Tenure Shrugged: A Scholar's Affinity for the Philosophy of Ayn Rand Cost Him His Job
By DAVID GLENN
In late April, John D. Lewis, a historian and classicist at Ashland University, flew to Virginia to deliver a lecture at George Mason University about U.S. policy toward Iran. Mr. Lewis is an admirer of the late Ayn Rand, and he shares her belief that democracies should respond to external attacks without much concern for civilian casualties. He wrote in an essay in 2006 that "America, acting alone and with overwhelming force, must destroy the Iranian Islamic State now. It must do so openly, and indeed spectacularly, for the entire world to see, for this is the only way to demonstrate the spectacular failure and incompetence of the Islamic fundamentalist movement as a whole."
Mr. Lewis's bellicose reputation preceded him. His George Mason speech had already been postponed from its original February date because of protests from left-wing student organizations. When he finally delivered it, he did so under heavy security.
The postponement raised alarm bells. "George Mason may be the father of the Bill of Rights," wrote a reporter at National Review, "but it looks like the university named in his honor is having trouble with that part about free speech."
Student leftists, however, were not the only people challenging Mr. Lewis's academic freedom that week in April. Hours before he flew to Virginia, he resigned from his position at Ashland, in the culmination of a years-long faculty battle over his interest in objectivism, as Rand termed her philosophy. And in the Ashland arena, Mr. Lewis says, his foes were mainstream and evangelical Christians.
Mr. Lewis says his battles reflect the extraordinary and unfair degree of hostility that objectivists in academe receive from both left and right. "In the morning at Ashland, I was resigning because conservatives and evangelicals were opposed to me," he says. "And then in the evening I was at George Mason, and there were some Muslims and this new student SDS opposed to me. I found that poignant."
Objectivists Out
Officials at Ashland have made their discomfort with objectivism abundantly clear. In January the university, in Ohio, rejected Mr. Lewis's application for tenure, and officials told him in writing that his support for objectivism was the sole reason for the denial.
A memo from Robert C. Suggs, who was then Ashland's provost, to Frederick J. Finks, the university's president, said that Mr. Lewis's tenure application was "a unique and particularly thorny one." Mr. Suggs wrote that Mr. Lewis's publications, teaching, and service all met or exceeded the university's tenure standards, but said that his support for objectivism, an atheist philosophy, "stands in unreserved opposition to the Judeo-Christian values found in the university's mission and the beliefs of the founding organization, the Brethren Church."
In the memo, Mr. Suggs conceded that Mr. Lewis had not proselytized objectivism in the classroom. But he argued that Mr. Lewis's scholarly publications expressed ideas that were contrary to Ashland's mission. He pointed in particular to Mr. Lewis's chapter in an edited volume, Essays on Ayn Rand's Anthem (Lexington Books, 2005). There Mr. Lewis celebrated Rand's "break with the Judeo-Christian condemnation of ambition and pride."
Mr. Lewis was floored by the rejection. "I was denied tenure explicitly on the basis of objectivism," he says.
"This was a very blatant case," says Anita Levy, an associate secretary of the American Association of University Professors, which offered advice to Mr. Lewis at one stage of the dispute. "We don't often see such stark declarations at our office."
Mr. Lewis appealed the denial, saying it was arbitrary and discriminatory. He also hired a lawyer. Among other things, he argued that only two of the 21 scholarly publications he had submitted in his tenure file mentioned objectivism at all. His book on warfare, which is under contract with Princeton University Press for publication in 2009, will contain no explicitly objectivist arguments, he says.
On the morning of his George Mason lecture, Mr. Lewis and Ashland University reached an informal settlement. Ashland granted him tenure -- on the condition that he offer his resignation. The deal spared Mr. Lewis the indignity of having to explain to potential future employers why he was denied tenure, although he will not get the paychecks that usually come with that status. Mr. Lewis's resignation takes effect after the Spring 2008 semester, but he will not return to the campus. He will spend 2007-8 in a visiting appointment at Bowling Green State University, in Ohio.
"Lewis is a classical scholar and an ancient historian of the highest order," a former colleague, C. Bradley Thompson, said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle. "This is a case of contract violation, religious persecution, and conservative political correctness." Mr. Thompson, a proponent of objectivism who taught at Ashland until 2004, is now a professor of political science at Clemson University.
But Mr. Finks, Ashland's president, says it is entirely appropriate for Ashland to defend its mission and identity by drawing certain lines in the sand.
"Ashland has had a commitment to Judeo-Christian values since its founding 128 years ago," he said. "In our faculty rules and regulations, and even in our bylaws, we talk about having a faculty committed to Judeo-Christian values. We don't require faculty to be specifically of Judeo-Christian persuasion, but we do require faculty to support the mission."
Mr. Finks declined to speak about the dispute in detail. "The tenure application moved through normal channels," he said, "until there was a question -- not an accusation, but simply a question -- about whether some of his writings stand counter to Judeo-Christian values. ... He was initially denied tenure and promotion, but he continued with the appeals process and was recommended for tenure."
Money vs. Mission
Ms. Levy of the AAUP acknowledges that institutions with strong religious identities do have "some leeway" in regard to academic appointments. In that respect, she said, the justice or injustice of Mr. Lewis's treatment hinges on how clearly the university explained its rules to him when he was hired.
Mr. Lewis said that Ashland's formal faculty regulations did not explicitly state how and why a faculty member's scholarship might violate the university's mission. The faculty's committee on professional standards and responsibilities, which supported Mr. Lewis's appeal, agreed. Without clearer rules, the committee wrote in an April memo to Mr. Suggs, "the decision must be viewed as arbitrary and a restraint on academic freedom."
Mr. Lewis and Mr. Thompson added that the mission argument was especially weak in this case because throughout Mr. Lewis's six years at Ashland, the university accepted grants from the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, a California-based organization that encourages the study of Rand's thought. The grants were used to pay for release time that allowed Mr. Lewis to concentrate on his research. "That release time was always approved by the dean," he said. The grant, he said, "was used to hire adjuncts."
Mr. Finks, however, said the grants Ashland accepted, while initially intended for the study of objectivism, were significantly revised in response to the university's concerns. "If you would read the grants, they are not for the promotion of that at all," he said.
Mr. Finks declined to share the text of the grants with The Chronicle. A copy of the final Letter of Understanding provided to The Chronicle by the Anthem Foundation appears to contradict Mr. Finks's account. "The primary purpose of the fellowship is to fund release time so that Professors Thompson and Lewis can pursue research and writing on Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism," it reads.
In some respects, Mr. Lewis is an unlikely poster child for academic freedom. In his 2006 essay on Iran, he urged Muslim intellectuals to renounce political Islamism or face "immediate, personal destruction." And he often writes and speaks on behalf of the Ayn Rand Institute, whose leaders are famously insistent on enforcing fidelity to Rand's beliefs, as they see them.
"We have to always make a judgment about things we put out, or things put out by people associated with us," said Onkar Ghate, dean of the Objectivist Academic Center, which is affiliated with the institute. "Are they going to be teaching, talking about, advocating Ayn Rand's ideas, or are they doing something else?"
John P. McCaskey, president of the Anthem foundation, said that if Ashland wanted to pursue a particular Christian mission, just as the Objectivist Academic Center pursues its own Randian mission, he had no objection to that. But he said he believes that Ashland acted wrongly by continuing to spend the foundation's money.
In a February letter to Mr. Finks that was sent after Mr. Lewis's tenure denial, Mr. McCaskey wrote, "If at some point the university decided that this was not a field in which it wanted its faculty working, there were several honorable options. This was not one of them."
Mr. Finks said that from his point of view, the episode, however painful, ended successfully. "I know that John had his own view of what was going on," he said, "but sitting at my desk I saw a larger picture, and our views didn't always mesh."
"He was ultimately granted tenure and promotion," said Mr. Finks. "I think it was a win-win."
Have an affinity for Ayn Rand? Forget about being a college professor.
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Originally Posted by ErikinWest
