Where have you gone AAUP?

A thoughtful essay. The difference between the 1915 statement and the 2007 statement is striking indeed.

Publius, at 7:00 am EDT on September 21, 2007

If You Don’t Have Time to Read the Whole Thing...

Shorter Peter Wood: People who disagree with me are wrong, and I found an anecdote off some website to prove it. Plus, humanists and social scientists aren’t experts on anything, and therefore have no real authority in their own classrooms. God, I wish it was 1915 again.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 8:00 am EDT on September 21, 2007

Reason

The conviction that it is important to believe this or that, even if a free inquiry would not support the belief, is one which is common to almost all religions and which inspires all systems of state education. The consequence is that the minds of the young are stunted and are filled with fanatical hostility both to those who have other fanaticisms and, even more virulently, to those who object to all fanaticisms.

A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering. But at present, in most countries, education aims at preventing the growth of such a habit, and men who refuse to profess belief in some system of unfounded dogmas are not considered suitable as teachers of the young.

The world that I should wish to see would be one freed from the virulence of group hostilities and capable of realizing that happiness for all is to be derived rather from cooperation than from strife. I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than at imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence. The world needs open hearts and open minds, and it is not though rigid systems, whether old or new, that these can be derived.

Bertrand Russell, at 8:25 am EDT on September 21, 2007

“Truthiness” abounds

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

- Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990)

Malcolm Forbes, at 9:45 am EDT on September 21, 2007

Why Wood Is Wrong

Wood is wrong about the AAUP process. It’s completely normal for a report to be produced by a subcommittee and approved by Committee A as the voice of the AAUP without approval by the full membership in advance. Did the NAS response to the AAUP get the full approval of the NAS membership in advance? Of course not, and it’s a silly argument to make. As for the report itself, Wood, like other conservatives, is fond of quoting one paragraph from the 1915 Statement about indoctrination. The 1915 Statement, overall, is a very good statement (online at http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/566). But it was flawed in its use of a vague term like indoctrination (it also includes the false view that professors’ statements in the classroom should be secret “privileged communications”). Wood is correct that the AAUP’s conception of academic freedom has expanded since 1915 to include the freedom to express controversial political views. Yes, and that’s a good thing. It’s very disturbing that Wood urges colleges to “avoid assigning politically-charged books” to students. Nothing could be further from the real spirit of the AAUP, in 1915 or 2007, than this idea.

John K. Wilson, at 9:45 am EDT on September 21, 2007

“The AAUP sent the report ... electronically to 350,000 U.S. faculty members ....” Correction: The AAUP _spammed_ 350,000 U.S. faculty members. By spamming me with its report, regardless of the contents, the AAUP has forfeited any chance of my support.

N Phillips, at 10:35 am EDT on September 21, 2007

impressionable students

I think before we can “indoctrinate” our students, they would have to, en masse, come to us starry eyed. That’s rarely, if ever, the case. My students have never fawned over my every utterance. Mostly, I’d say they ignore that sort of thing, unless it counts as an answer on a test or an idea they can develop in their paper. I tell students don’t try to suck up to me, but to write what you think. Sometimes students are just plain wrong and poorly informed. When that happens, I tell them so, but I would hate to think that amounts to indoctrination.

Too often I have had students who are defensive, mostly about issues of faith, and if I raise that sort of an issue in the reading of a poem or some such thing, looking at the poet’s words (and not obscure poets, but canonical poets), then they accuse me of trying to shatter their faith or some such thing. Of course, if a middling mind like mine can shatter their faith, it was probably tenuous anyway. Be that as it may, I’ve yet to ever experience indoctrination, or attempts at indoctrination in my years of teaching,observing other faculty teaching, or my many years as a student in four universities. (Maybe I already shared the allegedly politically correct mindset so I didn’t have to be indoctrinated!) I’d sure like to see some hard and fast facts about actual indoctrination rather than ideas being challenged being seen as such.

The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.

bradley bleck, instructor at Spokane Falls CC, at 11:00 am EDT on September 21, 2007

AAUP’s whitewash fails

The AAUP sought to whitewash the abundant and well-documented criticisms that a significant number of professors use their classrooms much more to proselytize for their socio-political views than to instruct students in any body of knowledge. The whitewash was very thin to begin with and Peter Wood has hosed it all away.

One of the most serious failings of American higher education today is that most students enter with weak academic skills and scant knowledge about the world around them, but instead of attending to their needs, colleges and universities often dump them into classrooms where professors try to impart their belief systems. Whether it works isn’t the point. It’s simply bad practice.

George Leef, Vice President for Research at John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, at 12:00 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

Truth R Us

Peter Wood is right. The AAUP’s claim in its recent statement to be defending academic freedom is a smokescreen to justify the indoctrination of students by professors, most of them on the left politically, that occurs on American college campuses today.

Professors who indoctrinate their students instead of educating them should be held accountable for their betrayal of one of the most fundamental tenets of the university, namely its commitment to the disinterested search for truth and knowledge

Jay Bergman, Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University, at 12:40 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

Mr. (Dr.) Furr

Bob Schenck thanks Grover Furr for his response. Indeed, Mr. Furr (if it’s Dr. Furr, my apologies) should be heartily thanked by all involved. In his highly illustrative post, Mr. (Dr.) Furr provides a compelling response to Woods’ commentary. Honestly, what impartial reader can question the earnest and scholarly approach taken by Mr. (Dr.) Furr as evidenced from the following quotes:

“At least Horowitz is clear about it – ‘indoctrination’ is the failure to teach the ‘conservative’ viewpoint!” “In the real world, as opposed to ‘conservative’ Fantasyland, it is not possible for professors to ‘indoctrinate’ students. Only the mass media, and people like Horowitz who have access to that media, can do this. They do it by constant repetition, and by shutting out competing viewpoints.” “However it’s often a good idea to do so, and I often teach ‘conservative’ ideas for purposes of refutation – to show how invalid they are.” “I make a point of relating the American imperialist aggression against Iraq to whatever subject I teaching.” “’Conservative’” ideas ARE those of ‘political and economic power.’” (I particularly find the use of CAPS here as highly persuasive – maybe that’s why he’s an English professor!) “Conservative and liberal domination over education and the mass media make a mockery of any notion of a ‘free market of ideas.’”“As for ‘conservative’ ideas, they should be treated with respect, if that is understood to mean taken seriously, demolished with the use of evidence and reasoning, their invalid premises and elitist assumptions exposed.”

Give it up, Peter Woods. Mr. (Dr.) Furr has got you. It is entirely clear that an 18 year-old student entering Mr. (Dr.) Furr’s classroom will get a highly impartial and rigorous education regarding contemporary politics and social issues. He or she might even learn something about English!

Paul Stukel, at 12:40 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

Credentials

Buzz—

Prof. Wood’s last post, according to the NAS site, was at King’s College, a college that, according to its website, is guided by “its commitment to the truths of Christianity and a Biblical worldview.”

To many of us, such a commitment is not compatible with the search for truth (we’re not talking just a religious point of view here either, but a specifically Christian one). In any case, it makes Wood’s throwing around the term “indoctrination” recall that Biblical worldview: let he who is without sin...”

To be fair, Wood is no longer at King’s College; perhaps he left because he disagreed with this mission. But I would feel more confident in his commitment to a non-ideological classroom if someone could point to his criticism of “indoctrination” on the right.

RM, at 12:50 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

Truth Detector

I Googled Mr. Grover Furr’s name and found the following:

“A Scholar For Stalin By Rocco DiPippoFrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, March 16, 2005

For twenty years, Grover Furr has been an English professor at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey, where he educates students in his peculiar worldview, which is an updated Stalinism and in which America is the world’s biggest oppressor and greatest terrorist state. While his academic expertise is English literature, he presents himself as an expert on communism, and scours academic forums like the Historians of American Communism net, defending Joseph Stalin and calling America’s role in bringing down the Soviet Empire a moral outrage. “Was there something morally wrong in trying to bring down the Soviet Union? I think the only honest answer possible is: Yes, it was wrong,” says Furr.

In a speech delivered at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex County in New Jersey, Furr said, “I think the reason Stalin is vilified is because, in his day at the helm of the Soviet Union, the exploiters all over the world had something to worry about! That’s why I feel some kinship with Stalin and the communist movement of his day.” And not only his day: “What the majority of humanity needs today is an international like that one, to co-ordinate the fight against exploitation — just as the IMF and the World Bank, Exxon and Reebok, the US and French and the other governments, coordinate the fight FOR exploitation.” A copy of the entire speech appears on his website, the same site his students must use as a study resource.

Although not a historian, Furr frequents the “Historians of American Communism”, a scholarly forum inhabited by experts on Communism like Robert Conquest, John Earl Haynes and Robert W. Cherny. There he takes up causes like denying Stalin’s well-documented campaign to liquidate the Jews: “The mass murder of Jews, but not only of Jews, by the Nazis is very well documented. In the case of the Cold-War horror stories demonizing Stalin, the shoe is on the other foot — all the evidence points in the opposite direction...Of the hoary horror tales virtually taken for granted as true concerning Stalin, I have researched many at this point in my life, and have yet to find a single one that is true, or anywhere near it.” Participants in the forum generally find Furr’s positions to be absurd.

At Montclair University, Furr teaches a “General Humanities” course described on his website as, “an introduction to Western European culture and society from the Ancient World through the Middle Ages.” Required reading for the course includes the following authors: James Axtell, whose “The White Indians of Colonial America” implies that Native American culture was better than European culture in colonial America; Ronald Takaki, a prominent multiculturalist whose views of America’s oppression of minorities is only a shade more moderate than Ward Churchill’s; Rodney Hilton, a British Marxist; G.E.M. de Ste Croix, whose “The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World” is a Marxist tract; and I.F. Stone, a Communist fellow traveler and then New Leftist who once commended the Soviet Union for “steadily expanding democracy in every sphere.”

Another of Furr’s courses, titled “The Great Books and Ideas,” offers more radical-left fare. Readings for the course include works by Karl Marx, a Marxist analysis of Shakespeare by Richard Wilson, a book by Communist Party member Ted Allen, one by Marxist feminist Silvia Federici, and one by radical-left activist Marcus Rediker, who has worked to win a new trial for convicted cop killer and leftist icon Mumia Abu-Jamal.

While Furr has no credentials as a history teacher his duties at Monclair include teaching a course on the Vietnam War. Furr’s course paints America as an oppressive, terrorist state. His Vietnam war page, and his Politics and Social Issues web page, which are course resources, feature virulently anti-U.S. material, much of it penned by him. Furr’s personal views on Vietnam reflect the views of the leftist fringe: “‘The western imperialists, the U.S. among them, are the biggest mass murderers in history’….’The U.S. is even more guilty [of genocide] than Pol Pot.’…’it was a good thing that the U.S. ‘lost’ in Vietnam…. If the US and their South Vietnamese stooges had won, South Vietnam would have been yet another place for American companies to move to. Hundreds of thousands more American workers would have lost their jobs.’…’Under no circumstances, therefore, should we ever support the US government or believe what it says.’” [emphases as in the original]

A number of Furr’s views are taken directly from Challenge, the Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party’s newspaper. Opinion pieces written by Furr on the other hand are published in the school newspaper, The Montclarion, and also posted on his Montclair University website, where he celebrates the violence that took place after the Rodney King verdict, accuses the U.S. of being behind the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II and echoing the views of Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky implies that on Sept.11, 2001 the U.S. got what it deserved when radical Islamists slammed jetliners into the Twin Towers, killing thousands of innocents.

Furr is involved in the Modern Languages Association [MLA], the largest academic professional organization. MLA methods and recommendations are implemented across the U.S., down to the elementary school level. Professor Furr heads the MLA’s radical caucus. How much influence does he have in shaping the MLA’s agendas? Quite a bit, it appears. During the run-up to its 2003 national conference, the MLA put out a call for papers to be read and discussed at the conference. Out of the five papers submitted, four of them came from the radical caucus. One asked the MLA to work towards “the repeal of the U.S.A. Patriot Act.” A second wanted the MLA to deplore “government war-making projects” and urge “the withdrawal of troops and reallocation of funds to reverse inattention to, and grave deficits in, funding of education and other human services.” A third was concerned with pay for graduate students and faculty members. The last proposal is worth quoting, since it appears to have been penned by Furr himself:

“Whereas in wartime, governments commonly shape language to legitimate aggression, misrepresent policies, conceal aims, stigmatize dissent, and block critical thought; and

“Whereas distortions of this sort proliferate now, as in the use of the phrase ‘war on terrorism,’ to underwrite military action anywhere in the world, against whomever our government sees as opponents; and

“Whereas we are professionals committed to scrupulous inquiry into language and culture; Be it resolved that the Modern Language Association supports its members in conducting critical analysis of war talk, in public forums and, as appropriate, in classrooms.”

What do Professor Furr’s students think of him? A sampling of the views of forty of them is available on Rate My Professors, a website which allows students to rate teachers on a scale from 1-5 (Furr averaged 2.4), and gives insight into how Furr is perceived by them: “’I can’t believe this man is teaching!’... ‘He sends you radical left wing propaganda almost every day through email’… ‘Pretend to be a communist and he’ll think you’re the greatest thing ever’…’He uses the classroom as a platform to teach his radical political views’…’Leans so far to the left he’s horizontal’… ‘Hates the USA’…’Keeps on talking about his life and nothing relating to the work’…’If he spent more time concentrating on teaching his students than spewing hate in the discussion threads, maybe he would be a happier person!’...’What a bitter, hateful man!’”

Furr’s own attitude towards conservatives in academia is this: “What [American universities] need, and would much benefit from, is more Marxists, radicals, leftists – all terms conventionally applied to those who fight against exploitation, racism, sexism, and capitalism. We can never have too many of these, just as we can never have too few ‘conservatives.’”

In an academia that has become highly politicized and where conservatives are increasingly rare, Furr’s views are valued currency. His web pages are recommended as both a teaching resource and as a resource in developing curricula.

Rocco DiPippo is a free-lance political writer who publishes the Antiprotester Journal”

Winston Lyme, at 1:05 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

Prof. Furr

Prof. Furr, I thank you. You state: “For example, I make a point of relating the American imperialist aggression against Iraq to whatever subject I teaching. As with everything in one’s teaching it’s important to do this responsibly and with care.” What could be better proof of Prof. Wood’s thesis? Using your position as teacher to indoctrinate students on political matters about which you feel passionately, that’s the whole problem.

Now if you were teaching a class about current conflicts in the Middle East, that might be an appropriate occasion to vent your personal political views, so long as you were respectful of alternative views. Somehow, though, I get the impression that students with different politics than you would be wise to shut up and parrot back whatever you want to hear, that is, if they want to do well in your class.

DBL, at 1:20 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

ad hominem?

I don’t think the question of credentials is the same as an ad hominem attack. Nor was it I who brought up the question of credentials in the first place. I just followed up the reference to Prof. Wood’s background.

I also consider it reasonable to ask 1) whether teaching at a college that commits itself not to truth but to Christian truth (and a particular version of Christian truth, as well) is itself compatible with a commitment to free inquiry and 2) whether Prof. Wood or the NAS also focuses on “indoctrination” by the right. I would add that in my last sentence or two I was careful to distinguish between Prof. Wood’s past institutional affiliation and the current record of his writing. So I reject the accusation of personal attack.

RM, at 2:40 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

touchy conservatives

“The freedom of students to be taught in classes that focus on the subject at hand, unadorned by their instructors’ opinings on President Bush, global warming, or immigration — that freedom — hardly exists.”

There isn’t much in the social sciences or humanities these days that can be taught without some reference to the Bush war doctrine, global warming policy, Pax Americana, or immigration. If that bugs Dr. Wood, so be it. I have no intention of removing the relevance of my course content to contemporary issues just because touchy conservatives take it personally. If the shoe fits. . .

Thus, I welcome the AAUP report and look forward to studying it at lenth.

Diana Relke, Professor at University of Saskatchewan, at 2:45 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

On the Meaning of Academic Freedom

On 17 September, three Hamilton College professors, after having experienced the post-modern version of academic freedom up close and personal, decided to breathe truly free air in creating the Alexander Hamilton Institute (www.theahi.org)off campus. Given my involvement over the last few years in a series of events that have shaken my campus—everything from a presidential plagiarism scandal to the thwarted appearance of Ward Churchill—I can speak with some experiential authority on the subject. Allow me to repeat what I have expressed to the powers that be at Hamilton College: “There is a serious debate on this campus as well as on many others about the blurring of the line between activism and scholarship in the classroom and on the lack of intellectual diversity on college campuses. . . . The problem is not the honest configuration of evidence into a meaningful pattern with explanatory power. If that process leads to a ‘left’interpretation or a ‘right’ interpretation, so be it. But activists are like trial lawyers. When confronted with evidence that inculpates their client, trial lawyers do not say, ‘Geez, I hadn’t thought of that.’ Honest scholars do say that, and they adjust their interpretations accordingly. Scholars, unlike trial lawyers and activists, do not set out to justify a preconceived end but to discover where the evidence will lead them. It is the politicized selectivity, gross distortion, and caricature that often accompanies or contextualizes the classroom lecture or discussion that causes concern. It might take the form of a professor in a class devoted to the issue of censorship seeing fit to burn an American flag in front of his students. It might take the form of a professor beginning a class by quipping, ‘How many students in this class are smarter than George Bush?’ It might take the form of a professor with a marxisant interpretation of (anti) globalization denying (whether from ignorance or dishonesty is not clear) the deficiencies of the labor theory of value when questioned on the subject by an economics student. It might take the form of a political demonstration on behalf of Planned Parenthood masquerading as a class project. It might even take the form of an administrator who when speaking to the board of trustees tries to comfort them that intellectual diversity truly prevails on campus by highlighting first and foremost among all the previous semester’s invited speakers. . . The only avowed conservative speaker.”

Robert L. Paquette, Professor at Hamilton College, at 2:45 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

AAUP’s Spin Doctors

The AAUP Report, “Freedom in the Classroom,” is a masterpiece of spin and obfusation. It defends several innocuous hypothetical teaching activities to which groups like the National Association of Scholars have no objection. It says nothing about the real incidents to which the NAS and others actually have objected, or about the statistics compiled by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and others showing persistent left-wing bias in college classes. The AAUP’s Report also portrays itself as a defender of freedom to express controversial opinions. However, the AAUP has rarely defended academics accused of making politically incorrect statements or of the broad, vague speech codes that these academics are alleged to have violated. Nonetheless, the fact that the AAUP bothered to reply at all (albeit dishonestly) shows that the critiques of the politicization of classrooms and of political bias in academia are having some effect. The critiques should continue. Perhaps eventually the AAUP will give them an honest response.Prof. George Dent, Case Western Reserve School of Law

George Dent, Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve Law School, at 4:10 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

Scholarly Work and Methodologies

I am not sure how some of the arguments expounded in this artcile could be reconciled with scholarly work and academic research methodologies.

The statement that postmodernists reject “the assumption that the best ideas win out over time” and “espouse the view that the ideas that typically win are those that are backed by political and economic power” does not engage with any contemporary scholarly research but is based on political inclination.

Academia does not work with “assumptions” but with theories and methodologies. The theory that hypothesizes that the best ideas win over time is associated with a mix of bastardized “social darwinism” (that are not even related to Darwin but to Spencer) and bastardized interpretations of the theories of a “free market” (that do not rely on Adam Smith’s scholarship but rather on a politicized over-generalization of Milton Friedman). These theories are no longer as respected in U.S. academia as they were during the time of the Cold War precisely because scholarship reflects social and historical forces. Today, theoretical approaches in U.S. academia tend to favor analyses that take into account social and historical forces—and not just the interaction of ideas taken out of context. These accounts became academically more robust in recent times due to the sheer amount of scholarly work across disciplines highlighting the analyses of social change after WWII (ideologies, consumer society, TV and the media, etc.) and of the seeming irrationality of “politics” (from Hitler and Mussolini to the Cold War, etc.). Methodological approaches started to question Enlightenment theories about self and rational choice, and started to explore theories of subjectivity and power relations.

Ignoring “paradigm shifts” is neither a scholarly nor a rational approach. To accuse those who privilege power in their studies of being “postmodernists” (a term that is not even understood properly but thrown in as a monstrous category) shows complete ignorance of the social and political theories of the last century and cannot be considered an academic position. Numerous social and political theorists across the humanities and the social sciences have been engaging in scholarly research projects about the social and political construction of reality. Such is the academic situation today, and that is why professors cannot be serious about their academic scholarship and teaching if they do not engage with the theory and application of these approaches.

While I am not going to address what “academic freedom” is and what it consists of, I would call on everyone to remember the “academic” part of this equation. The article above is not sufficiently informed of scholarly work and methodologies to be taken seriously—nor should other shades of political punditry.

Let us continue doing what we are doing in our classes, but let us also ensure that the university remains both “academic” and “free.”

FK, at 4:55 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

AAUP_NAS

I share concern about academic freedom with all good-faith discussants. My main concern, though, is not AAUP policy statements or the rants of NAS-I’s, but the ongoing machinations of the likes of Harvard minion Dershowitz, who, through spreading dirt and shit about honest scholars, have successfully scuttled the tenure of one professor, a Jewish intellectual, are working to defeat the tenure of another, a Palestinian-American, and who have a long ‘enemies list’ that overlaps that of the NAS-ites and their ilk.

David, Ph.D., MFA, at 11:55 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

AAUP afraid of critics?

On September 12 The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a piece by Robin Wilson titled “AAUP Goes to Bat for ‘Freedom in the Classroom’.” (See http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/09/2007091202n.htm.) The article included the following: “Cary Nelson, the AAUP’s president, said in an interview that the new statement would allow professors to say to their critics, ‘You shouldn’t mess with me’.” Since when are professors who violate accepted standards of professional conduct (even AAUP’s own official statements) beyond reproach? What other profession is granted immunity from criticism? When the AAUP acts like a school-yard bully, it dishonors itself.

Luann Wright, President at NoIndoctrination.org, at 11:55 pm EDT on September 21, 2007

“RM” posts two comments on my credentials, assuring readers that this is not an ad hominem criticism. Perhaps not. In any case, RM’s suspicions are raised because I served as provost and as a member of the faculty of a small Christian college for two years—after serving at a large secular research university for over 20 years. Can someone who teaches at a Christian college legitimately take a dim view of “indoctrination?” Or is serving at a college that says it upholds “the truths of Christianity” a bar to further participation in respectable intellectual discourse on academic freedom?

The King’s College during my time there had no religious test for admission; no required profession of belief for students; and no religious test for graduation. The student body was predominantly Christian, but also included Hindus, Muslims, atheists, and students who were uncertain about where they were headed. Religious indoctrination may have been present in some classes, but it wasn’t prominent and it wasn’t encouraged.

At my urging, King’s adopted the 1940 AAUP Statement on Academic Freedom. During my time no faculty member complained about violations of or restrictions on his academic freedom.

I do not speak for The King’s College (nor does it speak for me) but I’ll stand by the propriety of a Christian college declaring that it is committed to Christian truths. That declaration in no way implies a diminished regard for truth in general.

RM speculates that I might have left King’s because I disagreed with its mission. No, the College’s mission was a forthright statement, consistent with academic freedom among those self-selected faculty members who chose to serve at a sectarian institution. John Dewey himself made provision for such institutions in his essay on acadmic freedom published in 1902, and the AAUP’s 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom likewise allows for sectarian institutions so long as they divulge their commitments up front.

I left King’s because I disagreed with some of its president’s evolving views which seemed to me to be incompatible with a robust regard for intellectual freedom. I say this partly in answer to RM who says he would “feel more confident” if I could give an instance of my making criticisms of “indoctrination” on the right. Yes, I resigned from a position as provost and full professor on exactly that basis.

As to providing other instances in higher education of “indoctrination on the right” to which I’ve objected, I have indeed objected to professors over-zealously pressing the claims of free market economics. But wait a moment...American higher education has a miniscule representation of professors who self-identify as being conservative/Right, and a huge percentage of professors who self-identify as being liberal/Left. How does it become a standard of honesty in criticism to hunt down “indoctrination” among the very few conservative/Right-leaning professors, when the problem has emerged as part of the explicit program of a segment of the professorial Left? (Witness Professor Furr’s revealing testimony above bringing his views of “American imperialist aggression” to “whatever subject I’m teaching.")

RM is setting up a false symmetry, as though he won’t believe in my account of meat-eating lions until I demonstrate the existence of meat-eating giraffes. As it happens, NAS is not a conservative organization, but a centrist one, and is perfecvtly willing to call out conservative professors who cross the line into indoctrination too. It is just that, in the nature of contemporary higher education, they are relatively rare.

Peter Wood, Executive Director at National Association of Scholars, at 12:00 am EDT on September 22, 2007

Controversy is a part of life. Exploring it fairly is key.

Several smart people can disagree over the same facts. The solution is not to avoid controversy because that teaches dogma or rather it doesn’t teach. The solution is to teach controversy fairly — where multiple perspectives are presented in a balanced manner so that the audience can make its own judgments. I know of one organization, www.procon.org, that does this balancing act better than any other. I enjoy this entire discussion because avoiding controversy is controversial in itself, and therefore, I learn something.

Tommy Flanagan, at 12:00 am EDT on September 22, 2007

Good advice

Diana Relke offers sound advice in suggesting people go back and read the AAUP report. I would only add that those readers should also spend some time with the point-by-point reply that Stephen Balch and I posted on the NAS website and that I linked at the beginning of my article. If the AAUP article persuades and our critique of it falls flat, so be it. But no one will be worse off for considering both sides of the debate.

In the long list of responses above from those who disagree with my article, I see numerous attempts to vindicate an expanding claim for freedoms for professors and little concern for the consequences of these expanded professorial freedoms for students.

Peter Wood, Executive Director at National Association of Scholars, at 12:00 am EDT on September 22, 2007

Dr. Wood’s World

Dr. Wood may not be the best face for NAS to put forward to argue against student indoctrination and the increasing partisanship found in academe. Is this not the same Dr. Wood who is the Provost at The King’s College, a private evangelical college that states baldly in the mission statement that its pedagogy is to be “founded on the truths of Christianity and a biblical world view"? So much for not indoctrinating your students! Does the student at Wood’s institution get equal treatment of atheist and agnostic thinkers and scholars, or of feminist thinkers and scholars, in the classroom or in hiring/recruitment or is a definite ideological stance privileged from the outset?

Is this Peter Wood decrying partisanship the same one who writes regularly for National Review, a thoroughly partisan magazine with the stated goals of trying to support the most electable conservative candidates to office?

Is this man lecturing us on what science can know versus the social sciences the same Peter Wood who, though a social scientist, writes articles denying evolution? http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/wood200508090808.asp

Since Dr. Wood is the provost of an evangelical Christian college I will use one of my favorite passages from Scripture to reply to his assertions of indoctrination and hyper-partisanship in academe: And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Ken, at 12:05 am EDT on September 22, 2007

Dr. WoodYou claim your readiness to call out indoctrination on the right. I would like you then to comment on Liberty University, Patrick Henry University, and other conservative Christian schools with rather open faith statements containing obviously ideological positions on controversial questions that faculty and students must adhere to. Please do not merely assert they have the right to do what they do, of course they do. But what do you say about the wisdom of professed institutions of higher learning that make all faculty and students adhere to such statements drawn up and enforced by the administration?

Ken, at 8:55 am EDT on September 22, 2007

Fragile Flowers of Conservatism

When did conservatives become such wimps? I know it takes a special kind of cowardice to cheerlead a war when you’re too scared to volunteer for military service, but at least in that case we’re dealing with life and death. Here we’re talking about young men and women too dainty to take on a (shudder) college professor! Or too fragile to endure listening to views with which they disagree for an hour or so two or three times a week. How do these people steel themselves to get out of bed in the morning?

One of my freshman history professors, back in the days when dinosaurs and Reagan strode the Earth, began his first lecture by announcing, “I believe that America is a great and generous nation, and that’s what I teach in this class. If you don’t like it, too bad.”

I didn’t like it. And that was too bad. I wrote the sort of papers I figured would get me my “A” and I went on with my life. I certainly didn’t go blubbering back to mommy and daddy and Peter Wood about some existential assault on my inner child.

Of course, I had the requisite Marxist prof as well. When I was in school, it was considered a rite of passage to draw your first classroom Commie. We laughed at him behind his back, called him Professor Trotsky. He was actually more generous than “John Wayne", the right wing historian, allowing us to engage him in vigorous debate without penalty. Once again, I survived the semester without ever reaching for the smelling salts.

There are two important points here. First, the proselytizing profs were very much the exception, just as they are today. Second, and more important, even as they annoyed me, the Duke and Trotsky forced me to think about my own view of the world and to consider things from a perspective I would otherwise have avoided. That, my friends, is a gift, and it’s one I wouldn’t have received had the scholars in question followed the cultural right’s thuggish command to “shut up and teach".

Now before anyone tries to enlighten me, let me be clear: I realize that the right-wing’s fight against “indoctrination” is disingenuous. I am fully aware that their goal is to silence the left wherever and whenever they can. Failing that, they at least hope to delegitimize the academy in the minds of Middle Americans.

People like Mr. Wood are smart enough to understand that those who privilege Western culture in the classroom or teach American politics or international relations uncritically are every inch the proselytizers that my old pals John Wayne and Professor Trotsky were back in the last days of disco. They just don’t care: to them, this is a culture war and all that matters is to vanquish the enemy. Every word they write, every argument they offer, every claim they make is in service to that end and nothing else.

But for those who are new to these battles, and especially to the students who have to listen to all this nonsense about indoctrination, let me just say this: not only do you not have a right to feel comfortable in the classroom, we (the professors) have an obligation to make you uncomfortable. If you leave the university without ever having doubted everything your parents taught you, then we have failed miserably in our duty to you.

In the meantime, ignore the Peter Woods and David Horowitzes of the world, open your mind, and revel in the experience. Make up nasty nicknames for the professors who irritate you. Try on every piece of intellectual clothing on the showroom floor and figure out which ones fit you best. And check your dorm room closet every night before you sleep just to reassure yourself that, contrary to what the folks at NAS and ACTA would have you believe, the boogeyman doesn’t live on campus.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 8:55 am EDT on September 22, 2007

It Depends On What The Definition Of Is Is

I am no fan of AAUP or its “leadership.” By the same token, I am no fan of NAS or its “leadership.” On the other hand, I AM a big fan of academic freedom, especially for “scholars” ... and by that I mean teachers, researchers, and students (all with “equal standing”).

One of the things that annoys me about discussions like this one is the absence of a domain of definition that frames logical arguments. Consequently, we have individuals making what seem to be thoughtful but contradictory statements ... only because, when you push their arguments back to their respective domains of definition, we discover they are talking about different things. It may even be grounds for divorce.

A significant problem in this case is the extent to which the quite different domains of definition have been determined by “definitions” of academic freedom that leave a great deal to be desired. For someone who has spent as much time as I thinking about academic freedom, you would think I have written THE definitive definition on a slip of paper and carry it around in my billfold. I do not. Deviating from the abstract for a moment, the only definition that matters to me is the mush-headed one that is spelled out in my university’s faculty handbook.

But, if I were going to pursue a more abstract understanding of academic freedom, I would not start with anything that could be found at the offices of AAUP ... or NAS ... or FIRE ... or ACLU ... or The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression. I would probably start with ...

1. the Report of the First Global Colloquium of University Presidents (January 2005 at Columbia University) which proffered ...

“At its simplest, academic freedom may be defined as the freedom to conduct research, teach, speak, and publish, subject to the norms and standards of scholarly inquiry, without interference or penalty, wherever the search for truth and understanding may lead.”

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/president/communications files/globalcolloquium.htm

2. the UNESCO Recommendation Concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel, which is a very extensive and interesting statement about many dimensions of higher education. A short segment of their definition states ...

“27. The principle of academic freedom should be scrupulously observed. Higher-education teaching personnel are entitled to the maintaining of academic freedom, that is to say, the right, without constriction by prescribed doctrine, to freedom of teaching and discussion, freedom in carrying out research and disseminating and publishing the results thereof, freedom to express freely their opinion about the institution or system in which they work, freedom from institutional censorship and freedom to participate in professional or representative academic bodies. All higher-education teaching personnel should have the right to fulfill their functions without discrimination of any kind and without fear of repression by the state or any other source. Higher-education teaching personnel can effectively do justice to this principle if the environment in which they operate is conducive, which requires a democratic atmosphere; hence the challenge for all of developing a democratic society.”

http://www.caut.ca/en/issues/academicfreedom/unesco.asp

It is noteworthy, I think, that neither definition constrains one’s academic freedoms to only those that are within one’s specific discipline or within one’s so-called “area of expertise.”

In any event, I’m prepared to let a committee of Publius, Unapologetically Tenured, kgotthardt, John K. Wilson, Grover Furr, Diana Relke, Paul Stukel, Buzz, of course, Laurie Morrow, Larry (we can’t leave him out), Mark Bauerlein, Luann Wright, Ken – oh yes, and even Peter Wood and Cary Nelson, but neither of those bedfellows, David Horowitz or Ward Churchill, will be invited – get together to bang out the definition of academic freedom that will become part and parcel of the domain of definition that constrains future debates. In the absence of that I suppose we’re stuck with the six or seven different domains of definition that contribute to making this discussion such a big snore.

Frizbane Manley, at 10:45 am EDT on September 22, 2007

symmetry? really?

Unapologetically Tenured argues that politically-driven slant was and is rare: “the proselytizing profs were very much the exception, just as they are today.” He also argues that it was symmetrically rare: the abuses aren’t dominantly from the left. I am unconvinced.

As it happens, for another web argument I had occasion to pull out my 1976 edition of Paul Samuelson’s freshman text _Economics_. (Unlike UT, I didn’t have the foresight to jot down slanted lecture passages so I could quote them word for word decades later. For me, then, something like a textbook is a particularly convenient way to dredge up exact quotes.) Consider two passages. On p. 728, “a market economy enriched by government planning and control.” As I wrote elsewhere, “will that attitude be on the test, Professor?” And on p. 881, “it is a vulgar mistake to think that most people in Eastern Europe are miserable.” That statement of revealed truth is supported with the argument that “a Soviet citizen thinks that he is living in a paradise in comparison with life in China or in earlier times.” No mention is made of the walls and minefields which prevent escape.

It is my understanding that Samuelson’s text was the bestselling textbook for freshman economics. Does anyone want to nominate a comparably successful freshman textbook, either then or now, containing comparably dogmatic anti-left constructions? Perhaps libertarian ones like “an economy unusually free of political meddling?” Or apologist-for-horrors ones like “it is a vulgar mistake to think that most chattel slaves in the American South were miserable?”

(Of course, as Ken pointed out, openly dogmatic institutions like “Liberty University, Patrick Henry University, and other conservative Christian schools” are easy to find. But that does not justify UT’s claims of symmetry. If the controversy were only that conservatives were upset at views expressed at the Trotsky Institute for Progressive Marxist Thought, then this debate would be very different. Claims of symmetry would be better served by showing that even if supposedly-unideological state universities in liberal states do lean left, state universities in conservative states lean right in at least as embarrassing a way.)

William Newman, at 2:00 pm EDT on September 22, 2007

You describe a world that existed well into the Sixties but not since. Please address the case of Radical Feminist Scholars that I described above.

John Marshall, Re: Fragile Flowers of Conservatism, at 2:05 pm EDT on September 22, 2007