The Flight from Reason on Campus

Events surrounding a recent Rolling Stone article that chronicles an account of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity make clear how little the critical spirit operates today on our nation’s campuses. The story, which Rolling Stone no longer supports, begged to be treated with skepticism. Appearing in a magazine that trades in sensationalism—last year it put a glamour photo of the Boston marathon bomber on its cover—the narrative is so pat and faithful to a formula that common sense dictated caution. And most readers, one suspects, did feel at least a tinge of suspicion. Yet opinion leaders and campus activists across the nation quickly embraced the story as gospel truth, with some looking to convert it into a national movement to stem sexual violence.

At the epicenter of this event is the University of Virginia, where I have taught for over three decades. Jefferson’s campus became the site of rallies, demonstrations, constant social network exchanges, and endless meetings at all levels. A discourse or rhetoric began to develop that alternated expressions of rage with pleas for compassion. Apologies were issued all the way from the university’s Board of Visitors down to informal groups gathered on the campus grounds. 

To be in the midst of an occurrence of this kind is to appreciate just how powerful is the force of the crowd. What took place resembled nothing so much as the behavior of a gentle mob, postmodern style. Anyone who expressed reserve about the article or who dared to apply the adjective “alleged” to the acts described faced the charge of being indifferent to sexual violence and rape. The penalty was to be written out of the community. Best, one observer cautioned, not to poke the beast.

Like many such crowds, this one sought its own victims to punish. Strangely, retribution against the seven alleged perpetrators was treated as less important than one might have thought, for this result would have placed the onus in the affair on these individuals and their criminal acts. From the moment of the first mass rally, speakers from the faculty and student body left no doubt that they were in search of much bigger game. Moving in a reverse pyramid from the specific to the more abstract, they decried the fraternity system, privilege (the “money-fraternity complex”), and the rape culture of the South, including Thomas Jefferson for his relations with Sally Hemings. The charges went higher and higher up the ladder of generality until the sex crime committed at UVA became a confirmation of the basic theory of privileged Western male oppression that is so widely subscribed to in the disciplines of cultural studies. The theoretical or ideological dimension that began to take hold, which relies on class profiling, accorded with the subtext of the Rolling Stone article that is directed less against sexual violence per se—of which Charlottesville has tragically suffered more than enough in recent years—than against sexual violence perpetrated by males belonging to society’s “upper tier.”

The abandonment of a critical spirit on our campuses is as much a failure of moral courage as of intellectual blindness. Every adult, if not every student, knows what happened at Duke eight years ago, where, under pressure from the same kind of academic crowd behavior, members of the men’s lacrosse team were tainted and criminally prosecuted for rape, under charges that ultimately proved baseless. Every professor in media studies and public opinion is fully aware of the spectacular hoaxes of modern journalism, from the gripping accounts of urban poverty by Janet Cooke in the Washington Post to the multiple fabrications of Stephen Glass in the New Republic. And scholars of literature and history cannot be ignorant of the psychology of false accusation, from the biblical story of Potiphar’s wife down to the rape charges by Tawana Brawley, cynically perpetuated by Al Sharpton. Yet, in the climate of the moment, none of the perspective that these teachers could have offered, even if they had wished to do so, was ever brought to bear. A crowd does not listen, particularly when it is convinced it is on the side of the angels.

University authorities might have helped to keep open a semblance of a discussion. But faced themselves with the prospect of becoming an early casualty of the crowd, which seemed ready to target the administration for alleged indifference, the leadership sought safety by joining with and trying to get out ahead of their critics. The president of the university, Teresa Sullivan, made clear where the initiative lay: “I want you to know that I have heard you, and that your words have enkindled this message.” Still, in a final gesture of restraint, she asked that the community evaluate matters in a way that would ensure that “one of our founding principles—the pursuit of truth—remains a pillar on which we can stand.” She may have had in mind Jefferson’s own promise that “this institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

Noble sentiments, but have they been followed? The latest and most disturbing turn in the whole sequence of events came in the aftermath of the unraveling of the published story. No one, of course, knows exactly what, if anything, happened in that fraternity house, or how many, if any, of the victim’s charges can stand up to scrutiny. Despite promises from different parties to get to the bottom of things, one coming from Rolling Stone no less, this matter may never be resolved. What stands out, however, is the reaction of the activists. Though disappointed that the veracity of this story of suffering and bestiality has been placed in doubt, they remain undeterred. Now they claim that the facts of this case ultimately do not matter. It is the larger cause that counts. The article, they say, has served to put a spotlight on the epidemic of sexual violence on campus. As one of them put it, “The main message we want to come out of all this is that sexual assault is a problem nationwide that we need to act in preventing. It has never been about one story.” The activists, moreover, can claim already to have won a victory. They are certain to be at the center of the next step in the process, now underway at UVA, of adopting new measures to deal with this problem.

But the truth does matter. Even on the level of future policy changes, this problem can only be properly addressed if it is presented in an unbiased way, not in terms of a preconceived framework. The moral dimension of disregarding the truth also cannot be forgotten. Members of the university community have been vilified as gang rapists. Does anyone mind? The University of Virginia has been charged with bearing the full burden of national obloquy. Does anyone care? If the faculty and administration prefer to abdicate to a crowd rather than offer a defense, even in comparative terms, of the university’s reputation, then who will stand up for the place?

The answer is: no one at the university. The task has been taken up by the local newspaper, Charlottesville’s Daily Progress, which has spoken with a clarity and directness unheard on the campus: “The University of Virginia and its reputation were also vandalized by this story.” The president of the university, having initially invoked the pillar of truth in her first reaction to the Rolling Stone article, struck a very different note in her pronouncement on its retraction: “While all of us who care about the University are upset by the Rolling Stone story, I write now with a different message.” Surely the truth merits something more than a dependent clause.

Far from being an end in itself, the truth on our college campuses is now treated as a mere instrument of combat. It is wielded with feigned righteous-ness when it promotes a preferred cause and then abandoned when it produces the opposite result. In the end, this is the sad message that universities now convey. 

James W. Ceaser is professor of politics at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.