COMMENTARY: Freedom of expression through Rutgers lens
The violent confrontations, with devastating loss of life and destruction of property in the Middle East, set off protests on many of the nation’s college and university campuses, including Rutgers.
This troubling time for U.S. citizens has been made worse by those who use the campus protests as political fodder for their own strategic and political advancement.
Universities are in the crosshairs of certain representatives in Congress and their supporters across the country.
It’s a wrenching time as politicians threaten the well-being and independence of our nation’s centers of learning.
It’s also a good time to step back and reflect on our past at Rutgers and what we might learn from it as we anticipate a challenging start to the Fall semester.
Current efforts to undermine higher education and the corrosive atmosphere those efforts create bring us back to the time of the Rutgers Red Scare: a time in the U.S. during the 1950s when individuals in colleges and universities were under siege by right-wing political forces.
In 1954, Moses Isaac Finley, a classics scholar, was teaching at Rutgers, when Sen. Patrick McCarran (D-Nevada), who was campaigning against alleged communists in government and universities, made him a target. Finley was called before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security (SSIS), where he refused to say whether he had ever been a communist.
This followed an appearance before the notorious House on Un-American Activities two years earlier when Finley invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Rutgers fired him, along with another other faculty member, for refusing to testify.
Finley understood that a society in which discussion and debate are essential is also a society full of risks. These are risks that Rutgers, its current president, and its board of trustees were not willing to take.
It may seem odd to today's students and governing boards. But such requests to declare "loyalty" were not rare. As noted, the threat of communism and subversion existed through a good part of the 20th century.
The loyalty oaths and the congressional investigations of the McCarthy era may have been drawing to a close, but schools and colleges were still imposing political tests on their members. Many concerns were misdirected, limiting the very freedoms that were supposedly threatened.
It was a dark time for Rutgers.
The year 1966 presented another challenge when a tenured Rutgers professor, Eugene D. Genovese, declared his desire for a Vietcong victory in Vietnam at a teach-in on the Vietnam War that was held on the Rutgers campus.
It continues to serve as an important episode in the history of academic freedom in the United States, as candidates for governor sparred over whether Rutgers should fire Genovese or retain him.
The Genovese case became one of the defining issues of the gubernatorial campaign and led to the victory of Richard J. Hughes, who refused to interfere, unlike his opponent, Republican State Sen. Wayne Dumont Jr.
The University stood firm against the pressure — and it was considerable — so much so that Former University president Mason Gross and the university’s governing board were awarded the Alexander Meiklejohn Award for Academic Freedom by the American Association of University Professors in "recognition of (their) outstanding contribution" by protecting that freedom.
Indeed, the arrival of Gross as the 16th president of Rutgers clearly marked a significant transition from the 1950's.
As noted, he faced challenges similar to those today, but the Gross era also included protests against the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), the bombing of Cambodia in 1970 and demands for Black Studies that prompted major protests on campus.
As Mason Gross stated, “the fundamental aim of education as we know it is, simply, freedom. First, comes the material freedom that is won by the acquisition of some special skill or body of knowledge that enables our students to establish their personal and economic independence. Then comes ... the freedom which results from a knowledge of how to organize ourselves, politically, economically, and socially, and which minimizes the danger of our collapsing, through incompetence, into the power of a tyrant or a dictator.”
He said that it must be the university’s responsibility, “to provide the atmosphere and the intellectual conditions by which alone the free spirit can survive.”
One of the authors of "The Selected Speeches of Mason Welch Gross," and former professor in the Department of History, Richard Schlatter, wrote, "in practice this meant, in part, defending the rights of students and faculty to speak their minds," and Gross certainly did, but not without criticism to be sure, which included accusations of "softness," or giving in to pressures, much as we see today in the slings and arrows directed at the current University President, Jonathan Holloway, among others.
Among other manifestations of his talent and commitment to free expression, Gross spoke to students who were protesting the invasion of Cambodia in May 1970, referring to that spirit he saw alive among them and expressed his hope that it would last.
In Gross' final year at Rutgers, he was greeted with standing ovations from students, faculty and New Jersey civilians whenever he spoke at a gathering. It is held that his most impressive ovation came from the group of student protestors who had surrounded and occupied his office on May 4, 1970, in the central administration building.
Owen Ullmann, who was deputy managing editor of USA Today at the time, recalled the incident at a 1991 ceremony and said, "Mason told us we were his guests and to make ourselves at home; that this was our university as well as his, and asked us not to break anything. As he walked away, we applauded, and we respected his wishes."
No doubt, the regrettable part of Rutgers' history was often on the mind of the president. He knew that acts of conscience and the willingness to fight efforts to silence and discredit them gave witness to the values we cherish and acknowledged the importance of the institutions that guard them.
We may not have the heavy hand of the government threatening our constitutional rights, but some members of Congress are dancing in that direction, reminding us that no threat is worth losing the free expression of ideas.
Student movements in the United States are rarely popular off campus and appreciating their constructive impact can be delayed by decades.
The protests against the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, along with the anti-apartheid and anti-fossil fuel protests and, of course, the many manifestations of the movement for civil rights are seen as being successful, but not every protest has been.
The protests cannot be said to have been solely responsible for constructive change. Other factors were at work as well. When protests ignite, particularly in highly polarized political environments, we need to embrace opportunities to discuss the importance of freedom of expression. We have a strong foundation at Rutgers.
History will take its revenge if we do not exalt the importance of ideas and information, protect access to them and defend the academic institutions that are pledged to do just that. This includes the expression within protests, conducted responsibly, that can reach the soul of society.
Linda Stamato is a former chair of the university’s board of governors and presently senior policy fellow at the New Jersey State Policy Lab at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy.
*Columns, cartoons and letters do not necessarily reflect the views of the Targum Publishing Company or its staff.
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