To the Editor:
Perhaps the great formulation of 20th century world jurisprudence was the "crime against humanity," a catch-all term used to embrace acts of genocide and human massacre that so far exceeded the idea of war crime that new standards of justice were needed, if only they could be consistently applied. Crimes against humanity rob people, usually large numbers of them, of fundamental human liberties.
I would suggest that in the 21st century, we add a new formulation to the human lexicon, the "crime against civilization," which would be defined as follows: a crime against civilization is an act that robs humankind of its immortality.
These are most easily defined by example. Historically, to have used the Parthenon as an ammunition dump was irresponsible; to punch a doorway through Leonardo's Last Supper was arrogant; to shell and burn the National and University Library at Sarajevo was a callous and deliberate evil; and to attack Michelangelo's Pieta with a ball peen hammer the work of a madman. Each in its way was a crime against civilization. In each case, what was lost or spoiled was a measure of humankind's immortality, and the damage was not susceptible to normal valuation. Such things have occurred throughout history, and the collective loss has been incalculable.
A work of art is qualitatively different from almost any other product of human ingenuity because its value transcends that of the labor that went into its creation. Art conveys a vision, one that enhances life in ways neither easily describable nor enumerable. A world without Mozart and Michelangelo and Molire and Melville would be a poorer one, not because we wouldn't still have investment banking or SUVs or beer, but because we would know less about ourselves. Civilization, at least one aspect of it, depends upon the enlightened self-examination artists provide.
The student artists whose work was ruined last week put a measure of their souls into their creations and no amount of "moving on from here" can replace that loss. Despoiling an artist's work, even the halting explorations of a youthful artist still groping toward finding a voice, cuts to the quick. Not a few artists have likened their work to children. All art is not great. But all art has value in that it reflects humankind's attempts to define itself. And because there can be no total quality management programs in the arts, we need that 99 percent in order to generate the less than 1 percent that will survive.
"Criminal mischief" does not begin to describe the harm wrought. We ought to recognize that the destruction visited upon the studio art department and its students was an attack on the idea of the College itself.
