Democracy Project writes:
Before last spring, Miller planned on retiring to his home town of Young Harris to teach at the eponymous junior college there. He’s a YHC graduate and former professor at the small Methodist school, which was founded in 1886 by a circuit-riding minister. But in May, David Franklin, a history professor there whose wife is academic dean, penned a vitriolic letter to Miller that was obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In the letter, Franklin, from whom I took a Western history survey course during his first year there, 1979/80, said:
“You, Zell Miller, are a disgrace to your city, your county, your state and your country. Your attack upon the U.S. Senate that you sit in now was so unpatriotic it boggles the imagination.”
In response, Miller declared that he wouldn’t teach at the College, as the letter “makes it abundantly clear that I would not be, shall we say, warmly welcomed.” And: “I have long put up with this kind of vitriol in the political world but I am not going to at my alma mater.” . . .
[S]o politicized has higher education become that even the smallest academic communities now employ teachers who’re only too happy to lash out at a native son who professes traditional conservative beliefs — even if he also happens to be the school’s most distinguished alumnus. . . .
Can there be any doubt that, had Miller spoken out against the Bush administration, his place in academe would have been assured? After all, Max Cleland, Georgia’s embittered ex-Senator, found his liberal credentials far more useful in landing an academic post than in maintaining his Senate seat in a Red State. Viewed from that perspective, Miller’s ostracism from his alma mater is a badge of honor. But for Young Harris College, it remains a shameful stain.
InstaPundit points to this, writing “Zell Miller is joining a law firm, because apparently his alma mater, where he had been scheduled to teach post-retirement, decided it didn’t want him.”
Now there might be more to the story than what Democracy Project wrote, but so far it seems like one professor harshly criticizing the Senator. In fact, it’s one professor exercising his academic freedom in harshly criticizing the Senator.
I think the professor was wrong to do so (both in tone and on the substance), but absent some more evidence, it’s hard to see how his speech could be imputed to the college as a “shameful stain” on the institution. Nor can I see how “academic communities” could properly make sure that they don’t “employ teachers who’re only too happy to lash out at a native son who professes traditional conservative beliefs.” And while it’s too bad that some faculty members are rude, neither do I think it profitable for colleges to try to completely exclude all people who might occasionally be uncollegial.
The flip side of college professors’ freedom to speak is that the college doesn’t endorse their speech (even if their spouses are administration members). It’s true that the college might have taken steps to express its affection for Miller, and distance itself from Franklin’s statements, but for all I know it might have. Certainly nothing in the story suggests that the college endorsed them, or that many other colleagues expressed similar sentiments.
So it’s hard to see how this is evidence that Miller’s place at the College was anything but “assured.” (Universal affection for him, or even collegial politeness, wasn’t assured, but that’s outside the power of the College to assure.) He doesn’t seem to have been “ostraci[zed].” Nor does there seem to be evidence that the College “didn’t want him.”
I think there’s plenty of undue hostility towards conservatives in academia, and plenty of vitriol that ought to be condemned. But I’d hate to see people hold colleges responsible for isolated faculty members’ speech, speech that the colleges ought to tolerate even when they disagree with it.
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