Strange

It is strange that there is so much talk of leftist academia; the vast majority of students majoring in one discipline (at least at my university, a self-described liberal arts school) are business administration and/or some other business derivative such as accounting, finance, or marketing. As for the business faculty, virtually all of them are “conservative,” though some of them suffer from forms of economism and are thus liable to have radically libertarian views.

As for my faculty (philosophy), there are several conservatives, including classicists, medievalists, and Straussians. It is also interesting to note that it makes sense for much of the faculty to be politically liberal. They are highly educated but make considerably less money than many less educated peers in similar fields, so they do not benefit from many policy decisions geared toward benefitting wealthy individuals. Furthermore, tax dollars are often significant sources of funding for univerisites which are continuously strapped for funding in the liberal arts. Performance pay, evaluative decisions, issues of scandal, etc. further restrict the freedom of professors to be provocative as well as push the boundaries of contemporary thought; why would the faculty then turn around and thank the administrators and political authorities for their efforts to undermine the autonomy of faculty?

John, at 4:35 am EDT on April 18, 2008

One cannot expect conservatives to join this campaign if almost all its arguments are based on liberal assumptions—esp. when the call to do so is mixed in with some name calling and innuendo.

Douglas Lewis, at 2:30 pm EDT on August 22, 2006

name correctio

I inadvertently misspelled Professor Lazere’s surname in my post—my apologies, Professor (no pun intended at the time).

jacques albert, at 2:30 pm EDT on August 22, 2006

Rethinking the Culture Wars

A long passionate defense of the academy and its Enlightenment traditions against its supposedly oppressive, academic freedom threatening, clearly reactionary critics. One question to Professor Lazere: who came up with the speech codes, now utterly rejected by our courts?

BrianGratton, Professor at Arizona State University, at 4:20 pm EDT on August 22, 2006

Lazere/Chesterton/Belloc/Horowitz

As an old colleage of Don’s from Cal Poly, I generally agree with his defense of academic freedom. I have never voted Republican in my life, but I do not share the unwillingness of faculty to criticize the left when the left’s electoral impotence is so often clearly traceable to policies which outrage common moral convictions. How many anthropologists will admit that Margaret Mead was a liar, that Freud was a fraud and that there is no good scenario for sex in highschool? How many political science teachers will admit that the democrats have done little to defend our workers (still no punitive damages for unfair labor practices)or overseas workers? How many philosophy teachers admit that a passionate love of truth is hard to square with a purely material definition of human nature? Or that it is a cheap shot too argue that since genuine miracles would be a reasonable motive to examine Christ’s claims, genuine miracles are a priori impossible? Since I am more open to examining all these questions, students who do vote republican complain to me about the indoctrination that goes on in their classes. I am the least tolerant of teachers, if by tolerance one means not letting students know where I stand, but most tolerant in letting them defend where they stand. I invite my colleagues to come to my classes to defend their contrary views. They rarely invite me. We won’t have genuine university intellectual lives until we have more Chestertons and Bellocs, and even Horowitzs on the loose.

Stanislaus J. Dundon, Professor Emeritus at CSU Sacramento, at 5:15 pm EDT on August 22, 2006

Bradley, I’m a uni teacher on the left too, and I appreciate and agree with your comments. The Horowitzian fear that such people as you and I—who as left-leaning but balanced and politically tolerant teachers, are predominant among left-leaning academics—the fear that we’re indoctinating students by shutting out rightwing views is absurd. Some few do do that, and the examples springing from their classes get blown up into exemplars of nearly the entire professoriate.

Based on my 17 years of teaching, your explanation of the conservative students’ tendency to fend for themselves rather than toil for relatively less material reward in service to others also rings true. But the conservative bias of our mainstream media, it seems to me, leads many among even the service-oriented majors to move on in conservative and thus self-contradictory terms, with an ideology whose tenants run counter to their own civic-minded ambitions.

The bigger problem I see is the conservative insistence on entry into the realm of hard thought and evidence-sifting when the explanations they offer for social phenomena are so relatively simple and context-free. “Why are people poor?” “Because,” says the conservative, “they’re lazy, or genetically inferior, or taught to be lazy through government handouts.” Never mind the complex, multigenerational effects of systemic classism and racism revealed by deeper scholarly investigation.

willie mink, at 4:25 am EDT on August 23, 2006

warped discourse

More and more I see students entering college having internalized the (bipartisan) notion of education-as-commodity. This only makes more difficult the task of instilling in them habits of thoughtfulness and reflection, implicit in which is a questioning of the assumptions and biases hammered into their heads from early infancy onward.

Most of them depart after sixteen weeks more or less unmolested by critical inquiry, safely returning to the “real world” where the right wing dominates all three branches of government, as well as business, mass media, and, often, university administrations. This is in part why I am unmoved by the crocodile tears from the right over the private voting habits of liberal arts faculty.

This is also why right-wing culture warriors have no incentive to engage in good-faith discourse. They are ascendant, and therefore a simulacrum of discourse will do, when discourse is necessary at all. Witness some of the comments in this space.

Clark Iverson, Professor of English, at 6:40 am EDT on August 23, 2006

Re: Culture Wars-! (3)

GW: Thanks for your follow-up posting. Your quotation about discourse from Professor Lazere is not in question here, merely the implication that traditionalists and conservatives (whether academic or non-academic, and especially the latter—in Horowitz’s case—when they challenge powerful campus vested interest groups) do not or insufficiently serve these ends. Try requiring post-structuralists, psycho-anal-ists, feminists, “theorists” (i.e., those afflicted with theorrhea), and many Marxists (where “assertions leap out of a mass of verbiage"—G. Graff) so gushed over in “humanities” departments even to pay lip service to the Laws of Thought (so much for Professor Lazere’s short litany of “academic” virtues, which also inform non-academic argumentation—and most certainly Horowitz’s. “Read him, and read him again, and if you do not like him. . .” (you know the rest). Yet I do think he would accept an “oderint dum metuant” victory if “gentle persuasion” fails. What I suspect irritates academic, “do-as-I-say” leftists like Professor Lazere most about Horowitz is that his passionate but carefully reasoned argument carries far outside the echo-chambers of academia and beyond the reach of some institutions’ speech police. As for your reference to “politics of the day,” I read “light of day."I’m happy to hear there’s a former UN ambassador in your department; would that your department would offer the current UN ambassador such a position when he retires. Cheers again, GW

jacques albert, at 11:55 am EDT on August 23, 2006

Jacques,

William Thelin beat me to the punch in replying to much of your post. I agree with him wholeheartedly that you are misrepresenting Lazere’s position.

However, there are a couple of issues Thelin did not address which I think you need to explain. First, please explain why we should expect or even want theorists in whatever discipline to adhere or pay lip service to the laws of thought? It seems to me that there is a rich tradition of Philosophers argueing against and/or working outside these laws. Heraclitus is likely the first example (unless someone more knowledgable can correct me) while we find more modern and very powerful arguments in some of Hegel’s work.

Secondly, that was a bit of rhetorical trickery worthy of Horowitz — the way you sidestepped my comment regarding the politics of the day. What I meant by that — and what I would be surprised to hear you did not understand — is an allusion to the terrifying prospect of the sort of public oversight that demands academic persuits (research, teaching) conform to the ever changing whims of the people. There is a very important difference between exposing the inner workings of the Academe to the light of day, and allowing unqualified people to determine what is and is not a legitimate research persuit (read: Jacques’ comment re: Laws of Thought).

GW, at 3:25 pm EDT on August 23, 2006

Goose the Gander?

Thelin and GW basically repeat:

“Please explain why we should expect or even want theorists in whatever discipline to adhere or pay lip service to the laws of thought?”

or either should we require it of Horowitz and his ilk ?

No, let us go forth into chaos and incourage sophomoric with narrow focus and shallow depth of thought, to retreat to a lonely apartment and repeat the tragic failure of Marx. Develop a thick, impenetrable theory (peer reviewed by a few sympathetic fellow revolutionaries) that will not include anyone who does not speak the language of that theory.

Sure, sounds reasonable to any potential tyrant or murderous potential dictator.

Both sides should submit to “daylight” or neither.

Dr. F. Gump, at 4:35 am EDT on August 24, 2006

Re: “The Unquestioning University”

Thanks for your probative remarks on the importance of questioning in education, Alan—remarks that you managed to illustrate with one in your message (granted, that merely a false dilemma in interrogative form) just prior to your decree: “We cannot pick one profession that serves the public and demand that different kinds of people do that work whether they want to or not, it is all or none.” Perhaps the implied question here is what to make of the tacked-on clause at the end. My surmise is that it more clearly identifies the previous one as a false dilemma. What say you? Then: “The whole idea is silly.” Could you not have effortlessly followed this with: “QED—class dismissed!"? What questions or critical inquiries (let alone complaints, entreaties, or revelations) could follow that diffident exploratory conclusion? Know that I concur with your emphases on questioning and on critical inquiry, and, consistent with these virtues, I have one last question for you: Does your apparent dismissal of political diversity in academe (liberal—conservative, i.e., not liberal-left—radical-left—extreme left) also include the “different kinds of people” listed in equal opportunity disclaimers? As for your proposal about requiring American history courses of all Oregon undergraduates, I would tentatively agree, though on such a proposal I might have a few questions. Cheers

jacques albert, at 8:25 pm EDT on August 24, 2006

Prof. Lazere compares politicians who intrude on academic life to ones who presume to tell surgeons how to perform operations. But it would certainly be legitimate for an elected legislator, in reviewing the budget requests from public hospitals, to take note of institutions that had much higher costs than others, or had patients much less likely to recover from their illnesses. No claims to surgical expertise are required to perform this legislative oversight and the stewardship of the taxpayers’ money.

We have Prof. Lazere’s assurance that academic life is better governed, not by elected legislators reflecting popular but uninformed opinion, but by “standards of professional accreditation (upwards of 10 years graduate study for a Ph.D. and 7 more for tenure), systematic scholarship, and academic discourse. That discourse is based on the principles of reasoned argument, rules of evidence and research procedures, wide reading and experience, an historical perspective on current events, open-minded pursuit of complex, often-unpopular truths, and openness to diverse viewpoints.”

These are the lofty and rigorous standards, however, that guaranteed Ward Churchill lifetime employment at public expense. The conscientious educators at the University of Colorado spent decades contentedly unaware that Prof. Churchill was writing articles under a pseudonym, then quoting those articles to bolster arguments he made in writings under his own name. It was pressure from the lay public, angry over Churchill’s grotesque moronicisms about the people who died in the World Trade Center being “little Eichmanns,” that forced the formal investigation of Churchill’s laughable and shoddy scholarship. No reasonable person can doubt that, in the absence of this popular pressure, Ward Churchill would still be a member in good standing of the clerisy entrusted with promoting systematic scholarship and reasoned argument.

It is scandals like the University of Colorado’s that make people wonder whether American higher education is a high calling or a low racket. The rigorous and lofty standards Prof. Lazere speaks for would, if adhered to, produce universities few could reproach. If they are simply invoked by cynical or self-deluded public employees as a way to tell the taxpayers to keep sending the money and then leave us alone — we’re busy doing noble things you can’t possibly understand or evaluate — then universities can expect lots of the close, critical popular and legislative scrutiny they will have earned.

William Voegeli, Vice President at The Claremont Institute, at 2:20 pm EDT on August 25, 2006

Re: ” a perfect example of bad faith”

Thanks, I could say, for the (ultimately) revealing exemplification of your announced subject, which you modestly (yet cunningly and eruditely) proposed to us in your message—for only gaping red-state rustics and classroom flaneurs of the profanum vulgus could want the words, “What follows is. . .” before your subject title (I confess it was an Augustinian “tolle, lege!” moment for us); indeed, when the arcanum of your message was at last apparent, Fichte’s “sun-clear” report could not have dazzled us retrograde Hegelians more. . . . Here, a sustained negative example worthy of the mighty Swift in support of William Voegeli’s claims! For, that you quite declined (stunning nolo contendere there!) William Voegeli’s challenge to discuss the whole issue of proper public or legislative oversight of taxpayer-financed institutions sparked by Professor Lazere’s essay at first shocked some of us from our traditionally complacent reliance on ad rem or ad argumentum or cui bono? rather than ad hominem or noscitur a socios (i.e., “who is he and who are his friends?—aha!—Republicans, Claremont Institute, Ann Coulter—well then, Ca se voit! Quid verbis?” followed by the imperial “There it is") appeals just before your magisterial sentencing (the brilliantly climactic anathema sit!) of the “far right” to eternal fire and ever-last—ing pain.Another stumbling-block (scandalum) you cunningly side-stepped (mirabile dictu! for such feigned obtuseness, Professor) is the issue of what relationship obtains between academic freedom and freedom of speech in our institutions of higher learning. And your clever tu quoque counter to WV’s specific mention of Ward Churchill’s academic malpractice invoked the great bogey (Ann Coulter) of a non-academic (!) controversialist whom you say slandered 9/11 widows (here we admiringly also note your deftly ironical expansion of her four to your implied “all"). Would that you now would deliver us such powerful negative exempli in treating other aspects of the “low racket” that you feigned to condemn: metasticizing pseudo-disciplines like “gender (we know this is actually a grammatical term, don’t we?) studies,” “ethnic studies,” “body studies,” “disability studies” and the like?; or the campus entertainment industry that often takes the shape of a criminal underworld (i.e, college sports)?; or the odious speech codes that try to snuff out all unorthodox dissent? However, if your remarks are to be taken otherwise than you have expressed them, Professor Iverson, I think you might try again. Cheers, in friendly opposition, I am, etc.

jacques albert, at 5:45 pm EDT on August 27, 2006

Irrelevant

“Academic freedom means running the risk of having one’s tender ears scandalized by unpopular views.”

This has nothing to do with Churchill’s documented history of systematic and intentional fraud over the course of decades.

JBM, at 7:45 am EDT on August 28, 2006