
On Nov. 17, US District Judge Mark Walker struck down Florida Governor Ron DeSantisโ signature Stop WOKE Act, which bars Floridaโs higher education institutions from teaching critical race theory (CRT), and โprohibits school districts, colleges and universities from hiring woke CRT consultants.โ Although the decision’s practical ramifications will attract the bulk of media and scholarly attention, the arguments behind Walker’s ruling, which make strong, normative claims about academia’s role in American politics, are worth further examination.
Walker argued that โour professors are critical to a healthy democracy, and the State of Floridaโs decision to choose which viewpoints are worthy of illumination and which must remain in the shadows has implications for us all.โ He added that โif our โpriests of democracyโ are not allowed to shed light on challenging ideas, then democracy will die in darkness.โ
Regardless of whether one views the Stop WOKE Act as a necessary measure to halt critical race theoryโs acceleration, or an unconstitutional violation of professorsโ free-speech rights, Walker seems to view academics, and academia in general, through rose-tinted glasses, which the comparison of professors to priests makes clear. But Walker’s depiction of academics as holy saviors of democracy could not be further from the truth: Democracy is not a religion, and professors are not its priests.
Walker is not the first to take this position. As early as the late 19th century, American democrats were already beginning to view civic education as a religious experience. In 1899, Scottish-American philosopher Thomas Davidson concluded โnot only that Americanism is a religion, but that it is the noblest of all religions, that which best insures the realization of the highest manhood and womanhood, and points them to the highest goal โ a goal which it is their task throughout eternity to approach without reaching.โ The โideal[s] of American democracyโ ruled all else.
By the 1950s, this view had matured into the one Walker expressed. Professors, many of whom were being persecuted by the U.S. government for their refusal to disavow communist ideas, clung to their role as truth-givers in order to defend themselves. They were supported by Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who offered the โpriestsโ label in a concurrence to Wieman v. Updegraff, writing that โto regard teachers โ in our entire educational system, from the primary grades to the university โ as the priests of our democracy is therefore not to indulge in hyperbole.โ
But just because this perspective is old does not mean itโs right, and Frankfurter was definitely engaging in hyperbole. Any declaration that professors are democracyโs priests implies that democracy is an end in and of itself. And institutions that treat democracy as an end inevitably become destructive.
In the American political tradition, the preservation of a society’s liberty and security is of paramount importance. Democracy, or in our system, a democratic republic, is considered by many to be the best institutional arrangement for doing so. In that sense, democracy is a means to an end, that end being liberty and security’s preservation.
As Duke Universityโs Michael Munger observed in 2005, however, democracy deals with collective decisions as opposed to public decisions. Public decisions impact everyone, by nature (Munger offers the examples of defense budgets and water pollution). Collective decisions โaffect us all only because the majority is empowered to force its will on everyone.โ In other words, if democracy is an end, then societyโs objective is to achieve simple majoritarianism. And there is no guarantee that the majority will be interested in preserving individual (or academic) liberty.
After all, academics are notoriously hostile to any perspective that contravenes established orthodoxy. The University of Oklahomaโs English Department encouraged professors to shut down any classroom discussion that was โrooted in the oppression and denial of humanity and someoneโs right to exist.โ The University of Central Florida tried (and failed) to fire a professor who committed the egregious crime of wrongthink on Twitter. And most recently, Phil Magness and Michael Makovi were lambasted for daring to argue that Karl Marx was a relatively obscure theorist prior to the outbreak of the Russian Revolution.
If we take โdemocracyโ in its pure, majoritarian form, then professors are its priests, if not its gods. Nobody embraces dogma and groupthink quite like an academic. But no system of government, no matter how effective or liberating, should be given religious reverence. Principles and people are what matter most.
If we ascribe qualities like academic freedom, free speech, opposition to censorship, and skepticism of government to American democracy, as Walker does, then we should avoid putting academia on a pedestal it does not deserve. If anything, academics have chilled the very intellectual marketplace that Walker seeks to preserve.
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