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The Virtue of Tolerance The President of the United States of America is going to speak at the University of Notre Dame’s commencement ceremony. And instead of feeling excitement or honor, a vocal student and alumni minority has chosen to lash out at the supposed un-Catholicism of President Obama. They create an enemy when it seems more logical to make a powerful friend. They discard academic credibility for ideological homogeneity. They preach and stomp their feet and raise arms without realizing the only thing they damage is the university they purport to love. In the extreme, close-minded ideology begets tyranny, and in this case threatens to lower the University of Notre Dame’s stature from a leading academic institution to the level of Liberty University, the insular academic bastion of the late Jerry Falwell’s fundamentalist claptrap. Of course, this extreme will never happen. The administration is too smart and the student body too proud. What is troubling is that the angry minority doesn’t realize that this end is what they are endorsing in their close-mindedness. They wish, whether they think it or not, to convert Notre Dame from an institution of higher learning into a propaganda machine for conservative Catholic thought. A college is only enriched by the presence of contrasting viewpoints. Italo Calvino gives us the model of thought best adopted in an academic environment: “I felt in harmony with the disharmony of others, myself, and the world.” Students will not necessarily come together with the same answer, but will bond in the search for that answer. The role of the modern university is not to educate through rote learning. It is not the mere dissemination of facts and formulas. The role of the university is to promote critical thinking and provide students with the means of addressing issues for which there are as of yet no answers. It is about looking to the future. This is only enriched by diversity in the student body, where friendly confrontation will leave the graduate with the skills needed to think beyond the classroom. So while it is not being claimed that the moralistic mission of Notre Dame should alter, never should it be imposed at the expense of inclusiveness. Katahrine Haake, college professor and feminist theorist, points out that differences do not constitute “a hierarchy, but a matrix, where difference itself is a value, something we can look at and be curious about, take pleasure in, exalt.” A university is a place of peers, relying, even when in disagreement, on respect. In 1940, shunned by a public university owing to his divergent, unpopular beliefs, Bertrand Russell said, “The man who has the art of arousing the witch-hunting instincts of the mob has a quite peculiar power for evil in a democracy where the habit of the exercise of power by the majority has produced that intoxication and impulse to tyranny which the exercise of authority almost invariably produces sooner or later.” But what is most awful in the current situation is that those voicing the loudest protests are not the majority, but a vocal and vehement minority. These are the people who favor ideology over education, indoctrination over graduation. These people want Notre Dame alumni to be same-thinking automatons, and they want Notre Dame’s message to be one of ignorant acceptance instead of freethinking plurality. These people, in their undeniable love for their alma mater, in effect want to cripple her by hacking off her left arm, left leg, poking out her left eye and ripping off her left ear. And when there’s only half a body left, these same people are going to look around and wonder why Notre Dame is sliding down the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, and why their beloved football team can no longer attract top athletes, and why the world looks at them as a quaint, medieval relic of intolerance. There is no virtue in exclusion. None. Should students with un-Catholic views be banned from campus? Of course not. If all “good Catholics” were honest with themselves, they would be forced to acknowledge, at least on some small detail, their own divergence with Catholic social thought. But they would never expect the church doors to be barred shut against them because of it. Abortion and the like are wedge issues. While they are for many people of the highest moral priority, it is even more morally questionable to use these issues as an excuse to distance oneself from another human being. It is sad when a Christian message of love is replaced, for whatever reason, by one of hate. No one is saying that every Notre Dame alumni should support President Obama, agree with him on issues, or much less vote for him. But this is a powerful and important man who was elected by the majority of voting Americans, and he is taking time out of running the free world to speak to the next generation of the Notre Dame family. To offer him anything but a warm welcome, which 97% of the graduating seniors do, is disgraceful. To politicize an act of generosity and demonize probably the busiest man on the planet when he deigns to do the university of favor is absurd. Use this opportunity to engage the President, and make a connection in the hopes of influencing his opinion. Is his opinion likely to be altered? No. But that’s how it works in a democracy, and Notre Dame’s position is going to be stronger with a friend in the White House rather than a self-made enemy. |