hope they will also be understood as being, at least in intention, patriotic claims. But in order to make any claim at all, am I not obligated to defend Bill Ayers?

In fact, I am not. Neither is the College of Education, the Deans, the President, the Chancellor, or the Regents. And this is because the proper discernment of Bill Ayers's ideas is the very reason we bring him into a university environment with the request that he share and elaborate his viewpoints to a wider community of scholars.

One possible objection seems obvious: Are not Bill Ayers's ideas manifest? And are they not manifestly evil? And if they are, what possible choice do we have but to accuse the UNL faculty of endorsing those ideas? This has been the substance of most of the attacks leveled against the University. We are accused of "having an agenda" and of forcing that agenda on others. And not just others! We are accused of forcing our (liberal, socialist, anarchist, anti-American) views on students, who, being innocent and impressionable children, are left virtually defenseless and without recourse toward more balanced and even-handed forms of instruction.

Yet this approach to the question of Bill Ayers is quite obviously an example of the very thing that we are being told we must not do. The opposite of the scholar who "has an agenda," after all, is the scholar who is presumably neutral, dispassionate, and willing to hear both sides. A truly dispassionate scholar would have to invite Bill Ayers to speak — even if the result of that engagement was condemnation. So on its face, the notion that the veracity or usefulness of certain ideas are already a settled matter in advance of any investigation betrays an "agenda" of its own — a belief that universities actually should not be neutral and dispassionate, but should instead support the predetermined beliefs of the society that supports it.

But then what of Bill Ayers himself? He is surely not at all dispassionate. He has an agenda, makes no apologies for it, and is happy not only to argue his positions in open debate, but to use his position as a teacher to convince his students that he is right. If we condemn, in the foregoing bit of sophistry, the partisans of neutrality for their own secret agenda, are we not compelled to condemn Bill Ayers himself for the same thing? He might be a professor, but he's surely as prejudicial in his views as any one of those who condemn his agenda.

I believe I have just set forth — in three paragraphs — the paradox of the university. On the one hand, it proclaims itself, as Thomas Jefferson once said, "not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." On the other hand, it harbors people who, having followed truth "wherever it may lead," will proclaim quite loudly that they have found it. The university is therefore at once both open-minded and doctrinaire, neutral and biased, relativistic and dogmatic.

I wouldn't have it any other way, and I think the people's money is well spent by supporting such institutions. Because this is how we, as a society, honor what Jefferson called "the illimitable freedom of the human mind." It is also how we produce informed, responsible citizens and advance human knowledge.

To understand the educational role of the university, we need to dispense with the notion that universities are sites of unified belief and opinion. I suppose I could rest that claim on my own experience, but one's own intuitions about the behavior of human beings will probably suffice to make it plain. A student making their way through the University will have to deal with Bill Ayers's attempt to convince them of his views, but they will also have to deal with those who disagree completely with Bill Ayers (because in academia, there is nothing to be gained, professionally speaking, from thinking like someone else). They will have to contend with those who think that persuasion is always inappropriate in a university environment, and with those who think it is the only coherent rationale for teaching. Such dizzying oppositions are, moreover, not confined to courses on political matters; they are, rather, constitutive of higher education in any subject. In one class, Shakespeare is portrayed as an Elizabethan radical. In another, it is demonstrated that he was an obsequious toady of the Queen. A third eschews all politics so that Shakespeare's language can be discussed and illuminated. In some classes (in my classes), all three ideas get aired. Or rather, one is put forth until I get the sense that my students might be starting to agree. Then I forcefully argue the opposite. This is sometimes called the "Socratic method." Most teachers (including Bill Ayers) understand it to be the oldest trick in the book.

The goal of this trick is not to convince students that one idea is right and the other wrong, but to get them to distrust — with all their being — knee-jerk opinions, empty bromides, hasty conclusions, and unreflected assumptions. Or rather, it is to convince students that one idea is right and the other wrong — because that is the only real and genuine way to bring about intellectual maturity. As individual scholars, we have our own agendas. As members of a corporate institution, we distrust agendas with all our might. We are literally both. We are trying to create students — and by extension, citizens — who are literally both. We want them to listen to both sides, but have strong, heart-felt (and informed) opinions. We want them to be open to the truth wherever it may lead, but we also want them to speak the truth (especially to power). In this project, the ability of the individual student to accept or reject an idea is presupposed. We do not regard them as children, but as adults capable of mature judgment.

As a research institution, universities try to produce ideas that are of benefit to society. If they are successful in doing that (and here, I am thinking of everything from educational policy to nanotechnology), it is because they are utterly ruthless in the way they vet ideas. I think there is a perception that Bill Ayers's visit would be a kind of love-in in which the choir is subjected to preaching and preconceived notions are affirmed. If so, I believe it would be an unusual — if not a unique — moment in the history of the modern academy. In fact, Bill Ayers's ideas on "qualitative methodologies" (to say nothing of his ideas on armed political action) would be subjected to what would be regarded in most circumstances (in the public square or on television, for example) as withering critique. Ayers himself would be surprised if that didn't occur, and those in attendance would consider the symposium a great success if it did. It is another instance in which the paradox of the university manifests itself. We want people like Bill Ayers to have strong opinions. We also want to criticize those strong opinions. The truth that emerges from such collisions is the only kind of truth universities know how to make, and it has led to advances in every area of human inquiry and need. If there is a solution to the problems that confront us as a society — in matters ranging from bone cancer, to Middle East policy, to the nature of human love — that solution will in all likelihood first emerge in a laboratory or a seminar room where academics are doing what they do best: fighting and arguing over who's right.

We now turn to a question that naturally emerges from consideration of the nature of universities: Who decides who gets a hearing in this forum I have described? Who gets to speak?

It won't do to say, "trained academics" or "those with Ph.Ds." Academia is not composed entirely of such people, does not confine its invitations exclusively to itself, and would be considerably impoverished if it were to do so. What it does demand, however, is that the people inviting and the people being invited both agree to the principle that truth and neutrality are not contradictory concepts. They must agree to be at once humble and audacious. They must be as quick to admit error as they are zealous of their own opinions. This is the distinguishing feature of a faculty.

They got that way not by taking certain courses or acquiring certain degrees, but by having been mentored into a community that is utterly intolerant toward people who believe in some lesser version of truth and neutrality. There are those at the university who believe that Ayers's actions as a member of the Weather Underground were gravely immoral. There are also those who believe that it is not only permissible to take up arms against an oppressive regime, but an obligation of a free people (they cite the founders of this country as an example). Such people very often occupy the same department. Their disagreement might be deep and even personal. But all faculty members are resolutely committed to the idea that a question like this deserves careful examination and scrutiny. They want a forum in which to examine words like "immoral" and "oppressive." They would renounce their own positions in the debate before they would renounce their belief that such forums are necessary and vital for the continuation of civilized society. These people decide.

Such a system places great demands on a society. For while they may benefit in obvious ways from the fruits of a university (rendered in the form of an educated populace and through the donation of useful ideas), they have to tolerate what might at first seem offensive to freedom. They have to allow these professors to make decisions about who they need to listen to, whom they accept into their fold, what they talk about, and what they say to their students. They need to do this without interference from government and the public square (where the paradox of the academy cannot usefully exist in a permanent state). Even the interference of administrators damages the integrity of the system. Because without freedom from interference, both the education of students and academic research suffer.

One might suppose that the case of donors is different, and it is. But we must be clear about what a donor does when they withhold funds. They are not refusing to support the actions of the faculty, or its politics, or its decisions. They are refusing to fund the idea of the university. We do not take the generosity of those who contribute their own wealth to the maintenance of this idea for granted; we are humbled by it and grateful for it. But we do insist that people giving money to universities know what it is they're supporting. In a sense, we ask them to support the paradox. If you are a donor, you won't like everything we do. We don't like everything we do. We believe in something greater. We hope that you do as well.

Reasonable people can disagree about Bill Ayers. People can also disagree about Bill Ayers's having a place in our university forums. But people cannot condemn the right of the faculty to make such decisions and still be supporting the idea of a university — this, or any other. I call upon the citizens of Nebraska to support what Governor Heineman recently called (in his rejection of the decision to bring Ayers to campus) "the people's university" by supporting the ideals upon which the modern university was founded. As an employee of this University — one honored and privileged to be counted among those who decide on matters of education and debate at this institution — I call upon all administrators loudly and forcefully to support the idea of a university and the academic freedom without which it literally cannot exist. Finally, I call upon the Board of Regents to recognize their role as those, first among citizens, who commit themselves to supporting the project of university research and education against all challenge from without, even when — especially when — the will of the people moves against the ideals that make us a university.

Stephen Ramsay
Lincoln, Nebraska
October 26th, 2008