Blogs > Cliopatria > 9-11 at NC Wesleyan

Apr 29, 2005

9-11 at NC Wesleyan


by Cliopatria


From everything I've seen to date, including Scott Jaschik's Inside Higher Edpiece referenced by Ralph in his post below, I'm disturbed at the treatment SIU professor Jonathan Bean has received. Unless new information comes to light, this case seems to amount to an open letter denouncing Bean from eight colleagues and a formal rebuke from the dean (without consulting him about the issue but who now says she can't comment out of respect to"due process") because of one optional assignment from a conservative webzine--an assignment that I still haven't seen anyone describe as factually inaccurate.

Frontpage is obviously a controversial publication. Some of its articles are over-the-top; a few have not withstood critical scrutiny. But simply because a piece appears in Frontpage should not automatically discredit it. In the last two years, I've published three articles in the webzine, dealing with"global studies" and with academic freedom issues at Brooklyn, and these pieces mirrored many of the posts I've done at HNN. I simply wanted to reach a different audience.

This morning, I received an email from a colleague recommending that I look at a course offered by an associate professor in the at NC Wesleyan political science department named Jane Christensen. The course is entitled "911 The Road to Tyranny." It has come under strong attack in Frontpage, where author Jon Sanders went through Christensen's syllabus, followed several of the links, and quoted from what he found. As far as I can tell, the article's critique of the course is correct

Professor Christensen responded by labeling Sanders a"neo-Nazi." She provided no supporting evidence.

The course itself is an embarrassment to the academy. Christensen states,"This course is outside the scope of traditional 'political science' in many ways. First it is 'unscientific' in that it relies much on eyewitness accounts and speculation. Secondly, there is not yet a solid literature on the September 11 'attacks' or on the war on terrorism. This literature is emerging, particularly on the latter. Thirdly, this course will rely somewhat extensively on alternative news media accounts and a variety of films and videos in lieu of literature." Yet the grading is entirely traditional--2 exams, at 25% apiece, a paper at 25%, and participation at 25%. What are the exams to be based on:"speculation"? Should students not use government documents in their research papers?

The single most appalling element of the course, however, comes in its total exclusion of the 9-11 Commission Report. No section of the report is assigned as reading. Nor is the report listed as recommended reading. The report is not even included as a link on the syllabus. A student who had traveled to a remote section of Australia weeks after 9-11 and returned just in time for Prof. Christensen's course would have no way of knowing that a 9-11 Commission even existed, much less that its staff waded through millions of pages of government documents and produced a study that has received almost unanimous praise from reviewers.

What does Prof. Christensen assign instead of the Report? A self-published book by George Humphrey (whose background is interesting indeed) called 9/11: The Great Illusion; a book published by San Francisco's City Light Books titled The Terrorism Trap, and assorted links from various anti-war and socialist websites.

According to its website, the political science program at NC Wesleyan"provides a crucial element of a liberal arts education . . . through course work that emphasizes the relationship between democracy and citizenship." How would Prof. Christensen's course meet any of these requirements? And what does its approval say about the general state of curricular affairs at NC Wesleyan? While college curriculum committees generally give enormous deference to individual departments and professors, how could any responsible college committee have approved this course?

The existence of courses like Christensen's--or, as I've written about previously, Vinay Lal's similar course at UCLA--should serve as a caution against an absolutist defense in the case of someone like SIU's Bean. From the available evidence, Bean has been wronged not because criticism of the content of a professor's course is automatically out-of-bounds, but because the criticism that he has received seems unprofessional and based on a double standard, since I doubt any of his critics would like Bean to be able to demand exclusion of readings from their courses that he doesn't like. Christensen's course, on the other hand, doesn't even come close to meeting the minumum standard of what a college-level political science (or history) course should entail.


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More Comments:

pierre menard - 5/1/2005

"But simply because a piece appears in Frontpage should not automatically discredit it."

Its generally unrealistic to expect readers to factcheck articles; mostly readers have to take writers and editors at their word. Given that Frontpage has repeatedly published factually incorrect articles, I believe it would make sense for a casual reader, simply by looking at the past record, to start with an a-priori belief that controversial accusations levelled by Frontpage are more likely to be false than true.

In this way, I think Frontline does a disservice to its professed cause. There are indeed many wacky left-wing professors out there who need to have their ideas subjected to the kind of scrutiny this post provides. By mixing up such scrutiny with vitriol, Frontpage alienates many people who would be otherwise sympathetic. I'd urge KC Johnson not to write for them again.

Anthony Paul Smith - 4/29/2005

It is silly that she isn't using the commission report, even thought that has its problems. Some of what she professes is dubious, but not all of it. I don't think you can automatically discredit socialist sources the way you do, but whatever.

This is my main problem: you are complaining about what a private school is doing. You said that you wouldn't do this with a conservative private school, lik Olivet, because it was private but now you are doing it with one who is more to the liberal side of things. What gives?

Robert KC Johnson - 4/29/2005

Agreed that we don't have to guarantee the factual accuracy--especially in this case where the assignment was an optional one. I don't know enough about how the system at SIU works--but the anti-Bean argument that he was somehow forcing these TA's to teach this article, given that it was optional, seems crazy. On the other hand, you also don't want to see professors regularly assigning material riddled with factual errors.

I've been following a few more of the links on Christensen's website. Among them is:
http://www.rense.com/general25/of.htm

which contends that the suicide bombers were really plants by the Israelis. Utter fantasy.

Ralph E. Luker - 4/29/2005

Three points, KC. In fact, there have been claims that the piece from Front Page Rag is factually in error at several points. I don't know the truth of the matter and I don't think that we have to guarantee the factual accuracy of everything we ask students to read. Secondly, apart from what you've published at Front Page Rag, the whole site is problemmatic -- specializing in propagandistic bullshit that takes no care for what is true -- only that it be serviceable in Horowitz's propaganda machine. In that sense, I wouldn't allow anything I had written to appear alongside the disruptable stuff that appears over there (yours excluded, of course). Finally, your point about Christensen's not including the 911 Commission in the readings is pretty telling. This was not just your usual government report. By all accounts, it is eminently readable. Not many government reports get nominated for National Book Awards.