Newspaper Op-Eds

As a new college president, I've learned some inspiring lessons this year: the extraordinary creativity and decency of Muhlenberg students, who volunteered over 86,000 hours of public service in the Lehigh Valley last year; our faculty's passionate dedication to undergraduate teaching; the rich ethnic diversity and cultural offerings of Allentown and the Lehigh Valley.

One lesson has been an abject disappointment: the quality of public discourse surrounding the Muhlenberg faculty's resolution regarding the USA Patriot Act since it was described in The Morning Call in an op-ed column by Professor Anna Adams on Feb. 2 and then in a news article on Feb. 3. The USA Patriot Act and the Muhlenberg faculty resolution have elicited strong responses. As a liberal arts college, Muhlenberg seeks to harness reason rather than emotion to the purpose of civic engagement, to treat this controversy as a ''teachable moment.''

But then Brit Hume of Fox News picked up the story and aired a brief and slanted jibe at Muhlenberg's faculty in general and Adams in particular, based entirely on the false charge that she had never read the Patriot Act. (She had told The Morning Call that she read relevant sections of it.) Hume did not call Adams. He did not request a copy of the faculty resolution. Call it irony or call it hypocrisy, any way you slice it, it would seem Fox News was guilty of the very offense with which it (inaccurately) charged Adams.

The predictable harvest of this national broadcast was a spate of angry letters to the newspaper, to the college, and to Adams, most of them based on the dubious assumption that Fox News broadcasts the gospel truth. Few of the writers seem to have done their homework by reading the faculty resolution or the Patriot Act. One local Muhlenberg alumnus even went so far as to declare that college professors should not express political opinions at all!

So, what is the significance of the Muhlenberg faculty resolution? Judging from the fevered reactions of some letter writers, you would think that Muhlenberg's faculty had denounced fundamental American values and championed the cause of terrorism. Not so. Indeed, the faculty resolution represents a rather mainstream position that has been articulated in similar resolutions by more than 230 communities throughout the country, and expressed by both Republicans and Democrats.

The resolution simply requests that:

''The Administration of the College, the Mayor and police of Allentown, and the leaders of other institutions of higher learning in the Lehigh Valley . work together to ensure that governmental actions against terrorism do not violate the Constitution and do not compromise individual liberties, research, education, and academic freedom, and resist all attempts to do so.''

Those of us who have actually read the USA Patriot Act (all 342 pages of it) realize that much of it is sound, reasonable, and laudable. We also realize (as many of Adams' critics do not) that reading the act hardly ensures one will understand its meaning. To really understand the Patriot Act, with its scores of inscrutable references to minor changes in specific clauses of a host of other federal statutes, requires one to read extensive analysis and explanation of the act by trustworthy legal experts.

As Muhlenberg's president, my responsibility is to seek the counsel I need to ensure the college's compliance with the law while protecting academic freedom and the constitutional rights of our students, faculty, and staff. But beyond administrative compliance, what should a college's role be in this debate? Key elements of Muhlenberg's mission include: ''to develop independent critical thinkers who are intellectually agile, characterized by a zest for reasoned and civil debate . equipped with ethical and civic values, and prepared for lives of leadership and service.''

Our faculty has shown outstanding leadership in focusing the attention of our students and our community on an important civic issue. They have followed up their resolution by creating a Web site (www.muhlenberg.edu/cultural/ethics/forum.html) where interested citizens can access a truly ''fair and balanced'' collection of resources about this issue, and they have organized a campus-wide forum (to be held today) where multiple viewpoints will be expressed and the issues can be explored and debated based on facts and reason, rather than sloganeering, second-hand reporting, scare tactics, and cheap shots. I am sure I will not agree with everything that is said at the forum (nor, I suspect, will Adams). But I am confident that the marketplace of ideas is the best venue for pursuing truth. By modeling constructive debate, we strengthen freedom. T