Kerby Anderson

Dr. Everett Piper is the President of Oklahoma Wesleyan University and recently wrote to plead with his “colleagues to stand firm for the academy’s millennia-old commitment to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of inquiry, and freedom of thought.” This was a needed commentary for universities that implement “speech codes,” organize “safe spaces,” and allow students and activists to shut down speeches.

He goes on the explain that the “answer to the riots and rebellions that Berkeley and many other college campuses are facing is not found in the tyranny of false tolerance or the ideological safety of trigger warnings. It isn’t found in more restrictions and more legalism.” It is found in the pursuit of truth and the “practice and virtue of love.”

Commentators and even administrators at the University of California like to remind us that Berkeley is the home of the Free Speech Movement. Dr. Piper disagrees. “Human freedom, intellectual or otherwise, was not born in Berkeley, California but rather in a community called Bethlehem some two thousand years ago.” This may sound like a radical statement, but it is not. Christians founded major universities in Europe and were instrumental in founding most of the major universities in the first centuries of this country. For example, the motto for Harvard University is “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae,” which is Latin for “Truth for Christ and the Church.”

He believes that the freedom that these university administrators seek “finds its home not at a campus near the sandy beaches of our West Coast, but rather in a stable under the stars in ancient Israel.” And how do we find truth? He says that: “Honesty demands that we boldly pursue ideas tested by time, defended by reason, validated by experience, and confirmed by revelation.” This is a formula worth following.