Chancellor replies to KUCA's letter
The Chancellor issued the following statement Tuesday in response to Monday's letter from the KUCA:
The KU Committee for Alternatives has asked me to reply to their "open" letter of May 4. I am pleased to do so. The central issue of that letter is contained in their request for an outline of the University's position "in regard to this country's recent actions in Southeast Asia." It is followed by the expression of belief that the University "cannot remain neutral on this issue."
I submit that the University, as an institution, must remain neutral on this and similar contemporary social, religious and political issues or forfeit its claim to objectivity. Commitment to a religious, social or political position is appropriate for individual students, individual faculty members and individual administrators. For example, my personal position concerning our involvement in Southeast Asia has been public knowledge since last September. Nevertheless, the institutional commitment must be one in which divergent positions, values, and philosophies may flourish. Even though the majority of our students and faculty members may be of a single persuasion, we have an institutional commitment to maintain the right of free inquiry into all aspects of contemporary life and to permit persons of every religious, social or political persuasion the right to study and to learn on our campus.
8 KANSAN May 6 1970
As an institution we are committed to a belief in the rationality of man, the worth of the individual, an abiding respect for truth, a tolerance of the broadest spectrum of beliefs and opinions, and the right of free inquiry into all aspects of the physical and social universe. To take an institutional position either for or against specific social issues would require the rejection of one or more of our basic values.
tion to the war in Vietnam. I can reply effectively to that criticism only so long as we are true to our institutional commitments. The instant our institutional values are sacrificed to any committed group of individuals, within or beyond the University, we forfeit our rights and privileges to listen to speakers of divergent points of view, to study all aspects of society, and to permit the development of individual values or philosophies that result from objective inquiry rather than from subjective indoctrination.
Outside the University community I am criticized for "permitting" peaceful demonstrations in opposi-
The University of Kansas must and will continue to flourish as a "free marketplace of ideas." In this tradition, each individual member of the university community may develop, study, and propound his individual political, social, and religious beliefs; and each individual may choose from a number of alternative philosophies. In this sense, therefore, each of us is faced each day with his own "day of alternatives." I believe that this is the reason for a university's existence, and I trust that we will all continue to promote the right of each person to make his choices from the widest possible range of alternatives.
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