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Interesting story from the University of North Carolina, where 71 professors have signed a letter criticizing the university for its negotiations with the Pope Center about a sizable donation to establish a Western Cultures program at UNC. As sketched out, the foundation would contribute up to $700,000 annually to help fund the program, which would create a new minor in Western cultures, new honors courses, freshman seminars, undergraduate research awards and study abroad scholarships.
The Pope Center is clearly a conservative organization, and it has been critical of UNC's" cultural diversity" requirement. But there's no indication, based on the comments of UNC administrators, that the foundation intends to influence the content of courses offered--only to sponsor additional faculty lines and new courses in the subject.
The faculty protesters, who represent around two percent of the professors at UNC, have offered two lines of criticism. First, they claim that they have not been consulted about the provisions of the grant. As it seems that few, if any, have expertise in the grant's subject matter, it's not clear why they would be consulted at this stage. Second, they object to the topic. According to the wire report on the controversy, Sue Estroff, a professor of Anthropology, Psychiatry, and Social Medicine, noted that there was"no need for more emphasis in Western studies" in UNC's curriculum, and termed the grant a threat to academic freedom. This seems to me to be a remarkably broad conception of academic freedom, but at least Estroff is candid."The cohort of people who are [senior faculty members] now on most university campuses are people like me," she boasted a couple of years ago, professors"who went to college in the '60s and were part of that upheaval, who cut their teeth on a different kind of political activism and some radicalism." In a remarkable assertion, Estroff claimed that in the post-9/11 era,"universities were probably the only places where differing views of what 9/11 meant and what our responsibilities should be were actively aired."
Legitimate concerns exist about this initiative, which appears to be in its preliminary stages, and clearly UNC would need to take steps to ensure that the curriculum would be one charted by the university and not the Pope Center. Yet, on the surface, the position of Estroff and her cohort is hard to defend, since they seem to be saying that the university would be better off with fewer courses in a subject matter that is clearly worthy of study.
I have no doubt that a grant to study Lappish might come from Finland or perhaps a Finnish beer company. I cannot conceive who would support Ancient Technology -- perhaps a wealthy weaver or some quarry located on a good obsidian site or . Of course they want studied what interests them.
Is the purpose of a University to allow free study, research, and teaching of anything academic - constraints of space, time, money,student interet, and personnel recognized-- or is its purpose to design curricula according to ideological and political criteria. In which case, whose criteria and what criteria are presently applied and why are those better than Pace's, a typical tarheel, or mine?
Wouldn't a critical question be whether students wanted to study Western Culture?
In other words, assuming that Satan would not constrain the direction of study, funding from him to study evil in an academic way ought be welcome --- although I understand there might be contractual difficulties involved in the university selling something twice <grin>
John H. Lederer -
3/4/2005
I have no doubt that a grant to study Lappish might come from Finland or perhaps a Finnish beer company. I cannot conceive who would support Ancient Technology -- perhaps a wealthy weaver or some quarry located on a good obsidian site or . Of course they want studied what interests them.
Is the purpose of a University to allow free study, research, and teaching of anything academic - constraints of space, time, money,student interet, and personnel recognized-- or is its purpose to design curricula according to ideological and political criteria. In which case, whose criteria and what criteria are presently applied and why are those better than Pace's, a typical tarheel, or mine?
Wouldn't a critical question be whether students wanted to study Western Culture?
In other words, assuming that Satan would not constrain the direction of study, funding from him to study evil in an academic way ought be welcome --- although I understand there might be contractual difficulties involved in the university selling something twice <grin>
Robert KC Johnson -
3/4/2005
This, of course, is a possibility, but it seems to me an extraordinarily remote one. Even at CUNY, which is much more cash-starved than UNC and where it seems like we have to beg the legislature to give us any money, I've never heard of a situation (at least since the city budget crisis of the 1970s) where cutbacks in government funding led to programs being cut. In addition, the Pope grant would fund, at best, a handful of courses. Given the hundreds of courses offered at UNC, that couldn't reshape the curriculum. It could only provide students with greater choice.
As to your second question, I'd be very interested. Does anyone know if there's some sort of database that charts outside grants (whether private or public) devoted to curricular matters?
Robert KC Johnson -
3/4/2005
Agree completely with Tim: if the grant would give Pope the power to create the ideological polar opposite of, say, an ethnic studies department, with courses oriented around the theme of "west is best," this would be unacceptable. And, as Tim points out, we don't have the fine print on this offer right now. (I'm less concerned about Pope's criticism of UNC's curricular diversity requirement, which I've attacked previously as well, and which seems to me a terribly structured program.)
That said, what appears to have occurred thus far is what occurs at universities all the time: an outside donor or granting agency, working with interested faculty on the ground and administrators, has tried to set up a grant for a curricular program. To use the example above, I doubt that, if Pope wanted to fund an ethnic studies program, Estroff et. al. would be raising the faculty governance question.
It shouldn't be (and isn't) surprising that some faculty want to have as few courses in Western civilization or other topics perceived as "traditional" taught, even if doing so comes at no cost to the University. That's a position that's somewhat hard to defend intellectually.
Van L. Hayhow -
3/4/2005
Thanks for your response. I don't disagree with any of it. As your courses for my hypothetical Mexican history grant, I think they would all be excellent and I would not object to them. Nor would I object to your courses on Western Culture. On your fascism course, it might be interesting to add communism and compare how western civ ran off the rails for a while there.
Timothy James Burke -
3/4/2005
I agree that KC is right to express skepticism about that petition and its reactive character. I just think that it's also important to be wary about the Pope Foundation.
I think a granter has a right to be upset if faculty use a grant for something which is *manifestly* unrelated to the purpose of the grant, and any foundation that deals with academics has to know that's a very real possibility--that grants get hijacked or used in ways that really break faith with the donor. Any donor is wise to set some broad conditionalities and seek some broad guarantees before giving. On the other hand, if those guarantees are drawn too tightly, then I think they not on restrain academic freedom, they tend to be more of a net loss for the institution than a net gain. If your grant for Mexican history was used to fund courses in East Asian history, yes, you'd have a right to say that broke the spirit of your grant. If it was used for a course on the "borderlands" between the US and Mexico, or for a course on Mexican immigrant communities in the US, or for a course on the image of Mexico in Spanish history, or for a course on the economic history of NAFTA, etc., maybe you would or wouldn't feel disgruntled, but all of those would be potentially fair judgements about how to proceed with the grant. I'd want to be sure as a faculty member that you as a donor didn't have the intent to micromanage those kinds of legitimate professional judgement calls.
I'd stick by my challenges: a good program on the Western tradition should allow (in fact, I think ought to mandatorily include) courses which ask whether there actually is a Western tradition or what the meaning of "The West" is, as well as courses that raise questions about the negative aspects of that tradition. A course on fascism in the 20th Century, for example, would make a very good addition to such a program, precisely because one burning philosophical *and* historical question about fascism is whether it is a consequence of the Western tradition or a break from it.
If it turned out that the granters insist that the program they wish to fund must be uniformly celebratory, I'd say that it's not only a bad program of study, it's also a constraint on academic freedom. At the same time, if the faculty implementation of the program turned out to be nothing more than "Why We Hate Dead White Men", or a program on non-Western history with the justification that non-Western history is a great way to learn about "the West", then the foundation would be perfectly justified in withdrawing its support and criticizing the faculty for breaking faith with the donors' intent.
There has to be give on both sides: were I a UNC faculty member, I'd want to know that there was good intent on the Pope Foundation side before I committed to supporting the grant.
Carl Patrick Burkart -
3/4/2005
Would the Pope Foundation donate a grant to cover all the costs of teaching Lappish, or establishing a program to study Ancient Technology?
What the Pope foundation was trying to do it to influence the content of instruction at UNC by donating money. This is their right. At the same time, it is the right and the duty of the faculty to be suspicious of attempts to influence the curicula by groups with political agendas.
John H. Lederer -
3/4/2005
Would 70 professors sign a petition opposing a grant to cover all the costs of teaching Lappish, or establishing a program to study Ancient Technology?
I doubt it.
Which suggests that the issue is not control of the curriculum per se, but control of the political curiculum.
Van L. Hayhow -
3/4/2005
A comment and a question on your post. You say KC is not being completely evenharnded. I don't agree. His post was about a petition signed by a significant portion of the faculty who are reacting without, apparently, knowing the facts. If I wrote a paper taking a position without knowing the facts, I would have flunked. I think his post is fair comment. Now the question. You say that a grant with too narrow a focus may act as a contraint on academic freedom. Really? Why? When I was an undergraduate I loved Latin American history. I'm about the only person I know that has read between 10 and 20 books on the Mexican Revolution. If I had a lot of money and made a grant to UNC to fund a program on Mexican history, I think I would have reason to object if the money was used instead to fund courses on Asian history. How would my objection be a constraint on academic freedom? The university has other resources to do whatever it wants. As an attorney, I can tell you that if you owned a chain of stores and borrowed money from the bank to rehab the appearance of the stores and instead you used the money to buy another business that's called bank fraud and you could go to jail.
Carl Patrick Burkart -
3/4/2005
Let me add, that I would like to know how similar grants have affected curricula at other places in the past (particularly in state universities). Does anyone know?
Carl Patrick Burkart -
3/4/2005
Another thing that must be kept in mind is the possibility that a future state legislature will cut funding to a University system that is seemingly awash in cash. So the Western Civ courses would be ok because private money was paying for them and non-Western civ courses would have to be cut. Thus, the Pope foundation would have helped to reshape the curiculumn despite the intentions of the faculty. If you are ok with people with lots of money shaping state university curriculumn, that is fine.
Timothy James Burke -
3/4/2005
It all depends, intensely so, on what the Pope Center has defined as a suitable response to its grant, what conditionalities it's placed on it.
I think UNC faculty would be justified in regarding such an offer with skepticism when it comes from an institution which has in the past criticized existing curriculum there, which has argued that they should not be teaching some of the things that they do teach. Because it seems to me that a basic requirement for ANY donor, of ANY ideology to a university or college is that they set broad conditionalities on their grants and leave the faculty to make intelligent, diligent decisions about how to meet the spirit of the grant. Tight conditionalities, or grants which are meant to heavily constrain the ability of academic professionals to exercise their own professional judgement, are a constraint on academic freedom, no matter who is giving the money or what the ideological purpose of the grant might be.
So in this case, I think KC ought to start with a kind of even-handed skepticism about both the UNC faculty AND the Pope Foundation, if his main concern is the practice of academic freedom. I agree that the UNC faculty who are mobilizing against this appear for the moment to be mobilizing based on a rejection of the Pope Foundation for what it is ideologically, that because they don't like the Pope Foundation, they don't want UNC to take the money. But I would not assume, as KC seems to, that there aren't some strings attached, and that's also an important issue.
These would be my litmus tests for determining that if I were a UNC faculty member. For example, if I proposed that a course on comparative European imperialism in the 19th and 20th Centuries be part of the program, would someone (the granters, or their administrative liasons) tell me that was inappropriate? I'm not talking about a course that was foaming at the mouth attacks on the West, but a perfectly professional and balanced course. Would someone tell me that imperialism was not part of the Western Tradition, e.g., that this program has to, by its very nature, be a celebration? If I proposed a course on the intellectual history of the idea of "the West" that left the question open of whether there *is* a Western tradition, or a course that argued that classical Greece and Rome have very little to do with post-Renaissance Western Europe, would those fit the bill?
I would at the least have a lot of very serious questions about any grant that underwrote new curriculum, whether it was Mellon or Ford or Rockefeller or Pope. I'd especially have those questions if the foundation in question already had an adversarial relationship to the curricular choices that faculty had made. This has got nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with the legitimate professional autonomy that academics are entitled to have. That there is a lot of ideological noise in the debate is very clear, and that's important too. But it's not the only issue.
Richard L McGaha -
3/4/2005
Seems that Professor Estroff for fears for her academic position. Almost as if by accepting the money from a conservative organization a purge will take place. Though I do find that people like Professor Estroff and her ilk who expound on 'diversity' and whatnot are usually the first to try and stop courses that they feel threaten diversity (or diversity as they see it). I am sure if the grant were to study trangendered pygmies of New Guinea instead of western culture, Professor Estroff would at least stop to think about it (A bit snide I know).
Amardeep Singh -
3/4/2005
...Would be a good idea.
(Get it? A little reference to M.K. Gandhi there.)
Sherman Jay Dorn -
3/4/2005
Now if it's money with restricted scope and for things that the institution WASN'T interested in doing before,...
There's the crux of the matter: is the offer of money leading the university away from focusing on what it had (preferably previously) decided to concentrate on? In some ways, this is similar in principle to a hypothetical announcement of a multimillion-dollar grant competition for a combination of research and service in complexification studies (if I can borrow from profgrrrl's moniker for her field). If there's a faculty member who's interested in complexification studies, great. But a university shouldn't go beyond its broader plans, capacity, or expertise just because there's money dangled in front of it.
Money dangled for curriculum is a more serious dilemma, because you're committing to faculty lines and time and student programs. If the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation were offering the same amount of money, for a limited time, if only the university created a graduate epidemiology program, the faculty should have similar qualms. I love epidemiology, it's an important area, and no university should ever be ashamed of having such a program. But did the university ever intend to create an epidemiology program? What happens to students if the money disappears at the end of five years—and, by committing itself to the students, would the university suddenly find itself in a multimillion-dollar whole when the benefactors skedaddled?
It's one thing to start up a center that doesn't commit the university to courses and programs of studies. It's something else when you're going to promise students that a degree program is going to be there in five years. Having said that, the devil's in the details. And we're assuming that this is good journalism, which means that 20-30% of the details are only subtly wrong. Is there anyone from UNC who wants to chime in here?
Jonathan Dresner -
3/4/2005
... use it! Money's money. If it goes into an area that doesn't need a lot more support, then old tenure lines in that area can be shifted into more important areas when the come free. If the faculty hired are underused... who cares? Didn't cost you anything, and when that kind of money comes in the institution takes cream off the top to share with everyone (often in the form of facilities). Didn't get any? Talk to your own department chair, division chair, dean, grant committee, but don't complain about the donor.
It's money. Never have an institutions problems been made worse by having more money. Sometimes it isn't a solution, but boy it sure ain't a problem. Don't like having that name (whatever it is) on your institution? Find more money from someone else, but as long as the money doesn't come with strings attached (aside from a plaque or two), there's no harm. None at all.
Are there people whose money I wouldn't accept? That's a tough one. If they want to give me/my institution money and it's money for something we want to do anyway, then I honestly can't see NOT accepting it. I'm serious. Halliburton Chair of Migration Studies? I'd take it. League of the South Chair in Asian History? Long as I don't have to clear my teaching or scholarship with them, why not?
Now if it's money with restricted scope and for things that the institution WASN'T interested in doing before, then you might want to ask just how tightly controlled the money is and whether the purpose contributes to the real missions of the institution. But...
Unless there's a conflict of interest, or a violation of academic freedom, or some loss of institutional control.... take the money.
Robert KC Johnson -
3/4/2005
Yes, it does seem like a similar story. The current UNC administration has been rather erratic on contentious curricular and policy-related issues, and it will be interesting to see how they handle this.
Ralph E. Luker -
3/4/2005
We don't know all the inside details, but this looks very much like the big story at Yale a decade ago, when the University gave up a $20,000,000 grant to underwrite the costs of a Western Civilization program. See the Yale Daily News.
