Regardless of policy, Rice true public servant

My limping muse was later than usual this week. I had despaired of her arrival at all when, late on deadline day, I came upon a letter in my electronic mail box. It was addressed to "Dear English Department," and its seven authors, all unknown to me, were inviting me to read and append my own signature to a second document, attached to "Dear English Department," which, it was proposed, would then be sent to President Tilghman. The genres of the "open letter" and the "petition for redress" are academic favorites, and I have little doubt that you will soon have the opportunity to read this letter for yourself.

There were tendencies I agree with in the letter and tendencies with which I disagree. But I did not sign it on the basis of a high principle, adopted long since, that had little to do with its political content. If I am to burden the Powers with a page of feeble prose, I want it at least to be a page of my own feeble prose.

The alleged tort for which the letter petitions redress from President Tilghman is one familiar to all observers of that major phase of the Culture Wars being prosecuted on American campuses: to wit, "ideological imbalance." The usual form of the question is this: "If the general American electorate favors George Bush over John Kerry by a ratio of 51 to 49, why is it that tenured humanities professors in American colleges favor Kerry over Bush by a ratio of 95 to 1? And who is this man Leon Trotsky who is favored by a diehard four percent?" That is the usual statement of the grievance, but not the statement of "Dear English Department."

The complaint in this petition is that the University has been conspiring in constraint of intellectual trade to bring to our campus a monopolistic succession of "speakers with messages consistently representative of federal administrations." The list includes, but one presumes is not limited to, Robert McNamara, Anthony Zinni, Michael Chertoff, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Now, in an institution forthright in the praise of its "diversity," I must perforce be prepared for a diversity of perceptions. But it has not been my own perception that the general tenor of political discourse on our campus would suggest that Shirley Tilghman is a silent partner in the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.

The authors of the petition are particularly aggrieved by the recent high-profile appearance of Condoleezza Rice, who gave the keynote address at the reunion sponsored by the Wilson School in celebration of its 75th anniversary. The letter complains that she "spoke unambiguously in favor of the Iraq War," and that Dean Slaughter in introducing her praised her as a model for "students dedicated to serving the nation and the world through careers in public service and international affairs."

That Condoleezza Rice would speak unambiguously in support of the war is about as surprising as the fact that the Pope is Catholic. One university role is to sponsor "high profile" speeches guaranteed to annoy some group or another. The usual group is not leftist graduate students but potential donors. Among the most famous such events of the last century was Princeton's invitation to Alger Hiss, still bearing the prison pallor of the penitentiary in which he had done time for lying about his Soviet espionage. I myself went along to Clio to hear Gus Hall, Secretary of the American CP, and the last American Marxist alive in the wild, outside of the artificial menageries of literature departments.

I disagree with Dr. Rice about the war. I think it is probably illegal and certainly immoral, and that in initiating it we crossed a fatal line from which a return may prove most difficult. But I know that there are others who hold other views. Is Condoleezza Rice qualified to address a Princeton audience? She just happens to hold a Ph. D. in political science. She was a prizewinning teacher of that discipline at a peer institution, where she also served as provost. She is the former National Security Advisor to the President, and the current Secretary of State of the United States of America. If hers is not a career that "exemplifies" the values and aspirations of an academically rigorous school of public service and international affairs, I don't know my Kautsky from my Kropotkin. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu. His column appears on Mondays.