Not “The Lobby’ again!

Sounds like yet another “Lobby” conspiracy theory.

JBM, at 6:40 am EDT on June 16, 2006

I normally just pass through these web pages as a very interested reader. However, I must comment, even if that comment is only tangent to the subject, on the quote referenced above: “the academy stands today as one of the last spaces in America where the democratic ideas that shape the social, economic and political fabric of the nation can be openly and independently debated on the basis of their merits and without coercion or distortion from vested economic and political interests.” I have three degrees and speaking only for myself and based on my experiences in three otherwise fine universities, I have been a student in more than one class where I feared for my grade if I spoke openly. I have not felt these types of constraints in discussions in my workplace, my church or my home. Whether it is changing times or perhaps the changing nature of what I was studying, the frequency of classes with this type of environment increased each yea

MikeS, at 7:25 am EDT on June 16, 2006

On connecting dots where none exists....

Dean Jones paranoid essay is an excursion into yet another “vast right wing conspiracy” theory that exists only between the ears of the beholder. Intellectual diversity among faculty is a worthy goal from both an educational and empirical perspective.

It is not a Big Lie to illuminate the obvious leftward tilt of most, but not all, faculties in higher education. For example, it is a statement of empirical fact that 95% of all campaign contributions from the Yale faculty went to John Kerry in 2004. Now I am sure that the same can be said with respect to George Bush about the faculty of Bob Jones University. The real point of the matter is that Bob Jones has a stated right wing agenda while Yale, supposedly, does not.Only when the left finally admits to the obvious can honest reform happen in higher ed in terms of the politics of the academy.

feudi pandola, at 8:30 am EDT on June 16, 2006

variety of opinions

Having spent time on a number of college campuses, and, much time in the United States, I am always confused by people like Jonathan Cohen. Has this leftist cabal of university faculty really twisted the knowledge base of Americans? Are all college graduates truly raving left-wingers? Have no conservative students gradauated from American universities in the past half-century? Are there truly no right-wing academics?

Most of what Mr. Cohen wants professors to teach is what the majority of Americans seem to agree with (if polls can be believed), and so, anyone with an understanding of education (as opposed to indoctrination) would know that it is vital for university faculties to challenge those assumptions, and get their students to see both sides. Considering the overwhelming tendency of the US mass media to conform to right-wing opinion, this requirement of opinions which dissent from the government line is essential.

What the conservative activist groups want is really compliance, or at least the ability of their right-wing-raised children to opt out of being intellectually challenged. They want home-schooling control over their children’s education while gaining the “prestige” of a degree from a known university. This is joined to a federal government that actively seeks to squelch informed argument or challenge to their policies (note that yesterday they sued New Jersey’s attorney general to stop him from attempting to protect citizen privacy — really to stop a discussion of these practices). These two movements are joined together by a small group of political marketing folks as detailed in this article.

Universities will (or at least should) always be “ahead of the general population.” A society with a conservative university system would be a society going nowhere. Mr. Cohen and others want faculty to be followers. I want them to be leaders.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 9:05 am EDT on June 16, 2006

Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned

One of the surest ways to know that you’ve hit paydirt is when right-wingers start playing the “conspiracy theory” card. This, of course, is their way of dismissing an argument without ever having to engage it. A good rule of thumb is that the earlier conservatives start shreiking about “conspiracy theories", the weaker their argument is.

Thus, we shouldn’t take them seriously until they answer the following questions:

1. Specifically, what statements in Dean Jones’s essay are factually incorrect?

2. Do you deny the existence of the Bradley, Scaife, or Olin Foundations?

3. Do you deny that these foundations (assuming you believe they exist) have a conservative political agenda?

4. Do you deny that Horowitz, ACTA, etc., receive funding from these and/or similar organizations and individuals?

Of the people posting above, the only one who (in effect) stipulates to the facts contained in Dean Jones’s article is Jonathan Cohen, who argues that these foundations and the organizations they fund somehow “provide balance and equilibrium” to the supposedly left-wing academy. Unfortunately, his comments also put words in Dean Jones’s mouth that are nowhere even remotely suggested by the Dean’s article. I would be curious to learn the basis on which Cohen seems to know that,

“Dean Jones would simply dismiss the views of Heather McDonald and the writers for City Journal on the issues of crime and policing, the views of Victor Davis Hanson on the need for a common civic culture, the views of Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Roger Clegg or Ward Connerly on affirmative action, the views of Christine Sommers on gender feminism, and the views of most religions on abortion, marriage and sexuality.”

If Cohen knows the Dean personally, he should say so. If he possesses psychic powers, he ought to share that with us, too.

In the meantime, I look forward to seeing how the ACTA blogger spins this one. But I’m not holding my breath. ACTA seems to prefer ripping apart strawmen to engaging in any real dialogue with their critics.

But if ACTA is looking to respond to Dean Jones’s article, I have a very simple suggestion: they should list on their website who all of their contributors are (including foundations), and how much money they have received from each one. Sunlight, after all, is the best disinfectant, right ACTA?

If they can demonstrate that they have never received funding from the organizations mentioned in this article, and/or similar foundations that were unmentioned, then I will begin to take them seriously. If they cannot, then I think it’s time for the ACTA blogger to stop telling us that we are “confus[ing] ACTA’s work with the work of advocating outside regulation of colleges and universities". Because, you know, if you walk like a duck, quack like a duck, and take money from all the duckiest foundations, then you shouldn’t cry “fowl” when we call you out.

The ACTA blogger once accused me of “opining in paranoid terms about what’s wrong with ACTA’s work". Well, here’s your chance, ACTA blogger. Show me I’m paranoid. Show us that Dean Jones is totally up a tree. Prove once and for all that all this talk of right-wing foundations is just a big conspiracy theory.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 9:10 am EDT on June 16, 2006

Eroding Rather than Promoting Academic Freedom

When people such as Horowitz claim to be pressing for academic freedom I am stunned. Many of my friends who are professors of Middle East history or politics have begun tape recording their classes and meetings with students so that they will be able to vindicate themselves if accused of various sorts of bias or intimidation. They also do so to avoid being quoted out of context or quoted incorrectly. It is not that all persons critical of the policies of the Israeli government or the Bush administration make the blanket assumptions stated in one of the previous comments (i.e. that Israel is responsible for violence in the Middle East). The problem is that if one is at all critical of US or Israeli policy, they are now labeled by persons like Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer and Horowitz as “anti-American” or “anti-semetic". Even as a student going to lectures on campus, I am afraid to voice even the most basic criticisms of the Israeli government in particular for fear that I too will attract the use of such labels. It is becoming fully acceptable to demonize the regime in Iran, for example, but then it’s a violation of some sort of academic freedom to criticize the US or Israeli government. This asymmetry is astounding to me. I would love to know how the growing environment of fear, suspicion and accusations promoted by Pipes, Horowitz, etc. can in any way be understood as promoting a freedom.

amanda, at 9:30 am EDT on June 16, 2006

Does anyone else see irony in the fact that, in a discussion of academic freedom, so many of the participants feel the need to hide behind pseudonyms? The irony seems clear in the suggestion that “Sunlight, after all, is the best disinfectant,” posted by the pseudonymous “Unapologetically Tenured.”

David Nelson, Cochise College, at 11:00 am EDT on June 16, 2006

Conservatives have done so for years

“Many of my friends who are professors of Middle East history or politics have begun tape recording their classes and meetings with students so that they will be able to vindicate themselves if accused of various sorts of bias or intimidation. They also do so to avoid being quoted out of context or quoted incorrectly.”

Multiple conservatives I know in the universities (not just in Middle East studies) have taped their classes for years for this reason.

JBM, at 11:20 am EDT on June 16, 2006

Anonymity and Irony

David Nelson (presumably his real name) says the following:

“Does anyone else see irony in the fact that, in a discussion of academic freedom, so many of the participants feel the need to hide behind pseudonyms? The irony seems clear in the suggestion that ‘Sunlight, after all, is the best disinfectant,’ posted by the pseudonymous ‘Unapologetically Tenured.’”

No, Mr. Nelson, that is my real name. I come from a long line of Tenureds, the “Tenureds of Madison County", we were called. “Unapologetically” was my mother’s maiden name.

Seriously, though, I have commented on my anonymity on another thread, so, for Mr. Nelson’s benefit, just a brief rehash:

“Why would a tenured person, supposedly protected by the veil of academic freedom and a ‘job for life’, worry about exposure? Gee, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I don’t want some group like ACTA to declare me ‘another Ward Churchill’ and alert the trustees and alumni of my home institution. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be a part of the witch hunt when Horowitz runs out of ideas and decides to publish ‘The 501 Most Dangerous Professors’.

“Yes, I’m tenured, and that will probably allow me to keep my job as long as I don’t say anything too offensive (which is not my style, anyway). But maybe I’m an Associate Professor who wants to get promoted. Maybe I’m an administrator who knows that I am only tenured in my role as a professor. Maybe I live in a state where the legislature is considering adopting post-tenure review, or perhaps even reconsidering the whole idea of tenure. Maybe I want to move to another school and I don’t want my potential future employers to Google me and decide that I’m ‘trouble’.”

In short, Mr. Nelson, there is nothing ironic at all about wishing to remain off the Horowitz/ACTA hit lists, especially now that we know that they have the capacity to destroy, or at least impede, careers. It is, indeed, this well-funded and ideologically-charged attack on academic freedom that causes so many of us to “hide behind pseudonyms".

So even though I will remain anonymous, I will happily answer the question I asked of the ACTA blogger:

No I am not currently funded by any foundations, left- or right-wing. My only source of income is the salary I draw from my employer, and, in my not entirely unbiased opinion, I earn every cent of it.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 11:40 am EDT on June 16, 2006

Jonathan Cohen’s comments are excellent I think... I am a homosexual male opposed to gay “marriage” and “multiculturalism” (and hear all those lines Jonathan wrote on a regular basis). However, rather than be considered “diverse perspectives,” my views are excoriated as hateful, uninformed, and inappropriate for a campus environment. Go figure....

J.P., JMU, at 1:45 pm EDT on June 16, 2006

In between WC games

Exactly K.T. The plethora, and vehemence, of right wing opinion on this site and others is rather conclusive proof that everything these groups are saying is nonsense. Few faculties are monolithic (though obviously Brigham Young and a few other conservative institutions would like it that way), and political opinion surely is weighted more one way in certain fields, more another in others (there are also a minority of far leftists among the US Army’s corps of colonels — that’s just the way things are).

But I also have truly seen little proof of anything the “right” is saying here. I can remember that one of my undergrad political science profs wrote “invalid opinion” on a paper I wrote arguing for Black Panther revival, and an undergrad econ prof told me, “we do not discuss socialism in this class,” but, perhaps I, like a typical adolescent, only recall the incidences where I was not allowed to do exactly what I wanted to do. In neither case did I run and complain, I dealt with it, got what I could out of the class, and moved on.

Please do, all those who insist that this is “the norm,” post your work on line and link us to it, so we can see both your scholarship and the ways in which it is “excoriated as hateful, uninformed, and inappropriate.” Right now all I hear is whining students complaining about teachers not agreeing with them. But if you are willing (or if David Horowitz is willing) to provide any proof of this widespread left-wing conspiracy, I will be happy to look at it and give it due consideration.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 2:40 pm EDT on June 16, 2006

Nancy, I assume you teach sciences not liberal arts.

In the 2000 election, Al Gore received a plurality of the votes, not a majority.

JTD, at 4:40 pm EDT on June 16, 2006

A golden rule

” .. I will be happy to look at it and give it due consideration.”

Oh, how nice. Just like the anti-Bush screed in Rolling Stone by R.F. Kennedy, Jr. The opposition offering judgment on the incumbent. Lots of objectivity and insight there.

Here’s a golden rule: those with the gold, rule. Growing numbers of taxpayers realize academia is grossly-biased to one political party. They’re going to withdraw their support for conventional funding of academia. Get used to it.

L.L., at 4:45 pm EDT on June 16, 2006

The level of the conversation here is truly depressing. I only wish that I could say that the unwillingness to offer an honest assessment of Jones’s arguments and evidence, along with the ad hominem attacks are stunning. Sadly, they are all too predictable in a political climate in which Horowitz’s assaults on academia are given creedence by state legislatures, despite a repeated failure to document even his most basic claims.

The one bright spot here is the article itself. Jones does a tremendous service by tracing the money behind the assualt on academic freedom. The perception of a liberal bias in the press, and of leftist academics run amok, is so widespread because the proponents of these persepectives have such dramatic access to the press. Nice to have a clearer sense of how their megaphones are purchased!

JM, at 5:20 pm EDT on June 16, 2006

The Jones article

In an earlier comment I made a list of opinions that I find act as a collection of orthodoxies within parts of academia. Some of these opinions I share and some I don’t.

Many of these views are neither left wing or right ways but simply opinions. My point is that there is a great deal of intolerance for opposing views and this is a problem in academia.

I have no idea what opinions Dean Jones has on these issues. My point is that the validity of the views of Heather McDonald are not determined by whether she works for the Manhattan Institute. The relevance of Shelby Steele’s contributions on the subject of race are independent of the fact that the Hoover Institute employs him. Likewise Sommers working at the American Enterprise Institute doesn’t tell you the worth of her ideas. Would her views be different if she was still teaching at a university.

These scholars produce important ideas about issues of crime prevention, race and gender and their writings are generally excluded from the readings in courses that deal with these subjects. They are not usually invited to give graduation speeches and they are not typically part of the list of favored campus speakers.

My experience is that academia has become increasingly insular and intolerant. This has nothing to do with who funds the Hoover Institute. I’m afraid that articles like the Jones piece are simply rationalizations for not facing the problem of bias.

Jonathan Cohen, at 6:30 pm EDT on June 16, 2006

The article mentions a piece by Cathy Young in the Boston Globe on liberal bias in academe. It then questions that judgment by noting Young’s connection with Reason Magazine, which is funded by the Reason Foundation, whose funders also support Horowitz and ACTA.

Here’s the problem with this dot-connecting. Reason Magazine has come out squarely against Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights.See http://www.reason.com/links/links021705.shtml and http://www.reason.com/links/links091703.shtml for the articles. Guilt by association is an easy way to avoid the substance of what people say.

mark, at 9:40 pm EDT on June 16, 2006

Dear Jonathan I think that if you are going to make a point such as “there is a great deal of intolerance for opposing views and this is a problem in academia” then you need to support it with evidence. Otherwise its an empty assertion. Simply repeating Mr. Horowitz’s and Ms. Neal’s assertions to that effect does not constitute evidence. As to your comments regarding the Manhattan Institute, the Hoover Intitution and the American Enerprise Institute and the independence of their scholars, you should refer to the mission statements of these organizations. Nowhere in the Academy will you find organizations whose ideological focus is as clearly defined as is in those statements. They were created by Scaife, Olin, Bradley and Koch precisely to introduce into the national debate,ideas consistent with that ideological perspective and there is nothing wrong with that as long as we all understand those constraints. The authors that you cite put forward ideas that have great worth in national policy debates but the content of those ideas is absolutely tied to the mission of the institutes that they work in. If it were otherwise, they would not be working there. The same can be said of David Horowitz and his relationship to the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and of Anne Neal and her relationship to ACTA. That condition is categorically not true of any faculty member who works at my institution.

Its difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it — Upton Sinclair — I, Candidate for Governor — 1935

Alan Jones, Dean of Faculty at Pitzer College, at 11:20 pm EDT on June 16, 2006

Nancy,If you are the same Nancy who posted earlier, I am surprised at your statements concerning the intolerance of conservatives. Your earlier posting implied that, in your personal experience at least, conservatives were tolerant of your views.

“I am an academic but I have never experienced academia as a place where I must be afraid to express a political viewpoint because of a liberal bias. This is the fantasy being promoted by Horowitz as an excuse to impose constraints on the existing freedoms of academic thought.” OK, so you are not afraid of expressing a liberal viewpoint. Liberals are tolerant of liberals by your statement here. No surprise.

“There is a mainstream view in my department. It is evangelical Christian, but when I expressed disinterest in accompanying them to church, they left me alone. That’s as it should be. I have never met anyone in academia remotely resembling Ward Churchil.” Great, you state here that the conservatives (assuming the Christians in your school could be described as conservative) in your school are tolerant. Now re read your last posting and see if yu accorde them the same courtesy.

“I am very worried about the assault on academic freedom being launched by the right wing because historically every dictator has attacked the intelligentsia in order to consolidate power. I think we need to heed Dr. Jone’s warning and be vigilant in protecting our universities because our universities protect the larger society.” Dictators, I believe, have come from the “left” (if you must label) as well as from the right.

Your last statements, if modified somewhat, more closely fits my views. The problems I read above, whether its I. Socal and his experience with socialismphobia or J.P.’s problem with being stereotyped, is from people who want ‘know the truth’.

For me and my kids, I don’t want a liberal or a conservative. Or someone who sees liberals or conservatives everywhere. I want someone who teaches facts and how to make something from those facts. Pretty extreme position in my views. In fact I could argue in favor of a teacher who is not tolerant of any extreme view and instead forces the class to examine both sides and strive for the middle that actually tends to keep society functioning. (I’m an engineer, not a social scientist so I’m sure this could have been expressed better)

R.Conlon, UCONN, at 11:20 pm EDT on June 16, 2006

REPLY TO WADE C

You’ve missed the point of my comment. I was not commenting on the question of the preeminence of American higher education. (Actually, I agree that American higher education is preeminent.) I was not commenting on the quality of Coles’s article. (I didn’t read it carefully, just scanned it to see what he wrote about this question.) But what I wrote is indeed correct. Almost all of Coles’s article is about academic freedom. He only mentions the preeminence of American higher education briefly, as part of his argument for academic freedom. He maintains that academic freedom contributes to this preeminence. (Actually, I agree with that, too.) But his article certainly does not contain a meticulous documentation of the preeminence of American higher education,nor does it claim to contain to contain that, and I stand by my comment that Jones mischaracterizes Coles’s article when he writes that it does.

math prof, at 6:05 am EDT on June 17, 2006

It Ain’t Me, Babe …

David Nelson writes, “Does anyone else see irony in the fact that, in a discussion of academic freedom, so many of the participants feel the need to hide behind pseudonyms? The irony seems clear in the suggestion that ‘Sunlight, after all, is the best disinfectant,’ posted by the pseudonymous ‘Unapologetically Tenured.’”

I was fired from my position of Associate Professor of Statistics and Management “Science” at a small, tier-five, private university last year for very strange reasons (the university, by the way, eschewed tenure in favor of three-year rolling contracts). Both the dean of my school and the vice president for academic affairs were recent appointees of the president without benefit of search committees. The school of business is named in honor of one of Virginia’s fine arch-conservative businessmen and legislators.

I had excellent teaching evaluations (by both students and faculty), an extensive service record, and a record of scholarship that was second or third best in the school of business. In any event, I am in my upper sixties and would like to teach, conduct my research, and write in an academic setting for another ten years. I am, as I write this, job hunting. You may be certain that ageism keeps at least as many exceptional teachers and scholars out of the classroom as conservatism bars one from a position in a sociology, psychology, or political science department. In addition, I like to — indeed, I feel compelled to as a function of being a scholar — take controversial positions on a broad range of issues.

One is not always successful at finding URLs at InsideHigherEd, so you may have some difficulty tracking down these articles (no big deal, just take my word for it). In response to a recent essay I admitted I was a big fan of suicide in many contexts, including as a solution to “life’s problems,“ and I stated it was likely that at some time in the future I would end my life by suicide …

Suicide on the Mind

In another I argued and presented some evidence that faculty plagiarism (and other profession dishonesty) is ubiquitous on American university campuses …

Truth and Consequences

On more than a few occasions I have claimed “…what I’m hoping for is a no president left behind initiative in 2008 that focuses attention and resources on, in my view, the most important issue facing Americans in the first half of this century … and that ain’t gay marriage … and it ain’t abortion on demand … and it ain’t stem cell research … and it ain’t a so-called academic bill of rights … and by God, it ain’t even terrorism or “spreading democracy around the world.”

Leopards in the Temple

In another I argued that a great many individuals choose academe as their life’s work essentially by virtue of the fact that it salves their insecurity at each stage of their career-choice decision-making …

The Apparently Bearable Unhappiness of Academe

In another I suggested (and rather forcefully I might add) that the reason for the failure of the American automobile industry is not external factors beyond their control; it is , first and foremost, mediocre management. And there is a plethora of mediocre managers because in American business schools there is no paradigm that drives theories of business administration …

Rethinking the MBA Curriculum

In another I made very extensive remarks about the extent to which I thought most Christ-centered colleges and universities were somewhat dishonest vis-a-vis their endorsement of academic freedom … and in the process admitted that I am a terminal agnostic …

Faith, Scholarship and the College Classroom

Enough’s almost enough. There are many more examples of my presenting unusual (extreme) points of view in the media, but not too long ago I addressed the issue of profanity in the classroom and even used the words “nigger,” “bitch,” and “fuck” in my discourse.

George Carlin Need Not Apply

So Professor Nelson, you may tell me that if I’m an untenured faculty member looking for a position in higher education, I should choose my battles more cautiously or, if not, I should at least adopt an inane or more abstract form of discourse.

I can assure you, that won’t work for me. I can also tell you that ageism is bad enough, I don’t need any more deans or vice presidents for academic affairs rejecting my applications because they Googled my name and discovered I actually have a brain. “Oh my, he won’t fit in here at Post-modern U … he apparently has a brain.”

And what about Unapologetically Tenured? … he has a job and he has tenure. I can’t say … but I would guess that if Jonathan Swift were writing comments for InsideHigherEd today, he’d probably be signing his name Professor Lemuel Gulliver.

RWH, at 6:10 am EDT on June 17, 2006

Reply to Alan Jones

Alan,

While it may be true that Heather McDonald, Shelby Steele, Victor Davis Hanson and Christine Sommers were employed by think tanks that like their views and wish to give them a platform to promote them, it is equally true that these scholars would hold them if they were teaching at universities. In particular, Sommers taught at Clark University, Steele taught at San Jose State, and Victor Davis Hanson taught at Fresno State for a long time while they were writing books expressing their views. The fact that they now are employed by conservative think tanks does not really have anything to do with whether their views are accurate or helpful to our society.

Ad hominem arguments are reasonable if they reflect on the reliability of the contents of the arguments being put forward but there is no reason to believe that these scholars have in anyway shaped their views in order to get hired by the various institutes you have mentioned.

But the question is not whether ideological think tanks seek individuals who promote their views, that issue is not in doubt. The question is whether an ostensibly more neutral institution, the university, is behaving in a similar fashion.

I have been at DePaul for almost nineteen years and been involved in faculty governance as a department chair and a member of the Faculty Council. I have participated in numerous meetings and evaluated countless proposals for everything from paid leaves, conferences, and graduation speakers to academic programs and general education requirements. I have seen how hiring decisions are made, how committees are set up and how they influence decision making in the university.

DePaul university celebrates the involvement of its faculty in public debate. The political science department recommended and the university agreed to hire one of the most severe critics of Israel, Norman Finkelstein, to among other things, teach the history and politics of the middle-east. He is very outspoken and his views are well known. He gives perhaps as many 30 speeches a year, mostly on college campuses, to audiences looking for criticism of Israel. He compares Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany and states categorically that the war of 1948 was an ethnic cleansing by Israel of the Palestinians. Furthermore, he generally omits any culpability by the Arabs in the discussion of responsibility for the violence in the conflict.

He has a right to his opinions and he is free to accept invitations to express them. But can you honestly say that DePaul’s hiring of Norman Finkelstein was any less political than the American Enterprise Institute’s hiring of Christine Sommers? The difference is that the American Enterprise Institute’s politics is out there on the table. DePaul is a university that claims to some level of objectivity and neutrality.

In the academic year 2000-2001 DePaul sponsored a series of lectures on Social Justice in the twenty-first century. The first speaker was Angela Davis and the second was Hurrican Carter. Doesn’t this suggest that DePaul is endorsing the views of a woman who spent much of her life defending the actions of the Soviet Union.

The scholars I mentioned above come up because I have urged my colleagues to include them in what they read and assign and have suggested two of them as graduation speakers. I volunteered to be part of a committee to select courses for a sophomore seminar on multiculturalism. I suggested that the critics of multiculturalism be included in the planning of this course and I was informed that my services would not be needed. I volunteered to join the university’s strategic planning committee on diversity and I was turned down. My impression was that I was turned down for these committees because my views did not conform to the prevailing orthodoxies.

These are a few examples. More important would be anecdotal evidence from conversations at faculty meetings discussing the issues of domestic partnerships, the distribution of condoms to students, the Catholic identity of the university, military recruiters on campus, anything about diversity, including hiring and program proposals and any discussions about general education. My colleagues show a level of ideological conformity that is in keeping with the list I made in an earlier comment.

You have asked for examples and I could certainly give plenty of them but this comment is already too long so let me just say that the criticisms of ACTA and David Horowitz would not resonate if they weren’t accurate.

One final note: I appreciate the producers of insidehighered.com for making available one of the few places on the web where a serious debate of views actually takes place.

Jonathan Cohen, at 1:20 pm EDT on June 17, 2006

Jonathan Cohen’s comments are among the few by conservatives here that present some credible knowledge of the academic profession and supporting evidence, to his credit. However, his claim that “the criticisms of ACTA and David Horowitz would not resonate if they weren’t accurate” is logically fallacious. Many views “resonate” with the public simply because they are propounded by special interests with enough money and power to saturate public discourse with ceaseless, “echo chamber” repetition of charges whose accuracy is dubious (as is the case with Horowitz’s charges, which have been demolished in several studies, such as freeexchangeoncampus.org, May 9, and mediamatters.com, April 18).

Furthermore, as I argued in “Money and Motives” (IHE, July 20, 2005), many conservatives, either out of guile or lack of knowledge, fail to recognize the difference between university scholars in the liberal arts, whose views are sometimes partisan but are the result of their own independent scholarship, and faculties whose research is funded by corporate interests, or the employees of corporate-funded think tanks who are essentially paid, like advertising or PR agents, to support the interests of their organizations’ sponsors.

Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times last year, “For the most part, people employed by right-wing think tanks don’t have to be specifically paid to support certain positions, because they understand that supporting those positions comes with the job. Senior fellows at Cato don’t decide, after reconsidering the issue, that Social Security shouldn’t be privatized. Policy analysts at the Heritage Foundation don’t take another look at the data and realize that farmers and small-business owners have nothing to gain from estate tax repeal. But it turns out that implicit deals between think tanks and the interests that finance them are sometimes, perhaps often, supplemented with explicit payments for punditry.” Krugman cites the cases of Peter Ferrarro, senior policy adviser at the Institute for Policy Innovation, and Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, who according to Business Week, “were paid by the ubiquitous Jack Abramoff to write op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff’s clients.”

Economist Bruce Bartlett lost his job at the National Center for Policy Analysis the minute he departed from that corporate-funded think tank’s Republican line to criticize President Bush’s disastrous economic policies.

Conservatives cannot or will not acknowledge that whatever liberal bias humanities faculties might have, they serve as a minimal counter-agent to the vast apparatus of conservative bias resulting from the billions of dollars corporations, the corporate wealthy, and foreign governments spend annually on public relations, advertising, lobbies, PACs, law firms, media ownership, foundations, think tanks, and advocacy organizations like Horowitz’s. The incessant attack by the right on the academic left is a red herring designed to distract public attention from this apparatus. The exposure, finally, of the corruption of politics by the vast network of corporate lobbies in which Abramoff and Tom DeLay were at the center makes glaringly clear the true proportions of who wields political and cultural power in America.

I second Professor Cohen’s gratitude to IHE for providing an ongoing public forum for debates like these.

Donald Lazere, at 3:20 pm EDT on June 17, 2006

Acting Up At ACTA

I certainly can’t speak to all of the research, analysis, and subsequent reports that constitute ACTA’s raison d’tet, but if the report presumably demonstrating the fact that Ward Churchill clones are ubiquitous within American higher education is par for their course, then I’m wondering what’s the big deal.

Last week I decided to bite the bullet and read the ACTA report … proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that I don’t have a life. Man, what a blast. Unless I’m mistaken, it proves nothing more than there are lots of folks in higher ed these days doing a lot of really weird (and probably interesting) things. By that I mean these folks must be thinking thoughts, formulating ideas, and participating in discussions I would not even have imagined. I’ll have to admit that were I an undergraduate these days, I would not be inclined to take many of the courses in the ACTA list … and both of my sons, recent graduates of the University of Michigan, managed to spend a total of eleven years there without taking a single course of that nature. On the other hand, I was not scandalized by what I read.

I imagine market forces are at play here, and those courses live or die on the basis of enrollment figures (student interest) … and that strikes me as being precisely how a community of scholars should function. Just for the Hell of it, I visited the Swarthmore College web-site to check out their courses on the ACTA list. In the English Literature Department I discovered (1) a remarkably interesting curriculum, (2) a wonderful likeness of the Cherokee scholar Sequoyah, (3) a group photograph of a very normal-looking collection of faculty, all smiling and none even remotely looking like Ward Churchill, and (4) the fact that “Legal Fictions in America” is not a required course. In other words, Swarthmore is not dragging its English Lit majors into the classroom, chaining them to their desks, and making them take notes in that apparently mind-altering class. The students choose to do it on their own.

Then I visited the Political Science Department to find the condemned “Public Service, Community Organization, and Social Change.” Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be found … perhaps the department is hiding it from public view. What I did find was (1) a very extensive curriculum that seemed, for the most part, to be “mainstream,” a quite standard set of requirements for their majors, (3) a very normal looking faculty (although not enough of them have personal web-sites), and (4) too many (in my view … 100%) with Ph.D.s from top-five political science programs.

I’ve got a tennis match an hour from now, so I can’t conduct that sort of “research” for all of the courses in the ACTA list — i.e., the ones that apparently prove a multitude of Ward Churchill look-a-likes are out there dominating the academic scene and corrupting the minds of our children. But I’d wager — and give significant odds — that I’d find pretty much the same thing at Carleton, Williams, Amherst, Michigan, Berkeley … i.e., at all of the schools in the ACTA list.

At least in this case, those guys and gals at ACTA appear to be spoiling for a fight ... and they seem to be quite belligerent in their efforts to get us to put on the gloves. Hmmm ... who was it who said something along the lines of “Never roll out a canon to squash an ant?”

RWH, at 5:30 pm EDT on June 17, 2006

Exactly NOT the point of universities

“Conservatives cannot or will not acknowledge that whatever liberal bias humanities faculties might have, they serve as a minimal counter-agent to the vast apparatus of conservative bias resulting from the billions of dollars corporations, the corporate wealthy, and foreign governments spend annually on public relations, advertising, lobbies, PACs, law firms, media ownership, foundations, think tanks, and advocacy organizations like Horowitz’s.”

You have fundamentally misunderstood the role of education and of faculty in colleges and universities. That misunderstanding is at the very root of efforts to reform the modern academy. As long as faculty mistake their work for a necessary “counter-agent” to political influence, that mistake makes them incapable of undertaking actual education. That mistake is exactly why those people cannot reform themselves.

JBM, at 9:25 pm EDT on June 17, 2006

Good Discussion

This has been a remarkably civil and respectful discussion. Let me see if I can contribute without changing the tone.

The reason I am so hard on ACTA is that I consider them disingenuous, at best. They have a baldfaced political agenda and they are not interested in a true dialogue with their opponents. Their ultimate purpose, in my opinion, is to defeat and de-fund the left, and the evidence they gather and present about “radicalism” on campus is carefully organized and cherry-picked to de-legitimize the academy in the eyes of the press and the public. The organized right, represented by ACTA and Horowitz, does not want to debate; they want to win.

Many of the people on this comment thread, by contrast, seem truly interested in exchanging views and understanding those of the other side. I have similarly benefited by learning how many of you view the academy.

It is hard to escape the fact that the vast majority of academics are politically left-of-center. I think that it’s simply a matter of self-selection, the same way that those choose careers as military officers tend to be conservative. Graduate students in the social sciences and humanities are overwhelmingly liberal and that is the pool from which faculty are selected.

I don’t doubt that the predominance of liberals on campus may result in an overrepresentation of liberal views in the classroom. But, for the most part, the expression of these views, when it occurs, is usually brief and incidental. The majority of faculty, myself included, try to remain as neutral as possible in our dealings with students.

Moreover, those faculty who do regularly interject their views into their lectures treat their students with respect and would never dream of penalizing them for holding differing opinions. As I’ve mentioned previously, I know of several overtly left-of-center professors who are very popular with their conservative students, because those students enjoy being challenged and giving as good as they get. Only people who have never set foot in these classes could ever consider them exercises in indoctrination.

As far as hiring and tenure decisions, I have never—never—heard a candidate’s ideology mentioned in any committee meeting. My Dept has hired both liberals and conservatives (yes, more of the former), but I only know that because of civil, respectful conversation we have had over the years.

If there is a problem in academia, it is simply not the one that ACTA describes.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 9:25 pm EDT on June 17, 2006

Clawmute and JBM seem to have a view of college education that is strangely divorced from its traditional goal of educating students for informed, critical citizenship.

I have taught English courses, mostly general-education requirements for non-majors, primarily in argumentative writing and critical thinking, in half-a-dozen colleges, public and private. The large majority of my students have identified themselves as coming from conservative communities and have acknowledged that their main sources of information are primarily their parents, peers, churches, and media like Fox News and talk radio. Far from “thinking for themselves” many of them simply parrot the views they have been indoctrinated with by these sources, by the political party that currently controls the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of federal government, the military, and the corporations and lucrative professions that most students hope to work for (whose vast propaganda apparatus I detailed in my last posting).

So why are conservatives so terrified by the thought that college students, perhaps for the only time in their lives, should be exposed to views that differ from those which control most other aspects of their lives? Teaching them to think for themselves begins with challenging them to question their own biases and those of their accustomed sources of information, and with presenting opposing, liberal or leftist scholarly or journalistic sources—whose views virtually all eventually admit that they have never really heard expressed systematically, by their proponents, as opposed to the straw-man distortions of them in conservative sources.

To be sure, it is a daunting pedagogical challenge to try to balance the scales against conservative indoctrination without lurching into the opposite form, or without appearing to. The most scrupulous efforts to do so, however, are unavoidably perceived by many conservative students, parents, and critics—whose own biases they are blind to—merely as “liberal bias.” And this misperception has been exploited by demagogues like David Horowitz and ACTA, who (as a mirror image of the straw-man faculty leftists they attack) themselves manipulatively incite ingenuous conservative students to wage complaints against any teachers who challenge their biases.

This is not to deny that some liberal or leftist teachers are less than totally scrupulous. Conservative attack groups, however, show little concern for distinguishing them from the most scrupulous, but deliberately erase any such distinction in their pursuit of headlines, political capital, foundation funding booty, and eliminating any remnant of opposition to right-wing control of American society.

Donald Lazere, at 1:55 pm EDT on June 18, 2006

Education is always political

Do you know what happens whenever there is a coup d’etat in Latin America? They shut down the universities. Do you know why Paulo Freire was imprisoned and expelled from Brasil? He was teaching the poor to read. Do you know why we prevented slaves from reading during US times of slavery? Knowledge is power, and we couldn’t let slaves have power.

My point is that education is always political, as is any use of language. Perhaps over-simplified, learning either prepares people to accept the status quo or to change it. This holds true in the “hard sciences’ as much as it does in the social sciences. (Should we accept disease or find a way to cure it? What science gets funded, what is discoursaged, ie, stealth bombers or environmental conservation.)

My colleague states that counter-hegemony is in itself hegemony. True, but shouldn’t the academy always challenge hegemony? Hegemony is acquiescence to power and the knowledge power endorses. The academy should always challenge power, whether it is on the right or the left. We should always challenge assumptions, not reify them.

One final note, I don’t believe right and left are legitimate ways of classifying faculty. We are a very diverse lot, including postpositivists, postmodernists, structuralists, poststructuralists, constructivists, and so forth. If you think we are all of the same mind, I recommend that you sit in a faculty meeting with a group of professors trying to make a decision. EVERY point and counterpoint will be challenged, scrutinized, and argued. Or at least it should be for quality decisionmaking to ensue. The neocons are trying to paint us as monolithic ideologues, but intellectually, we are extremely diverse. A brilliant political move on their behalf, as usual.

David Franklin Ayers, Assistant Professor at UNC Greensboro, at 6:20 pm EDT on June 18, 2006

Critical Thinking

JBM says:

“Finally, you are misrepresenting the concerns of people worried about political indoctrination replacing critical instruction in the schools. If people were actually teaching students to think critically, there would be no problem. But leftist political orthodoxies are so thoroughly not questioned that even sympathetic students cannot debate them intelligently. That refusal to question certain orthodoxies reveals a wholly different classroom goal, which is specifically political in nature, and which some posters have been candid about admitting.”

I have seen no posters admit that their purpose is leftist indoctrination. This quote reveals that “critical thinking” is defined for JBM as “questioning leftist views", not questioning the orthodoxies students bring into the classroom. Critical thinking challenges the students held views. If students views were leftist to begin with, then critical thinking would more often involve questioning those views.But leftist views and not orthodoxies for most students.

The problem is that those who seek critical thinking in universities will only recognize it when it results in agreement with their own views. It is not something relative to one’s starting point. It is something designed to produce a specific outcome — belief in conservative views. That makes it not critical thinking at all, but indoctrination because only one set of beliefs is acceptable as evidence that critical thinking has occurred.

There is no focus on process — only on content of debate.

I am sick of jaded academics like JBM who propose that no education takes place at their institutions — they know because they teach there. This is nonsense. I see students changing and learning every day. Why are some academics so willing to confess their own ineffectiveness? Do they blame it on the students? I think these remarks are a confession that not only have they given up trying to teach, but they don’t know how to do it. Manifestly, many people do think critically. Were they born doing it? If not, why can’t we teach students to improve their thinking skills? I believe we are doing so. I see the changes in my students from first year to graduation and I know that education has improved their thinking. That’s why I do what I do. What does JBM think he is doing, if not teaching students to use their minds more effectively? Is JBM indoctrinating students because that’s all he believes possible for them?

Nancy, at 7:40 pm EDT on June 18, 2006