Wednesday, Feb. 14, 1962 University Daily Kansan
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On Faith and Non-Belief
Yet the propaganda for faith as the only way to the good life constantly threatens to invade not only our political mores, but also our educational processes and institutions. Americans might well reflect on the history of the entrenched position of the Greek Orthodox Church. There, Church and State have always been looked upon as inseparable. "The Greek Orthodox Church is the basic institution and mentor of the modern Greek state. Byzantine man could conceive of no political idea which did not assume the complete unification of church and state; and the basic social unit of this culture is a body of believers, with no conception of the democratic process, no elections, no concept of majority rule, except in annual meetings in church which decided on secular as well as religious affairs."
Note also that Roman Orthodoxy started from the same assumption, although as it migrated to different cultures it accepted compromises through various degrees of dissociation from the state. This struggle has taken different forms in different lands; in Italy the open struggle between spiritual and temporal power; in France, the characteristically French device of tacit nullification by neglect; in England the substitution of a state Catholicism for a Roman Catholicism. In our own land there has been a complex and less consistent pattern. With the founding of the country it began as the expression of a search for religious liberty by various sects, each viewing religious liberty as something to be preserved for itself rather than for the others. The inevitable result has been that we have had virulent manifestations of hatred against diverse religious groups, of which anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism are only the more recent. In spite of an occasional Robert Ingersoll, there have been recurrent efforts to squeel
man's right to question, to doubt,
to accept nothing on faith.
Actually in every culture the struggle goes on endlessly, and requires that eternal vigilance by which all human liberties must be safeguarded. The struggle is not only against an official posture which says, "You must believe this and not that." More deeply it is against the broader dictum: "You must believe." In our own country there have been three recent expressions of this essentially totalitarian and repressive invasion by religion into state affairs. One is the postwar attack against the creative, spiritual, and cultural value of doubting. Another has been the allotment of school time for the religious indoctrination of children. A third is the Congressional action which introduced the words "Under God" into the Oath of Allegiance. By implication this made faith in a Godhead a precondition for citizenship. Taken literally it meant that not even an agnostic, much less an atheist, could be a loyal American. This is as dictatorial a position as that of the antique Greek church. American universities, American jurists, and especially American clerics of all faiths should be up in arms against it.
Let me emphasize this point further. Much is made in this country of the right to believe and worship in any way that man may please. To that basic freedom no one who supports the democratic process can object. But what has happened to the equally basic right not to believe? Belief must be weak indeed if it needs buttressing and sanction by social pressures, by congressional action, and by university prestige. Man's weak-kneed impulse to hide himself in the crowd by intolerance of disbelief is hardly worthy of our once courageous country. Therefore, in an effort to strengthen Faith itself, the ministers of every Faith should be the first to champion man's right to disbelieve. Where indeed is the minister who protests this invasion
Where indeed is the legislator who dares to risk the support of his constituents by denouncing this implicit denial of the right of an American citizen to be a nonbeliever as un-American? And where is the President who sees it as his constitutional duty to veto it? Or the Presidential candidate who recognizes it to be his duty to urge its repeal? Or the individual or group who will bring it up through the lower courts to the Supreme Court? But the Pot to the Kettle is no defense! Is this just one more sign of that post-war deterioration of spiritual courage in America, which has landed us in our present dilemma? And if so, is this not another reason why in this crisis of conformity it is essential that our universities should not abdicate their independence from dogma?
Sound and Fury
On Housing Rules
of the basic American right to not believe? I have asked several close friends of the cloth why no ministers have launched a campaign in support of the basic American right to be a non-believer. To this the only answer I have received has been the plaintive defense: "Why has no senator or representative or judge or president or presidential candidate defended the basic right to doubt?"
By Linda Swander Wichita senior
University regulations forbid all undergraduate women from living in apartment houses that are not approved by the University. Apartment housing that is approved by the University is quite limited, and many times it is overcrowded. There is a small selection because none of the off-campus housing is approved if it has a private entrance. The women must enter their living quarters through the main entrance to the house.
BY THE TIME a college woman reaches her sophomore year she should have the right to live where she pleases. If a woman is old enough to live away from home, have her own checking account, date anyone she pleases, drink, drive a car and intelligent enough to attend a state university, then she is old enough and intelligent enough to select the place she lives while getting her education.
With the increase in enrollment the women's dormitories have reached their capacity. Even as new dormitories are built the University will probably find it necessary to house three and four women in the same room. This crowded condition does not provide adequate living or studying facilities.
THE SITUATON in sorority houses is no better. With only 13 sororities on the campus many women do not have an opportunity to pledge a sorority. This year there will probably be twice as many women going through rush as those for whom the sororities have openings. Many of the women who do not pledge would rather quit school than live in a large, overcrowded dormitory that is more like a hotel than a home.
For several reasons, college women, excluding freshman women, should be allowed to live in apartment houses with a private entrance.
Many women cannot adjust well under these conditions. They may not find their roommates compatible. They may find it more economical to live in an apartment and do their own cooking, possibly sharing expenses with one or two other women students.
It is important that the University accept these facts and allow the college women to live in off-campus housing. In the past few years Lawrence has acquired many new apartment buildings which could provide adequate living facilities for women. There are also homes in the Lawrence vicinity for rent. There is no doubt that this privilege would be abused by some, but all privileges, no matter what kind, are abused by some.
This is not 1890 or even 1930. It is time to break away from these traditional and old-fashioned ideas. It is time the University gave women students their independence.
Without this we are in danger of becoming party-line theocrats. It will be dangerous for all democracies ever to forget that within the span of our lives totalitarianism has arisen without exception in countries or parts of countries in which the majority of the population had for generations been dominated by party-line theocracy: to wit, Japan, Spain, Italy, Bavaria, Russia, China. Nor should democracies overlook the fact that in spite of exceptional acts of heroism by individual clerics of all faiths, wherever in recent times a close alliance between church and state has been threatened by a temporarily victorious totalitarian government, as organizations the churches have made their peace with the partyline boss, as Rome did with Mussolini and Hitler, until they fell. Will they not make peace with Russia if Russia triumphs? Because churches tend to identify the ultimate good with their own survival as institutions, the goal of most churches is to survive at all costs. Consequently, although they will call upon individuals to sacrifice their very lives for principles, as institutions the churches have repeatedly sacrificed principles for survival. Churches as institutions are less moral than are men as individuals. Anyone who shuts his eyes to this fact is putting his head into sand. Yet in this land of ours, where the ostrich has replaced the eagle as the national bird, men have become afraid even to mention such disturbing facts.
If we carry our reflections a step further, we will realize that an important first step in the breakdown of the clear and necessary separation between Church and State occurs when there is any breakdown in the separation between Faith and Education. Here is where in recent years many young college presidents have done our universities and therefore our whole culture an injury which must be reversed promptly if it is not to become irreversible. A tough, objective, critical study of the history of religion and of religious error should be an important ingredient in scholarship. It can be something from which Man can learn, but only if he goes to the autopsy table to study the failures of his religions. Any inculcation of faith, any propaganda for the antique notion that believing is spiritually higher and more creative and more difficult than doubting does untold harm. Universities should be proud strongholds of Man's right to doubt and question.
One great preacher said from the pulpit that a true religion is a search for truth, but that the moment any religion thinks it has found the truth, it has ceased to be a religion. He was Harvard's greatest religious leader. On the basis of that sound platform but on no other our universities can defend our liberties from both the internal and external threats to their destruction.
Reflections From An Angry Teacher
(This is the fourth and last in a series of articles from an article by Law-
yers for the American University." in the Oct.
28, 1961. Harvard Alumni Bulletin.)
So, my son, you are considering a teaching career, perhaps in the University, after your graduation.
Let me warn you about what you may expect. Let us hold the glass to your future colleagues. At first, you will find yourself in the company of instructors, young men and women who, like yourself, are intent on snatching a degree from the unwary senior faculty. These hungry young folk, hired at a pittance, instruct not. They do not come to teach but to learn. Half are ignorant and incompetent and will, when they have received their degrees, become diffused in our grand educational system...
Many of them know less than our B students, but they will be passed into the bloodstreams of education where they will afflict students for almost four decades. These are the future professors.
Oh, I grant you there are competent graduate instructors who make fair professors. The instructors are like their seniors in the faculty. Look back yourself. How many of us inspired you as an undergraduate? Two? Three at the most? Through how many classrooms did you pass where the teacher was the talking adjunct to a textbook?
YES, WE PROFESSORS are a great lot, sipping our soup at noon, joking about out "student body," which we talk of as a mindless corpse. From what you have told me, there would be more profit for us if we listened to your discussions...
The senior faculty has a ritual through which you must proceed before you may enter their hallowed precincts. First, you must divest yourself of any cause whatsoever. Oh, you may get excited about something in your field, but you had better erect a barrier between yourself and the world of man's affairs.
In short, son, you will become a political and intellectual eunuch. Do not try the patience of the administration by being outspoken in civil affairs. You are an academic monk. Above all remain faithful to the professorial code of non-commitment to anything outside your discipline. Do not make the mistake of looking to your seniors here for action of any sort, for we are all lap dogs in this benevolent community of scholars. If we mind our own business, we are invited to speak at alumni meetings, we are held up to public display by our administration, and we may achieve the salary rank that allows us to keep our children in the state university.
I HAVE HINTED, somewhat broadly, I fear, that you will find your exposure to deans and administrators a somewhat chilling experience. This is not wholly true. They are a mixed bag. Some are ruthlessly ambitious, some are competent, some are witless. A few form alliances to keep the competent few from rising. Should you be privy to discussions by these men you will generally find that they fear the teacher who is liked by his students, who is outspoken and who does not belong to The Club, an unorganized group of back patters, convivial and jovial, all hiding the dirks they will put to use when the opportunity presents itself...
If I libel the dedicated men among them, it is because there are so few of them. After 42 years here I can recall only three, one was finally done in by a ruthless young man, no doubt a scholar, who found a greater arena for his talent in an academic deanship. I feel sorry for this young man; I don't believe he really knew that he was despised. The second talented administrator aspired to the top rung and although he achieved the presidency, it was too much for him. You see, he never understood his limitations.
He was a delightful person in a group, witty, friendly, popular. As a second or third man on a "team," (a very important word) he was superlative. But as top man he often confused the aims of a university. I recall his asking me one day what I thought we were trying to do here. I replied that some of us thought of ourselves as paddles stirring the gray matter of our students.
HE SIGHED and shook his head, and later that night spoke at length about our school's need for funds. It was an alumni group, so I suppose he was not culpable. But I often longed to hear him say something about our intellectual commitments, our desire to create an atmosphere outside the community where scholars and students could be free to think and speak...
But let me immediately return to your problem. Teach? Yes, if you want to accept a salary that will rank below that of carpenter and plumber. Yes, if you want to work with young men and women, many of whom are in school because they can find nothing better to do. Yes, if you can laugh at a dean or a president's jokes.
Why am I here?, you ask. Because I love it despite all I have said. And you would make an old man happy if you felt his life's work so important that you made it yours.
(Excerpted from an article, "Expostulations of an Angry Father," by Timothy Skelton, published in The Observer.)
Worth Repeating
There is more to this force than the normal friction between the generations. There is something in the minds of young people today which they themselves have not been able to make wholly articulate and not all the behavioral sciences have succeeded in bringing out fully into the light. Exactly what that is lies beyond my scope and perhaps my competence to explain. Suffice it to recognize it as a subject of profound significance to our diplomacy and to offer three thoughts which may shed some light upon it.—A. Whitney Griswold