Claremont, Calif.

I teach at

Claremont McKenna

College, the No. 1-ranked liberal-arts college for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. FIRE may need to consider its ratings.

On Oct. 4, 2021, my class discussed Plato’s “Republic” and his views about censorship. A student objected that Plato was mistaken about its necessity. Here in the U.S., she said, there is none. Someone brought up “Huckleberry Finn.” She replied, correctly, that removing a book from curriculums doesn’t constitute censorship. I pointed out that the case was more complicated. The book had also been removed from libraries and published in expurgated editions.

An international student asked me why. I told her, quoting

Mark Twain’s

precise language, which meant speaking the N-word. This caused the first student to change her mind and acknowledge the existence of censorship in America. Far from being harmed by hearing the word, she now saw that Plato’s views couldn’t be dismissed as outdated and merited more serious consideration. This liberation from her initial prejudice bore fruit. Later in the semester she raised a very thoughtful question about Socrates’ criticisms of the poets: “But isn’t Plato a poet?” A rare success.

CMC’s administration determined to put an end to any such successes. The associate dean of faculty,

Ellen Rentz,

emailed me on Oct. 14 asking me to speak on the phone about “some serious concerns” a student had raised with her about one of my courses. I asked repeatedly for her first to communicate the concerns in writing over email, but Ms. Rentz wanted only to discuss them in person, over the phone, or on Zoom. Eventually, on Nov. 6, the Dean of Faculty

Heather Antecol

emailed me explaining the student’s concerns, who it turned out was not filing any sort of official complaint. After saying “this is not a disciplinary matter,” Ms. Antecol said CMC still had a “duty to appropriately respond to concerns brought to the College’s attention” and demanded to know the “pedagogic principles” that I thought justified using “the n* word expressly.”

Here is exactly what I emailed in response to her question: “I do think that when a student asks me a direct question that I am able to answer, good ‘pedagogy’ requires that I tell him the truth. Do you disagree? Similarly, when a student makes a false statement, I think my job requires me to confront that student with facts that contradict him. Do you think I am wrong to do so? I also hold the view that before criticizing or praising an author, one should first attempt to understand that author as he understood himself, something that requires reading and discussing exactly what he wrote. Do you think I am mistaken in this approach?”

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I never received a response. “Pedagogy” wasn’t really up for discussion. Instead, the dean enlisted the help of both the department chairman and a co-director of the college’s Open Academy program—a resource center that describes its purpose as “to counter the forces that are pulling us apart with educational strategies that bring us together”—to ban me from teaching any required courses in the future, seemingly into perpetuity.

I was informed by these other faculty that the discussion of “Huck Finn,” reading the forbidden word aloud from the autobiographical “Narrative of the Life of

Frederick Douglass,

” and alleged complaints for making arguments on all sides of contentious issues such as the equality of the sexes, formed the basis for the dean’s decision. But I can’t be sure, because the dean of faculty’s office has never informed me of a single complaint, though I had repeatedly asked in the fall for her office to detail what complaints, if any, students had filed against me. Instead, Ms. Antecol kept the process secret and played the role of investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury.

On July 13, I filed an internal grievance for violations of the college’s published policies. That process has yet to run its course. I can report that two weeks after that filing, when it was apparent that my case and other similar ones would become public, Ms. Antecol decided to permit me to teach in the fall one of the two courses she had taken away from me and given to adjuncts.

The administration’s behavior toward me and two similar cases in the literature department seem to show that CMC sets the bounds of faculty speech arbitrarily. This spring, a literature adjunct read aloud and asked students to discuss a passage from “The Color Purple” that contained the N-word. They complained. Ms. Antecol summoned the adjunct, who apologized and agreed to undergo recommended counseling. The professor submitted to re-education and training in critical race theory. Despite all this—and a glowing recommendation by the faculty member who observed her course—the class the adjunct was set to teach at CMC in the fall was abruptly canceled.

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When a tenured literature professor, who is also well-connected to the board of trustees and the media, committed a similar offense, he received no penalty. Last fall the professor assigned

Robert Lowell’s

poem “For the Union Dead,” which contains the N-word. When he played in class a recording of Lowell reading the poem, a student exploded, excoriating both author and teacher as old white men. The associate vice president for diversity and inclusion informed the professor by telephone, not in writing, that he was in the clear because he hadn’t himself read the forbidden word aloud in class.

The effects of the administration’s actions are disastrous and lasting. Students, already fearful to speak their minds, become even more so when they see that certain peers can veto the content of courses and conduct of teachers arbitrarily. Professors, a generally timid lot at best, give increased devotion to the cause of conformism. The liberating power of books, particularly those written in times and places distant from ours, is diminished when they are expurgated and bowdlerized.

My job as a teacher is to oppose ignorance wherever it manifests itself. If a dean promotes the work of Daniele da Volterra, Pope Paul IV’s painter of fig leaves, I have no choice but to stand for the original of Michelangelo. And so must I stand for the original works of Mark Twain and Frederick Douglass, exactly as written by their authors. They deserve that, as do my students.

Mr. Nadon is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.

Wonder Land: Despite repeated cries of threats to “our democracy,” a political fix for November won’t repair the damage progressives have done to the U.S. (02/23/22) Images: Getty Images/MG21/The Met Museum/Vogue Composite: Mark Kelly

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