Hamline University and presidential dishonor

No, not that president. I’m talking about Fayneese Miller, the president of Hamline University, a small liberal arts college in Minnesota. There has been an ongoing controversy and she has finally written a statement in response and I have words. … Now Hamline University President Fayneese Miller has issued a statement (dated January 11) that brings further dishonor to Hamline and more words from me. …

To suggest that the university does not respect academic freedom is absurd on its face. Hamline is a liberal arts institution, the oldest in Minnesota, the first to admit women, and now led by a woman of color. To deny the precepts upon which academic freedom is based would be to undermine our foundational principles.

This is absurd on its face. President Miller is arguing that it’s absurd to say the school doesn’t protect academic freedom because it’s the job of a school to protect academic freedom. What? It’s rather like arguing that the government is never corrupt because it’s the job of the government to never be corrupt. The argument is both circular (it assumes the thing it’s trying to prove) and ridiculous. Yes, we know what your school’s job is, and we’re telling you that it wasn’t doing it!

[Back in the day, a true liberal-arts university would have flunked students who used this type of circular fallacy in their arguments. Now the flunkees run the asylums. — Ed]