The aim of authentic academic freedom is the free inquiry into truth

Dr. David H. Calhoun, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Gonzaga University, has summed up, in just a few outstanding paragraphs, the essential problems with pushing and producing "The Vagina Monologues" on a Catholic campus:

Alfino claims that performance of "The Vagina Monologues" is a matter of academic freedom.  However, academic freedom is not a blanket principle that mandates or legitimates that anything and everything can or must be done in an academic context.  It is, rather, the policy that specifies that academic life presumes the free inquiry into truth.  Perhaps the most authoritative statement on academic freedom in the United States, the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the American Association of University Professors, outlines the issue by noting, "Institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good. ... The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition" (http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/poli...). The free search for truth does not require that every available book be read, that every poem be recited, that every available speaker be invited to campus.  In the present context, genuine academic freedom does not require that every play ever written be performed publicly on a university campus.  The objective is not the airing of every possible form of every possible idea.  Rather, practical judgments of pedagogy and practice are employed all the time by teachers and administrators regarding the best means to critically explore ideas and the arguments that support them.

Responsible teachers decline to employ certain expressions of ideas because they judge them inferior intellectually or pedagogically.  So, for example, most college teachers avoid presentations of their subjects found in popular encyclopedias, for such presentations typically fail to include the best ideas and arguments relevant to their discipline. This is not a violation of academic freedom, but a matter of pedagogical judgment.

Responsible teachers also decline to employ expressions of ideas that are morally offensive or needlessly controversial.  An excellent example of a needlessly offensive and controversial expression of ideas occurred at Northwestern University recently.  As part of a human sexuality class, a professor arranged an extra-classroom event involving a live sex demonstration with naked participants using a sex toy.  Some might defend such an event as "academic freedom," but a live sex demonstration is neither necessary nor particularly helpful for promoting academic inquiry into human sexuality.  To the contrary, such a spectacle feeds prurient interests and provokes outrage by many reasonable people inside and outside of the academy.

Similarly, "The Vagina Monologues," as a particular expression of ideas, is not necessary to explore questions of violence against women, or indeed of human sexuality and female self-image.  Not only is it not necessary, good arguments can and have been made that it is a poor vehicle for exploring these ideas.  It does not speak univocally against violence against women, insofar as it depicts sympathetically female-on-female sexual abuse of a minor.  Despite Eve Ensler's brilliant marketing campaign, the play is not even so much about violence against women as it is a celebration of polymorphous sexuality.  Beyond its poor literary quality, the play features unnecessary vulgarities which amount to vicarious live sex demonstrations.

There are further reasons for rejecting "The Vagina Monologues" as an occasion for academic inquiry at a Jesuit, Catholic institution.  The play ignores the multifaceted nature of female experience by eliminating entire ranges of human sexuality from its purview.  It offends against human dignity by reducing human personality to sexuality, and female dignity to sexual activity.  It completely ignores the rich literature and vocabulary of Catholic and Christian sexual teaching.

Read the entire letter, posted yesterday on the Gonzaga Bulletin website. By the way, Dr. Calhoun is not a Catholic; he attends a non-denominational Evangelical church. If only so many Catholic educators would understand, articulate, and show respect for Catholic teaching (and common sense) as well as Dr. Calhoun!