Congress and the President are politically elected branches of the government. The judiciary, the free Press and universities play equally important roles in the health of a nation. Indiscriminate assaults on them will seriously harm all of us. The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court noted that for over two centuries the proper response on disputed judgments is to appeals in courts, not for the President to threaten judges.
With Congress having failed to be a check on a runaway executive, it remains for the judiciary, press and universities to do so. The great universities of this country, some such as Harvard older than the nation itself, along with counterparts in Europe going back many hundred years, have developed their norms of academic freedom and free exploration, including criticism, of all ideas.
This has preserved and expanded knowledge for all western civilization. Society has seen as necessary for public good that universities investigate and question ideas and beliefs. Great harm is done when either the Congress as in the 1950s with Sen. Joe McCarthy or our current executive flouts basic norms and principles in political diktats on what should be thought and taught.
The President cannot insist on some “patriotic” path for everyone to follow, whether in domestic or foreign policy. That is the way of a dictator. A U.S. election does not elect a king, only one who swears an oath to the Constitution. The election does not make him an authority on the arts, science, economics, public health and history.
It is very good that Harvard has decided to defy and fight the current unprecedented assault on universities. Besides matters of principle and integrity, appeasement is not a viable tactic even practically with this administration which only doubles down on its bullying and escalates the blackmailing.
Public universities must also stand with the prominent private ones in this fight. Forward thinking people (Lincoln, Morrill) of an earlier generation, and even amidst a devastating Civil War, established land-grant A&M Colleges such as LSU, looking ahead to the health and prosperity of society and the nation. It is now the responsibility of our generation to speak up for the same when the existential threat comes from our own government. We owe it to all those predecessors in the past, and to succeeding generations to come, to fight in the present to preserve them.
This country is great because of its ideals, Constitution, the rule of law, not of men. “We the people,” not one man. Threatening neighbors was the behavior of a Germany or Japan in the past and a Russia today, not of the U.S. Insulting and bullying other countries inevitably extends to his own countrymen. Snatching a woman student off the streets by masked men not wearing uniform of police or FBI is the way of Ayatollahs’ morality enforcers in Iran, not in a land of civil liberties. Whisking someone away at the dead of night, leaving family and lawyers in the dark, happened to “disappear” in a past Philippines, Brazil, or Chile, should not in today’s U.S.
An immigrant or foreign student may be an easy target at first, but it will inevitably extend also to citizens, as it did in those countries. All, therefore, should condemn and reject these tactics of bypassing courts and due process. Each of us should speak out and fight for justice and the law, for free thought and expression of it. History will be a harsh judge otherwise, as it has of other past regimes, seeing the U.S. as once great but not now.
A. Ravi P. Rau is a professor of physics and astronomy and LSU faculty member for 50 years.
