Why have we abandoned intelligent, thoughtful and reasoning Marquette students in favor of anti-intellectual partisan noisemakers and talk-radio wannabes?

If the best we can do at Marquette University is to form a debate around the notion that 'inviting someone with the surname "Kennedy" to campus, during an artificially contrived pre-election period, wherein everyone is expected to accept that the principles of freedom of speech and open dialogue within a university community are properly held in abeyance,' then we must — all of us — feel the deep burn of shame. We are no representatives of Jesuit higher education if we champion the censorship of Arun Gandhi because he disagrees with some Christian thinkers as regards same-sex love. If this is our best, then we have failed 400 years of Ignatian pedagogy and embarrassed ourselves in front of our professors.

If the Trustees who are supposed to provide for the continuity of our education ask us to participate in a pseudo-dialogue about a racist school mascot and fail to open a dialogue that does not begin with the question "what is just?" then we have abandoned our common academic mission to those unnamed persons who hope to subvert our academic community with their personal agendas — extremist agendas that are grounded in non-Jesuit principles like unjust separation, racial and economic segregation and the isolation of the weaker by the merely stronger. If this 'Warrior' business is an example of 'open dialogue,' then we have allowed ourselves to abandon our mission for the promise of money given or money denied. We have abandoned our Ignatian community of thousands to the few with covert connections.

If we cannot, in accordance with the Ignatian pedagogical ideals set for us (historically throughout the history of the Society of Jesus and contemporaneously from the best of our professors, colleagues and comrades) frame a discussion with any more sophistication than an appeal to the empty, divisive and false distinction between 'liberals' and 'conservatives' (as if these terms actually meant anything), then we are failing our university and we are failing Ignatian pedagogy all the way back to Loyola himself.

The ideologies of fundamentalist Christianity and the politics of fear are not consonant with the ideals of this Jesuit University. And we must stand up to those who think that censorship and mockery are tenets of academic activity. We must tell those people that, while even their views deserve airing, we shall not as reasoning and tolerant people accept that no other views are permitted.

I propose these very modest efforts to re-align the reality of our academic practice. Let us invite all sides to the issues which we debate, and debate with them on behalf of humanity, regardless of political party and not on behalf the message du jour demanded from some political hack on the payroll of any party. Let us open the dialogue on a Marquette mascot all the way and not after the 'debate' has been pre-framed for us behind closed doors and by people who cannot stand the scrutiny of the community. Let us debate issues about the conservation of natural resources by insisting that all sides are represented — to use the least common language: let's bring to campus 'liberal' and 'conservative' environmentalists. By hiding behind partisan nonsense, we pretend that there are no 'conservative' environmentalists, which is simply contrary to fact.

Let us appeal to the best of what we are and better guard against the intellectual decay that creeps at the edges of Marquette University. We owe it to 400 years worth of Jesuit education. We owe it to the next 400 years worth. Most of all, we owe it to ourselves and to the rest of our community.

Paul Shinkle is a graduate student in philosophy.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Feb. 8 2005.