I Decline to Answer

If his students ask Dr. Sracic what he thinks of torture, will he decline to answer? If they ask him if waterboarding is torture, will he decline to answer? If they ask Dr. Sracic what he thinks of extralegal surveillance and special rendition, will he decline to answer? If his students ask if he supports pre-emptive war, will Dr. Sracic decline to answer? If his students ask Dr. Sracic what he thinks of capital punishment, will he decline to answer? If they ask him what he thinks of a commander-in-chief who says Jesus is his favorite philosopher and claims to be reborn, will Dr. Sracic decline to answer? “We ought to keep our opinions to ourselves,” Dr. Sracic believes. Those who express their opinions in the classroom are “out of the mainstream,” even “dangerously radical,” and commit “sin” when they “feign” and “spout” certainty. Does Dr. Sracic express this opinion in the classroom? Does Dr. Sracic “know what he is talking about"?

Bob Schenck, at 7:00 am EDT on October 11, 2007

It Takes All Kinds

Let’s see, over the years I’ve taught mathematics, statistics, education, economics, political science, management science, social methodology, the so-called quality sciences, I was a philosophy and religion major as an undergraduate ... other stuff. I guess I’m covered.

But you, Bob Schenck, had better watch what you say ... especially if one of your students asks you if you believe in evolution. If I’m not mistaken I think I hear someone Buzz-ing around?

Frizbane Manley, at 7:45 am EDT on October 11, 2007

Advise Me

I teach at a place where the conservative view is dominant, and regularly voiced in class in certain disciplines. Clearly the article regards this practice as unprofessional. My question is: what do I do to correct it? Can’t go to administration; they espouse it. Can’t give the liberal view; I’m not qualified. Guess I’ll just have to take solace in the fact that my students are getting the Truth, and thus have no reason to dialogue or debate issues that affect their futures.

Glaucon, at 8:30 am EDT on October 11, 2007

Clarification

I believe students are smart enough to come to their own conclusions. I’m willing to listen. I oppose “disservice,” “mindless stupor,” and “hectoring.” If student seek my opinion, I don’t mind offering it.

Bob Schenck, at 8:35 am EDT on October 11, 2007

Fact and Opinion

What a strange column. The student asks Professor Sracic which candidate he supports and the professor refuses to answer because “I am not qualified to teach students about who should be elected". Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t think the student said, “Please tell me for whom you are voting so I can march mindlessly to the polls and make the identical choice.” Probably he was just curious.

Mainly, though, this article fails because it insists that there is some sort of clearly defined barrier between fact and opinion. There is not.

We are not encyclopedias; we are professors. We make choices all the time regarding which topics to cover and which to ignore, which perspectives to present and which to exclude. These choices speak directly to our (educated) opinion as to the things we think our students ought to learn.

Does Professor Sracic, for example, teach the radical perspective that voting in the United States is a sham? If not, then he has made a choice based on opinion rather than fact. Moreover, he has made that choice without telling his students he has done so, an act far more likely to influence their thinking than any overt announcement of his favorite presidential candidate.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing inappropriate about ignoring the radical critique of voting behavior if one doesn’t believe it merits discussion. We are, after all, in the business of making value judgments every time we put together a new syllabus. Indeed, the phoniness of the fact/opinion dichotomy can be seen in the rantings of right-wing groups like ACTA who argue, on the one hand, that professors should leave their personal values out of the classroom, and then insist, on the other hand, that every student should be required to study Shakespeare. You see, ACTA *knows* that certain works of the western canon are superior to other forms of literature, just as the Marxist *knows* that it is false consciousness that causes working class Americans to vote Republican.

If Professor Sracic chooses to believe that he is offering value-free instruction, that’s his privilege. But he’s wrong. He makes value choices every time he gets behind the podium, and those choices are, to a large degree, based on his (educated) opinions. Indeed, it is the experise that he brings to making those choices that justifies the salary he receives from the state of Ohio.

So please don’t tell me to teach only what I know. It is not simply a wrongheaded request, but a nonsensical one. Every professor—every single one—brings his or her opinions into the classroom. The honest ones are candid about it.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 8:45 am EDT on October 11, 2007

Strident questions?

“I am not qualified to teach students about who should be elected.”

Sracic does his students a disservice by not answering a simple question relevant to the course he teaches. It is a form of disrespect, and patronizing attitudes like this undermine education.

In fact, if he were honest about himself at the start of the course, rather than trying to hide his true feelings, which is probably what prompted the stridency of the question to begin with, none of this would have happened.

Students deserve contextualizing responses, especially when they ask for them.

Sracic also overestimates his impact on students. There is a big difference between sharing personal perspectives and teaching students “who should be elected,” and they should not be confused. The fact that he cannot distinguish between the two suggests he is not a very good teacher.

dah, at 9:00 am EDT on October 11, 2007

I tend to agree that professors should avoid *gratuitously* inserting their political ideas in class, though in many cases it is impossible (I teach courses on race and ethnicity, for instance, and though I do make a point of including all possible alternatives, just what you select to cover on the syllabus makes certain political opinions clear. The right was to deal with this is to continually remind students that you are NOT telling them what to think and that it is FINE if they disagree with you). Furthermore, in SLACs where you are expected to get to know your students well, not answering a question like this could in some situations be your professional downfall.

But those things are not my major point. My major point is that I don’t agree with the author’s characterization about why voting is needed. Certainly we have the skill to determine who would be the “best” president, given any set of objective criteria. The reason we vote is because in a situation of rule by the experts, the experts would likely choose criteria that benefited them. It is only through democracy that we can avoid tyranny by the minority. But democracy allows tyranny by the majority, and that’s a problem too.

ML, at 9:50 am EDT on October 11, 2007

Opinions in the c;lassroom

I would have been more impressed with Prof. Sracic’s epiphany if he had ask the students whom they thought he was supporting and then followed by asking them why they thought that. In his haste to be “right,” the professor missed a teachable moment.

jon-christian suggs, at 10:10 am EDT on October 11, 2007

I think we best serve our students by prefacing our opinion with, “It’s my opinion, though it may not be yours...” This isn’t “teaching” or “indoctrinating.” It’s no different than having students read an editorial.

I don’t like people asking me, “Who would you vote for?” I think it’s a rude question because I feel who we vote for is private. That’s why the polls are set up the way they are.

I don’t think the student was trying to be invasive or rude. But I do think he was asking the wrong question. He should have been asking himself, “Who would I vote for?”

To answer this question, students need voter education. They need to attend non-partisan (and civil) debates to really understand the issues. They don’t need rallies or out of control emotionalism when trying to make decisions. We’d better serve our students by inviting nonpartisan groups to conduct debates on campus (as some already do) and offer extra credit to students who attend.

kgotthardt, at 11:07 am EDT on October 11, 2007

What studens have learned

” .. this article fails because it insists that there is some sort of clearly defined barrier between fact and opinion. There is not.”

Amusing to see, despite the departure of Ward What’s-His-Name, Ward’s old comment “there is no truth” still gets a work-out.

Reality: most students only care about getting the diploma, which lets them apply for higher-income jobs that require a college degree for application. (Not that the diploma has anything to do with the real world, but that’s another topic.)

So, if a professor blathers “I believe that there is no truth” or “I believe that George W. Bush is a rotten doody,” most students will memorize it long enough for the exam.

Then immediately after the exam, as with many things “academic” today, the students toss it over the side. It’s the diploma, stupid.

BTW: one more thing about the writer:

How refreshing a PhD in political science — a research authority — commenting on political matters objectively, cool-eyed, and expertly. As opposed to the many non-expert political operatives in academia today.

L.L., at 11:35 am EDT on October 11, 2007

But do we have the authority...?

Like most of us most of the time, Professor Sracic is partly right. He is certainly right in attending to an underlying scruple to teach his students with prudence and fairness. Full disclosure: I am a long-time friend of Sracic, I’ve observed his teaching, and Respondent “dah” is wrong: Sracic is a very fine teacher, indeed, and I believe popular and well-respected by his students. If I understand Sracic’s position correctly, his intentions are noble. He wants to be careful to teach his subject to students in such a way as to inform them of the relevant information about his subject but also (and especially) to help hone his students’ critical thinking skills. He hopes to teach his students in such a way as to respect their autonomy and freedom in crafting their own lives. He does not want to cheat them.

Part of his commentary here is a response to reports that surface from time to time of professors rambling on about political views instead of teaching the subjects they are paid to teach. For instance, if my kid is trying to take a course in intermediate calculus, the instructor should not spend three-quarters of the time talking about, say, the merits or a Kucinich or Keyes administration. I’ll want my money back. That non-intermediate-calculus discussion could (and even should) be held over coffee after class—extracurricular discussions between faculty and students being a not insignificant element in a rich educational experience.

So Sracic is trying to do what he’s paid to do: teach a subject in which he has developed an expertise. Any hint that he might be violating his code of ethics strikes him as unacceptable.

But would he really be violating his code of ethics by answering his student’s question about his personal political views? I think the answer in the context of a course on American politics is: not necessarily. If he were to fail to teach about the structures and processes involved in American polity, and instead tried (emphasis on try..students aren’t sheep, and Sracic does not think they are, by the way) merely to sway his students to cast their vote in a certain way, then I would think that he did not perform his job well. If, on the other hand, he were to answer his student and provide his student with his reasons for supporting Kucinich or Keyes (or whomever), this could easily constitute a teachable moment—especially if he were to encourage his students to do the same. It would then be a manifestation of an element of the democratic process: debate and deliberation.

However, there might be good pedagogical reasons for not sharing a personal view. When I taught the history of philosophy, students would often ask me which philosopher we studied I thought was “right.” I would frequently (and flippantly) answer: “We’re not here to talk about me.” It is not that I do not have views on the question. It is not that I was (merely) being coy. For pedagogical reasons, I was trying not to make things too easy for my students, trying not to let them let their guard down concerning the rhetorical force of authority and expertise. Don’t misunderstand: both I and my students knew I knew more about the various philosophers than they did. They knew I was the expert and their hard-earned money was going to pay for my expertise. But, asking “which philosopher was right” is, in itself, especially at that stage of the learning process, the wrong question to take up.

And I should mention that a refusal can often incite further curiosity, which of course is pedagogically very valuable.

So for at least one (and probably both) of these reasons—some version of a professional code of conduct and pedagogical strategy—Sracic may have been right to not answer the question. But then again, he could have easily answered it for the same reasons. Either way, a teacher senstive to both the ethics of his or her profession and the techniques and strategies for success can hardly be called “not a very good teacher.”

But there is a much larger question that haunts this discussion: What is the role of the humanities in the contemporary university?

I commend to readers Anthony T. Kronman’s new book, “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life.” His analysis can shed light on Professor Sracic’s dilemma, along with that of his critics: Does the humanities professor have the authority to teach about profound questions that do not admit of “objective” answers? Sracic might feel that he does not. Those who do often face as much (or more) criticism as some of Sracic’s respondents have leveled at him. Why is this?

Kronman writes,

“Over the past century and a half, our top universities have embraced a research-driven ideal that has squeezed the question of life’s meaning from the college curriculum, limiting the range of questions teachers feel they have the right and authority to teach. And in the process it has badly weakened the humanities, the disciplines with the oldest and deepest connection to this question, leaving them directionless and vulnerable to being hijacked for political ends.

“But the encouraging news is that there is, today, a growing hunger among students to explore these topics. As questions of spiritual urgency — abortion, creationism, the destruction of the environment — move to the center of debate in our society, America’s colleges and universities have a real opportunity to give students the tools to discuss them at a meaningful level.

“What our society now desperately needs is what it once had: An alternative approach to a college education that takes these matters seriously without pretending to answer them in a doctrinaire way.”

[Source: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/...s/2007/09/16/why_are_we_here?mode=PF]

The question of who should be president is important. The answer will involve people’s understanding of the nature of government and politics, which in turn involves an understanding of the meaning and purpose of life. The issues raised Sracic’s editorial and the discussion it has spurred are critically important for both the university and society.

Eric Weislogel, Executive Director at Metanexus Institute, at 11:50 am EDT on October 11, 2007

Proudest Moment...

In my many years of teaching, some of my proudest moments have come when a student approaches me to find out my opinion, as it wasn’t clear from our discussions or lectures. Following a lecture on Shakespeare and the State (A subject begging for political bias) I was approached by 3 students afterward. “So ummm... we were wondering...” He started sheepishly, “You started by making Republican jokes, then Democrat, Liberal, Conservative and even Centrist jokes. So we were wondering... what *are* your political views?” Of course, trying to keep my pride in check that they would feel the need to even ask (or want to) my response was, “It turns out you aren’t being tested on my political views, and everyone deserves to be joked about.”

So while my true opinion did leak through, my major concern was not adding the element of authority to any one viewpoint. This was for my own protection in case they agreed to disagreed, but also for the protection of what I consider to be the goal of teaching: allowing students to think, not just agree (or disagree).

It’s a thin line between using the lectern as as an opportunity for teaching or as a pulpit for espousing whatever political fad or trend you think is the Cause of the Morally Just ™. If you cross it, you deserve what you get.

BJW, Indoctrinator at Colorado State, at 12:40 pm EDT on October 11, 2007

the market

It is a market exchange. When I was a student if I registered for a course on Colonial American history I did not want to hear the professor blather on about his political beliefs as I did not want to hear him talk about his favorite baseball team. Teach me about Colonial America. If the professor expresses his opinion about colonial history, great lets debate. But be honest, how many so called political debates that occur in classrooms is a professor shouting down his students telling them what they should believe. Most yawn and ignore him or her, but they are not getting the education they are paying for. The next time you get a freshman who can’t write a good sentence or doesn’t know basic material that they should have picked up in high school, ask yourself “did they have a teacher in high school who only went on and on about his or her political opinions because that was what they thought teaching was, since that is what they witnessed in the university?”

Wesley, at 1:50 pm EDT on October 11, 2007

I teach American Studies overseas. My European students want to know my personal views on U.S. politics. I try to teach the factual content of my courses without bias and try to present both or several sides of controversial issues, but I see no harm in sharing my outlook with them. I make clear that this is what I think and that other Americans may think differently (after all, there are more than 300 million of us).

m.caliban, at 1:50 pm EDT on October 11, 2007

Isn’t it wonderful

that in this country, and in our professional sphere, we can have a debate such as this. Many good points, both agreeing and disagreeing with the author, have been made. Higher education would be well served if this debate were taking place in faculty lounges and clubs across the nation and I’m sure it is at some colleges but probably not enough of them.

I ‘think’ I agree with L.L. when L.L. states: “How refreshing a PhD in political science — a research authority — commenting on political matters objectively, cool-eyed, and expertly.” However, I am certain there are many professors who adeptly share more of themselves while offering an excellent classroom (or out-of-classroom) experience.

Diversity of teaching styles is one of the great strengths of our higher education system. While, as an administrator, I do think some faculty can go overboard with their opinions—as can administrators—but if the aim is to broaden the thinking of students, then both subjective and objective approaches can make for sound pedagogy.

After all, one aim of higher education is to help our students distinguish fact from opinion and, relative as they may be, there are some facts to be learned in every discipline which undergird critical thinking.

Kevin Drumm, College President, at 2:25 pm EDT on October 11, 2007

Value-Free Teaching, or Editing?

“Unapologetically Tenured” has it right: Sracic is kidding himself if he thinks he is avoiding making personal value judgments by not answering the student’s question. Sracic himself admits that by not doing so he is affirming an “implicit” preference for democracy as the best form of government and for “equality” as a priority within a democratic system of government. Does he consider himself qualified, as someone who can claim to “know” as a teacher of government, that democracy is indeed the best form of government? Does he offer his students an unbiased “best of case” argument for the virtues of monarchy, or oligarchy, or state socialism, etc., so that students can weigh these against the advantages of democracy? Does he consider contextual arguments that, under conditions of severe deprivation and widespread violence, democracy may not be the best form of government, when order is more important than freedom to survival? It is one thing to use the lectern as a platform for outright propaganda, unconnected with the subject matter of a course, but one could imagine using the student’s question as another teachable moment to ask, in return, “What do you think I would say in answer to this question given how I have presented the arguments I have in this course for a certain form of governance as optimal?” Refusing to answer the question is a dodge and a cop-out, in my opinion—the result of being too scared of being criticized by the David Horowitzes of the world. Let me use an analogy from my profession, as an editor at a university press. I acquire in politics, and I have strong personal views. My primary role as editor is to find and publish the books that represent the best scholarship, whatever normative position they represent—liberal, conservative, Marxist, libertarian, etc. I may personally agree with one author’s point of view more than another’s, but my mission is to see that all get a fair hearing. Even with that degree of “objectivity” in the pursuit of my primary duty, however, I can’t help feeling more enthusiasm for some books than others given my own political preferences and thus may “go the extra mile” for those books in my support of them. Thus, my values creep into my profession and influence it in certain ways, without however making me ineffective as an editor for those books whose viewpoints I do not personally share. Similarly, I think Sracic can still be an effective teacher without completely trying to hide his own preferences from his students.

Sandy Thatcher, at 3:30 pm EDT on October 11, 2007

God is not a Democrat

” .. my values creep into my profession and influence it in certain ways ..”

Uh, oh. Teacher’s got some pets. Everybody better lobby for the higher grade.

And just because a gross, overwhelming number of liberal arts faculty support one of the two major political parties — well, that doesn’t mean 99.999999999% of all faculty should not be biased to that major political party. Of course.

Buzz, at 6:00 pm EDT on October 11, 2007

Thanks to Professor Sracic

After reading Professor Sracic’s essay and the subsequent exchanges of opinions on it, I can’t help but think that there’ve been no convincing challenges above to its soundness and sense. For even if students learn of or can reasonably infer a professor’s political views only from extra-curricular sources, some humanities and social science students might wisely hestitate before sub-critically “pitching” their arguments in papers, exams and discussions to accord with partisan political opinions and preferences expressed by their professors. And, as one commentator above reminds us, Professor Sracic is merely confirming our political system’s tradition of honoring the secret ballot.

J A DeLater, PhD, at 8:40 am EDT on October 12, 2007

Let me see if I’ve got this straight

Students are smart enough to take in all the PR, election talk, news coverage, debates, and other material around an election, combine it with their own understanding of the workings of the political system and their place in it, and arrive at a decision about which candidate is best qualified to represent their particular interests in DC. But students are *not* smart enough to hear a professor express an opinion about a candidate without being indoctrinated to the professor’s point of view. Is that about correct?

I think this all represents a pretty dismal view of students (aren’t y’all the same people I hear complaining about how students don’t know how to *read* anymore in the big virtual staff lounge of IHE?) as well as a pretty dismal view of teaching (in which flesh-and-blood robots read the textbook supplement to disinterested consumer-students). If you’re an American Government prof and you’re afraid that your students are so politically naive that expressing a political opinion in your class would be taking unfair advantage of them, might I suggest you’re not doing a very good job (or maybe you are but need to work on your self-esteem a little).

Dustin, Adjunct Instructor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, at 11:40 am EDT on October 12, 2007

Right Said Fred

I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to be ticked off or flattered. I run off to the market for some corn flakes and jello, and by the time I return, someone called Fred is accusing me of “engaging in rather typical postmodernist sophistry". If I even knew what postmodernist sophistry was, I could at least mount an argument that mine was, in fact, bravely atypical. (I skipped a couple of chapters in The Republic, so no doubt I missed the bit where Socrates humiliates the postmodern sophists.) But before I could even deal with that accusation, I find that I further stand accused of “making [a] Derridean argument". I was fairly certain that Captain Kirk had destroyed the Derrideans, sadly but necessarily contravening the Prime Directive, but evidently my memory again fails me. In any event, suffice it to say that if Fred knew anything about my actual position in academia, he would realize that he doesn’t have a Foucault-ing clue.

When I referred to the uncertain boundary between opinions and facts, I was not asserting that the latter do not exist. I presume that Professor Sracic tells his students that the United States Senate has 100 voting members. That is, indeed, a fact, and not “a construct of patriarchal capitalism", whatever the hell that means.

But just because there are some facts that are essentially undeniable does not mean that the boundaries between fact and opinion are always clear. Many scholars, for example, consider it an empirical fact that Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election; others consider George W. Bush’s victory in Florida to be equally a matter of demonstrable truth. It is one thing to say that some people enjoy vanilla ice cream while some crave strawberry banana. It is something else entirely to give students multiple versions of “factual” information without providing some guidance as to where the evidence seems to lead. After all, the question of whether or not Al Gore won Florida in 2000 is not a matter of personal preference, though such preference might certainly clould one’s analysis of the empirical record.

But more to the point, the placement and emphasis of certain facts over others is a necessary part of syllabus construction and lecture writing. Consider this: it is a fact that the United States government was, over the course of its history, responsible for the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of native people. If you are teaching American History, does that fact deserve one mention, an entire lecture, an entire lecture plus a writing assignment, or what? Clearly, whichever answer you choose is pregnant with political implications. And if you choose to ignore the slaughter of the Indians altogether, then you are also making a political judgment, whether you realize it or not.

You see where I’m going with this. All social science and humanities professors make choices involving which topics to cover and which to exclude. Even Professor Sracic. We make these choices based on our best judgment about what students ought to know and ought to hear. Very often, we do this for reasons that reflect our own values as citizens and educators (call them opinions if you wish, but we’re really talking about values here). There is nothing wrong with this. Indeed, there is nothing else we CAN do.

Further, if our training and research lead us to certain conclusions, we are under no obligation to treat all sides of an issue equally. No professor should feel bound to say, “On the one hand, most people are persuaded by the historical record that the Nazi Holocaust occurred. But let’s give due credence to the other side of this debate.” In fact, any professor who did so would, in my view, be failing in his or her job.

So anyway, my main point is that Professor Sracic’s distinction between “what we think” and “what we know” is, at best, artificial, and at worst, dishonest. What we know is inseparable from what we think. That doesn’t mean that the Organic Chemistry prof gets to spend all her time arguing that Ronald Reagan was the best president ever (though a little irrelevant chatter now and then does help to personalize the professor and perk up the class). But it does mean that professors should be allowed to privilege arguments and viewpoints that are based on their educated understanding of where the evidence leads. And if conservatives don’t like that, then they should quit their lucrative M.B.A. programs and work toward academic careers in political science, philosophy, history, or English.

As to whether Professor Sracic should have told his student which presidential candidate he supported, I have no opinion. I tend not to answer questions like that from my students because I’m kind of a private person. But there’s nothing wrong with doing so. Indeed, the only people who truly believe that indoctrination by college professors is easy or common are people who have never been on my side of the podium.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 7:10 pm EDT on October 12, 2007

Sheesh — get a grip

” .. Are your referring to me as “Joseph D.” in your 8:00 a.m. post in this thread?”

No — only the nationally infamous, greatly useful to the Horowitz fund-raising machine (e.g., Ward, Grover, Billy, Columbia’s di Genova, Slick Willie, Frillary, et al.).

Sir, reasonable persons would agree that you are nowhere near the aforementioned’s unique ability to raise funds for Mr. Horowitz. Not an opinion — merely a hard-number quantitative outcome.

L.L., at 8:35 am EDT on October 14, 2007

Typical

Like your heroes, LL, you just lie & change the subject.

Joseph Duemer, at 5:05 pm EDT on October 14, 2007

Stay in your lane

While I would like to believe that it is possible to teach a class outside of the hard sciences without tainting it with personal beliefs and philosophies, the very fact that you refuse to answer the question directly, is a philosophy. I believe that teachers should state as early as the first class some of their core beliefs, state that you believe these topics to be very personal and not appropriate for classroom discussion, and encourage students to come by during office hours if they would like to pursue some of these personal issues. This way, the class is not subject to Professor Windbag’s discourse on what’s wrong with America, the students are not held hostage by these beliefs, and coerced into believing that a good grade may be dependent on aligning their output with the instructor’s philosophy, there is little chance of litigant lotto, whereby a student uses poor performance as an excuse to attack the intructor’s philosophies. Th fac of higher education is changing. Young, impressionable students are subject to the influences of their instructors and role models, before they’ve had an opportunity to really analyze why they believe what they believe. We are observing more and more instructors who are living “alternative” lifestyles, experiment with drugs, are secularists or fundamentalists, left-wing loonies and right-wing nuts, socialists, neo-conservatives, and everything in between. When our instructors stick to the syllabus and the course objectives, everyone wins.

Garnett Arnold, PhD Student at University of Kansas, at 6:50 am EDT on October 16, 2007