God and Man at Dartmouth

Sep 28, 2005 01:52 PM

In the latest issue of The Weekly Standard the Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield writes: "Sensitivity is today’s version of the soft despotism that Alexis de Tocqueville worried about in democracies, and it would not have surprised him that the worst of it would be found in the halls of intellect."

I have to concur. Yesterday I wrote on NRO about a recent (actually, ongoing) dust-up at Dartmouth College. The short form is this: Noah Riner, the president of the student body, gave a convocation speech to the class of ’09. The speech mentioned Jesus--and all hell broke loose:

Surely nothing as banal, as reliably soporific, as Riner’s address could rankle anyone. Surely people didn’t even listen to these things.
As it happens, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The bored work in mysterious ways, and a number of Dartmouth students saw the speech as a fine occasion for an attention-grabbing moral tantrum. The Daily Dartmouth’s "Verbum Ultimum" allowed that "Riner had every right, as a member of a community that values the freedom of speech, to speak freely about what matters to him." But he chose an "inappropriate forum" ï¿½ perish the thought ï¿½ and "[preached] his faith from a commandeered pulpit." Clearly, Riner is corrupting the youth of Hanover. Somebody fetch the hemlock.

I’m pleased to note that WFB has weighed in on the matter:

That violation of secularist decorum brought on great indignation. A petition drive against the young student body president is contemplated. A vice president of the Student Assembly wrote to him, ï¿½I consider your choice of topic for the Convocation speech reprehensible and an abuse of power. You embarrass the organization, you embarrass yourself.ï¿½ A sophisticated defense was tendered by a Jewish student who wrote, ï¿½Many of us in the Dartmouth community proudly disagree with that and other aspects of Rinerï¿½s religious beliefs, but our disagreements do not give us the right to limit his speech.ï¿½

Read the whole thing here. The situation continues to simmer at Dartmouth: The aforementioned vice president, for instance, is shocked that Noah Riner "wasted a chance to reach out to students who may have been offended by his speech" by appointing a sympathetic Christian to the position she just vacated. It would seem that she’s ingrained the lesson of the Larry Summers fiasco: There’s no conviction, however deeply held, that a little outrage can’t silence--or, better yet, change. Unfortunately for her, that lesson is turning out to be false.