Censorship by Purdue president …

                                                                               Daniels is on the hot seat early

On a fall day in 1970, I sat in a political science class on the University Park campus at Penn State. The professor's name was Larry Spence, who had just been hired at Penn State after earning his Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkley earlier in the year.

Imagine that! A Berkley man, center of radical activity in the U.S. During the Sixties, was hired in the Poli Sci department at staid, button-down collar conservative Penn State. That was a major sea-change -- and he was a fabulous professor.

What I will never forget is a lecture that he gave early in the semester. He told of a visit earlier that year to Monticello in Charlottesville, Va., which was the home of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the U.S.

Spence told about going into Jefferson's bedroom at Monticello and having the tour guide point out everything in the room and talk about each one in detail -- well, almost everything.

When they left, Spence ran after the guide and asked where on the estate the door in the bedroom led. The guide ignored the question and moved on to the next room.

The truth was that the door led to the slave quarters -- more specifically, to the female slave quarters.

That was the first time that I heard of Sally Hemings, who, as DNA tests today indicate, bore six children with Jefferson -- while remaining a slave <http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-sally-hemings-brief-account>.

First, I was shocked to learn that Jefferson owned slaves. The man who wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness … " owned slaves and fathered children with one of them.

I have learned that many of our founding fathers were fallible human beings, like George Washington, the father of our country who also owned slaves.

I thought of my political science prof last week when I read about Mitch Daniels and the current turmoil in which he finds himself at Purdue University. Hired in January of this year as president, Daniels was a controversial choice for some at Purdue, which is one of the elite research universities in the nation.

Some of this had to do with his lack of academic credentials -- no Ph.D. or any doctorate, only a law degree -- and no significant administrative experience in academia or academic writing.

The other problem that some critics pointed to is that he was a politician for many years, and he just finished his second term as governor of Indiana in January. He had also served as President George W. Bush's Director of Management and Budget, where he was accused of significantly underestimating the cost of the Iraq War. In short, both as governor and in other roles, Daniels had been controversial.

That background leads to the current charge that may lead to his early downfall at Purdue: Censorship, something that is anathema to academics and to academic freedom.

As governor, Daniels wrote e-mails in 2010 that the Associated Press discovered this year via a Freedom of Information request. At the center of this is a history text by an historian who is himself controversial: Howard Zinn.

Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present, is at the center of this controversy, which is likely to become contentious this summer at Purdue and possibly throughout the nation.

Written by an admitted "radical," Zinn's book looks at American history from a very critical vantage point, presenting some very negative narratives about a few American heroes. Zinn's obituary in the New York Times in 2010 mentions three of them: "… the genocidal depredations of Christopher Columbus, the blood lust of Theodore Roosevelt and the racial failings of Abraham Lincoln." He had the audacity to question the credentials of some of the country's heroes.

Here is what Daniels wrote after reading Zinn's obituary in 2010, according to the emails obtained by the AP: "…The obits and commentaries mentioned his book, 'A People's History of the United States,' is the 'textbook of choice in high schools and colleges around the country.' It is a truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page. Can someone assure me that it is not in use anywhere in Indiana?"

Daniels is entitled to his opinion as to Zinn's analysis of history, and he is hardly alone in his sentiment. That is not the issue. The problem is that he attempted to ensure that the book would not be taught in any Indiana schools -- including secondary and post-secondary institutions, although he is trying to walk back the academic part.

Since this story has occurred just over the past week, many academics are just learning about Daniels' action. Those who have, are often critical: "It is astonishing and shocking that such a person is now the head of a major research university, making decisions about the curriculum, that one painfully suspects embodies the same ignorance and racism these comments embody," said Cary Nelson, who is an English professor at the University of Illinois and held the position of president of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) for six years, about the e-mails.

Daniels is probably in good stead with his board of trustees at Purdue since he appointed many of them. He is unlikely to follow the route of former Penn State president Graham Spanier.

Daniels is trying to stamp out the fire before it ignites a conflagration, although the emails indicate that he was also trying to eliminate personal critics of his, which is a violation of academic freedom.

Daniels denied this last week. "In truth, my emails infringed on no one's academic freedom and proposed absolutely no censorship of any person or viewpoint. In fact, the question I asked on one day in 2010 had nothing to do with higher education at all. I merely wanted to make certain that Howard Zinn's textbook, which represents a falsified version of history, was not being foisted upon our young people in Indiana's public K-12 classrooms," he said.

That, however, is censorship, attempting to stamp out ideas with which you disagree.

The Purdue president has his supporters who argue that he was not referring to academics. A story in the "Chronicle of Higher Education" quoted J. Paul Robinson, the former chairman of the Purdue University Senate, who read Daniels' emails on May 16. "Even though I think that the administrators have grown very powerful at Purdue over the years, the faculty still are the ones that establish the academic standards and the curricula — and we are not easily moved," Robinson said. "Mitch knows this, and I am pretty sure he respects it — even more now that he is here than when he was outside."

Another Indiana educator criticized the censorship. "It is ultimately bad for democracy. No head of state should engage in any form of censorship," said Gerardo Gonzalez, dean of the Indiana University College of Education.

Another e-mail by Daniels in 2009 illustrates that he tried to quiet a university professor who was critical of him. Dr. Charles L. Little is a clinical professor of education leadership at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. Daniels wrote about Little's program, “This crap should not be accepted for any credit by the state. No student will be better taught because someone sat through this session. Which board has jurisdiction over what counts and what doesn’t?”

In essence, Daniels attempted to cut funding for Little's program because of the professor's criticism of his conservative policies.

The current president of the Purdue Faculty Senate said that Daniels' beliefs will be irrelevant at Purdue. "The academic side of Purdue University is controlled by the faculty. Period. End of story," David Williams said.

That brings us back to Professor Spence. In 1970, the Sally Hemings story was not yet accepted by mainstream historians since the DNA proof came decades later. Was Spence wrong to criticize an American president who is ranked as one of the top ten by historians today? Should the Penn State administration have attempted to silence him about this? Would censorship have been proper in that case? Of course not.

Spence may have been called radical by some in those days, but no one attempted to interfere with his right to present ideas that were out of the mainstream.

Spence encouraged me and my fellow students to look at every person and event critically. He cared not what a student's paper advocated, just as long as he or she supported it with empirical data. I was fortunate to have taken both undergrad and graduate classes from professors like Larry Spence.

Students must be challenged intellectually in high school and college. At times, local school boards will forbid books from high school reading lists. That sounds like what Daniels was advocating.

Young people need some guidance on what is appropriate reading. For instance, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is hardly appropriate for students in fifth grade. What about eight grade? High school?

Mark Twain's Huck Finn has been banned from many high schools. In reality, I disagree with the censorship of Twain. Many disagree.

In essence, censorship should be avoided completely in academia and in high schools unless absolutely necessary.

Daniels may have thought that he would have a honeymoon in his first six months at Purdue, but this censorship debate has cast him -- and the university -- in a negative light.

Purdue is not a hotbed of radical activity since it is situated in a very conservative state, one that had the largest number of members of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Nevertheless, academic freedom is something that academics revere, even in conservative states.

The next six months to a year will be an interesting time in Lafayette, Ind. The board of trustees may wish for buyer's remorse with Daniels, but he is unlikely to leave.