Harvard has apparently decided that single sex gym time will help Moslem students feel at home.
There is nothing wrong with a private institution trying to make some students feel more at home. In fact, it is a good thing and one would only wish more universities would show sensitivity to all their students. The only problem with the situation is that Christian students at major universities often tell me that they don’t find the same accommodation.
There are two ways a university can accomodate students who do not toe the dominant secularist line. They can, as Harvard has evidently done with Islamic students, be respectful of religious practices and ethics. This is good, though one can only trust that Christian students receive the same respect for their practices of Lenten fasting, chastity, and traditional morality that Islamic students do.
There is a second way an educational system can change, especially if it is a state or “full service” university open to all qualified students. Such a place should open up to religious ideas and a serious discussion of those ideas. Students certainly are discussing them. Gone should be the ethnocentric and culturally limited association, without further argument, of education with philosophical naturalism.
Ideas Are Fair Game: But Let’s Treat Serious Ideas Fairly
Of course religious ideas should not be “protected” from attack when they are studied. The best way to respect a religion in a University is to discuss it, but one hopes that the discussions would be fair and helpful to students.
In fact, too often religious is ignored except when the local atheist decides to attack it.
Christians do not, or should not, demand that their point of view receive protection from any attacks. Ideas are what university education is all about and religious believers, and non-believers, should have a thick skin in the Socratic rough and tumble of education.
Students who complain about disagreements, even pointed assaults, have missed the point of a University, but there is a difference between Socratic examination and dismissing a faith commitment with a sneer.
Too often students tell me that their Christian views are not respectfully challenged, but merely ridiculed. At the same time, Eastern religions such as Buddhist views are taken seriously and greater sensitivity is shown to other religious perspectives such as Islam. It is rare to hear atheist or agnostic views portrayed at the same simplistic level as Christian theism.
Popular level books on academic topics, the kind that undergraduates are assigned, are a good way to get a feel for the tone of classes at contemporary colleges. The discussions and lectures are not likely to better informed than the books.
The sheer ignorance is often astounding when it comes to Christianity. The sneer for the religion that shaped much that is good about Western civilization is apparent. A Christian philosopher like John Locke, who wrote Christian apologetics, is treated as “secular” and the religious roots of his ideas are ignored.
Of course, when a brilliant philosopher like Owen Flanagan can dismiss religious arguments for God’s existence or for the Bible in a few pages in otherwise interesting and important books like The Really Hard Problem and The Problem of the Soul while demonstrating no knowledge of contemporary arguments from philosophy of religion in their favor that is troubling. He attacks “straw men” in those areas and one looks in vain for citations to major philosophers of religion such as Alvin Plantinga or Richard Swinburne. His few references to one or two favored philosophers of religion do not seriously engage with their work.
Oddly, Flanagan is almost an apologist for the Buddhist tradition overlooking or minimizing faults and treating Buddhist religious leaders deferentially.
This kind of generosity and charity of spirit toward a non-Western religion combined with hostility to a caricature of Christianity is sadly not unique. A good rule of thumb in the university is, if one must attack a deeply held belief of a student, to attack the best case for that belief and point the student to the best exponents of their ideas.
This can happen.
My own experience at the University of Rochester in the philosophy department was positive. I was treated fairly, even generously, and my perspectives received the same tough scrutiny that any point of view was given. When I made bad arguments, they were exposed and when ideas (even religious ones) were brought up, the best defenders and opponents of those ideas were read.
This was a model for me in everything I try to do. Though they would disagree with many of my beliefs, I hope my professors can still respect my continuing commitment to Socratic discourse. Their brilliant example motivates every class I teach.
We may think each other wrong at times, but we did so with professional courtesy and respect.
I fear not every student, undergraduate or graduate, is so fortunate.
This is especially true in the their private lives where “co-curricular” faculty often justify their existences by attacking traditional values.
Christian students are sent to re-education seminars to destroy their chastity, since libertine sexual values are viewed as an aid in undermining traditional Christian values. Christian views on family and marriage are mocked without any other defense allowed. Students find themselves defending their values against an establishment with all the power.
It is good if Muslim students can escape this, but one would wish that the Christians, many of whom reside in buildings built with devote Christian’s money, would be treated equally well.
Courage of Islamic Scholars A Challenge To Me
Once giving a paper at Cornell University years ago, I noticed that some of the Islamic scholars began their papers with a tribute to Allah. This was not offensive to me and I appreciated their academic work and courage.
I wondered if I had the same courage in giving credit to God for my own work. However, I realized that if I had started my paper on Plato’s psychology with “In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen.” that the reaction would not have been the same in the community. My cultural perspective would not have received the same toleration as other points of view. Christianity is the “enemy” to many academics.
It was harder for me to be my “whole self” than for the Muslim scholars, because of this circumstance.
None of this is of earth shattering importance. The American university system remains the envy of the world and it should be cautious about any great changes. However, it does seem one change it could encourage would be to show more respect in dorms and classrooms to the religion of eighty percent of the population.
