President Mark Schlissel urged graduates to learn from a “horrible mistake” in U-M’s past and to “use the breadth of your University of Michigan education” when debating important issues, including one he said is “fundamental to things we hold dear as educated members of society.”

“It is the question of how we treat freedoms when there are real or perceived threats to our safety,” Schlissel told the Winter Commencement audience gathered Sunday afternoon at Crisler Center.

“As a nation, we are struggling mightily with the tensions in trying to balance our constitutional rights and shared values with our sense of safety, in our communities, on our campuses, all the way to the level of national security.”

Those tensions play out as some people react to terror attacks with proposals that Schlissel said are “rooted in Islamophobia,” not unlike actions that led to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the political persecution of suspected Communists in the 1950s.

“History teaches us moments such as these — these right now — are when we are most likely to bow to fear, to sacrifice our freedoms and rights in return for a perceived increase in safety and security,” the president said.

“But history tells us another story too — that we can learn from our mistakes.”

That, the president said, is the lesson to be drawn from the case of three U-M professors — H. Chandler Davis, Clement Markert and Mark Nickerson — who in 1954 were suspended for refusing to testify before a panel of the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Schlissel quoted from U-M alumnus Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” — which had opened a year earlier, in 1953 — to illustrate how, at that time, America viewed the search for Communists in stark terms, driven by fear.

In the play, an allegorical tale that uses the 17th-century Salem witch trials to symbolize American attitudes during the early days of the Cold War, a character declares, “You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between.”

Such was the political atmosphere in the 1950s, Schlissel said.

“You were considered either with the Communists or against them, and if you were a Communist, you were automatically considered a threat to public safety and no longer guaranteed the fundamental protections of our Constitution.

“There was no road between.

“Although punishment for one’s beliefs is antithetical to the mission of the academy, where we espouse the values of academic, intellectual and expressive freedoms in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, many campuses succumbed to the scare-mongering and demagoguery of the McCarthy era.

“The University of Michigan, unfortunately, was no exception.

“The hysteria of the Red Scare reared its head, right here, on the Michigan campus. And we made a mistake. We did this despite being armed with the warning presented in ‘The Crucible.'”

Although Markert subsequently was reinstated by U-M, the university fired Davis and Nickerson.

“This was a horrible mistake,” Schlissel said. “In 1954, the university ignored both constitutional rights and long-held academic values. … As members of the University of Michigan Class of 2015, I hope you can do better than our community did in 1954.”

The episode spurred U-M’s Faculty Senate to create the annual Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this fall. And while painful to hear about, the incident offers an opportunity to “extract a lesson of great relevance today,” Schlissel said.

“It seems as if every problem we confront these days is being debated in absolutist terms, pitting rights, freedoms and values against a desire for safety, creating false dichotomies that one must be either for or against,” Schlissel said.

He urged the graduates to show “we can disagree without demonizing and debate without demagoguery.”

“All of you can use the breadth of your University of Michigan education to help others explore issues from multiple perspectives, as you have in your classes and conversations here. You can elevate these important debates to a level that is substantive, far removed from demagoguery, to one that is worthy of the great investment you have made in your education,” Shlissel said.

“We need your thoughtful engagement, as graduates of the University of Michigan, as leaders and best, to carry these ideas forward.

“I implore you to help us find that road between, to always remember that our rights and freedoms are our most precious and vulnerable gifts, and to lead us to a better future as you go discover, go achieve, go serve, and Go Blue!”

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