My favourite argument in Plato’s Republic concerns the nature of freedom. In Book 3 of The Republic he argues that free people govern themselves by applying the appropriate standard to their conduct in any given situation. Hence, where people rely upon external authorities to make their decisions or get them out of trouble, (his example is doctors and lawyers) the society and the character of its citizens is corrupt. By that metric we live in corrupt times indeed.

I was put in mind of this argument by the news that Erika Lopez Prater, the adjunct professor whose contract was not renewed by Hamline University in Minnesota because she was accused of “Islamophobia” has commenced legal action against the institution. Its not the health of her soul that I worry about– what choice does she have to correct the maligning of her character and competence?– but the soul of her accusers and, more generally, the soul of academic institutions as they drift ever further from a clear understanding of their raison d’etre.

The case stems from a class in art history in which the professor showed a medieval painting of the angel Gabriel in conversation with the Prophet Mohamed. A Muslim student in the class was offended and trotted out the usual cliche’s about not feeling included just because something they were studying made her feel uncomfortable. Instead of acting like a student and challenging the professor in class, i.e., engaging in an argument about whether or not the painting should have been shown, she ran complaining to the boss.

Remember when students thought they were a revolutionary vanguard!

What makes this case all the more disturbing is that the painting was made by a Muslim artist and was shown during a section of the class devoted to Islamic art. How expanding the content of the class beyond the Western canon constitutes Islamophobia is beyond me. A true Islamophobe would either ignore or disparage the histories of Islamic art. In this case, a good faith effort to explore non-Western traditions– are we not constantly enjoined to “diversify” the curriculum?– ended up costing the professor future contracts.

Numerous American Muslim organizations and Islamic professors have weighed in to the controversy to note that there is no absolute prohibition on depicting the prophet Mohamed. As one would expect, the complex philosophical, scientific, theological, and artistic histories of Islam contain different positions on the permissibility of depicting Mohamed. The class could have become an occasion for challenging myths about the intellectual uniformity of the Islamic tradition and its domination by dour fundamentalists, i.e., the caricatured view constructed by real Islamophobes. Instead it became yet another sorry instance of well-meaning people falling victim to cliches. The professor, academic freedom, and the integrity of academic institutions suffered the consequences.

Justifying the egregiously stupid decision to not renew the professor’s contract, the president of Hamline University argued that ” “Prioritizing the well-being of our students does not in any way negate or minimize the rights and privileges assured by academic freedom,” Miller wrote. “But the concepts do intersect.”

They absolutely do not intersect and anyone who thinks that they do should resign their position as a leader of an academic institution. Universities are nor care homes for students’ psychological well-being. They are places of study in which no topic or work can be taboo. If the investigative context calls for it, then The 120 Days of Sodom or Mein Kampf must be on the reading list. If the context calls for it, then medieval paintings of the Prophet Mohamed must be on the syllabus. Universities do not exist to protect or preserve the integrity of religious or other traditions: they exist to question them. No external authority no matter what their beliefs or politics can determine the content of courses or the direction of research. Course content can only be determined by the problem under investigation; the direction of research can only be determined by professors’ interests and the conclusions that they can coherently defend when challenged.

Administrators who do not understand these fundamental, defining principles of the institution need to step down from their roles.

What about student well-being? No student who is at university for the right reasons– to grow intellectually– should ever be offended by any subject explored in good faith in the classroom, on the reading list, or in a public lecture. Academic freedom is based on respect for differences, but it cannot be limited by the worry that some subjects might cause offense. In the classroom context respect entails explaining clearly to students the reasons why certain problems or texts have to be investigated. To avoid topics because some students might take offense is the very opposite of respect: it is demeaning to the student as learner.

Everyone at a university: students, professors, administrators, is a learner. Learners learn by being challenged. Being challenged means being confronted with that which we do not know, with that which we might disagree, with events from history that might disturb, even horrify. When I was an undergraduate at York University (a school with a high proportion of Jewish students) I took a class on the ways in which totalitarian ideologies spread. (It was called, if I remember, Morality and Ideology, and taught by a Professor Katz, I believe). We had to watch Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah. How do you think the Jewish students felt watching Hitler rant and rave at Nuremberg? How many recalled their own relatives killed in the Holocaust when they heard a Polish villager tell Lanzmann that they did notice that all of a sudden the Jewish villagers disappeared, but they didn’t care?

I would guess that they felt pretty damn uncomfortable. But no one complained. Prof. Katz was not fired. Everyone understood that the Holocaust and Nazism were historical realities that we must understand if we are to prevent their recurrence. (Perhaps they are still spreading because too many people are afraid to do the hard work of historical understanding and think that “comforting” slogans will protect us from real social dangers). Ignorance, intellectual cowardice, and averting one’s eyes from complex realities do not solve real problems. Nor do cliches and bathetic platitudes about compassion and inclusion solve the problems of hatred and exclusion. Social change does, but real social change depends upon an understanding of history and causes.

The same argument holds in this case. Islamophobia is not stopped by ignoring the complex, rich, and contradictory history of Islam, but by freeing people who are not aware of its richness and complexity (as the student at the heart of this case clearly was not) from their caricatured and cliched misunderstandings. If one-sided views are not challenged, then real Islamophobes will continue to conflate Islam with fundamentalist violence and oppression. Where better than the university to explore these problems?

Nowhere, provided that those who assume leadership roles in the university accept that their role is to serve the primary purpose of university: to challenge ourselves to know better. Smart people behave stupidly when they fail to govern their decision by the appropriate principle. The President of Hamline believed that she had some personal duty of care towards an individual student when her primary duty is towards the institution as a centre of learning. Academic freedom, as I have argued before, is not a personal right held by academics as individuals that allows them to say anything they feel like saying. Academic freedom is a collective right that ensures that that which needs to be studied can be studied without interference from external forces with an interest in suppressing critical thought and argument.

Academic freedom not only will produce discomfort, it ought to produce discomfort. The moment of discomfort is the moment of learning. They have chosen to come to university and must expect that they will be confronted with issues and arguments that challenge their beliefs. Universities bring together the growing totality of human thought and expression. They cannot be transmission belts for any particular culture nor can they erect firewalls around some subjects or positions just because they may offend someone’s religious sensibilities. It would be profoundly wrong to try to hang a painting of Mohamed in a mosque, but, by the same reasoning, it is profoundly wrong to try to prevent critical and historical inquiry into historical depictions of Mohamed.

Administrators must have the strength of character to defend the principle of academic freedom or they must resign.