In recent years Ex Corde has focused a longstanding question regarding academic freedom in Catholic universities: What constraints, if any, does the particular character of a Catholic university place on the activity of free intellectual inquiry of its faculty and students?

Most of the talk I've heard on this subject seems founded on the assumption that a Catholic university is a distinct and "special" genre. The implication is that the mission of a Catholic university is qualitatively different from that of "secular" universities, particularly public, state-governed ones, and that as a consequence the relationship between academic freedom and institutional values has a character different from that which exists at these other institutions. The imputed difference is that at Catholic institutions, the process of free inquiry is (or ought to be) subject to some degree of guidance and prior constraint consistent with the teachings of the Church.

I think this misconstrues the situation of academic freedom within the Catholic university; but it also misrepresents the dynamic between academic freedom and institutional mission that obtains in public institutions as well. It's important to remember that public universities (at least in the United States) have a mission that is every bit as particularistic as that of the Catholic university. In public institutions as in Catholic ones the pursuit of "truth," as conceived within the academic enterprise, is taken to serve a particular vision of the good person and the good society. In the case of American institutions of public education this vision of the good is couched in terms of a "democratic" culture, broadly understood, to which the activities of the university are presumed to contribute.

In this respect public and Catholic universities alike conceive of academic freedom as a process serving a defined end. Understood in this context, free inquiry is never really "free" in a basic material sense: it is always a "sponsored" activity, whether by church or by government. As a result in both cases the process of free inquiry is, while not properly constrained by the ends envisioned by its sponsors, at least answerable to those ends. That is to say, it exists in relation to those ends, and in dialogue with them. But it nevertheless exists, and must exist if we are going to call our workplace a university and not a church or a Party cell. This is the paradox of the university as a materially and historically situated institution: it exists both as a designated site of free inquiry and as a contributor to the particularistic goals envisioned by its sponsors.

At St. Thomas this paradox takes the by-now familiar form of the "capitalization condundrum": the imperative to be both catholic and Catholic. I would argue, however, that we are not special but generic in finding ourselves so paradoxically situated. The public university underwrites academic freedom on the premise that the activities pursued under its banner are necessary to the upbuilding of a particular kind of community--even when those activities involve critiques of the current state of that community or the exploration of alternatives to it. In the state-supported arena of free inquiry it is assumed that we become more "democratic" by openly examining the problematic of democracy itself, by critiquing its--and our own--historical circumstance. At times of course the paths that free inquiry takes are challenged by certain constituencies of the university; but while it is important to note these challenges, it is also important to remember in all humility that human knowledge-both of the university's sponsors and the faculty who conduct inquiry in its name-- is forever incomplete, and that the remedy for this incompleteness lies along as-yet unexplored lines of study.

In a series of essays in the early 1880's William James made a distinction between what he called the "cycle of production" and the "cycle of selection" in human social progress. In an argument that both borrows from and revises Darwin, James noted that human nature is infinitely productive in its variability; not only this, but it varies in ways that cannot be predicted, and that often produce benefits that cannot be anticipated. Arguing against eugenics advocates of the time, James insisted that it is an arrogant mistake to presume in advance to know which new variants or which new traits might be desirable, since it is the fact of productivity and variety itself that ultimately provides the benefit to the species, as it has for eons.

In the arena of knowledge and ideas, the field of free inquiry is the intellectual equivalent of James's "cycle of production": it is the freedom itself that provides the benefit to the university and to its constituency through its profligate production of knowledge and ideas. To attempt to adjudicate beforehand what the fruits of the inquiry will or ought to be, is (to follow James's argument) to confuse production with selection and evaluation, and to engage in a kind of intellectual eugenics whose arrogance and inefficacy parallels that of the biological eugenics of James's era. It is the lesson of history that today's heresy can sometimes become tomorrow's necessary premise, so we should be careful about what ideas we strangle in the cradle or ban from campus discourse; we may need them later, just as the Vatican discovered, centuries after its initial expulsion of Galileo, that it needed him as an ally in reason to do battle against postmodernism.

For reasons which by now should be evident, the university-Catholic or not--ultimately is not a cheerleader for the values endorsed by its sponsors, but rather serves those values indirectly, by testing them in the crucible of inquiry. The outcome of this inquiry cannot be a foregone conclusion; but the sponsors have (or should have) faith--which is not the same as foreknowledge--that those values will stand up to, even be strengthened by, their passage through this crucible. (And if they don't stand up, wouldn't we rather know that, and make our choices accordingly?) The sponsors of the Catholic university should have the same faith in this process as their public counterparts, and should welcome open inquiry as a productive challenge rather than as a threat to the particularistic values and vision they espouse.

I propose, then, that we think about academic freedom at St. Thomas in a manner that parallels its situation in the public, secular university. As I see it, this would involve embracing the following principles:

1. Free inquiry is, in and of itself, not only consistent with the particularistic goals of the university, but an essential condition of progress toward those goals. That is to say, we have faith that free and open inquiry will bring us closer to an understanding of the good person and the good society as envisioned within the Catholic tradition.
   
2. Free inquiry is answerable to the particularistic goals of the university, especially its vision of the good person and the good society. But it is not, and should not be, subject to prior constraints, since by definition it is impossible to know in advance the outcome of inquiry, or the contribution it might make to an enhanced understanding of the university's goals and vision.
   
3. Free inquiry makes a contribution to the particularistic goals of the university not by direct or explicit advocacy of those goals but indirectly, by situating them in the fullest possible range of human knowledge and experience.
   
4. Just as our knowledge is never complete, our understanding of the particular vision of the good person and the good society embraced by the university is also an unfinished work, subject to enrichment, enhancement, and evolution. This means that the relationship between free inquiry and institutional mission is not hierarchical but dialogical. Each speaks to the other, and neither ever speaks with final or ultimate authority.

Subscribing to these goals would be a gesture of faith on our part, in the form of a insistence upon the value of knowledge to the particular vision of the good person and the good society held by St. Thomas. It would allow us to assert that this vision is consistent with, and not inimical to, the constitution of the world in all its concrete possibility; it would help us resist the temptation to short-circuit our realization of this vision through an intellectual eugenics that claims a priori knowledge of outcomes and their resulting values; and most important, it would affirm that this vision is a vital and living thing, engaged with and transformed by the process of discovery, and not an image impaled within the frame of a dead syllogism.