In the immediate aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001,
President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror.”
Originally labeled Operation Infinite Justice, this effort was quickly
renamed Operation Enduring Freedom. Neither label, though, leaves any
doubt that this “war” is likely to be protracted, at least
as envisioned by its architects in the White House, for whom both the
Afghanistan war of 2001–2 and the Iraq war of 2003 ad infinitum
are not discrete events but moments in a broader process of reasserting
U.S. hegemony. The causes and the political consequences of these
actions are complex and beyond the scope of this paper; I will instead
focus on what these developments mean for political science, and for
social science more generally. How does the experience of living and
working during a time of war—especially such a protracted and
nebulous war—impinge on social science, and how should social
scientists respond to such effects? In particular, how should social
scientists deal with the threats to civil liberties that always accompany
the outbreak of war?
I argue that the flourishing of social science requires a condition
of intellectual and civil freedom that is placed in jeopardy during
times of war, and that social scientists—even those committed to
the political neutrality of social scientific procedures and
judgments—should find this assertion particularly significant. In
developing this argument, I draw on the work of Max Weber, who in the
midst of World War I penned and delivered “Science as a
Vocation,” a speech that has come to exercise a profound
influence on the self-understanding of modern sociology and political
science. Although my chief concern is the relationship, if any, between
liberal values and social science during a time of war, I will also
examine the broader issue of the responsibilities of social scientists
during wartime and ask whether we, individually and collectively, are
currently affording these responsibilities sufficient attention.
I proceed from Weber for two reasons. First, he has a great deal to
say on the matter. Second, “Science as a Vocation” and
“The Meaning of ‘Ethical Neutrality’ in Sociology and
Economics” have come to be regarded as the canonical statements
of the themes of scientific professionalism, methodological
scrupulousness, and value neutrality. These are themes deeply embedded
in our profession. And while each is contestable, I treat them as
premises—as many of my colleagues do—and ask what a
commitment to them really entails. My argument proceeds by way of four
general claims:
- liberal values of civil and intellectual freedom are jeopardized
during wartime;
- “Science as a Vocation” and “The Meaning of
‘Ethical Neutrality’ in Sociology and Economics” were
political interventions on behalf of a nuanced, complementary
relationship between social science and liberal values that is
especially important in times of war;
- this particular relationship is worth taking seriously by all who
take the practice and professional identity of social science
seriously; and
- taking this relationship seriously has implications that, as social
scientists living and working during the war in Iraq and the broader
so-called war on terrorism, require us to be attentive and active in
support of the liberal values that make our social scientific practices
possible.
My argument is thus a form of immanent critique. I delineate why
social scientists should defend certain liberal values, though I do not
contend that they must also act on them. Nor do I argue that the moral
validity of liberal values rests only upon social scientific
convictions; there are independent philosophical and political reasons
why individuals ought to support and defend such values. For this
article, however, I am only interested in the distinctive and
considerable reasons why we, as political and social scientists, might
consider ourselves obliged to do so.
Liberal Values in a Time of War
The liberal values I am chiefly concerned with here are those
associated with broadly construed civil freedoms—the freedoms to
inquire, communicate, and publicize (and thereby associate) without
fear of state interference or persecution. These values have been
classically defended by such writers as Benjamin Constant, John Stuart
Mill, John Dewey, Karl Popper, and Isaiah Berlin. They argue that a
society that recognizes, codifies, and acts upon such values is
pluralistic and capable of supporting a range of opinions, agendas, and
lifestyles. With respect to these liberal values, the two greatest
dangers to freedom are a tutelary state—especially one seeking to
promote ideological goals through intellectual monitoring and
restraint—and a cultural atmosphere of conformism and fear. While
not necessarily universally shared by all citizens, even in
universities, these values are given lip service by most members of our
society, at least when it suits their purposes to do so.
My first point, then, is simple, but it cannot be repeated often
enough: civil freedoms are always precarious in a democratic
society—something advanced by Tocqueville among others—but
they are especially at risk in time of war. Randolph Bourne's
essay “The State,” written amid the violent furies of World
War I, is perhaps the classic description of a citizenry at war:
War—or at least modern war waged by a democratic
republic against a powerful enemy—seems to achieve for a nation
almost all that the most inflamed political idealist could desire.
Citizens are no longer indifferent to their government, but each cell
of the body politic is brimming with life and activity. We are at last
on the way to full realization of that collective community in which
each individual somehow contains the virtue of the whole. In a nation
at war, each citizen identifies himself with the whole, and feels
immensely strengthened in that identification…. At war, the
individual becomes almost identical with his society. He achieves a
superb self-assurance, an intuition of the rightness of all his ideas
and emotions.1
But if war generates a wider circle of allegiance, if it rallies
people around the flag and fires patriotic sentiment and civic spirit,
it also generates fear and a powerful pressure to conform to the needs
of the warring state. Bourne describes the people of a democracy at war
as a herd, bound together into a single collective by a primitive sense
of fear and a desire for state protection:
Every individual citizen who in peacetime had no function to
perform by which he could imagine himself an expression or living
fragment of the State becomes an active amateur agent of the Government
in reporting spies and disloyalists…. Minority opinion, which in
times of peace was only irritating … becomes, with the outbreak
of war, a cause for outlawry. Criticism of the State, objections to war
… are made subject to ferocious penalties…. Public
opinion, as expressed in the newspapers, and the pulpits and the
schools, becomes one solid block. “Loyalty,” or rather war
orthodoxy, becomes the sole test…. Anything pertaining to the
enemy becomes taboo… .2
Liberal intellectuals and activists were plagued by these threats to
liberty throughout the twentieth century. Paradoxically, they often
regarded war as a necessary means for defending precisely those liberal
values that its modalities endanger.3
While I share
their concerns, I do not assume that the political science community
holds similar liberal moral or political convictions. The profession as
a whole comprises scholars unified in the pursuit and circulation of
scientific truths. At issues here is not whether liberals ought to be
troubled by war's inhibitions of civil freedom, but whether social
scientists
as such ought to be concerned. I believe the answer
to that question is yes, and I turn to Weber to support my
explanation.
Weber on Social Science and Liberal Values
In both “Science as a Vocation” and “The Meaning of
‘Ethical Neutrality’ in Sociology and Economics”
(both dating from 1918), Weber powerfully articulated a basic
conviction of modern social science, namely, commitment to a certain
conception of value neutrality:
The historical and cultural sciences … teach us how
to understand and interpret political, artistic, literary, and social
phenomena in terms of their origins. But they give us no answer to the
question, whether the existence of these cultural phenomena have been
and are worthwhile…. To take a political stand is one thing, and
to analyze political structures and party positions is another.4
For Weber the social scientist qua scientist describes and explains
but does not prescribe; truths obtained by social science about how the
world operates are veridical, regardless of whether we like them or the
world they describe.
Weber's position in “Science as a Vocation” is
complicated. He presents at least two arguments on behalf of his
general claim about value neutrality. The first is an epistemological
argument about the logical difference between descriptive and
prescriptive statements and discourses to the effect that no statement
about what exists logically entails anything about the
desirability of that state of affairs. The second—and more
powerful of the two—is an ethical argument about the arrogance
and intellectual mendacity inherent in the effort to practice
scholarship in the manner of a prophet or political leader. To Weber,
such efforts constituted a form of deception and, more importantly, an
illegitimate exercise of power. He insists that the authority of the
scholar—to inquire, enjoy academic freedom, disseminate
one's findings, and teach—rests on training and demonstrated
ability to offer valid analyses of the way things work, not on special
insight into the meaning of life, the ultimate purposes of individuals
or nations, or the policies most in accord with some conception of
justice.5
This idea has had a major impact
on conceptions of professional ethics in the academy. See, for example,
American Association of University Professors
1987. There are, of course, problems with Weber's
reasoning. For instance, he insists that the social scientist ought to
concern himself with descriptive (and not prescriptive) arguments; yet
his speech, offered as the contribution of a social scientist in a
social scientific setting, is an emphatically normative
one.
Weber never maintained that science, as a vocation, was beyond value.
In fact, he insisted that the vocation of science presupposed certain
intellectual values, and that the decision to become a social scientist
required a commitment to the value of understanding the way the world
works, in other words, a commitment to the value of seeking
scientific truth. Indeed “Science as a Vocation”
focuses on just this value—and on the discipline required to
cleave to it in the face of such temptations as bureaucratic inertia,
the mindless reiteration of banalities, and professional
opportunism.
Thus for Weber the point is not that science is free of
values; it is, rather, that science is a distinctive kind of
intellectual practice, characterized by a distinctive set of
intellectual values, and that as such it cannot directly engage in
moral prescription. Weber acknowledges that scientists can choose to
advance moral or political claims. In doing so, however, the scholar
abjures any intellectual authority and acts in a nonprofessional
capacity, as a citizen whose words carry no special weight:
The professor should not demand the right as a professor to
carry the marshal's baton of the statesman or the reformer in his
knapsack. This is just what he does when he uses the unassailability of
the academic chair for the expression of political …
evaluations. In the press, in public meetings, in associations, in
essays, in every avenue which is open to every other citizen, he can
and should do what his God or daemon demands…. [But]
every professional task has its own “inherent norms” and
should be fulfilled accordingly. In the execution of his professional
responsibility, a man should confine himself to it alone and should
exclude whatever is not strictly proper to it—particularly his
loves and his hates.6
While Weber was averse to social scientists using their authority to
privilege strong moral or political evaluations, he was not, as the
previous quotation illustrates, oblivious to the values associated with
science. Indeed, his writings on the methodology of social scientists
are seminal reflections into what we might call the “professional
ethics” of social science. Professional ethics, as articulated by
Weber, are both political and implicitly liberal. In emphasizing
intellectual discipline and the specification and maintenance of the
boundaries separating the university-based social scientist and the
broader domain of clashing ideologies, Weber was taking a profoundly
political stance in 1918 Germany.7
One discerns in his essays
repugnance and fear of the endemic politicization of university life in
post-Bismarck Germany, which was especially pervasive during World War
I, when the country was gripped by nationalistic passions. Weber offers
a powerful critique of many institutional practices of the German
university system (many of which also characterized American
universities): the hyper-politicization of classrooms and academic
departments; the use of professional credentials and credentialing to
certify some political positions and decertify others; and the use of
specious criteria to exclude certain classes of scholars from
participation in academic life. (Weber was especially critical of
anti-Semitism and the exclusion of socialists.)
8 Far from defending a status quo ante of social scientific neutrality,
Weber sought to establish a novel kind of scientific neutrality through
ethical and political means—through aiding and abetting reform of
university and disciplinary practices. The autonomy of science was a
precarious project. It required an appreciation of distinctive
intellectual values and the willingness, indeed the courage, to pursue
them, regardless of pecuniary, ideological, or political costs.
Weber's basic point is that it is not easy to be a social
scientist. Like the Protestant, the social scientist practices a form
of worldly asceticism.9
This requires
more than proper technical training. It demands a professional
awareness and responsibility linked to integrity—an integrity
that is particularly difficult to manifest in times of ideological
mobilization and temptation and of widespread anxiety and fear.
The social scientific values defended by Weber have a decidedly
liberal tendency, to the point where it may be accurate to say that
they are liberal values. For Weber, as for John Dewey, science is
distinguished by certain intellectual habits associated with a
“disenchanted” attitude and certain critical methods of
investigation, inquiry, criticism, and publicity. It requires the
robust exercise of intellectual freedom. Scientists must be allowed to
read, write, and publish according to their own intellectual interests
and not those of dominant political or economic institutions. They (and
their apprentices and students) must also be free to converse and
travel, establish libraries, teach courses, and organize conferences. A
corollary of these intellectual and academic freedoms is the autonomy
of academic and professional organizations and institutions, which must
function according to the logic of disciplined scholarly creativity and
the law of “may the best argument win.”
Weber never worked this out in great detail. Clearly all such
autonomies, to the extent they are even imaginable, can only be
relative. Yet, in Weber's view, authentic pursuit of the
scientific vocation requires forms of freedom that, at best, are
precarious results of liberal practice. There is usually justification
for taking these freedoms for granted. In a liberal society, social
scientists may act as though these freedoms are secure, and in most
situations this choice may make perfect sense. However, there may be
situations in which the very values of science compel an emphatically
political and adversarial stance. The dissident career of the late
Soviet nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov is perhaps the best case in
point: Sakharov was driven to human rights activism by his commitment
to scientific inquiry and the freedom of movement and expression that
it requires.10
Beyond the intellectual freedoms central to the scientific method,
Weber also argues that social science—as a practice of seeking to
describe and explain how social processes and institutions
work—has certain ramifications that can plausibly be described as
promoting liberal values. In “Science as a Vocation” Weber
discusses these in the context of teaching, but it is clear that such
teaching can be interpreted in the broad sense—relating to the
public dissemination of social scientific knowledge—as well as in
the narrow sense of classroom instruction. The first ramification of
this position is that the social scientist as teacher promotes the
recognition of “‘inconvenient facts’—I mean
facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions. And for every
party opinion there are facts that are extremely inconvenient, for my
own opinion no less than for others.”11
Weber
seems to suggest here that the effort to explain the workings of the
world has a critical function, insofar as social scientific
descriptions and theorizations are likely to exceed, and call into
question, partisan rationalizations and what may be pervasive
ideological dispositions. He goes so far as to say that in
“compelling” his audience to recognize such
“inconvenient facts,” the social scientist accomplishes
“more than a mere intellectual task,” and something that
might, metaphorically, be described as a “moral
achievement.”
12 The second evaluative ramification, linked to the first, is the
promotion of what Weber calls “the aim of clarity.” Social
science, he insists, cannot tell social agents what they ought to do.
But in explaining to agents the complex causes and consequences of what
they seek to do, it can help them to clarify and adjust their projects
accordingly—though it cannot authorize or mandate such
clarification or adjustment.
If, for instance, democracy is under discussion, one
considers its various forms, analyzes them in the way they function,
and determines what results for the conditions of life the one form has
as compared with the other. Then one confronts the forms of democracy
with non-democratic forms of political order and endeavors to come to a
position where the student may find the point from which, in terms of
his ultimate ideals, he can take a stand. But the true teacher will
beware of imposing from the platform any political position upon the
student, whether it is expressed or suggested.13
Social science, then, has profound implications for the way social
agents understand the relationships between their own moral and
political values and the means by which these values might be realized.
To practice social science is to engage in an activity, including the
disclosure of “inconvenient facts,” that requires the
exercise of certain foundational liberal freedoms. Social science also
serves to enhance the exercise of these freedoms by the citizens of a
liberal society. Weber's point is not a logical one, but a
methodological one. My point, following from Weber, is that the
practice of social science presupposes certain conditions inherent in a
liberal society, and that it also has certain effects—for which
social scientists are responsible in the same way that all humans are
responsible for what they do—that promote the exercise of liberal
freedoms by liberal democratic citizens. This does not mean that the
practice of social science requires one to avow a liberal civic
identity or to embrace liberalism.
Weber, himself a liberal, must have been profoundly aware of this
coincidence of social science and liberal values. The logic of a
Weberian understanding of social science as a vocation requires us to
acknowledge this connection and to attend to its significance. This is
especially true in times of war precisely because this is when liberal
freedoms are most jeopardized.
The Importance of the Weberian Legacy
Weber's conception of social science is not without its
problems. Many philosophers have argued that the epistemological
distinction between social and political facts and moral values is
problematic and that discourses of facticity and morality merge in
complex ways unacknowledged in Weber's classic essays.14
Closer to the heart of distinctively liberal
political concerns, Weber's entire account of science as a
vocation centers on the practice of the university-based scholar as a
specialist in pursuit of specialized knowledge. From this conception
flow many of his most important arguments. Yet we know that
university-based scholars are not simply specialized researchers but
teachers, practitioners of “liberal arts,” and in some
sense perhaps even civic educators. And from a more Deweyan
perspective, in which this pedagogical function is central rather than
peripheral to the scientific vocation, one could draw more robust
conclusions about the value basis and value implications of social
scientific practice.
Nevertheless, with its emphasis on the robust pursuit of knowledge
and the academic freedom necessary to publicize and contest scholarly
work, Weber's conception of the distinctiveness and autonomy of
social scientific practice is both foundational for the modern
discipline and profoundly valuable. While social scientific practices
conventionally promoted under these auspices are subject to many
legitimate forms of criticism, it is hard to take seriously the idea
that domains of social life beyond the academy are either freer or more
intellectually pluralistic than the current structures and institutions
of disciplinary knowledge. The most powerful and compelling
intellectual criticisms of social scientific practice are immanent
criticisms, emerging from within the disciplines and departments of the
academy and seeking to amend rather than replace its distinctive forms
of inquiry.
The Weberian view also underscores important principles of academic
integrity: the disposition to honor the logic of arguments, the
inclination of interlocutors to submit reasons on behalf of claims, and
the proscription against judging claims and their proponents in terms
of arbitrary aesthetic, moral, or political values. One judges
one's colleagues based on the ingenuity and intelligence of their
analyses rather than by their race, religion, nationality, political
conviction, or personality; one judges one's students based on
their disposition and ability to engage and question issues and
materials intelligently, regardless of whether they are pleasant,
attractive, friendly, or sympathetic to one's own beliefs. Of
course, such criteria are not the only measures by which one might
judge colleagues, but we know what is likely to happen when academic
standards are replaced by emphatically religious, moral, or political
ones: intellectual values are debased and political recrimination
follows. The Weberian conception of integrity sustains certain forms of
academic fairness and civility; it also legitimizes the legal and
political autonomy of the university. Insofar as this autonomy plays an
important functional role in a liberal society, academic integrity thus
serves not only academic and intellectual values but liberal moral
values as well.
Finally, a Weberian conception of the scientific vocation sustains
the importance of intellectual distinction itself and the corollary
importance of ethical distinctions and complexities of ethical
judgments. Important philosophical subtleties aside, Weber was
absolutely correct to insist that in a modern, disenchanted world, one
cannot deduce values from the state of affairs at any given point in
time. While it may be tempting to think that certain moments have a
self-evident moral significance, or that an outcome will take place
simply by virtue of its desirability, it is actually
“childish” to believe these things, as it absolves
individuals of the difficult responsibility of deciding what to think
and how to act in a world that does not proclaim its own meaning. For
the scholar to purport to have ultimate answers or to be able to
instruct students or citizens in what is right and good, or for the
scholar to use the classroom or a scholarly publication or association
to advance a particular political agenda, is counterproductive and
intellectually immoral.
The Weberian view, then, is worth defending. At the same time, as
Weber himself noted, there is a danger in the conception of the
specialized, university-based, value-neutral scholar—the danger
of an ethical complacency associated with a routinized,
business-as-usual approach to scientific inquiry. Weber emphasizes that
“both enthusiasm and work” are essential to social
science.15
For him, the specialized work of the social
scientist is only authentic when inspired by a passion for inquiry and
a commitment to the values and forms of integrity distinct to the
scientific vocation. Laziness about the world beyond the academy's
hallowed halls and indifference to its function as a source of
intellectual enablement or constraint is equally dangerous.
If social science requires the flourishing of certain liberal values
and practices in order to thrive, what happens when these liberal
values themselves are in jeopardy? Who is responsible for securing
them? Under such circumstances, may social scientists function as civic
“free riders” or must they act as responsible citizens of
the world?
Social Science in a Time of War
Thus we return to Bourne, and to the least controversial of my
observations—that liberal values are placed under duress in times
of war. There are at least two mutually reinforcing sources of this
pressure. One is the preoccupation with national security and the
tendency of political leaders and state agencies to monitor society and
police its borders, both geographic and mental, under the guise of this
concern. The second is the fear of designated enemies, and of
vulnerability in general, that war inevitably engenders in civilian
populations. The resulting pressure leads, socially and sometimes
legally, to conformity of opinion and a rise in “patriotic”
support for flag, country, and, often, God as well. In fact, a case
could be made—and here I venture nothing more than an informed
guess—that in the wake of 9/11 the media has exacerbated this
pressure through its continuous coverage of terrorism-related stories
and by providing almost unlimited opportunities for officials of the
Bush administration to frame the nature of the “threat” and
justify an almost single-minded military response to it.
What does the pressure on liberal values have to do with social
scientific values? In what ways does it present any special problems
regarding the responsibility of university-based intellectuals in
general and social scientists in particular?
The war on terrorism and the current campaign in Iraq represent
important and novel developments that cry out for social scientific
analysis. If the vocation of the social scientific community is to
explain the way the world works, then surely social scientists should
mobilize their theories to explain how and why these conflicts are
unfolding. Such explanations would no doubt disclose many
“facts” that are inconvenient for the Bush administration,
its critics, the media, terrorist organizations, rogue states, and
clerical ideologues alike. They could also expose the means necessary
to achieve the objectives avowed by political actors—state
officials, dictators, terrorists, antiwar protesters, and
others—and the likely consequences of employing those means. All
of this falls under the general rubric of “relevance.”
As social scientists, are we expending sufficient individual and
collective resources researching these momentous developments,
disseminating the results, and teaching them? Larry Diamond insists
that the answer generally is no and that political science owes the
world an intellectual debt it is loath to pay.16
Such a
summary judgment is debatable, both in its premises regarding the debt
and in its verdict regarding nonpayment. The Social Science Research
Council's volume
Understanding September 11 at least
offers an example of how diverse social scientists analyze current
events.
17 The papers on the Iraq war by scholars of
international relations posted on the
Columbia
International Affairs Online Web site offer
another.
18 Web site is
www.ciaonet.org/special_section/iraq/index_iraq.html.
The question of whether social scientists have enough to say about
these conflicts is interesting, and worth further consideration. For my
argument, however, it is peripheral. The central question is, Have
social scientists been sufficiently attentive to the liberal values
whose flourishing is necessary to the successful practice of the
discipline? To put it another way, Have they, individually and
collectively, been oblivious to changes in the political culture and
the intellectual climate that bode ill for these liberal values and
thus for the very practice of social scientific research? It is
possible to identify a range of concerns in which social scientists, as
adherents of the scientific vocation, might be imagined to have a
particular stake:19
This list of
contemporary threats to civil liberties is derived primarily from the
Web sites of the American Civil Liberties Union and the American
Association of University Professionals. See also Cole 2003.
- Limitations on the free movement of scholars and students, and,
more generally, the persecution (mainly abroad but also in the United
States) of scholars and students who are part of an international
scientific community
- Surveillance measures that render Internet, library, and bookstore
records less secure
- The emergence and strengthening of campus “watchdog”
agencies, such as the National Association of Scholars and Middle East
Watch,20
National Association of Scholars,
http://www.nas.org/; Middle East Watch,
http://www.zmag.org/meastwatch/meastwat.cfm.
- The proliferation of books and media commentaries—William
Bennett's Why We Fight being the most
“respectable”21
—that argue that an insufficiently patriotic
academy and an overly indulgent liberal education system are
responsible for morally disarming our nation at a time of terrorist
attack
- The passage of the 2001 Patriot Act—and the drafting of a
second Patriot Act—which authorizes an expansion of police powers
and, it has been argued by many, places further constraints upon
freedom of expression and association
None of these developments have anything in particular to do with
social science per se. They represent predictable forms of legal and
cultural closure and, insofar as they endanger liberal values, ought to
be of concern to all who subscribe to such values. If my reading of Weber
is correct, then social scientists, while not necessarily liberals, are
intellectual laborers whose activities require the flourishing of certain
liberal values. Therefore, as social scientists, we should be attentive to
these antiliberal developments and investigate and perhaps even respond
to them in the name of social scientific values.
How might we respond? The most obvious—and ethically and
institutionally unproblematic—response for scholars would be to
incorporate the issue of threatened freedoms directly into their
teaching and academic writings. This is the scholar's prerogative,
and there are ways of doing just this that are consistent with the
scruples of value neutrality. Yet even this allocation of intellectual
energy seems beyond what most of us consider essential to our
scientific inquiries. How much time have most of us spent reading and
worrying about the conditions of our own scholarly inquiries and
whether they are in jeopardy? Do we understand how recent legal and
administrative developments associated with the war on terrorism affect
our colleagues and students—especially foreign colleagues and
students—libraries, and our legal responsibilities as faculty
members? Do we care? To what extent have we integrated a consideration
of such matters into the seminars through which we engage in the
socialization of our graduate students, the future generation of social
scientists?
Another response, still at the level of individual discretion,
involves attentiveness to and affiliation with academic organizations
whose purpose is to enunciate and defend robust academic freedoms. The
American Association of University Professionals (AAUP), for example,
formed in 1915 amid anxiety about war and intellectual closure, is the
preeminent American professional association of university-based
scholars attending to this issue. The premise of the AAUP is that the
only way for scholars to attend to and advocate on behalf of
intellectual freedoms is by monitoring and disseminating relevant
information and by and acting collectively on behalf of scholarly
values. The AAUP recently issued recommendations and guidelines on the
challenges presented by the war on terror, detailing recent legislative
and administrative changes that bear on student privacy issues,
immigration and foreign student (and faculty) visa restrictions,
library confidentiality policies, and faculty law-enforcement
inquiries. The May–June 2003 issue of the AAUP periodical
Academe also detailed recent cases in which academic freedom
had been called into question by national security–related
concerns and offered accounts of how these cases might responsibly be
addressed.22
In a similar vein, the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS), through its Science and Human Rights Program and under
the auspices of its Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility,
has organized the high-profile conference, “The War on Terrorism:
What Does it Mean for Science.” In addition, it has disseminated
and publicized this discussion and has sought to promote more extensive
examination of these issues.
Science is an international enterprise. To flourish, it
requires freedom of thought, expression, and movement, and the freedom
to pursue professional activities without interference. Many of the
rights and standards set out in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and international human rights treaties are essential to the
conduct of science…. The AAAS Science and Human Rights Program
… was established in 1977 to give scientists a way to help their
colleagues around the world whose human rights are threatened or
violated. Mobilizing effective assistance to protect the human rights
of scientists around the world remains central to its mission, as well
as making the tools and knowledge of science available to benefit the
field of human rights.23
Like the broader AAUP, the AAAS promotes discussion; monitors threats
to core values; provides legal assistance in instances where these
values are endangered; and even mobilizes solidaristic responses to
specific and generalized threats to core human rights, without which
scientific inquiry cannot be practiced—all in the name of science
itself. Yet how many of us are aware of, much less affiliated with or
engaged in, these kinds of associations and their activities?
Many universities have responded to recent events with statements
articulating the values associated with academic freedom. A case in
point is the Statement of Principles drafted by a committee of Indiana
University faculty and published by the Indiana University Office of
the Chancellor on March 23, 2003.24
This document enunciates the
importance of the free exchange of ideas; the professorial duty to
teach within the parameters of one's courses; the significance of
civility in the classroom and on campus; and the need for special
attentiveness to the concerns of graduate student instructors and
students more generally. The statement can be regarded as a set of
guidelines or as a basis for conscientious individual reflection and
public discussion about collective faculty and departmental
responsibility. How many of us have carefully read, much less seriously
discussed, statements such as these? While many aspects of our culture
promote the fiction that intellectual inquiry is a solitary activity,
and while many of us prefer to act as if this is so (at least as long
as it suits us), most of us understand that we work in and through a
network of institutions and associations that sustain and promote the
scholarly values we both draw on and seek to advance. While these
institutions typically take responsibility for the conditions of
academic freedom, we scholars all too often regard this matter as none
of our business or as a distraction from the real work of science. A
division of labor has emerged in which most of us imagine ourselves to
occupy a realm of ideational freedom—subject, of course, to the
need for grants, research equipment, and research assistants—in
which the life of the mind persists independently of the work necessary
to support this life, and in which the work of support is regarded as
either unnecessary or simply not our proper work.
But if this work sustains the conditions that make science possible,
then it cannot be so easily distinguished from the work of science
itself. And this is why, as we consider the modes of response and forms
of affiliation appropriate to the threats imposed by the climate of
war, we cannot avoid the context with which we most identify as social
scientists—that being the social scientific disciplines
themselves. Thus we arrive at what is no doubt a very controversial
possibility: explicit intervention on the part of disciplinary
professional associations, of the kind exemplified by a statement
adopted by the National Council of the American Studies Association at
its November 2002 business meeting and published in its March 2003
newsletter: “Intellectual Freedom in a Time of War.” The
statement outlines recent FBI, Immigration and Naturalization Service
(now the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services), and Patriot
Act developments that threaten intellectual freedom.25
It clearly articulates a commitment to liberal
values associated with intellectual freedom, expresses “deep
concern” about the fate of these values, and urges
“colleagues, university administrations, and elected
representatives to repeal those policies, laws, and acts of censorship
that endanger intellectual freedom.” This is a professional
association of university-based scholars that is making a public
statement of moral and political principles on behalf of the
association, its members, and the academic field that it claims to
represent. It makes a public point, but it also purports to represent
and influence the viewpoints of member programs and to mobilize the
concern and perhaps even the activity of its members.
The association's statement comes perilously close to crossing
the boundaries that separate scholarly and political
work—boundaries entrenched in the academy that now define the
modern social sciences. Article II of the Constitution of the American
Political Science Association declares: “It shall be the purpose
of this association to encourage the study of Political
Science…. The Association as such is nonpartisan…. It
will not commit its members on questions of public policy nor take
positions not immediately concerned with its direct purpose as stated
above.”26
Similarly, APSA's
Guide to Professional
Ethics in Political Science states that while individual political
scientists have the right to engage in political activity, it must be
sharply distinguished from their professional work. As the
Guide notes, with reference to the disposition of such
questions within universities: “Special problems arise if
departments or schools endorse or sponsor political activities or
public policies in the name of the entire faculty or department or
school…. Departments should adhere strictly to the rule that
those faculty members who wish to endorse or sponsor a political
position or activity do so in their own names without binding their
colleagues. Departments as such should not endorse political
positions.”
27 And yet the Guide also articulates the centrality of certain
ethical commitments. Under the general heading of “Statement on
Professional Ethics,” for example—after enunciating a
professional “conviction of the worth and dignity of the
advancement of knowledge,” the importance of “intellectual
honesty,” and the need to “encourage the free pursuit of
learning in their students”—the Guide declares:
“As colleagues, professors have obligations that derive from
common membership in the community of scholars. Professors do not
discriminate or harass colleagues. They respect and defend the free
inquiry of associates…. As citizens engaged in a profession that
depends upon freedom for its health and integrity, professors have a
particular obligation to promote conditions of free inquiry and to
further public understanding of academic freedom.”28
These sentiments are echoed in the APSA
Constitution itself, in the same Article II, Section 2: “The
Association shall not be barred from adopting resolutions or taking
such other action as it deems appropriate in support of academic
freedom and of freedom of expression by and within the Association, the
political science profession, and the university, when in its judgment
such freedom has been clearly and seriously violated or is clearly and
seriously threatened.”
29 Here we have a set of principles that might be the basis of a serious
professional effort on behalf of the liberal values I have termed civic
freedoms. Thus far, APSA decision-making bodies have not responded to
current events in the manner of the American Studies Association. Is
not inconceivable, though, that they might yet do so. Such action would
be justified in terms of the professional values central to the
association's social scientific identity. Indeed, it would seem to
be just such a rationale that supported its August 9, 2003,
intervention on behalf of Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the recently released
Egyptian sociologist who had been jailed for his pro-democracy views.
Paralleling the more vigorous activism of the American Sociological
Association, the APSA intervention, undertaken “on behalf of the
scholars and teachers of public and world affairs who are members of
the American Political Science Association,” clearly rested on
the premise that it is appropriate, under certain conditions, for
associations to act on behalf of professional values by taking stands
on legal or political issues. The association thus implicitly
acknowledged that social science does entail a commitment to certain
liberal values, as well as a corollary commitment to respond when these
values are threatened or violated.30
Each of the three kinds of response noted above—individual
scholarly interest, individual scholarly affiliation with academic
freedom associations, and intervention on the part of professional
associations and their affiliates—has advantages and
disadvantages. There is no reason to imagine that there will ever be a
consensus about what to do in a particular case or within any
institutional venue. The problem of the civic responsibility of the
university-based scholar thus remains one of complex ethical judgment
by scholars as people of integrity—exactly as Weber imagined. As
one moves from individualistic to more collective and institutional
forms of response, the danger arises of an excessive politicization of
academic institutions, with the corollary fear of the creation of
internal political acrimony and conflict. This is a serious threat, and
one that lends a measure of credence to the cautionary statements
enunciated in professional charters such as the APSA Constitution.
My general inclination is to agree with Stanley Fish, who, in a
recent column in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “A
University is Not a Political Party,” maintained that
“academic virtue is the virtue that is or should be displayed in
the course of academic activities—teaching, research,
publishing…. [I]t is immoral for academics or for
academic institutions to proclaim moral views.”31
A university, academic department, or
professional association is not a political organization, and the
recognition of this fact imposes profound constraints on the ways in
which university-based professionals ought to view their participation
in distinctively academic institutions. Nevertheless, as Fish himself
indicates, while it would be dangerous to the legitimacy of academic
institutions for them to become directly politicized, they “can
and should take collective (and individual) action on those issues
relevant to the education missions—the integrity of scholarship,
the evil of plagiarism, the value of a liberal education. Indeed,
failure to pronounce early and often on these matters would constitute
a dereliction of duty.”
32 Have we—as individuals, faculty members, and participants in
professional associations and discourse—been overzealous on this
score, or have we been in dereliction of duty? I do not believe Weber
furnishes us with an answer; nor do I think that there is a single
answer to this or any other question of intellectual or moral
consequence. I do, however, believe that a serious reading of Weber and
a heartfelt consideration of our academic, professional, and
intellectual responsibilities force us to consider the importance of
the issue. To refuse engagement, in my opinion, is to implicitly call
into question the very purpose and value of our vocation as social
scientists. If we are not to renounce the value of what we do, then we
must recognize the need for a vigorous discussion of the current state
of the academy and its connection to the fate of liberal values. Such a
discussion, and the forms of engagement that it may lead to, are not
superfluous or incidental or a distraction from the more important
business of social scientific inquiry. They are an essential part and a
necessary condition of such inquiry.
