Under the Government's Thumb

Brown Complies with National Constitution Day

BY SUNISA NARDONE

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Is Constitution Day—a federally mandated, unfunded program designed to educate Americans about the constitution— unconstitutional? Many professors at Brown are pondering this very question in the wake of the University's decision to comply with federal legislation and inaugurate an annual lecture series, marked this year by Gordon Wood's talk on the "Origins of Constitutionalism" on September 15.

Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) fathered the new law that requires all educational institutions receiving federal funding to hold a program about the signing of the constitution arond September 17th each year. The senator's crusade to overcome a perceived historical amnesia has kicked off lectures, debates, and readings across the country. When asked the question, "Who was the American general at the Battle of Yorktown?" Two out of three graduates of the top 50 US universities didn't pick George Washington, according to a 1999 telephone survey cited by The New York Times.

John Tomasi, professor of political science, was first invited by Brown's administration to organize a Constitution Day event. Instead of merely discussing the document's history, his proposal would have examined the new mandate as well as Brown's relationship to the federal government. It was eventually vetoed.

Brian Casey, assistant provost, said the lecture that was chosen in place of Tomasi's provided more flexibility for changing interests in the future. The administration wanted as open-ended a program as possible, he said, so that over the next years different disciplines could give their perspective relating to the constitution, Casey said.

A Meta Proposal

Tomasi's proposal would have consisted of three brief talks. The first would have discussed the relationship between private universities and the federal government, specifically outlining the amount of direct and indirect funding certain institutions receive. The University received $73 million from government grants and contracts for the 2005 fiscal year, according to the Brown website. That amounted to 13 percent of Brown's total revenue.

The second talk would have been given by a legal expert on the Constitution, and would explain why the federal government already claims to regulate certain aspects of private universities, like hiring practices and environmental testing on construction projects.

Lastly there would have been an open discussion about the constitutionality of the day, and what "other sorts of regulations of private universities might be permitted/sought beyond the requirement of Constitution Day," Tomasi wrote in his proposal.

In the absence of this discussion, Tomasi is asking numerous questions about the intellectual opportunity Brown forfeited by not bringing the issue of Constitution Day to the forefront of a campus-wide event. "Why not bring out information, detailed information, about the degree to which Brown is genuinely a private institution, or the degree to which Brown has slipped into becoming a public institution?" he said. "What price does Brown pay as an educational organization by accepting public money? Does it limit the kind of discussions we can have? Can we even discuss the degree to which we've become quasi-public?"

Vanderbilt College in Tennessee held a panel similar to Tomasi's proposal. Their dean of law school, Ed Rubin, and other law professors debated the constitutionality of Constitution Day. "This requirement passed without hearings and without any discussion," said Rubin in the speech. "It amounts to forced speech, which means that we're required to celebrate the Constitution by violating it." Another law professor at Vanderbilt, Rebecca Brown, cited a recent survey of 100,000 high school seniors where only half of them said that newspapers should be able to publish freely without government approval of stories. "We need Constitution Day," Brown said, as reported in Vanderbilt's daily newspaper.

Hillsdale College in Michigan is one of the only colleges in the nation not required to celebrate Constitution Day under the new law. Their history of independence stems from the 1970s, when, according to their website, the government used federal aid to its students as a "pretext for interference in the College's internal affairs." In response Hillsdale trustees issued two resolutions, one of which read: " the College, 'with the help of God,' would resist, by all legal means, any encroachments on its independence." After a series of court cases and appeals, Hillsdale stopped accepting federal money in 1984, when all colleges whose students accepted federal aid were required to fulfill federal requirements. If they still received government money, Hillsdale claims that federal aid to their college would amount to around $5 million a year.

"The Constitution mandate is one of a long chain, but it is also a link of a new color," Tomasi said. "It goes to the question about what we teach at Brown, and who decides what we teach, and when we teach it. The government left us free to teach about the Constitution how we wanted, for which I'm thankful, but it doesn't change the fact that the government is telling the University what to teach, and when to teach it. And we have acquiesced to that. Whether or not we should accept that, we as a University community have missed the opportunity to have an open conversation about it," Tomasi said.

Brown And The Feds

Michael Vorenberg, a professor of History who teaches a class on American legal and Constitutional history in the spring, agreed that the new law is unusual because it dictates the content of education, as opposed to aspects like hiring procedures or admissions policies that the government already has some control over.

The law is open-ended enough to allow educational institutions to respond in a range of ways appropriate to their needs, Vorenberg said. However, historic precedents were set during the First World War and the Cold War, when public institutions were told to teach nationalistic lessons like reciting the preamble to the Constitution. Incidents like this are important to remember, he said. They keep the current situation in context, Vorenberg added.

Vorenberg also cautioned that although, as a historian, he appreciated a lecture series on the Constitution, a federal mandate—even an open ended one—diverted resources away from other possible forums. At a private institution, Vorenberg said, it is up to the educational institution, following the norms and the laws it has created, to dictate content issues. "If Brown decides to have a Constitution Day every September, fine, there are good reasons to do that," he said. "But if it has to abide by a federal government, we might find a lecture series there that wouldn't be otherwise," Vorenberg said.

Casey said there is "an enormous hunger for serious intellectual discussions about civic order" at Brown. He cited a lecture on "Civil Liberties in Wartime" given by Geoffrey Stone, dean of the University of Chicago's law school, as the impetus for Wood's lecture because it drew unexpected crowds.

Wood's lecture attracted several hundred people with less than a week's notice, Casey said, so the implementation of Constitution Day was seen by the administration as one more chance to meet existing demand for lectures on that topic at Brown. Students at Wood's lecture were informed of the need to comply with federal law, but Provost Robert Zimmer claimed the idea for a lecture series was in place following Stone's talk at Brown last fall.

If the University were to take any action concerning the new law, it would act in concert with other "leading research institutions," Casey said. He added that the Association of American Universities, of which Brown is a member, would discuss and respond to the legislation.

Future Constitution Days could encompass lectures from a wide variety of disciplines, including literature and anthropology, Casey said, and could also unite Providence communities. Next Constitution Day, the students at Moses Brown high school will be informed of Brown's event and will be invited to attend, along with other Rhode Island college students.

It's difficult to be against Constitution Day—who doesn't want Americans to be informed citizens, conscious of their rights? But for colleges and universities, the federally mandated event raises new questions about the bargain educational institutions make with the federal government when they accept its dollars. To what extent can their curricula then be imposed? If future Constitution Day events are less celebratory, perhaps they will explore such questions, as Tomasi originally proposed.

Sunisa Nardone B'07 prefers pistols at noon to the Federalist Papers at high noon.

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