Post 144—Ignorance and Prejudice in the Citadel of Academia—Harvard

Harvard is considered to be the topnotch Ivy League university in the USA, if not the world. (I have to be careful here, for my two sons who graduated from Yale are bound to chastise me for this assertion, but I think I’m safe, for they probably don’t read this blog!)  It probably deserves that accolade, but that does not keep extreme ignorance and prejudice from its campus, not even from its professors.  This statement may surprise well you. Ignorant and prejudiced Harvard professors?  Come on; that can’t be.  Well, it can and is. 

Though Harvard started out as a Christian university, it has bought deeply and totally into the spirit of modernism and secularism, though some might argue that today modernism and secularism are being or already have been displaced by postmodernism.  That maybe so, but from the perspective of this article that does not make a lot of difference. Both create the same kind of situation I am about to describe for you. 

In fact, that secular or, if you prefer, postmodern spirit is so all-pervasive on the Harvard campus and is pushed down everyone’s throat so vigorously, that Christian students have felt the need to support each other while studying there to withstand the contempt with which they are regarded.  So, they established the Anselm House where they connect “Faith and Knowledge with All of Life”—their slogan; the same goal, by the way, of this blog. 

One of the members of Anselm House, a female student, wrote the following story:

Sometimes, I feel just the littlest bit defensive when I tell classmates and acquaintances at Harvard that I did my master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. Many of my fellow graduate students are coming from places like Columbia, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth, and Oxford, and a Midwestern state university gets an occasional quizzical look. But I wouldn’t trade my two years at the University of Minnesota for two years anywhere else. There’s at least one area in which our very own UMN is at the cutting edge of higher education, providing resources and opportunities I could have gotten at very few other universities: its vibrant and active Christian study center.

Anselm House prepared me to face the rigors and challenges of study at Harvard with confidence in my Christian faith. When one of my English professors said casually, as an off-hand aside, “Of course a religious person can’t really be a professor,” I was ready to challenge his assertion that religious commitments limit freedom of inquiry in a way that secular presuppositions don’t—and I did so with arguments backed by my reading of Charles Taylor, James K. A. Smith, and Michael Polayni, because I’d read those works and discussed those questions at the study center.

As I studied the history of the Bible and its reception in different periods, I saw countless ways that my academic study of the Bible as a book and my personal experience of the Bible as the word of God could enrich one another, and I talked about my daily devotions in class—because as a MacLaurin Fellow I learned about scholars like Mark Noll and James Turner who are open about how their identity as Christians informs their research.

When, on the first day of one of my seminars, we went around the room and shared why each of us was in graduate school, I didn’t hesitate to say that I want to grow in the virtues I’ve been called to in the context of friendships based on shared pursuit of excellence—because at Anselm House I was surrounded by people for whom it was second nature to think of work in spiritual, moral, and relational terms.

It’s a slightly weird answer. It probably earned me a few more quizzical looks. But I don’t mind occasionally standing out as a Christian, because I know that there are countless brilliant and thoughtful people—in Minnesota and around the world—who share a vision of education that unites all things in Christ. I hope that during my time here at Harvard, I’ll get to tell many people that my studies are by the grace, and for the glory, of God.

   

I bolded this sentence in the story:  “Of course a religious person can’t really be a professor.”  Can you imagine a Harvard professor being so closed minded, so ignorant and so prejudiced as to make such a statement while surrounded by the most brilliant students in the nation?  And can you imagine that these alleged brilliant students simply soaked it in without challenging this nonsense?  It took this one single Christian female student to dare to challenge this ridiculous statement.

Well, that’s the power of faith for you. A closed faith filtered by the secular tunnel vision can stupefy even the most brilliant. There are thousands of Christian professors on all the faculties of all America’s universities. These professors do research and lecture, they write books, they engage in politics and everything else social, and this man has not run into even one of them who left his mark on one campus or another?  Simply incredible! I am dazed with incredulity!  How can such a prejudiced and ignorant professor be retained? 

Let me give you one single example from a document randomly lying on my desk today: Dr. Alvin Plantinga. Here is a brief bio:

Among many honors, Plantinga is the past president of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division, and the Society of Christian Philosophers, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. With a PhD in Philosophy from Yale University, Dr. Plantinga is widely known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics and Christian apologetics. He delivered the Gifford Lectures three times, and was a Guggenheim Fellow 1971-1972. In 2012, the University of Pittsburgh’s Philosophy Department, History and Philosophy of Science Department, and the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science awarded him the prestigious Rescher Prize.

Now, you tell me: This Christian "can't really be a professor?!"  Can this obscure little Harvard boy even stand in Plantinga's shadow? If you happen to be acquainted with Harvard faculty, know that this prof is a man in the English department. I would love to give you his name, but I don’t have it.

This is New Year’s Eve. I did not plan to write such a sharp post today. I wanted to write something about the passing of time or some such topic, but when I read the above story, I was so incensed I just had to pick up the sword and….  It’s probably a good thing I don’t know his name and that I am far removed from him. For that, I credit the grace of God. But for that, I’m not sure what I would have done!

Happy new year!  Enter it with your eyes and mind open and discard whatever secular tunnel vision may be blinding and limiting you. Check out Jesus, who described Himself as “the way, the truth and the life.”  I have not been able to find a more exciting and liberating perspective than that!