David Sanders

Many of the students and faculty at Purdue University are concerned about the direction of the new national government administration. It is apparently on a dark path of curtailing civil rights, blaming immigrants and foreigners for all that ails the United States, undercutting public education and denying science.

Authoritarian governments share four power strategies. They included scapegoating foreigners, immigrants and ethnic minorities; assailing the media; assaulting the independent judiciary; and attacking academia. The current manifestation of this undermining of these core, free-society institutions is a product of a long-term endeavor. It is merely the shameless nakedness with which the pursuit of the antidemocratic goals is occurring that is new.

I know there are some who will dismiss my words as mere “politics.” Nevertheless, it is clear, as the University Senate and President Mitch Daniels have affirmed, that the safety and wellbeing of our international and immigrant students is our concern at Purdue University. The subversion of public belief in the existence of factual information is our concern at Purdue University.

It is not sufficient for us merely to express our opposition to the inversion of rational discourse that we observe in the body politic. It is not adequate only to demolish the false equivalencies that defenders of demagoguery employ.

I have often urged the thesis that scientists in particular and academics in general need to think deeply about their vocation and to articulate effectively the product of their meditation. In brief I would like to share what I propose as a declaration of principles.

We are committed to the principle that every object in the natural world or human society is potentially worthy of our investigatory efforts.

We are committed to the principle that freedom of inquiry and freedom of expression are essential components of a free society and that they thrive in coexistence with a democratic republic.

We are committed to the principle that education is an end in itself and not reducible to a means to some other end.

We are committed to the principle that we take seriously the responsibility of transmitting the culture and highest values of American society and the society of other nations to our students.

We are committed to the principle that diversity in all of its manifestations is not simply tolerated but embraced as the major contributor to the richness of the human experience.

We are committed to the principle that it is frequently the counterintuitive insight that is the most productive.

We are committed to the principle that both individual and collective endeavors should be valued.

We are committed to the principle that we are training individuals for meaningful participation as leaders in society by providing them with enhanced capacities for critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, empathy and lifelong learning.

We are committed to the principle that, despite the fact that technology causes problems as it solves others, there is no existing alternative to science as a means for rational interpretation of the natural world and making plausible predictions about its future behavior.

We are committed to the principle that our obligation to conduct our scholarly mission extends beyond the academic environment to educating society and the world at large.

Sanders is chairman the University Senate at Purdue.