Ethics Newsline®

One winter night, during a previous career as a teacher of literature, I was checking out a book from the Harvard University library when the student next in line asked what I was working on. I told her I was writing a book on the poetry of the twentieth-century American poet e. e. cummings.

She was outraged. How, she demanded, could I subject cummings’ poetry to the sterile analysis of literary criticism? His work, she insisted, was so perfectly itself that it needed no interpretation. I think she even cited Wordsworth’s notorious line, “We murder to dissect,” to argue that discussing a poem meant killing it.

She had (just barely) a point. Academic teaching, done wrong, can sap a literary masterpiece of every drop of aesthetic beauty and emotional power. But done right, it can tease bright shafts of meaning out of poems that, like cummings’, often can seem just a jumble of incomprehensible words.

If I were back in the classroom again, I’d have to decide between her method and mine. I’d still choose analysis. But if the classroom were in Ohio, that decision soon might be out of my hands. A bill now pending before the state legislature — S.B. 24, purportedly to establish an academic bill of rights for higher education — would require that students be presented with “a plurality of serious scholarly methodologies and perspectives” intended to “respect all human knowledge” and provide students with “dissenting sources and viewpoints.” Similar bills in Georgia, Indiana, and Tennessee are kicking up concern on campuses across the nation.

Under this bill, would I have to treat her dismissal of critical inquiry as one of those “dissenting viewpoints” fully as worthy of consideration as traditional literary criticism? If I didn’t, would she haul me into court?

That, of course, would cause controversy to erupt all over campus. But S.B. 24 has foreseen that: It also requires that faculty members must not “persistently” introduce “controversial matter … that has no relation to their subject of study and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose.” Then what if my colleagues who teach, say, computer science are asked by their students about this burning controversy? What can they say except, “We can’t talk about this under state law.” Even if they’re not “persistently” introducing such topics, the chilling effect of the law would be significant.

Where does it all lead? From being thinkers helping young scholars sharpen their own critical thinking skills, our faculties risk becoming mere trainers, coaching students how to perform certain mental tasks. If this sounds strangely Orwellian, it’s worth asking why higher education is at this juncture.

In part, the answer lies in the radical political polarization of U.S. thought over the last decade. Universities are now being cast as repositories of liberal thinking unsympathetic to conservative ideas, and conservatives are clamoring for redress through bills like S.B. 24. Judging from faculty members’ party affiliation, they may have a point: Far more faculty members are Democrats than Republicans. Hence the newfound pressure.

But there’s a deeper historical issue here. In reaction to McCarthyism (which in the 1950s tried to ferret out Communist sympathizers and police people’s thoughts) and in sympathy with civil rights (which in the1960s insisted on respect for racial diversity in U.S. life), the need for tolerance rose steadily on the academic agenda.

But like so many good ideas, tolerance fell foul of extremism. It began as a movement toward respect. But on campuses everywhere, it soon came to mean that every idea and behavior, good or bad, had to be tolerated. It became, in other words, a version of ethical relativism, asserting that all moral positions are equal, and that there’s no valid basis for calling some ideas better than others. Result: The “values neutral education” movement was born, insisting that ethical questions couldn’t be discussed in the classroom.

Recently, as ethical collapses have figured so strongly in the headlines, that extreme has lost currency. Ethics is finding its way back into the curriculum. As these bills suggest, however, there’s a belated effort to force the issue, to the point of legislating a respect for ideas. The irony, of course, is that an excess of tolerance is being fought with an excess of thought policing. Isn’t there another path, across some common ground?

Certainly. The common ground lies in the shared values of honesty, fairness, and respect. Well-meaning and ethical people can see different ways for those core moral ideas to play out in practice. At bottom, however, they need to agree that both sides are right. Surely it is right for faculties, not legislatures, to referee the tug and scuffle of ideas until the best emerge in a fair contest. But surely it is right for those same faculties to be open to a range of ideas, even if they come from conservative quarters.

If the liberal ethos is intellectually as strong as its numbers among faculties suggest, it will have no difficulty arguing its case. If it’s not, it will be displaced naturally by stronger ideas. But if conservatives doubt the strength of their ideas and feel they can’t win unless they tilt the playing field, they’ll turn to legislatures for help. If they win, it will be clear that their success came from raw political power rather than from a compelling set of ideas. Do they really want to be known as the new thought police?

©2005 Institute for Global Ethics

“It’s a motherhood-and-apple-pie issue. We have a situation in this state and this nation where the legislatures are creating our own voters. This is dangerous for our country.”

– Maryland state delegate John Leopold (R), discussing the practice of political redistricting, in which lawmakers draw “Congressional and legislative district maps in geographically convoluted ways to ensure the re-election of an incumbent or the dominance of a party,” according to the New York Times. The Times profiles the widespread use of redistricting, as well as the mounting backlash against the practice. (“States See Growing Campaign to Change Redistricting Laws,” New York Times, Feb. 7)

BOULDER, Colorado
A firebrand professor who likened victims of September 11 to “little Eichmanns” last week refused to back down, sparking a fierce debate over free speech, personal responsibility, and U.S. foreign policy.

Ward Churchill, a tenured professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, came under fire last month after a New York college cancelled a speaking engagement after his 2001 paper “Some People Push Back” was brought to light.

In the paper, Churchill said that World Trade Center workers were at “the very heart of America’s global financial empire,” helping to fund oppressive U.S. foreign policy goals that create frustrated enemies like the terrorists who struck in 2001.

Colorado’s governor quickly called for Churchill’s firing and the university’s board of regents launched a 30-day review of his “writings, speeches, tape recordings, and other works” to see if there might be cause for dismissal, reported the New York Times.

For his part, Churchill last week refused to quiet down, rallying supporters and reiterating his belief that the Twin Towers financial workers were “technicians of empire” that had helped create the enmity that breeds terrorism.

“Every Palestinian child shot in the head by an Israeli for throwing a rock is killed with a rifle made in the U.S. There are millions of darker-skinned people piled up in heaps ultimately for the strategic interests of the U.S.,” Churchill said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The controversy inflamed both critics and supporters, who tangled last week over issues of free speech, academic liberty, and the bounds of good taste, with some saying that while they support Churchill’s right to speak freely, they found his choice of words offensive and obnoxious.

Though criticizing Churchill’s Eichmann allusions as “patently offensive,” Slate senior editor and legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick last week said his right to pronounce his views was important to challenging both fixed notions and fragile sensibilities.

“If academic tenure means anything at all, it means professors must be allowed to say and write what they choose without fearing removal by popular referendum,” Lithwick wrote. “That’s why the decision to grant someone tenure must be taken so seriously in the first place.”

“One hundred percent of the blame for the Churchill debacle rests with the University of Colorado’s board of regents that hired, granted tenure to, and promoted an individual whose scholarship and personal qualifications are now, and must always have been, in serious question,” Lithwick added.

UNITED NATIONS
Stung by multiple scandals, the United Nations last week promised swift action on some fronts while shifting blame on others. Among the developments:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week suspended with pay two U.N. officials implicated in the sprawling scheme of kickbacks and graft that has tainted the $64-billion Oil-for-Food program with Iraq.

Oil-for-Food program chief Benon Sevan, who pushed for favors for a small Swiss-based oil company, and U.N. Security Council Affairs chief Joseph Stephanides, who stumped for a London-based inspection firm that won a contract, were given two weeks to respond to charges of misconduct.

Also last week, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard tried to distance the New York headquarters from apparent graft and misdeeds at the agency’s World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, where $3 million appears to be missing.

Investigators say they believe Sudanese employee Muhammad Hassan masterminded the alleged embezzlement over the past three to four years.

Hassan has gone missing, and while his wife says he is dead, investigators have their doubts, reported the New York Times.

Eckhard said the weather agency operated independently of the main U.N. office and is “responsible for cleaning up whatever might have gone wrong there.”

Eckhard’s words rankled some members of the U.S. Congress, where a House of Representatives subcommittee last week held a hearing on the United Nations’ recent bout with mismanagement.

The committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Illinois), sent a letter to Annan requesting copies of all internal audits of the World Meteorological Organization and 15 other “specialized” agencies implicated in scandals, reported the Times.

NAIROBI
Kenya’s struggle against endemic corruption took another apparent step backward last week following the resignation of the government’s top anticorruption advisor, reported the BBC.

The resignation of advisor John Githongo prompted a funding pull-out by the United States and warnings from two Kenyan officials, who called on President Mwai Kibaki to either sack corrupt officials or replace his entire cabinet.

“The president must take decisive action to save the government and the country from this ignominy” of corruption, warned First Planning Minister Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, according to the report.

Kibaki declined to depose his entire cabinet, but reshuffled a few ministers on Monday, reported the Reuters news agency.

Adding to the controversy, Kenya’s vice president conceded to the country’s Daily Nation newspaper that Kenya’s “top brass is engaged in massive corrupt activities,” reported the BBC.

WASHINGTON
Industrial firm W. R. Grace and Co. and seven top executives were charged last week with deliberately concealing health risks posed to workers and residents of a small Montana town.

Grace is accused of concealing knowledge that the company’s mine near Libby, Montana, was producing vermiculite contaminated with asbestos, which produces fibers that can cause severe respiratory illnesses and death when inhaled.

A newspaper study claimed that about 200 deaths and hundreds of illnesses in the town have been linked to asbestos.

According to the 10-count indictment handed down last week by a federal grand jury, Grace officials allegedly hid the asbestos contamination since at least 1976, lying about what they knew for decades.

The indictment accuses Grace of deliberately endangering its employees, their families, and people living in Libby, where asbestos-laced vermiculite was used for a junior high school running track and as a base for an ice rink.

Despite internal company warnings about the dangers, Grace also leased contaminated properties to the city and to local residents for use as homes, businesses, baseball fields, reported the Associated Press.

“This wasn’t something that happened to us. This was something that was done to us,” a former miner who, along with his wife and two children, is now ill, told the AP. “They should have to pay. They will never have to pay like we did, because it won’t cost them their lives.”

Grace last week issued a statement, saying it “categorically denies any criminal wrongdoing.”

Taxpayers have spent more than $55 million cleaning up Grace’s Libby mine, which was declared a federal Superfund site following its closure in 1990. Grace has appealed a federal judge’s order to repay the cost.

If convicted of last week’s charges, Grace faces maximum criminal fines of $280 million, with its executives facing prison sentences ranging from 5 to 70 years.

WASHINGTON
Bank of America last week agreed to pay $675 million to settle allegations of improper trading in mutual funds — part of the continuing fallout from the 2003 crackdown on industrywide abuses.

Under the deal, Bank of America will pay $375 million in fines and restitution for its own activities and $140 million in fines and restitution for activities at FleetBoston Financial, which it bought last year.

The firms were accused of engaging in both late trading, an illegal practice that takes advantage of time-zone differences, and market timing, which is legal but frowned-upon because it cuts overall profits while enriching elite customers, reported the Associated Press.

While the settlement did not require Bank of America to admit wrongdoing, it included a censure of the firm and a demand that the bank and its subsidiary companies bolster compliance with securities laws.

The settlement also requires Bank of America to cut investors’ fees by $160 million, bringing the total penalty to $675 million.

Last week’s settlement cements a deal initially agreed to last March.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

JONQUIERE, Quebec
Wal-Mart Canada Corp. has decided to shut its first unionized store in North America, claiming that it was not able to reach a profitable contract with the union representing the approximately 190 employees at the store.

While the retail giant is claiming that it is closing the Jonquiere, Quebec, store for economic reasons, the union, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), has stated that it will file an unfair labor practice charge with the Quebec Labor Relations Board alleging the closure is a violation of the workers’ right to join a union.

The Globe & Mail is reporting that the company has claimed the store was operating in the red and that while it had tried very hard to reach a contract with the union, the bargaining was “stuck” on key labor issues, including the scheduling of employees and employee status issues.

BOSTON
The former head of a political consulting firm was sentenced to five months in prison for his part in a scheme to impede Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts in New Hampshire in 2002.

Allen Raymond, former president of the Virginia-based Republican firm GOP Marketplace, worked with others to tie up phone lines used by Democratic voters requesting rides to polling places.

Raymond and two others — New Hampshire Republican Party former executive director Chuck McGee, and James Tobin, former regional chairman of President Bush’s campaign last year — also were indicted in the conspiracy.

McGee pleaded guilty, while Tobin pleaded not guilty and awaits trial, reported the Associated Press.

At last week’s sentencing, Raymond, who admitted his guilt last June, said his actions were “outside” his character, confessing that he “did a bad thing” in blocking access to the polls.

After his lawyer explained Raymond’s wrongdoing as the result of alleged pressure from senior Republican officials, the judge lashed out, according to the Washington Post.

“What about common sense?” U.S. District Judge Joseph DiClerico responded. “What about a personal moral compass?”

From the Kaiser Family Foundation and Hewitt Associates:

“As businesses struggle to control rising retiree health costs, they are asking their retirees to pay more and plan to do so again in 2005, according to a new survey of many of the nation’s largest employers conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Hewitt Associates.

“The survey found that firms providing retiree health benefits experienced cost increases averaging 12.7 percent in 2004, with employers and retirees sharing these cost increases at most firms. The survey also found that a typical worker under age 65 who retired in 2004 would pay $2,244 annually in premiums ($4,644 with spousal coverage) — 27 percent more than a similar worker who retired in 2003. A typical Medicare-eligible worker who retired in 2004 would pay $1,212 annually in premiums ($2,508 with spousal coverage) — 24 percent more than in 2003.

“‘The prospects for retiree health coverage are slowly disappearing for America’s workers, and retirees who have it will be paying more,’ Foundation President Drew E. Altman, Ph.D., said….

“The survey found that 8 percent of employers surveyed said that, in 2004, they had eliminated subsidized health benefits for future retirees. For 2005, only a small fraction of firms (1 percent) said they are likely to terminate subsidized coverage for current retirees, but 11 percent said they are likely to terminate coverage for future retirees. Most of these terminations are expected to affect new hires only.

“Surveyed employers reported that they have made or plan to make the following changes to control costs:

• “79 percent increased their retirees’ contributions for premiums in the past year, and 85 percent expect to do so in the coming year;
• “53 percent increased copayments or coinsurance for prescription drugs in the past year, and 49 percent expect to do so in the coming year;
• “37 percent raised deductibles for health care services in the past year, and 43 percent expect to do so in the coming year;
• “29 percent raised out-of-pocket limits on retirees’ obligations in the past year, and 37 percent expect to do so in the coming year; and
• “13 percent changed their plans in the past year to offer retirees access to group health benefits with retirees paying 100 percent of the costs, and 18 percent expect to do so in the coming year.

“…The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) created a new Medicare drug benefit to begin in 2006 and established financial incentives for businesses to continue to provide drug coverage to their Medicare-eligible retirees. Retiree coverage was a key issue in crafting the legislation because of concerns that the new drug benefit could accelerate the erosion of employer-sponsored coverage….”

“From listening comes wisdom, and from speaking repentance.”

– Italian proverb