Swarthmore’s Hillel controversy

For that matter, what’s it mean to be an enlightened Catholic? Suppose you question the doctrine of papal infallibility? Suppose, like more than 90% of American Catholics, you disagree with the Church’s strictures about abortion and birth control?

What’s it mean to create a community of thinking minds— a university, say— if that community refuses to engage with anyone who advocates, say, abortion or birth control or sanctions against Israel? If a university starts drawing such lines, can it really call itself a university? Are terms like “Catholic university” or “Jewish student organization” oxymorons?

Catholic schools, Jewish teachers

In an age when some of the best Quaker schools are run by Catholics, and Catholic colleges are heavily staffed by Jews, these are no mere academic questions. (The headmaster of my progressive private school, operated by the atheistic New York Society For Ethical Culture, is himself an alumnus of Mennonite and Jesuit schools.)

In 2008, when Boston College invited Attorney General Michael Mukasey to speak at its Law School commencement, faculty members successfully lobbied against granting him an honorary degree in light of his justification of the Bush administration’s waterboarding and similar torture techniques for interrogation. One faculty member called Mukasey’s presence a violation of “our religious principles.” Since Boston College is a Catholic institution, I assumed he meant Catholic principles, but no: The professor, I discovered, is Jewish, and so are most of his colleagues.

Mukasey’s appearance at Boston College, I would argue, benefitted his critics: It gave them an opportunity to spotlight the transgressions of a Bush cabinet member who until then had flown pretty well under the radar. A similar (albeit so far strictly theoretical) issue surfaced recently when Jewish students at Swarthmore College voted to defy Hillel, the global Jewish college student association, and open their chapter’s doors to groups and speakers who don’t necessarily support Israel. “All are welcome to walk through our doors and speak with our name and under our roof,” the Swarthmore resolution states, “be they Zionist, anti-Zionist, post-Zionist or non-Zionist.”

Rejecting Obama

Swarthmore’s Hillel leaders said their move was prompted by a decision by Harvard’s Hillel chapter last month to cancel a speech by Avraham Burg, former speaker of the Israeli Knesset, because the event was co-sponsored by a group that supports sanctions against Israel. This is almost as ludicrous as some Catholic colleges’ refusal to invite Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton to campus because they support legal abortions. In either case, the question is the same: How do you deal with adversarial ideas— by engaging with them, or by trying to shut them out? Is listening to a speaker equivalent to endorsing that speaker’s views? If Jewish students at Swarthmore could entice, say, the Ayatollah Khameini or Nasrullah to chat with them under Hillel’s roof, should adult Jewish leaders deny them that opportunity?

Hillel International’s president, Eric D. Fingerhut, insisted that his organization welcomes debate about Israel but added, “Let me be very clear— ‘anti-Zionists’ will not be permitted to speak using the Hillel name or under the Hillel roof, under any circumstances.”

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s revered first prime minister, took the opposite tack toward Lessing Rosenwald, the prime mover of the American Council For Judaism, the only American Jewish organization ever founded specifically for the purpose of opposing Zionism. In 1957 Ben-Gurion invited Rosenwald and his wife to Israel as his personal guests. He failed to change Rosenwald’s mind, but when the Rosenwalds departed, Ben-Gurion gave them a book about himself with this inscription: “In recognition of deep sincerity and honesty in opposition and in friendship.”

Notre Dame’s vagina problem

More recently, in 2006 Notre Dame was widely castigated by conservative Catholics for allowing a gay film festival on campus as well as the graphically sexual play, The Vagina Monologues. What’s the point of a Catholic university, critics asked, if it exposes students to the same evils they encounter in the heathen world at large?

Notre Dame’s president, Father John L. Jenkins, did some hard thinking about that question and came up with a decent rationale. He personally objected to the portrayals of human sexuality in The Vagina Monologues, he said. But as president of the university, "I am very determined that we not suppress speech on this campus. I am also determined that we never suppress or neglect the Gospel that inspired this university."

In the process, Jenkins himself demonstrated the sort of personal growth that is theoretically the purpose of a college environment. "If I didn't learn anything from all this," he said later, “I'd be very disappointed and surprised. What I learned was we do really need to find ways to advance discussion about issues that have to do with women."

To put it another way: Listen to your adversaries, instead of searching for excuses not to. It won’t kill you, and you might learn something.