Harvard, Academic Freedom, and the New Wars of Religion

For evidence that intolerance is a problem at Harvard, one need only look at the cases from 2021 involving evolutionary biologist Carole K. Hooven and biostatistician Tyler J. VanderWeele.

Carole claimed that sex (not gender) was binary, the standard position in evolutionary biology. For this she was publicly denounced by the graduate student director of her department’s DEI task force and said she was unable to teach her lecture class as no graduate students were willing to serve as her teaching fellow. The fallout, coupled with the lack of support from her department, led to her eventual resignation.

Tyler, a practicing Catholic, signed an amicus brief opposing a federal, constitutional right to gay marriage in favor of state-by-state resolution. In response to the brief, and past writings of his on abortion, graduate students in public health insisted he be fired or, at minimum, barred from teaching. (He continues to teach at Harvard.)

In part because of these two cases, there have been demands by faculty that the University better protect academic freedom and that the broader Harvard community better ensure civil, reasoned discourse. (For an important statement on inclusion and academic freedom, see Harvard’s 2018 Presidential Task Force Report on Inclusion and Belonging.)

I fully support such calls. I doubt, however, that they will change the behaviors of those who are genuinely convinced about the erroneousness of others’ beliefs and the validity of their own. I will make a different argument: that for academic freedom to prevail, all at Harvard must tolerate others and their beliefs.

Religious and more generally ideological wars are often disastrous. In such conflicts, people are branded as heretics for their beliefs and excluded; they are attacked even though they are members of one’s own community; many people are harmed if not killed; if one side succeeds, it leads to the oppression of others.

In “Politics as Religion,” the renowned Italian scholar Emilio Gentile argues that in recent centuries, particularly in the West, politics has taken on the form of a religion, “claiming as its own the prerogative of defining the fundamental purpose and meaning of human life.” His particular concern is with fascism and communism as forms of totalitarianism that are analogous to those of fundamentalist religion with its total faith in its beliefs and practices. Too often, the horrifying consequence of such total self-surety is the demonization of nonbelievers and the adoption of “coercive measures that range from banishment from public life to [...] physical annihilation.”

The consequences of fascism and communism are — or at least should be — well known. But there is more to consider. For most of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, Europe was engaged in a series of devastating religious wars. The Thirty Years’ War, for example, is estimated to have resulted in the death of a third of Germany’s population. Today, we witness the carnage in Palestine and Israel, the result of a conflict that goes back more than a century, now fueled by the religious zealotry of Israel’s right and Hamas, both of which are certain that God has promised them the totality of the region’s territory

Recent political strife in the United States has also led to people being killed, as in Charlottesville, V.A. Fortunately, recent campus protests have not resulted in any deaths, but life, particularly for Muslims and Jews, too often consists of repeated harassment, intimidation, and exclusion.

The United States was founded upon the principle that individuals should be allowed to practice their religion free from persecution. Although the U.S.’s historical record on this front is certainly mixed and there is still much to be done, significant progress has occurred, allowing for the coexistence of a diversity of beliefs and practices.

It is ironic then, that today, across the country and on so many college campuses, we are seeing such fierce ideological wars analogous in character to religious conflict, sporting dug-in camps that make broad and increasingly dogmatic claims.

Currently, as in the past, there are strong pleas for Harvard to publicly take political positions. At times, it has, including in response to the murder of George Floyd and the war in Ukraine. Countering these calls, there has been recent debate about whether Harvard should remain neutral on political matters unless the issues involved threaten the very mission of the University. In the present context, this debate is arguably analogous as to those about whether a nation should have a state religion.

My plea in these contentious times is that we at least tolerate each other — that we resist the urge to deplatform, attack, punish, and censor — even if we can’t find it within ourselves to listen to those we deeply disagree with, much less understand and respect their views.

As Bertrand Russel argues: “In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”

Toleration of others avoids and ends wars of religion. It would be ideal if we were able to listen to and respect others even when we believe their views are objectionable and fundamentally wrong. But if we want to avoid the current situation becoming even more like a religious war, tolerance is a needed first step.

Christopher Winship is the Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology.

His piece is part of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard’s column, which runs bi-weekly on Mondays and pairs faculty members to write contrasting perspectives on a single theme. Read the companion to Winship’s piece here.