The following essay was handed out to the department faculty during a meeting.  No comment was made.

By performing campus experiments in free speech, I’ve become professor perpetually on the academic fringe.  My conclusions, without fail, support the hypothesis that the First Amendment is barely tolerated, rarely if ever encouraged, in higher and secondary education.  Regarding the latter, my full-length narrative, Total Chaos:  Behind the Scenes of a National Blue-Ribbon High School (People’s Press, 2002), details one such experiment. 

It becomes veritable farce, though at least honest in a sense, when colleges and universities announce the creation of free speech zones on campus.  Do they tend to place such zones next to the dumpster in back of the cafeteria?  Do they give away free soapboxes?  Logically, such declarations, willingly or not, actually support the intolerance hypothesis.  All professors ought be interested in the First Amendment, yet most really are not.  Few would back a colleague daring to test the limits of free speech on campus.  The rationalizations for not supporting free speech or a free-speech colleague proponent would of course be numerous and convincing, at least to the careerists who’d never perform such experiments.

When waging battle against status quo in Academe as “An Enemy of the People,” that is, the faculty, a la Dr. Stockmann, stress is inevitable.  To avoid heart attack, it is imperative to keep ones body in tip-top shape.   I thus train physically, hard and frequently to keep stress at bay.  As member of a Humanities department in a small third-tier college, I’ve recently performed several more experiments in free speech.   Daring to criticize the department mission statement constitutes one of them.  The following is an account of that experiment. 

The Criticism
In the beginning of one Humanities department meeting, I distributed a flyer.  During the meeting, I did not swear, holler or call colleagues names.  Sameness constituted my principal criticism.  Indeed, the department mission statement could have been copied from most any department mission statement in the country.  On the bottom of the flyer, I included one of my cartoons, “Compare/Compare,” which depicted a professor, sheep and parrot.  That alone provoked dragon flames and lion roar from my colleagues.  I listed a number of points to be examined in the light, or rather darkness, of sameness.  For example, what really did “empower students as critical thinkers” mean?  Would the department have students read my newspaper op eds critical of the college in class?  Or was my kind of critical thinking not what it had in mind.  I was sincerely curious.  What limits might the department seek to place on student critical thinking?  What limits did it seek to put on student “pursuit of truth”?  And did not limiting such things counter student empowerment?  Another term I thought needed to be examined was “mold,” as in “to mold scholars who value human expression.”   For me, the term evoked sameness, automaton, functionary et al.  It also conflicted inevitably with “creative.”  In fact, the very phrase appeared devoid of meaning, if not oxymoronic.  I thus suggested to deaf ears “encourage students to become independent and scholars” be substituted.   

What restrictions did the department seek to put on “human expression”?  I had to personally post my recent published Op Ed on the bulletin board, yet the Chair had mentioned she always hung up items published by faculty (my highly critical Op Ed on poetry the year before had never been posted either—Maya Angelou is a trustee of the college.  Then, somebody defaced the Op Ed, and I really didn’t think it was a student.  What was written in that Op Ed evidently must have fallen beyond the department paradigm of human expression.  I thus wondered what other expression might fall beyond that paradigm. 

Whatever did the educationist buzzword “global leadership” indicate?  Weren’t Enron CEOs global leaders?  The truth was that 90-95% of the college’s graduates would not become leaders, global or other, but rather corporate, public sector or educationist functionaries.  Employing the term “leadership” ubiquitously was senseless, if not downright deceptive.  In fact, one must wonder whoever dictated that “leadership” appear in all documents regarding mission statements?  The term “leadership” had never been thusly flaunted, right and left, when I was a college student. 

I then expressed confusion as to how the department could encourage “truth seeking” on the part of students, while creating a mission statement that appeared less than truthful.  “Truth seeking” needed to be defined or it remained vacuous.  Did mission statements have to contain vacuous terms and proclamations… nothing but vacuous terms and proclamations?  I wasn’t convinced, but then maybe I thought differently than the average educationist brought up on vacuous terminology. 

What, I queried, were “humanistic values”?  Were they not all values that defined human beings?  If so, then did that not constitute another vacuous term?  If not, then what precisely were those values?  Did they encompass niceness and goodness?  If so, whose definition of niceness and goodness?  What did “commitment to human expression” denote?  Did it imply non-commitment to inhuman expression?  In reality, was that not just another vacuous term?  What did the buzzword “holistic instruction” suggest?   What did it exclude?  If it did exclude, for example, points made in my Op Eds, then how could it be holistic, as in whole? 

Why not employ, I concluded, clear, jargon-free language in a mission statement?  After all, was that not what English professors and others demanded of students?  Or were we now supposed to be demanding use of obfuscating, in-vogue, educationist jargon?  Also, I found that the goal of becoming “a nationally competitive department composed of world-class programs” quite deceptive, if not outright pompous, and wholly out of touch with reality.  Would it not be more advantageous and sensible to set realistic goals?  After all, what was the point of setting goals that would not be achieved?  Why not set the goal of moving from a third-tier institution to a second-tier one?  That in itself would require immense and profound changes—not simply immense influx of dollars. 

Finally, I beseeched my colleagues to reflect, rather than revert to knee-jerk dismissal of the critic with denigrating epithets.  I also offered my assistance in helping to rewrite the mission statement and suggested that the department reserve an area for free and open criticism of all things relative to the college on its bulletin board.  I even offered to publish in the next issue of The American Dissident, which I edit and founded, the best “daring” criticism posted.  The key to the best would be logical argumentation and degree of fear experienced by posting.  Since academics are not known for courage, perhaps, I thought, that might encourage courage.  

The Results

“You have caused quite a commotion!” declared a colleague standing in the hallway a day after the meeting.  I stopped.  We’d been pretty friendly, but now he seemed quite distant.  We both stood facing each other as if congealed.  “Well, you have the right,” he said.  “I hope so,” I responded.  Then he went his way and I mine.  Evidently, however, and upon reflection, he’d missed the whole point… for, in reality, I did not really have the right.  Indeed, I did cause a “commotion” by proving to department members just how unwelcome Free Speech at the college, that is, when that speech diverged significantly from the party line.  Speak the party line or don’t speak was that department meeting’s message, for if you dared do otherwise, then expect to be berated with anger and general hostility.  Indeed, a colleague had actually declared:  “YOU’RE NOT PART OF THE COMMUNITY!  YOU TAKE PLEASURE IN BEING ON THE MARGINS.  YOU DON’T HAVE A RIGHT TO CRITICIZE THE MISSION STATEMENT!”  One must, at least, respect her honesty.   So, where did that leave the First Amendment in the department?  Just how important is the First Amendment in higher education in general?  Was it as important, for example, as making arrangements for the holiday get-together, fundraising, learning how to use Gradekeeper, health insurance jabber, or talking about successful piano performances?

Why is there such a marked strain of sameness in academe?  To simply blame the requirements of accreditation, as the Chair had done during that meeting, does not provide a response.  We need to rid the Academy of this seemingly obligatory phenomenon because it has been obliterating creativity across the curriculum and systematically eliminating dissident voices.  Regarding such voices, professors and administrators generally appreciate criticism and satire… until directed against them.  When that occurs, tolerance becomes intolerance, and diversity, not including the critic or satirist.  “IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT HERE, MAYBE YOU SHOULD LOOK FOR ANOTHER JOB!” had suggested another colleague during that meeting.  Indeed, I was even called “ARROGANT!” by yet another because I had the audacity to excoriate the mission statement.  Imagine how many people had referred to Martin Luther King, Henrik Ibsen, Robinson Jeffers, and Frederick Douglas as ARROGANT.  To challenge the power structure must ineluctably be considered ARROGANT by those profiting from it.  It is quite simple.  Was I offended by the insult?  Of course not!  I know who I am. 

My sin, transgressing a fundamental taboo, that is, criticizing the mission statement, would of course be interpreted as a nasty incidence of failure to be collegial. Taboos, of course, fall beyond the scope of free speech and free expression.  Yes, yes, they had allowed me to speak during that meeting.  However, their hostility clearly indicated they’d rather I had simply remained anonymous and silent.  Did they ever read my critique of the mission statement or did it quickly find its way into the garbage bucket?  I’d never find out.  Did they read the above quote regarding corporate cults, which I’d attached to the top of my flyer?  Was it not possible that academic cults also existed?  Did they not think the quote pertinent to their group (I employ “their” rather than “our” because of that colleague’s declaration.).  Why did they VISCERALLY ABHOR criticism?  Could they really argue that none of my mission statement critique was valid?  Did they think I was “selfish” and “evil”?  Would they like to eliminate me (e.g., “you should look for another job”) and cut communication off with me?  Well, that’s already been done for the most part.  Oddly, I recall when hired, the committee knew quite well that I tended to be an iconoclast, being editor of a literary journal called The American Dissident, and they even boasted of a certain dissident tradition at the college.  Thus, I was doubly astonished by the same professors reacting with indignance to my dissidence.  Just the same, the key to understanding their hiring error is quite simple:  Many academics viscerally believe they are open, logical, and liberal-minded when in fact they are anything but that.