Let’s engage in some political theory this Wednesday morning, shall we? And let me put it as plainly as possible: When the interests of its students and intellectual principles are at stake, a university — even a public university — has a responsibility to break the law.
Whoa.
It’s probably the aspiring academic in me, but I have long been hopeful that the public university would break away from its governmental and legal obligations and act like an independent entity with nearly unmatched leverage.
This impulse is an essentially anarchistic one, but it relates back to an ironic observation: In the world of political theory, the strengthening of institutional relationships can sometimes make them break apart. Thus, it might be that the more resources and support the state Legislature invests in the University of Wisconsin, the more leverage we gain to deny thy father and refuse thy name, as the fellow said.
Last spring I argued that as the chief intellectual actor in a radius of several hundred miles, the University of Wisconsin had a normative responsibility to provide women their constitutional right to abortion. It would have this responsibility even if Roe v. Wade were overturned and even if abortion were illegal in this state — especially in this circumstance, indeed, since if the university does not properly interpret women’s rights, then who will?
It is also clear to me that UW and other public universities should not be responsible to Supreme Court precedent on affirmative action: If administrators recognize campus diversity is important for many complex sociological reasons — especially in our medical and law schools — we should ignore the Supreme Court, set sensible quotas for minority admissions and dare President Obama to send federal troops to prevent this action. (Any bets that would happen?)
As Tope Awe was being swiftly deported by authorities, the university should have done more to secure her return to classes — up to and until an indefinite shutdown of the university and an apocalyptic game of chicken with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That’s a university I would have been proud of. (In less cordial terms: You want us to continue being the Midwest’s premier research university? You want us to keep doing research to cure cancer and AIDS? Give us our fucking student back.)
Similarly, my reasons for signing an Editorial Board statement last spring advocating for direct attorney representation at student misconduct hearings were more radical than my colleagues’: the UW System Board of Regents has a responsibility to interpret the Constitution through its own intellectual lens, with or without supporting court precedent. It has a responsibility to do what it needs to do as an institution for intellectual and cultural development. Its allegiances should be ultimately to its principles, however inconvenient or illegal those principles are.
Somehow I feel this column is making me no friends, either among the state legislators who insist upon their authority over the University of Wisconsin or among the UW administrators whose daily routine involves a titanic effort to preserve this balance of forces. But the emergence of the university as an extra-legal independent actor was adumbrated by Gov. Jim Doyle’s decision to fund in-state tuition for the children of illegal immigrants — a move supported by the majority of UW administrators.
The UW System is not breaking federal law here, per se, but they know there are harsh consequences a less progressive federal government could impose on the university for this decision. We could now theoretically be forced to offer in-state tuition to everyone. That would be a quick way to make the university’s operating budget unsustainable, wouldn’t it?
I could be wrong, but I suspect the relative friendliness of the Obama administration to the complexities of the immigration debate are not the only reason for this action. This is a decision that could stand if Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin were running the country, because the scientific contributions of the University of Wisconsin vitiate any claims the federal government might have over our autonomy on this issue. Gov. Doyle knows that and the UW System Board of Regents knows that. We hold more keys than we know — and indeed, a university with balls could have offered in-state tuition to illegal immigrants without the governor’s blessing and gotten away with it.
Certainly, I am proposing something more radical (and more academic) than this space can fill: that on many matters — not just immigration — the university should act autonomously. This would not be mere effrontery. It would be the extension of what our new tuition policy already hints at: that we are more powerful than we think and that our leverage likely far exceeds our wildest expectations. We should act like a state. For all practical purposes, we are one.
Now can we have Tope back, please?
Eric Schmidt ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science.
