Mad Melancholic Feminista has a series of posts on the rising attempts to hunt liberals down on campus.
In the first post, she goes through the manual one group produced to help start similar groups on campus. I read through the handbook too. It's full of fun tips, like how to target whole departments (suggested lefty hotbeds? Women's Studies, Native American Studies, American Studies, among others, but history, political science and sociology are also "fertile" ground).
There is a lot of sleight-o'-hand going on in this document, which gives the appearance of non-partisan and noble aims, but close examination reveals that, indeed, the emperor has no clothes.
I thought I would think out loud for here with my readers. I am particularly interested in two SAF moves that makes a case for "Abuses of Academic Freedom." First of all, SAF use two phrases to describe, what I can only surmise is the same thing (a scholarly viewpoint), but use different descriptions based on how well it jibes with their own unstated pro-conservative politics. Either SAF describes a scholarly viewpoint in terms such as "the spectrum of scholarly viewpoints" or "intellectually significant dissenting views" when they are making a case for including "conservative" views, or they refer to "narrow perspective" or "political and ideological persuasion" to refer to faculty positions that criticize some of the tenets of mainstream conservative thought...
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On first blush, this seems like a reasonable statement of purpose. Sure, we are finite beings, limited in our skills to unlock all the mysteries of the universe, and so unfettered, critical inquiry is the best way to get closer to understand the way the world works. But, SAF tends to emphasize a particular relativist reading of this statement. They focus on the "never-ending pursuit" and "no party or intellectual faction can be assumed to have a monopoly on wisdom" and interpret this to mean that no position is bettter than another, and that every position put forward in the classroom should be considered in relation to the contrary position. If you make a case for "affirmative action," then you should immediately make a case against affirmative action. Now, in the arena of ethical issues, I do think its important to consider a variety of arguments, and evaluate how well each is argued and reasoned. But, do we also need to necessarily teach creationism next to evolutionary biology? Should every Micro and Macro Economics course include equal time on Marx's Das Kapital?
Ah, I smell a whiff of ID! Is the next suggestion going to be "teach the controvery?"
Seriously, however, this short description illustrates in the manual the very relativism that the group claims to despise in its liberal targets.
SAF doesn't give its recruits any reliable standard by which to ferret out a good scholary viewpoint from a bad scholarly viewpoint. They assume the worst kind of relativism--that all knowledge is inherently politics--and the views of those in power necessarily prevail over those who are not in power. Given this postmodern relativism, SAF has to then establish (which they do from bogus studies) that college campuses are dominated by one political party who has a monopoly on wisdom. Once you convince people that liberals are in power on college campuses and "indoctrinating" students to their ideology, then you can make a case for bringing in government to stop this abuse of free speech. (I should add that the whole concept of "free speech seems problematic when ideas are the products of groups in power). SAF ultimately wants to get State legislatures to adopt its Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) that would give state governments the right to regulate what gets taught in your classroom. The arbiters of what counts as a "scholarly significant viewpoint" would then be whomever was elected, regardless of whether or not they know anything about molecular biology or Chinese. The standards get hashed out in legislatures, and, in my nasty imagination, I forsee special interests all over this debate: trying to get a certain textbook adopted, or particular lab equipment, etc. What SAF would ultimately achieve if its movement is successful is a thorough politicization of knowledge. What you learn is a product of whomever is in power or capable of manipulating state governments.
She says that like this isn't the goal. Neither does she address the assumption about which movement will be able to maintain that power.
MMF's analysis of the language of the manual clarifies the inconsistency, but she's still focusing on how it's incorrect and inconsistent. I don't think those that wish to police the academy really care. Reading the manual, and browsing the websites, what's readily apparent is that there is a movement being assembled to use power to attempt to control the flow information in higher education.
Of couse, this isn't really new, and it's only part of the effort to wrest "control" (and I dispute that anyone in particular has control) of information from the "reality based" community and let the spin doctors play fast and loose with information. We saw it with NASA, and we've certainly seen it with regard to science education in the public schools (see PZ Myers ongoing commentary).
But back to MMF, and the criteria the manual suggests for violations of students rights. Yes, I emphasized rights, because it is quite unclear which rights are supposedly being violated (and of couse, whether any violations are occurring at all).
This passage amused me, particularly having just finished reading My Freshman Year.
As a college professor I operate with the assumption that the students are mature enough to do the reading I have assigned, to ask me questions if they don't understand the reading, and then to participate in class discussions that test out hypothesis, consider counterarguments, or pursue the consequences of a certain line of argument. I view the students to have a rather active role in their own education in college. I don't see my role as one who merely transmits what is already in the reading to them during a class period. That is a waste of all of our times.
I think there are serious differences in how professors and students see the role of the professor. There is a relatively funny way to view the consequence, which leads professors to become frustrated when their students "just sit there." There was a Doonesbury cartoon (and no, I can't find a link to it) where as the class just wrote and wrote and paid no attention, the professor made increasingly absurd statements to see if anyone was paying attention and thinking, rather than simply transcribing.
The not so benign consequence is when students, like the group that MMF describes, act like those Doonesbury characters, and themselves imbue the lecture with absolute meaning. I think this can be a real problem, especially in a class like philosophy, where professors challenge students to argue for or think through an argument in direct opposition to their own values, in order to understand the logic, or rhetoric. That is, instead of being absent-minded (or manipulative) prostletyzing, it's a learning tool. People on debate teams have to be prepared for this, for example, in order to understand both sides of an argument.
Similarly, being challenged forces you to think. Last night a former student of mine was in town, and we went out for some beers and ended up talking about social science, the learning process, and our respective graduate programs, inluding the receptivity - or lack thereof - of graduate students to being challenged. I was very touched when my student said that of all the undergraduate classes, mine was really the only one which really challenged the student to think differently or think about contradictory ideas, and challenge the kinds of "the world is X" ideas. And I don't even teach a class in the student's major. For the record, my student did not become my political clone, and honestly, I am not sure the student really knows what my political beliefs are. The experience of being challenged, rather than turn students into liberal - or conservative - zombies, should fundamentally make them think about how they know what they know, and why they believe certain things to be true. It doesn't mean "swap my beliefs for yours," but rather "be aware of how you know and think."
In other words, and as many people have said already about this, being presented with a different way of thinking (if that is indeed the case, which as we will see below is not necessarily true) doesn't come with an evil intent to brainwash. As I often tell my students, my job is not to make them believe anything, but to teach them how to interpret (and create) explanations about how to understand things.
Worse than the misunderstanding of teaching method, or the conflation of understanding with believing, or the pernicious assumption by students they are being indoctrinated (deliberately fostered by organizations like the one MMF describes), is the liklihood that the actions of these organizations will lead to distortions, validation of baseless rumors, and outright lies that could damage individual professors, as well as the academy in general.
Mad Melancholic Feminista found out first hand, when conservative students on her campus targeted her for smearing as a "looney liberal," and made up lies about her and started distributing them on campus (emphasis mine):
I highlighted the accusation that I said the September 11th attacks weren't that bad, for two reasons: (1) I never said anything like this in my class and (2) it is exactly the kind of accusation conservative students are trained to make of their marks. I discovered this when I attended their conference and watched an entire session run by a college junior teach the students present how to get your professor fired or in trouble with the trustees. His examples were either send out emails that expose their terrorist sympathizing or their opposition of ROTC. I discovered this post about me only after I had attended that session and knew that I was lucky enough to be one of the professors they wanted to go after.
A quick note: when I showed this piece of propaganda to my father, what pissed him off the most is that he was called a Hippie. As a Goldwater man, Ronald Reagan devotee, and long supporter of the Republican party, he was incensed that anyone would call him a hippie. Oh well, at least he was upset.
Making things up to "get your professor fired of in trouble with the trustees." Not a professor about whom there were serious issues, but one they wanted to go after. These same groups, who on the front page of their website called Gloria Steinham a "bra burning psycho." A psycho. Not to mention that the whole bra burning thing is apocryphal.
There are many things that people do not understand about academia, and one of them is why free speech and the institution of tenure were so important in the first place. They are a corrective from the days in which the church could tell you that your science was incorrect, or that you could be fired when a new governor came in and got rid of all the professors appointed by his predecessor.
These movements also overlook something fundamental about education: if students are not presented with new and different information, they can't learn. No one is obliged to change religion, political party, or favorite color as the result of what a professor says. Students are required to show mastery of the material. What they do with the knowledge after the class is over, is their own business.
Finally, the big lie being perpetrated by these organizations MMF describes is that liberal professors run academic institutions like some evil cult, and that conservative students are babes in the woods.
It's either that, or the liberals are right, and young indoctrinated conservatives won't be able to resist the siren song of liberalism, and therefore it must quashed.
Either way, that's a pretty patronizing view of young conservative adults in college. If my party viewed me as unable to think for myself, I'd be damn insulted.
Posted by binky at March 25, 2006 05:06 PM | TrackBack | Posted to The Academy