Education: Rebel in Reverse

One sour note sounded at Yale’s family reunion last week (see above). It came from the brassy trumpet of a 25-year-old alumnus, William F. Buckley Jr. As chairman of Yale’s Daily News in 1949-50, Buckley had been a sort of rebel in reverse—a fire-eating youthful conservative. Last week, in a book called God and Man at Yale (Henry Regnery; $3.50), he accused Yale in particular, and other universities in general, of sabotaging God and capitalism alike.

Author Buckley believes that “the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world . . . [and] that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.” Under the “protective label of ‘academic freedom,’ ” says he, Yale has become “one of the most extraordinary incongruities of our time: the institution that derives its moral and financial support from Christian individualists and then addresses itself to the task of persuading the sons of these supporters to be atheistic socialists.”

Reverberating Questions. Though Buckley lists only five professors (out of a faculty of 1,100) as atheists or agnostics, and only five as clearly anticapitalist, he quotes an impressive number of classroom and textbook examples to support his charges. And he raises some reverberating questions. What is the moral responsibility of an American university? Has it any? Should a university have convictions—or no convictions? Should it be neutral against all religion? Or encourage Christianity as the most-favored faith? Or what?

Buckley bases his answers on the odd premise that Christianity and capitalism are, if not completely equal, at least inseparable. And like most young absolutists, he empties the baby with the bath. The only way to save Yale, says he, is to have the alumni rise up and quash the “hoax of academic freedom” once & for all. It is all very well for scholars to pursue their researches wherever their researches lead them; teachers have no such right. Says Buckley: “Assuming [that] the overseers of the university have embraced democracy, individualism and religion, the attitudes of the faculty ought to conform to the university’s . . .” If professors do not conform, says Buckley, they should be dismissed.

Silence & Counterblast. Yale’s official reaction to the Buckley blast was a cold silence. But unofficially, it was ablaze with counterblasts. The Yale Daily News denounced Buckley as a “child of the Middle Ages.” Economist John Perry Miller denounced his book as “warped and distorted . . . scurrilous and boorish.” Said Philosopher Theodore M. Greene:

“[It] expresses unambiguously the spirit and temper of intolerant dogmatism. Such dogmatism radically contradicts the Christian doctrine of human finitude and the Christian exhortation to humility. It contradicts no less radically the spirit of open-minded scientific inquiry … It dictates a rigid, monolithic society which, however benevolent, regiments its members according to an orthodox party line.” If Buckley had his way, said Greene, teaching “would become . . . dull, slavish, and uninspired . . . He would transform Yale into the most dogmatic, hidebound institute for orthodox propaganda.”

Greene’s rebuttal, which punctured Author Buckley’s conclusions without fully answering the questions he raised, was not likely to settle the matter. Always ready for a crack at the professors, New York City’s Daily News hopefully noted: “It looks as if the Buckley blast will kick up fierce rows on many campuses besides Yale’s . . . Our own hunch is that he’s a good deal more than half right.”