One professor will probably cringe the next time he hears Chancellor Nancy Cantor herald her efforts to diversify the campus.

If it really bothers him, he’ll go home and publish an essay on the Internet, criticizing her policies and the direction he thinks Cantor is taking Syracuse University.

That professor is Laurence Thomas, known for his eccentric and often unorthodox energy while lecturing on ethics and value theory in Philosophy 191, one of the most popular classes on campus since he came to SU in 1990. Thomas also maintains a Web log at www.moralhealth.com, where he criticized Cantor twice in the past week and a handful of other times in the last two years.

‘If I write about something, it’s about something that moves me,’ Thomas said in an interview. ‘I don’t like the chancellor’s policy on diversity. Some people like it; I don’t.’

In a post just before the end of the spring semester, he argued that Cantor promotes diversity just for diversity’s sake. Thomas asked: If there’s a lack of intellectual excellence, what difference does it make whether those involved are diverse or not?

On Tuesday, Thomas noted the difference between a university having a diverse population that interacts and one in which students separate into racial and ethnic groups. He says the latter is the case at SU.

Cantor denied many of Thomas’ claims and said she never spoke with him about his public opposition. She said she was not aware of the blog and didn’t read it until The Daily Orange gave her the Web address earlier this week.

James Duah-Agyeman, SU’s director of multicultural affairs and chief diversity officer, would not comment before this story was published. He said he will craft a response to Thomas’ arguments in the coming week.

By publicly criticizing Cantor and the university, the philosophy professor not only opens for debate his own arguments, but the faculty’s ability to criticize the administration – which was precisely the topic of Thomas’ entry posted on Aug. 24.

‘Imagine a university where people – faculty and students alike – do not (feel) free to wrestle with ideas and to engage in rich discussions about alternative points of view,’ Thomas started in his post. ‘You will have imagined Syracuse University.’

He went on to say Cantor is not open to criticism of her diversity policies and said in a world as politically correct as SU, questioning such liberal beliefs could bring suspicions of racism, sexism or homophobia. Thomas referred specifically to the Hill TV incident in fall 2005, in which the chancellor closed the student-run TV station for airing racial humor.

But Thomas said he’s too smart to be affected by such name-calling. What’s more, he’s black, so charges of racism don’t stick as well, Thomas said. ‘It’s an immunity that I wouldn’t have if I were white,’ he said in an interview.

‘People can claim climate on anything,’ Cantor said in an interview. ‘I think it’s very important to have vigorous debate. I also believe in vigorous leadership. It’s what I’ve been hired to do.’

The chancellor added that no professor has ever told her that he or she didn’t feel like they could speak out.

And as for the argument that her opposition was silenced during the Hill TV incident: ‘I just don’t agree with it.’ There was lots of dissent, Cantor said.

Of the dissenters was Joel Kaplan, associate dean of graduate studies at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

After reading Thomas’ blog posted on Aug. 24, Kaplan agreed with the philosophy professor on almost all counts.

‘The atmosphere is bad,’ Kaplan said. ‘There’s an atmosphere that you can say what you want, so long as it’s what we want you to say.’

A person in Cantor’s situation should be able to take criticism, he said.

But Kaplan, like Cantor, said a vocal opposition was not so hard to come by, at least not at Newhouse. He also said while others may have been frightened, tenured professors who don’t support her policies have not been criticized publicly or directly.

To have tenure means the university has guaranteed permanent employment to that professor and the reasons the professor can be fired are severely limited. Both Thomas and Kaplan are tenured professors.

‘She can control a lot,’ Thomas said of Cantor, ‘and that’s what makes my blog so important – because she can’t control that.’

The notion of tenure was challenged this summer at the University of Colorado when Professor Ward Churchill filed a lawsuit for being ousted. Churchill caused a public outcry when he published an essay comparing Sept. 11 victims to Nazis, but Colorado didn’t dismiss the ethics-studies professor for his statements. The school instead said it found plagiarism and fabrication in his research. Churchill claims the university didn’t look into the case until after his Nazi comparison.

As for Thomas’ blog, he bought the Web site himself and began writing in March 2005. Until recently, posts about his job at SU have been few and far between.

Children left in cars, the morality of gossip and the recent sex scandal surrounding Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) are topics Thomas wrote about in the last month. He said he tries to update the blog at least three times weekly, whether in Syracuse or Paris, where he spent much of the summer and frequently travels during the school year.

Thomas said he gets about 3,500 hits daily. Not until this week had he gotten a response from faculty at SU. And during the summer, he said few, if any, knew he kept a blog.

‘It’s not one of the things I mention to people as part of the things I do,’ Thomas said this summer.

But the site may have a growing importance on campus, and he said he hopes it will bring about change.

‘Sometimes your most vociferous critic can be just the right person to help you get things done,’ Thomas said.

Published on August 30, 2007 at 12:00 pm