A Columbia student hoists Lee Bollinger on his own ethical petard:

In June 2007, University President Lee Bollinger made one of the most controversial decisions of his presidency by stating, in ironically unsparing language, why he wouldn't make controversial decisions in the University's name. Although superficially spurred by an attempted British boycott of Israeli universities and academics, Bollinger treated the matter as a politically motivated attack on open inquiry and intellectual exchange. So he replied to the proposed boycott in the comfortable language of institutional rights and responsibilities. "If the British [University and College Union] is intent on pursuing its deeply misguided policy," Bollinger wrote, "then it should add Columbia to its boycott list, for we do not intend to draw distinctions between our mission and that of the universities you are seeking to punish."

For Bollinger, an institution remains true to its "mission" when it radically de-politicizes inquiry and exchange, when it rejects the heavy-handed responsibilities of public conscience-setting whenever they conflict with the larger goals of academia. Bollinger wrote, "We gladly stand together with our many colleagues in British, American and Israeli universities against such intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts to hijack the central mission of higher education."

Ironically, the idea that this "central mission" is only to provide a venue--and not to provide moral or social guidance from the institutional level--is what enabled Bollinger to OK the Ahmadinejad invitation a few months later. The invite arguably stretched the idea of institutional neutrality to the point of moral abdication. But Bollinger was careful to dispel the notion that the University was standing up for anything other than its institutional neutrality in allowing Ahmadinejad to speak. Said Bollinger, "It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices." With the boycott and with the Ahmadinejad invitation, Bollinger was consistent in arguing that the University would never use its institutional weight to dictate policy to its students or to the broader, non-academic world.

But the recent ROTC controversy has revealed just how malleable this deeply held institutional value can be. If you follow Bollinger's logic, the very purpose of the University is confirmed by its ability to remain strictly impartial on two of the most divisive countries on earth (Israel and Iran) and jeopardized by its silence on a comparatively smaller matter: the military's "Don’t Ask, Don't Tell" policy on homosexuals in uniform. "Under the current 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy of the Defense Department," Bollinger wrote in a campus-wide e-mail on Sept. 25, "openly gay and lesbian students could or would be excluded from participating in ROTC activities. That is inconsistent with the fundamental values of the University."

Of course one of the fundamental values of any university is freedom of conscience, which the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education defines as the right of students "to make up their own minds on the issues of the day--without administrative coercion." In 2005, when several law schools sued the government over federal funding withheld from programs that would not allow military recruiters on campus--on the basis that this would coerce them into supporting the military’s homophobic policies--it was the expectation of freedom of conscience that convinced the Supreme Court to dismiss the case. Finding that "students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the [school] chooses to communicate," the court decided that a pompous, pseudo-parental sense of responsibility didn’t equate with institutional first amendment rights.

Granted, law schools still have the right to effectively co-opt the marketplace of ideas--to take the more than slightly paternalistic tack that students have to be actively protected from that which the administration finds disagreeable. But in the 2005 decision, the Court determined that the government could take this sudden moral heroism into account when deciding just how much money an institution would receive.

The significance of this is apparently lost on Bollinger, who sees no conflict between a legislated morality and a vibrant public sphere. Yet every time a university acts on principle, there's the very real potential that the intellectual space it governs will shrink--after all, which IGB-sponsored student groups are "inconsistent with the fundamental values of the university?" Or which on-campus job recruiters? Or which professors or classes, or Spectator columns, for that matter?

In 2005, the Supreme Court decided that these questions were better left unasked--and that if a university wanted to forfeit its institutional neutrality and begin speaking on behalf of others, it would do so at the expense of its federal funding.

This isn't to suggest that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is anything other than a national disgrace. But as Bollinger himself so eloquently argued in June 2007, at a university, freedom of inquiry and conscience are the only values that matter. In essentially banning the military from campus, Bollinger is doing more than dictating policy on a wide swath of issues: "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the place of the military in civilian public life chief among them. He's also imploding those ideals that he once adamantly defended.

The ROTC issue has gotten new life in recent weeks, thanks to the comments Senators Obama and McCain made at a Columbia service forum in September. And one of the things I am noticing about the renewed discussion is that it tends to be students who want to see ROTC return to campus--and it tends also to be students who can deal with the complexity of that position. Unlike the professors and administrators who oppose ROTC for ideological reasons, they draw a clear distinction between supporting ROTC and supporting DADT, rejecting the equation folks like Bollinger make between the two. The future they envision is one in which ROTC has returned to campus--and where there is also an open, reasoned debate about why DADT serves no one well. It's quite interesting to see the role reversal this involves, with students being the ones who can teach the teachers a thing or two about grasping ambiguity and grappling constructively with difficult moral issues.

Here's another example, also from the Columbia Spectator:

In a recent e-mail, President Lee Bollinger referenced a "core principle of the University: that we will not have programs on the campus that discriminate." This attitude towards homophobia explains much of the gay community's attitude toward the military. The military discriminates against us. Until this discrimination ends, we are against the military.

However, I cannot withdraw from my responsibility as an American any more than I can withdraw from my family. The military, controlled by an elected civilian, represents a permanent part of American life. The military's problems are our problems--the military's mistakes are our mistakes. Take one pressing mistake: Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In his e-mail, Bollinger referred to Don't Ask Don't Tell as a Department of Defense policy. This statement reveals a crucial error in thinking, for Don't Ask Don't Tell is not a DOD policy, but rather a federal law, brought through Congress and signed by Bill Clinton. All of these representatives acted through the power invested in them by the people. We elect our leaders, and these leaders help to shape our government. We cannot look at the military as something exterior to ourselves any more than we can look at the plight of the public schools or the prison system as exterior to ourselves.

We cannot address discrimination by distancing ourselves from the military. We cannot ignore Columbia's potential to create a liberalizing influence from the bottom up (the five students Bollinger lists as currently participating in Fordham's ROTC program can do precious little on their own). As an elite institution funded largely by taxpayer dollars, we cannot legally excuse ourselves from actively engaging with the military (read the Solomon Amendment). Most importantly, we cannot address discrimination by imagining that we can keep it off of campus. Bias exists in our homes, in our classrooms, in the law of the land, and in ourselves. When we see discrimination on campus, this means that our campus accurately reflects America. We need to see the truth. We do not need shelter. We should embrace the discriminatory--whether embodied in a person, a community, or an American institution--and thereby seek to change it.