Duke, no stranger to the national spotlight, stepped back from the stage this month as its nearest colleague, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, became a lightning rod in a national brouhaha over its decision to have incoming freshmen read annotated passages from the Quran.
Duke professors are nearly unanimous in their support for UNC, but disagree on which issue is most central--including the nature of academic freedom at publicly funded universities, the separation of church and state, Western awareness of Islam and the role of higher education itself in American society.
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In a letter to Sue Estroff, chair of UNC's Faculty Council, Duke President Nan Keohane pledged her support for the school's steadfast adherence to academic freedom.
"Not the least of [our values] is the visible and historic national leadership our institutions have provided in support of academic freedom and of the essential right--indeed the duty--of our faculty and students to engage in thoughtful inquiry and robust debate about all kinds of issues, even the most controversial," Keohane wrote.
Bruce Lawrence, Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities professor of religion, attended Monday's discussions of the reading selection at UNC, and said he has been disappointed by what he sees as silence from Duke.
"My only regret is there hasn't been more of a response from Duke," he said. "Other than Nan's letter, I haven't seen anything from different quarters at Duke."
Lawrence said the debate is not about academic freedom as much as it is about what Americans can learn about the Islamic faith. He added that because the reading is not being preached by Muslim clerics, but rather examined in an academic light, there is no violation of the freedom of religion.
"They had effectively a bunch of educators saying, one year [after Sept. 11], 'What do we know about Islam?' And the answer is not a lot," Lawrence said.
William Van Alstyne, William R. and Thomas C. Perkins professor of law, said that freedom of religion and academic freedom are not at all contradictory, pointing to court cases in the 1960s in which public schools were allowed to use religious texts in an educational context, even if some students may have been offended by those materials.
"Part of the process of compulsory education is exposure to cultures that you may not like," he said. "When we go to the university level, the case is even plainer. We're not talking about fragile youngsters, and we're not talking about compulsory attendance.... The assignment of academically representative materials on Islam, on the Quran or something in particular, is exactly what you'd expect of self-respecting universities."
Michael Munger, chair of the political science department, said UNC has a clear right to assign the reading and that the state legislature has a right to cut funding, but that the more important question is whether their actions are in pursuit of the best interest.
"I have some recollection of what it was like to be at the mercy of the legislature," said Munger, who taught at UNC for seven years. "UNC's going through difficult budget times, and a lot of people don't really like UNC professors, and the idea that they were going to subject little Johnny from Goldsboro to their twisted version of what religion might be was very upsetting to some people."
He said that the legislature, in demonstrating that it is willing to interfere and micromanage the university, is severely harming UNC's reputation.
"If they want to have a world-class university, which North Carolina is and has been for a long time, they have to find a way not to do this," Munger said.
Lawrence said he was surprised to see some legislators take such a strong stand against the university, even calling Islam an "enemy religion," adding that religion is not necessarily wrong, but some people twist religion for their own purposes in ways that are not always consistent with the faith's teachings.
Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe professor of theological ethics at the Divinity School, said that if the reading were based on the Bible, there would have been very little uproar. "They say they're upset because... the book [omits] the allegedly more militaristic passages of the Quran," he said. "I think people might get upset if you read them the more militaristic passages of the Bible."
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