It's no surprise that we can still feel the ripples of former President Jimmy Carter's visit to campus. What is shocking, however, is the direction some of these ripples have taken.An unfortunate facet of a private university is its dependence on donors--something that permits ideologues with misplaced ideas of what a university should be to advocate a financial boycott by benefactors.

Although unconfirmed by the Brandeis administration, the New York-based Jewish Week reported last month that some major donors have cut ties to the University because of Carter's visit. If that's true, it's disturbing to see some benefactors approach this most sensitive of subjects without an understanding of its nuances. Although Carter's visit was not "official"--that is to say, sponsored by the administration as commencement speakers are-many bloggers, commentators and, most unfortunately, alumni have reacted as if it was.

Regardless of whether there has been a donor bolt, right-leaning figures like Morton Klein, the director of the Zionist Organization of America, and Daniel Pipes, a fervently pro-Israel pundit, have over the last year called on donors to "rethink" contributing to Brandeis--that is, to rethink helping to sponsor the educations of 5,000 students, the scholarship of 500 faculty and the research of 25 centers-as long as University President Jehuda Reinharz is in charge.

All this, because there's intellectual nonconformity at--gasp!--a university, an institution of higher (i.e., students don't automatically believe everything they're told anymore) learning.

Klein, who makes much of the fact that Louis Brandeis once headed his organization, often claims how "disappointed" the Justice would be by what Klein sees as anti-Zionist trends. He began his extended tirade last year by calling for the firing of Crown Center Senior Fellow Khalil Shikaki because of his alleged ties to terrorism. He has continued because Reinharz brokered a partnership with the Palestinian university Al-Quds; because playwright Tony Kushner was awarded an honorary degree; because the "Voices of Palestine" exhibit went up (before it went down); because Prof. Natana DeLong-Bas (NEJS) is an alleged "apologist" for Al-Qaeda; and now because President Carter appeared and the administration is attempting to hinder the march of outside controversial speakers, including Pipes.

But Klein and others would do well to recall that Louis Brandeis said that "in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress," and that "the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

It must be remembered--by anyone thinking about cutting off funds or advocating such a step--that the best universities have only one ideological mission: to pursue scholarly excellence. I'm loathe to open up old wounds, but the problem with an institutionally religious university is that ideology is implied. Brandeis best serves the Jewish community by being a bastion of the study of Judaism, and not through being a bastion of Judaism itself.

Yet elements of the Brandeis and wider Jewish communities want to prevent the liberalization of the University. Because our traditionally Jewish-sponsored-yet-nonsectarian University has hosted and still hosts views that are not firmly behind Israel, some individuals, "well-meaning but without understanding," are trying to use the power of the purse to get what they want.

By advocating and trying to impose ideological conformity, Pipes, Klein and those who adhere to their call to arms are thrusting politics on an academic setting. The political polarization currently plaguing the country must not be allowed to enter a learning environment. The world is not cast in black and white, and inflicting such a view upon a university will stunt its capacity to produce top-notch scholarship.

The nature of an open society dictates that within the free market of ideas, the stronger argument will prevail. If the right-wing views of Israel are the "correct" ones, when met by liberal pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, or even "Islamist" views, the former will stand firm-so there should be nothing to worry about. Spoon-feeding undergraduates an ideology will either stunt them intellectually or make them rebel.