The Sidney Hook memorial award address: Speaking truth to power

Abstract

I deeply appreciate this honor. I am particularly honored that it comes from hands of Senator Moynihan who, more than any other individual, represents ideal of scholar in public life, more concerned with what is objectively t r u e than what is expedient or subjectively reassuring. The Almanac of American Politics, 1996, has justly called him the nation's best thinker among politicians since Lincoln and its best politician among thinkers since Jefferson. The Almanac goes on to say that Moynihan is the kind of philosopher-politician who Founding Fathers hoped would people Senate. Though American universities have emerged in past century in ways that have expanded our intellectual horizons, increasingly university's underlying responsibility to truth has been violated by those controlling academic power structure. Rather than speaking truth to power, they have spoken power to truth. They have done this by denying possibility of objective truth, by forbidding consideration of certain subjects, by refusing to acknowledge error in past judgments, and by shamelessly separating behavior from rhetoric. James Coleman, first recipient of Hook Award, in 1990, noted that greatest enemies of academic freedom in university are norms that exist about what kinds of questions may be raised in research. 1 Those norms, he said, were more often than not established by self-suppression, for fear that research might lead to results that would elicit disapproval by those colleagues we see regularly. ~ Coleman was nearly expelled from American Sociological Association for violating those norms. To Fang Li-Zhi, second Hook Award recipient, norms established by political commissars were greater enemies of academic freedom than norms of timorous faculties. Fang insisted that free research is one of effective ways to break down ideological barriers erected by totalitarians. s Fang risked more than disapproval of his colleagues. Like other Chinese--Harry Wu, for example-he risked his life pursuing freedom of inquiry. How much more are we in West, with our tradition of scientific inquiry and religious tolerance, obligated to raise academic questions whether or not they are embarrassing or politically incorrect? As C. Vann Woodward, third Hook Award recipient, put it, the university is a place where unthinkable can be thought, unment ionable can be discussed, and unchallengeable can be challenged. 4 At least it should be such a place.