Sounding Board -- Michael Leigh

This is regarding the Bell Curve -- “A lost chance to debate academic

freedom” (Dec. 27). I’ve been a professor of speech-communication at

Orange Coast College for 25 years and am the immediate past president of

the Academic Senate. I also coached our speech and debate team to its

first national championships, so I’m not unfamiliar with issues of

argument in an educational setting.

During the days of the Vietnam War, which Bell mentioned in the

context of his teaching at UC Irvine, I was organizing the local

activities of Sam Brown’s Vietnam Moratorium during my undergraduate days

at the University of Redlands. Thus, I’m sensitive to issues of protest

and academic freedom. Yes, there were similar events to that involving

OCC professor Ken Hearlson, but I’d quarrel that they constitute an

entirely apt analogy.

The key difference is the nature of the student audience. It’s become

decidedly more international, and that means teachers are required to be

much more open to a variety of opinions and backgrounds. At OCC, we rely

on international student enrollment. In fact, we’d barely be solvent

without it. Students from Japan, Europe and the Middle East pay huge fees

that allow us some discretionary money for student programs that we

simply wouldn’t have otherwise. They also represent an opportunity for a

more global perspective, especially in classes like political science.

I’ve been quietly grinding my teeth about the publicity directed at

Hearlson’s indiscretions, especially one article that stopped just short

of portraying him as some sort of populist hero. The fact that this is

not the first time he has had trouble with Muslim students should give us

a clue that he’s not adapting very well to these increasingly

multicultural times.

My argumentation and persuasion class features some very hot debates,

involving as many as a dozen nationalities at a time, including Muslim

students, and I’ve never had to call security to accompany me to my car.

Why? Because I know that you have to entertain all points of view in a

rational discussion, and that the flint and steel of argument and

rebuttal strike sparks, but also make the light by which all ideas are

illuminated.

That is academic freedom, not just teachers saying what they want to

say, but teachers and students getting their moment to speak.

Yet this was never really an academic freedom issue, although we did

have very frank, if unpublished, debates about that issue on campus. The

truth is that indiscreet speech is simply indiscreet speech.

Awkward and insensitive expression is not essential to academic

freedom.

I think Bell’s column came close to saying what should be said: That

Hearlson, a nice enough fellow, simply lost his temper, which happens,

but that he has no right to force a Christian conservative agenda in the

classroom of a public school occupied by students of multiple faiths. I

suspect that’s pretty much what the “letter of reprimand” said.

What galls me most is that Hearlson found it necessary to grandstand

for the press as though he’d been terribly wronged by said letter of

reprimand.

I’m not offering any particular defense of how the administration

handled the situation, though I think it was pretty much benign, but the

notion that this all had a “chilling effect” on academic freedom is

ridiculous, as well as insulting to this faculty.

In fact, when I left for Christmas break -- which I celebrated,

privately, as a Christian -- a petition expressing anger at the idea that

we’re halting frank classroom discussion over this matter was being

circulated among faculty. Many professors with more notable credentials

than Hearlson are signing that petition. I did too. We want the community

to know that this is not representative of how we behave toward our

students of various race, color and creed.

MICHAEL LEIGH

Costa Mesa