Group Denounces 'Blame America First' Response to September 11 Attacks

By GOLDIE BLUMENSTYK

An organization that says American higher education plays down Western intellectual teachings has condemned colleges for what it calls a "blame America first" response to the attacks of September 11.

"College and university faculty have been the weak link in America's response to the attack," says the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, in a stinging report. "Their public messages were short on patriotism and long on self-flagellation."

Some of the professors singled out in the report said it smacks of a "Soviet mentality" and dismissed it as an attempt by the group to exploit the aftermath of the attacks to further its own agenda.

The report was released on November 11 and reported on thereafter. But by the time it appeared on the group's Web site (http://www.goacta.org) a week or so later, all the names of the criticized academics had been deleted. Their titles and other identifiers were left in.

The council's vice-president and general counsel, Anne D. Neal, said the deletions were made to "focus on what's being said not who's saying it." The council still "absolutely" believes the comments were wrongheaded, says Ms. Neal, a co-author of the report. But "we certainly wouldn't want individuals to receive any criticisms." Initially, she said, names were in cluded for "documentary reasons" The re port kept the footnotes, allowing intrepid readers to identify many of those quoted.

The report says that while America's political leaders and news-media commentators decried the attacks, "many faculty members demurred." It continues: "Some refused to make judgments. Many invoked tolerance and diversity as antidotes to evil. Some even pointed accusatory fingers, not at the terrorists, but at America itself."

The report includes a list of 117 examples from the past two months in which it says responses from American campuses reflect "a shocking divide between academe and the public at large." Some of the examples cited were comments or actions by students, including pleas for peaceful responses in newspaper editorials and at campus rallies. One of the comments cited among the "responses" came from a professor speaking at a township meeting on September 10. The report also lists incidents in which college officials restricted displays of the American flag or attempted to close down a professor's Web site that called for military retaliation.

The council, which was founded by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, and Lynne V. Cheney, the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the wife of the vice president, says that those responses are further proof that colleges should require the teaching of American history and Western civilization. In the report, the council urges alumni, trustees, and donors to protest and take other actions if the colleges don't do so.

"Expressions of pervasive moral relativism are a staple of academic life in this country and an apparent symptom of an educational system that has increasingly suggested that Western civilization is the primary source of the world's ills even though it gave us the ideals of democracy, human rights, individual liberty, and mutual tolerance," the report says.

The report, "Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America, and What Can Be Done About It," says that professors have a right to academic freedom, but says that the freedom does not exempt them from criticism. "We learn from history that when a nation's intellectuals are unwilling to defend its civilization, they give comfort to its adversaries," it says.

Michael Rothschild, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, said that many of the comments and questions being raised by professors are actually healthy for the country. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld disagree on some policy questions, he notes, and "that's not un-American. I don't think the disagreement in academe is any more harmful to our functioning as a democracy."

A statement attributed to Mr. Rothschild from a campus teach-in on the day of the attacks appeared in the original report. It quoted him discussing the "terrible and understandable desire to find and punish" the perpetrators, and warning: "It's very important for Americans to think about our own history, what we did in World War II to Japanese citizens by interning them." The quote is accurate, he said. "I was worried about a rush to judgment."

Mr. Rothschild said he wasn't too agitated by the council's report. "I thought these people were wrong before September 11," he said, and "I think they're wrong after September 11."

Another professor singled out in the original report, Hugh Gusterson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, questioned its logic. "At this particular moment in time, it seems there is a crying need to understand the culture and history of the people who attacked us," he said.

The report cites a quote by him from a September 20 campus rally: "Imagine the real suffering and grief of people in other countries. The best way to begin a war on terrorism might be to look in the mirror."

A professor of anthropology and science-and-technology studies, Mr. Gusterson said it is not anti-American to know about the rest of the world. "What anthropology is supposed to do is try to get people to get out of their own skins."

Mr. Gusterson said he knows of other professors who have received hate mail for their views and wondered whether the council's listing him in the report was meant as a form of intimidation. The approach, he said, reminded him of the Soviet mentality. "It's sad to see these belligerent nannies trying to restrict what people can learn," Mr. Gusterson said.

He also wonders why the council is so worried about professors. "All my students are so conservative," he said.

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