Culture of Peace, but guns in our classrooms?

The Concord Monitor has recently reported on legislation in our state to allow the right to bear arms unimpeded entrance to our classrooms. Several discussions have occurred among our members, and we share them with you. Expect commentary on this blog entry to continue, and to develop.

Numerous concerns are involved with the move that bill co-sponsors claim is about the right to bear arms.  Is the right to bear arms also the right to demonstrate strength through arms?  One purpose of universities is to develop strength of character, the ability to meet challenges, greet conflict with negotiation, and open up respectful dialogue.  The colleagues we have so far discussed this proposed legislation with have expressed fear-- either directly, through their concerns about the mere presence of a gun as a silencing of debate; or indirectly, through barely masked jokes about loosening up grading standards to prevent one's own demise.  In no case have colleagues mentioned that they themselves would choose to bear arms in their classroom.  If they did, the response would be immediate, and couched in terms of an abuse of authority, the presence of threat, and a round of lawsuits from parents.  Why then, do we consider allowing the reverse? 

Professors are in a vulnerable position, and are, it should be mentioned, already facing a variety of very physical threats. In Central Michigan two weeks ago, for example, a journalism major was suspended for threatening to kill every faculty member of the journalism department . Even the well-known scholar of democracy, Frances Fox-Piven at CUNY is under threat, thanks to radio programs claiming that her decades of work on the poor and democratic social change have led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis; repeating this claim has developed into death threats on Fox-Piven, and the AAUP recently issued a statement of support.

In this climate-- the one that led to Gabrielle Giffords being shot by a non-supporter-- professors are motivated to do more than claim 'open debate' arguments in favor of the banning of guns on campus. Public universities can demonstrate open debate without bearing arms.  Indeed, the presence of arms on our campus or in our classrooms will forever mark us as under siege by a tyranny of the masses.   Democracy involves responsibility as well as rights; while government has the charge to protect rights, they also have the charge to promote safe havens for learning among diverse points of view.  This bill will erode and deter the potential for people of all personal and political values to speak their mind freely in a classroom.  It flies in the face of every thing that the people who are voting on this were elected to do-- they are elected to protect the public safety. 

As members of the Steering Committee for a Culture of Peace and Social Justice, we invite our colleagues to discuss ways of ensuring peaceful routes to classroom dialogue, a preference for academic challenge over personal threat, and the safety of our colleagues everywhere.