I was disappointed to read The Crimson’s editorial this morning regarding Martin Peretz and the Harvard research fellowship that is apparently going to be endowed in his name. Peretz, the editor-in-chief of The New Republic, recently wrote on his personal blog that “Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims” and that he could not “pretend that [Muslim-Americans] are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.” Peretz has since apologized, but he has a long history of anti-Muslim remarks, as Anthony Dedousis notes in his dissent from The Crimson’s editorial. This is not a guy who said something he shouldn’t have; this is a guy who believes things that we should denounce in the strongest terms.

But, The Crimson argues, it would be wrong to turn away the fellowship’s sponsors just because we “strongly condemn” Peretz’s anti-Muslim sentiments. Because, the editors claim, “the donor is of less importance than the educational opportunities [his donation] will promote.” The obvious (and no less true for being obvious) rejoinder is that of course the character of the donors matters; Harvard would never accept an endowed chair from a known anti-Semite, a known racist, a known murderer, and so on. Clearly there is a moral continuum along which donors can fall. The Crimson seems to think Peretz is more like a convicted anti-trust violator who apparently gave a lot of money to the Kennedy School than like a racist or an anti-Semite.

I see things differently. Harvard has, or claims to have, certain values, e.g. tolerance, fairness, liberal-mindedness, and it can either defend or surrender those values. The Crimson seems to grant that Peretz’s values don’t jibe with Harvard’s–hence the call for Harvard to “distance itself from” Peretz’s views. But, the editors argue, the value of the fellowship trumps those other values. In essence, The Crimson thinks Harvard should make the right noises about tolerance and fairness, but sacrifice those values on the altar of, well, money.

The editors try very hard to show that this isn’t about the money per se, but rather about the great things students could do with the Peretz research fellowship. One wonders if they would reason this way if the money were going towards a new football stadium. Surely a new stadium would enable students to do great things, too? Of course Crimson editors don’t much care for football, but the point is, for all their talk about “educational opportunities,” what we’re really talking about is money. Is Harvard going to accept donations, which it would then use in a certain valuable way (by Harvard’s lights), in honor of a man whose values it claims to oppose with all its heart? Whether or not Harvard is right to hold certain values as opposed to others is not the question. The question is one of moral consistency.

The broader context of this debate can be seen in the comments on Dedousis’s dissent. Some people, like Peretz, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin, seem to think that all Muslims are accountable for the actions of a few. As Sandy18 says, “Every peace loving Muslim must stand up and be counted and denounce the violence and atrocities being committed in the name of their religion.” Look, undoubtedly good people should denounce bad people. But the loudness and the frequency with which this demand is made of Muslims is completely out of proportion. Its utter absence from discussions of other groups is proof enough of that.

People of every faith, every ethnicity, every nationality, do horrible things; it is only in the most extreme situations, e.g. the Holocaust, that we even start to move from individual to collective guilt. But today’s anti-Muslim rhetoric makes that move as a matter of course, and denounces all those who defend a distinction between good and bad Muslims as terrorist-coddling naifs.

And so a discussion ostensibly about Peretz’s statements regarding all Muslims comes to involve statements like, “It is not okay to bomb innocents in a marketplace. It is not okay to poor acid in the faces of girls trying to go to school. It is not okay to kill someone for drawing a cartoon.” As if Muslims, as Muslims, would disagree.

I don’t know why the anti-Muslim hysteria that could have resulted immediately from the 9/11 attacks has instead taken nine years to develop. But people who claim to oppose that hysteria, like Harvard administrators and Crimson editors, need to get some spine and stand against it, even if it’s ultimately only symbolic.

Related posts: