He didn’t, but social issues like gay marriage were certainly a subtext for much of the debate. George emphasized the relevance of Christian morality to politics. He spoke movingly about how Christian love meant “tough love,” rather than just showing empathy or giving people whatever they wanted. I couldn’t disagree with that, but I wondered about the silent implication that supporters of causes like gay marriage could only make personal appeals on behalf of their desires rather than real arguments based on moral principles. George certainly had an impressive rhetorical strategy: In the name of religion, make your listeners suspicious of all human fellow-feeling, and in the name of reason pretend that your opponents aren’t offering rational arguments at all.
I am not a political activist. I study Greek philosophy. Like my teachers Plato and Aristotle, I believe in the theoretical life. I know how precious the university is as a refuge for contemplation and dialogue. Political action is often based on indignation and anger, and these reactions are exactly what the university — like Christianity — asks us to suspend. It was thanks to this that West and George could sit next to each other on stage, have a debate and then give each other a big hug.
But what happens when academics are simultaneously engaged in actual political struggles? Can the ideal of the university survive when its members start inflicting “tough love” on each other as members of broader communities? Realistically, could you ever be the academic or intellectual colleague of someone directing a multi-million dollar effort to stop you from being able to visit your spouse in a hospital? I’m not making an argument from empathy. I just wonder about the limits of our ability as humans to compartmentalize different aspects of our lives.
Academic freedom should and does protect the content of extramural political speech by professors. But this freedom entails the responsibility for the form of this speech to promote what John Henry Newman famously called a “great but ordinary end” of the university — namely, “raising the intellectual tone of society.” Do the ads produced by George’s organization meet this standard? We ought to reflect on this, since his credibility as a public intellectual rests on the respect that is accorded to him right here in Princeton. When West sits next to George and talks, when we sit in the audience and applaud, we contribute to his ability to be taken seriously in a wider polity. Is there then a point at which our commitment to dialogue makes us traitors to our beliefs?
Similar questions could surely arise in other contexts for students of many different political viewpoints. These happened to be my own thoughts as I walked home last Wednesday night, reminding myself not to be angry, to consider everything sine ira et studio. When I got back, I read in the newspaper about the suicide of Tyler Clementi, a freshman at Rutgers. It was to be the first of three widely publicized suicides last week of young men who were or were thought to be gay. The chance juxtaposition of events was to me a harsh reminder of how false cultivated academic detachment can feel.
Popular speculation and anger have focused on the precipitating causes of these deaths, but in a broader sense the ongoing campaigns for both church and state to call gay relationships worthless can hardly have been irrelevant. Committed love between two people, and the recognition thereof, is deeply central to most human lives. What are teenagers to think when they hear that their love is immoral and unnatural, that their relationships will always be superficial and selfish?
Everyone who confidently promotes a political cause, but especially those who rely upon the language and the reputation of the university in order to do so, must consider very carefully whether their position could be wrong. But this reflection is still not quite enough. They must also have ever vividly before their mind’s eye the full range of concrete consequences, great and small, proximate and indirect, that their political action might have for society, and take responsibility for all of them.
On Sunday, George led another big gathering, this time in the University Chapel to kick off Respect Life Week, an annual event focused on abortion. I don’t think that I will go to any more of his discussions, but I have been celebrating Respect Life Week in my own private way. I’m simply asking God to stop people from telling gay teenagers that their lives should and will be nothing more than lonely struggles. Please join me in praying for life.
Thomas Miller is a Classics Ph.D. student from Baltimore, Md. He can be reached at tmmiller@princeton.edu.
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