Tufts maintains a general commitment to the values of free speech, free thought and pursuit of truth. These goals make us descendants of John Stuart Mill, whose writings founded many of the intellectual rationales for these practices, which are integral features of the best universities. By thinking about Mill's philosophy for a moment, I believe we gain insight into the recent controversy raised by some professors on campus over whether Larry Summers should speak on higher education at Tufts on March 14.
Mill's defense of free thought and free speech is straightforward. These freedoms are pivotal to the development of qualities that characterize a cultivated individual: rationality and resolute engagement with the world. They also create the necessary conditions for wisdom and progress.
Even if individuals completely disagree with their opponents, they will grow in self-awareness from engaging an opposing position. Conflicts between competing ideas of the "good" place restraints on antagonists, induce toleration and force advocates to sharpen and clarify their views.
Since most advocates emphasize one side of a position, partisans of contrasting positions are required so that the rest of us will grasp the whole or comprehensive position. Mill places special responsibility on the intellectual sector of society to develop as defenders of contrasting positions and synthesizers of competing outlooks. This is why he states in "On Liberty" that it is crucial for "the intelligent part of the public ... to see that it is good there should be differences ... even though, as it may appear to them, some should be for the worse."
So Mill's thought provides a specific challenge to Tufts' commitment to both liberty and wisdom. The discovery of better and worse ways of life and practices is neither grounded in indifference between one opinion and another nor general denunciations of opponents, but rather in the many-sided opinions of knowledgeable sources and the difficult task of comparing and contrasting those ideas.
This requires that the university cultivate a higher form of toleration than is necessary for the larger liberal society. It means going beyond simply ignoring or rejecting positions or ways of life we regard as false or foolish.
It requires respecting the possibility that an opposing outlook may be right - or partly right - even if one initially finds those views disconcerting. Indeed, the best universities transform the imperative to encourage diversity of thought into the love of learning.
And when it comes to the subject of Summers' talk, the tasks confronting higher education, we have much to learn! As chair of the political science department and member of the IR Core faculty, no one knows better than I the complexities of the general university requirements on the one hand and the distinct requisites demanded by the different departments and program majors on the other. Our strange mix of requirements, alternatives and replacements are expressions of a directionless curriculum, producing students with little to no common knowledge.
Many of our students gain knowledge and/or experience in this or that discipline or field of study, but too often this education derives from the will and character of the individual student rather than a coherent curriculum. Indeed, the arbitrary character of a Tufts' education is a reflection of higher education's general inability to identify what is wisdom and what a cultivated mind needs to know.
To be sure, during the past few years Tufts has initiated policies, such as the Summer Scholars program, the soon-to-be-reformed IR curriculum and the emphasis on writing senior thesis, whose purpose is to intensify academic curiosity, foster research and promote the life of the mind.
But we have much work to do! We are a long way from teaching students a subject's leading truths, debates and great features.
Such an education enables an individual to conquer the difficult initial threshold or set of assumptions that shrouds subjects in mystery and prevents individuals from entering into discourse on our most important literary, historical, scientific and philosophic questions.
Educators and students at Tufts could scarcely find a better way to think about the advantages and disadvantages of our curriculum than by debating the meaning and purpose of higher education. Engaging Larry Summers' speech on March 14 has the potential to promote that discussion.
Summers' prudence and wisdom can be questioned, but his commitment to reforming undergraduate education cannot, and we can learn from his positive and negative experiences.
Our engagement with Summers will produce agreement, muddled opinions and, no doubt, discord. Mill would tell us we will be freer and wiser for it.
