By
Samuel Smith
WASHINGTON — The trend of illiberal liberals shutting down open
debate is similar to certain forms of religious zealotry, a diverse set
of panelists argued.
Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore
compared liberals' growing intolerance toward religious views on college
campuses to certain fundamentalist Christians' dissent of heretics.
Though representing diverse political and theological viewpoints, the
other panelists made similar arguments.
The
Tuesday afternoon panel, Moore, president of the Southern Baptist
Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, liberal pundit Kirsten Powers
and atheist Pitzer College sociology professor Phil Zuckerman, was
hosted by Georgetown University's Religious Freedom Project at the
Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. Religious Freedom
Project Associate Director Timothy Shah moderated.
The discussion was inspired by Powers' new book
The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.
In the book, she lists the numerous examples of how liberal colleges
across America are punishing people, even some fellow liberals, for
dissenting from certain liberal viewpoints on issues like gay marriage,
abortion, Islam and others by, for instance, taking away honorary
degrees or uninviting scheduled guest speakers for things they have
said.
In explaining the purpose behind her book, Powers, who
previously worked for the Clinton administration and now serves as a
contributor to USA Today and Fox News, stated that colleges are
attempting to silence opposing viewpoints on certain social issues in an
attempt to avoid having to debate these viewpoints. n
"Even though my book isn't explicitly about religious freedom, there is a
crossover because a lot of the issues that have to be off limits [or]
silenced, are beliefs that tend to be held by religious people," Powers,
who recently converted to Catholicism, stated. "It usually involves
same-sex marriage, or it involves abortion and these views are treated
as if they are actual attacks. When someone expresses one of these
views, they have somehow created harm or committed an act of violence by
expressing a view that other people don't want to have to discuss on
campus."
As a professor at a liberal arts college in a liberal town in a
liberal state, Zuckerman agreed with Powers assertion that colleges'
attempts to silence opposing viewpoints is becoming a dangerous trend
and threatens the liberal principle of free thinking.
Zuckerman
took a crack at theorizing why this trend is occurring by explaining
that his era of liberalism rose to prominence with the idea of defending
society's most oppressed classes like African-Americans, women and the
oppressed victims of the Vietnam War against "the powers at play" that
were harming and hurting people's human dignity.
"The liberal folks that I know and grew up with are very much fighting a moral fight," Zuckerman explained.
But now that the powers at play are liberals, Zuckerman believes that
liberals of today's generation are still looking for a cause to fight
for and are searching for "anything that makes them feel as though they
are fighting the good fight."
"When the folks in power are not
greedy capitalists, war mongers, and the person in power is a liberal
woman, what are you going to do when you are looking for that fight?"
Zuckerman asked. "You are going to have to find it where you can."
"They
think that when they are protesting George Will or they are protesting
Ayaan Hirsi Ali [an atheist and prominent critic of Islam], a person
that is my hero, they think they are fighting that similar fight of a
generation or two earlier and they are mistaken," Zuckerman added. "They
are wrong and it's horrible. I totally agree that free speech and
rigorous debate is the heart of democracy and a society that I would
want to live in. I applaud Kirsten's calling out of this trend."
Moore offered a bit of different explanation as to why he thinks campus liberals are trying to quiet religious conservatives.
"We
are living in this sort of world where argument is simply, for the most
part, a means of tribal identification. When I make an argument, this
is in order to say, 'I am affiliated with these people and not
affiliated with these other people,'" Moore argued. "I think that can be
really dangerous when you have that phenomenon going on and then you
have, not being able to distinguish the dignity of the person from an
argument [you] disagree with and you add to that power, then persuasion
is replaced by power."
Although liberals are the culprit of this
silencing on college campuses, Moore asserted that the same phenomenon
can be found with right wing conservatives.
"I am dealing this week with a pastor in a community in which there
is great hostility toward a mosque being built in that community, and he
has people in the community wanting the government to zone this mosque
out of existence," Moore explained. "He is appealing them on the basis
of liberty, religious freedom, as well as Gospel witness. You can't use
the power of the state to turn people into Christians, you can only
drive them out of town or turn them into pretend Christians."
"You
have in that situation a group of people who have some sort of power
and their is kind of [theme] going on there [that says] 'In order to be a
conservative, you have to deal with Muslims in this way,'" Moore
continued. "I think the same thing happens on the left in college
campuses: 'In order to be identified as a progressive, free-thinking,
forward-directed person, then you have to take on this sort of crusade
or else you are somehow out of the tribe."
Moore then discussed how prominent feminist Germaine Greer has gotten
into hot water and has been turned down from an honorary degree from a
college in England after she asserted that transgender Caitlin Jenner is
not a woman.
"As a feminist theorist, she does not think that
gender can be changed. You can agree or disagree with her but the
reaction to her, I have seen that reaction before, and it's not
disagreement, it is the response to a heretic from a certain form of
fundamentalist. That is happening on most secular college campuses."
Powers,
who spent most of her life as an atheist/agnostic until about 10 years
ago when she became Christian, reasoned that the the silencing of free
speech on college campuses is a result of "lack of intellectual
diversity" and the fact that many secularists don't understand religious
beliefs.
"They are not even aware they are being intolerant. They really see what
they are doing as being quite righteous and they don't have any
framework to understand religious belief," she said. " Religious belief
is very complicated for people who are even knowledgeable about it …
It's almost like you are speaking Japanese to somebody. They really
don't understand what you are talking about. I can relate because I
didn't understand it [before becoming a Christian]."