Mercy and truth have met together
Mercy and truth have met together; * righteousness and peace have kissed each other (Ps 85:10)
Inform your conscience
Responsible engagement in social ethics calls Christians to follow their conscience. And before even that, to inform their conscience.
We live in an age where everybody wants to claim they have the truth. The facts are on their side. God is on their side. They're on the “right side of history.” It all gets a little silly, but even if it's silly, the stakes can be high.
They do not know, neither do they understand; they go about in darkness; *
all the foundations of the earth are shaken. (Ps 82:5)
My method for informing my conscience about this and other issues has two main elements. First, engaging the worship of the church week-by-week and day-by-day. Participating in the Holy Eucharist on Sunday, saying the daily office each day, and practicing holy reflection in solitude and community. It's the Prayer Book Pattern, the three fold rule of prayer.
One’s first duty is adoration, and one’s second duty is awe and only one’s third duty is service. And that for those three things and nothing else, addressed to God and no one else, you and I and all other countless human creatures evolved upon the surface of this planet were created. We observe then that two of the three things for which our souls were made are matters of attitude, of relation: adoration and awe. Unless these two are right, the last of the triad, service, won’t be right. Unless the whole of your...life is a movement of praise and adoration, unless it is instinct with awe, the work which the life produces won’t be much good. (Evelyn Underhill)
Second, I read two or three sources on the issue. I seek sources that disagree with one another. I’m not looking for the article that is “right” on the issue; even as they disagree with one another each may touch on something that is true. I believe that's the best most of us can do. None of us gets to claim we have the full truth. That is God's work..
What are we to make of the battle between the administration and Harvard University?
I’m taking today’s news about Harvard University as an example. Here are three articles posted today. They see the issue from different perspectives. If you are to “inform your conscience” you need to begin by, for at least this moment, setting aside the part of you that wants to decide which article is the truth. Seek something true in each. Just give it a try.
“Harvard Had It Coming. That Doesn’t Mean Trump Is Right.”
This was written bu Charles Lane in the Free Press. He assumes that the Trump administration has no right to engage the University in this manner.
Lane wrote that for the administration’s action to be legitimate it “has to follow the law, and under the relevant civil rights statute—Title VI—the government is required to formally document allegations such as those the administration is making against Harvard, and to cut funding only to the specific programs that have been found to discriminate. The Trump administration has yet to do that.”
He goes on to note that Harvard’s resistance isn’t all that total as the University softened its response. The first message that Harvard “will not negotiate over its independence or constitutional rights.” An amended statement said that Harvard “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”
What about the “Harvard had it coming idea?’ He lists a series of ways in which Harvard failed to take responsible action. I’ll take his comment on antisemitism to illustrate. Lane begins by criticizing the Trump administration suggesting that it would have been appropriate to give Harvard some credit for positive steps it had taken since coming under pressure… over its feckless response to anti-Israel campus protests and antisemitic incidents on campus.” He goes on to say, “And yet any sympathy for Harvard has to be tempered by the knowledge that the school—and others like it—brought much of their current predicament on themselves. …. And of course, this is a university whose response to antisemitism on its campus includes a high-level task force that has still not published final recommendations more than a year since Garber established it.”
Why Harvard decided to fight Trump
An article in today’s New York Times quoted Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.” The administration position was that the school had “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.” The Government had issued two statements, the first relatively mild, much like what Columbia had agreed to, the second that the Times described as vague, broad and intrusive. Harvard’s “no” came in response to that second statement that went beyond an initial concern about antisemitism at Harvard, now asking for actions to end what they saw as a left-wing tilt. Harvard was now arguing that this was about the independence of the university. It appears that Harvard also came to the conclusion that it could not trust the administration to negotiate in good faith.
The article positioned the government as making this about the civil rights laws and the university administration making it about its institutional independence. The piece also took note that some faculty and students were looking at this as a struggle about authoritarianism and democracy.
“The Right Is Winning the Battle over Higher Education.”
Christopher Rufo writing for the Free Press said, “The argument is straightforward: Racial discrimination is wrong whether it targets whites, Asians, and Jews, or blacks and Hispanics. Any institution that continues to discriminate based on race is ineligible for federal support.” He makes ther case this way, “elite universities have institutionalized discrimination against disfavored racial groups, implemented DEI policies based on racial rewards and penalties, hired and promoted faculty according to skin color rather than merit, and overseen racially segregated student programs, dormitories, and graduation ceremonies.”
Rufo thinks that position is “the winning argument.” He notes that “Americans support a “color-blind society” over a “race-conscious society” by a margin of more than three to one. Even in left-wing states like California and Washington, voters have consistently passed ballot initiatives showing that they reject racial discrimination in college administration.”
One additional element - Free Speech?
This morning’s email from The Tablet (it’s not on The Tablet’s website) added this to the story, “In a Monday letter, the university’s lawyers, including former Special Counsel Robert Hur, alleged that the White House’s demands were unlawful and promised that “the university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional [First Amendment] rights.” The nod to free speech is nice and stirring and all, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t note that in the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s 2025 Free Speech rankings, Harvard finished last out of 254 schools, with a score of 0.00 out of 100.” The email offered a letter from David Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason University, that provided examples from the FIRE report -70% of Harvard students believed that shouting down the speaker is at least sometimes justified, and nearly a quarter of students say the same thing about using violence to shut down a speaker.” He went on to report on students saying that they sometimes self censored and on a series of actions that Harvard administrators and faculty had taken to suppress the speech of others.
This aspect of the story seems important as much of the popular debate on the issue has framed this as a matter of free speech.
What now?
Try this. Take a walk. Read a novel. Say your prayers. Do something other than allowing yourself to play God by making a quick determination on what is truth and justice. Unless you’re one of the judges hearing cases related to this — your judgment can wait. And as the judges know, before they make a decision, they may take a walk, read a book and maybe even say their prayers.
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)
This abides.
Brother Robert, OA