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Thesis: Politics Has No Redeeming Social Value.
Assignment: Discuss.
With some regularity, we hear complaints that conservatives are discriminated against in the academy. With some regularity, we hear complaints that Cliopatria gives her vocation short shrift by getting caught up in partisan political debate; or, more commonly, that it lends itself to partisan advocacy.
I thought of those comments again when I read this post,"Why Do I Even Bother," (scroll down) by Geoff at The Minds of Moria:
What did I do to deserve having this class be this bad? If there was ever a time to take a study on government, it is a presidential election year. Therefore, I was thinking this class would be a lot of fun. But no, it most assuredly is not. This class should not be called"Federal, State, and Local Government." Its real name will live forever in my heart:"Democrat Bashing 101: The Republicans Can Do No Wrong." We"discussed" the debate in class today; by discuss, I mean we decided how Kerry had screwed up, how he is such a retard, and how he was wrong in what he said. Aside from the personally dispar[a]ging comments, that would have been a worthwhile discussion, if we had then turned and done the same thing to Bush. But, according to most of the class, Bush can do no wrong, even when he does extremely poorly in a debate. All of the discussion was on how the Democrats are twisting what Bush said here or how they disagreed with him there; well, duh! People, they are the opposing party. News flash: the opposing party doesn't much like the incumbent. A second news flash: Bush has screwed up royally more than a few times since he took office. He is not perfect.
Now, I generally consider myself a Bush supporter in this race, and I was insulted by some of the comments Dr. [*****] was making about Kerry and Democrats in general. This morning made me remember what about"politics" today that I hate the most. It is all party line and personal assault. There is no debate, no exchange of ideas, no considering of the issues. It is all rhetoric and inflamatory talk. Pray to God for the return of statesmen before this country destroys itself.
Geoff is an undergraduate at an evangelical liberal arts college, the kind of institution from which we hear too little. But I found his observations to be fascinating as an exercise in looking in the mirror. Thanks to The Elfin Ethicist for the tip.
Richard --
Good points all. Left-leaning academics like to think that because they sometimes champoion causes of the beleaguered it makes them beleaguered, and so they develop what in South Africa is known as a laager mentality in which they circle the wagons to protect themselves from a hostile outside world, and thus when some say the silliest things or provoke the pickiest fights, the daftest among them feel the need to defend those stupid stances. in that sense you are absolutely right -- lots of lefties play right into Horowitz's hand.
dc
That's a fine question. I certainly don't know what the majority of religious colleges and universities are like.
I think that part of the problem is that much of the evidence we do have comes through the man-bites-dog mass media. Therefore what one gets is Bob Jones U. and debates over banning pro-choice speakers on Catholic campuses without ever getting any context about the wider world of sectarian colleges and universities.
Thinking about it, that’s exactly the same coverage that other universities get. The controversies and stupidities get aired; the solid and professional is never even discussed.
Carl Patrick Burkart -
10/5/2004
The reason that I used the word "alleged" is because I used to read David Horowitz regularly in Salon and for a time, regarded him as serving a useful function. However, there were several cases when linking from his column led me to the original sourcew whcih revealed that he was willfully misrepresenting what his targets said or wrote. This seemed especially strange because there are so many actual instances of left wing inspired nonsense in academia that he could have picked up on. By the time that he started his anti-reparations crusade, I had stopped paying attention.
Charles V. Mutschler -
10/5/2004
Question for all you folks who have thus far commented on this topic:
How many of you have any real, first-hand experience with religious schools? I get the distinct impression that most of the comments come from people who would not want to be employed by conservative religious schools. That's fair enough. If you don't subscribe to the theological and philosophical principles of these institutions, there is no reason to apply to them. I suspect that most of the people here are familiar with Professor Kirstein's stand on the military. His treatment of the cadet, while popular with some people on the cultural left, might be considered to be over the top in some quarters, and he was widely criticized for it. So there are certainly examples of questionable behavior by facutly on both sides of the poltiical spectrum.
I think Mr. Morgan has the most accurate assessment - some indoctrination is attempted at these schools, but it is also attempted at schools on the cultural left. How wide spread is it? Now that's what's missing from this discussion - verifiable data, not just hearsay.
My own experience with a religious university was several years ago, when I was a finalist for a position teaching US history. Let me note right here that I was not and am not a member of the denomination that operates this university. Not all of their faculty were, though all recognized that they were expected to attempt to live according to the accepted values and practices of this denomination. I have to say that the meetings with the students and faculty impressed me with the quality of reasoned discussion and thought. I was asked good solid questions by both, and was repeatedly told that if hired, my job was to teach US history, not religion. I came in second, and was not hired. However, I have to say that at every step in the process, from my initial inquiry to notification that I wasn't going to be hired, that university treated me in a highly professional manner. Dare I say it - a Christian manner. I would note that this experience was in marked contrast to the shabby treatment and indifference I encountered when applying at many public universities. Some of this may be due to the size, and I won't deny that. My sample is one out of many places I applied to.
Did I feel that I was being vetted to join a religious propaganda machine? Not in the least. I think that university has a good solid faculty teaching bright, interested, engaged students. Now, what's wrong with that?
Thanks for reading.
Charles V. Mutschler
Derek Charles Catsam -
10/5/2004
Ralph --
I am certainly not lumping all religiously affiliated colleges together. But if a professor has to sign certain agreements about behaviors and the institutional culture is such that the teaching and politics are inextricably intertwined -- and as someone who has been on the job marketm in the last few years, I can tell you that you'd be shocked how many really, really conservative religious schools are out there. Calvin, Wheaton and others are outstanding in their realms. can professors teach about abortion there froma value-neutral standpoint? there are plenty of colleges out there where they could not. never mind teach it from a pro-choice perspective. I agree that i am precariously close to a dangerous generalization, but it is also true that in the debate about the liberal professoriate a huge number of nonliberal professors seem to be excluded because they get to disappear in a subcutlure that the Horowitz's always ignore. If an entire category or class is excluded from a sample, how legit is that sample?
dc
Richard Henry Morgan -
10/5/2004
Indoctrination attempts are made, though less often than scare mongerers would have it, by teachers from all parts of the political spectrum. As Jonathan and you, Derek, have put it, the individual cases are highlighted by interested parties as a way of painting an entire wing with the brush in order to delegitimize that wing. These efforts are aided when liberals fail to distinguish themselves from left-wing ninnies, and conservatives from right-wing ninnies -- they fall into the trap of no enemies on the left, or no enemies on the right.
Horowitz is a provocateur. Formerly he saw the right as the enemy, now he sees the left as such. The methods haven't changed much. Thus when he went on his "no reparations" tour, he knew liberals wouldn't distance themselves from the more outre reactions of the idiot wing of the left. When he arrived at Brown, his "no reparations" argument was denounced, by a black philosophy professor there, as hate speech. One attempt to delegitimize met another head-on -- or should one say symbiotically, as each needed the other. The "hate speech" argument (if one could call it an argument) met few opponents at Brown, where a press run was also stolen (but nobody punished, of course). Guess who came out ahead in that propaganda war?
I just came across another example of such stuff, this time at Dartmouth. Seems an English lit professor, during the course of a mandatory freshman composition course called English 5, offered up the view that Band-aids are a symbol or tool of oppression (I'm not sure which -- it could be both) as they resemble the color of flesh of white folk. When a student offered instead that it might be simply a matter of economics (white folks being the largest slice of the market) the student was informed that such a view was simply that of a "white supremacist". She (the professor -- a female) then followed up that bit of encouragement to open thought with an e-mail to the class, addressed "Dear Ones, particularly White Ones ...", followed by a repeat of the view that an economic explanation simply reveals "a white supremacist set of assumptions".
Of course, Dartmoth is the place that expelled a student for dressing up as an Indian (apparently a banned symbol there) and skating onto the ice between periods of an ice hockey game.
I think Horowitz would be greatly encumbered if people in academia spoke up against this sort of crap -- it would then be harder to tar them all with the same brush. As it stands, it looks like he's assured of a lucrative career playing off the idiocies of the Abderite wing of the left.
Jonathan Rees -
10/4/2004
Ralph:
Actually, I'm inclined towards the second too. What I mean is that the professor here is doing a bad job at indoctrination AND a bad job at teaching.
As you aptly point out in this post, the nature of the point the professor is trying to make ought to be irrelevent. Unfortunately, it's not to the Republicans in the Colorado State Legislature and it's not to David Horowitz. Their goal is to delegitimize the message and if they destroy the messenger along the way, so be it. Therefore, they have to make it look like all liberals are intolerant ninnies. In fact, there are intolerant ninnies on both sides of the political spectrum and they are hardly restricted to academia.
JR
Ralph E. Luker -
10/4/2004
Jonathan, It seems to me that Geoff has a very healthy reaction to a bad teaching/learning situation. A part of what is at stake here is what we mean by critical thinking. Do you teach critical thinking by teaching students to take apart an argument that you _assume_ every reasonable person disagrees with; or do you teach critical thinking as a way of interrogating whatever text is the subject? Those two different ways of defining what critical thinking is runs throughout the curriculum. I'm fairly strongly inclined to the second definition. I suspect that you are inclined to the first. Just because this professor is failing to indoctrinate Geoff doesn't mean that he's doing a good job.
Ralph E. Luker -
10/4/2004
I meant to add to the above comment that it seems to me that what we have in the example that Geoff cites is an instance of bad teaching and bad teaching may not be peculiar to evangelical colleges.
Jonathan Rees -
10/4/2004
Ralph:
I can't, but I'm not sure that means I disagree with you. This is an attempted indoctrination, not an indoctrination. You'll notice that we only hear cries about indoctrination in cases like these where it doesn't work. This only makes me question the significance of the alleged problem.
If a professor wants to bash Democrats, it's his or her right to express themselves. The problem is in this case that they are doing it very badly. On pedagogical grounds the professor is clearly not thinking critically. On pure partisan political grounds the professor is likely to alienate anybody who didn't agree with them already (and maybe a few who do anyway).
Chastise and maybe punish them for bad teaching, not the nature of their message, or else you're just as bad as Horowitz.
JR
Ralph E. Luker -
10/4/2004
Derek, For the most part, I don't see evangelical college faculties or religious studies departments in them as dangerous. There really are some terrific evangelical liberal arts colleges, like Calvin College in Michigan or Wheaton College in Illinois, and they produce some excellent graduates. The "evangelical mafia" (Mark Noll, et al) in American religious studies has reshaped the field in very important and constructive ways.
Richard Henry Morgan -
10/4/2004
True. The only difference between the Horowitz of today and the Horowitz that edited Ramparts and whitewashed the history of the Black Panthers, is the axe that he grinds. Too bad the world insists on giving him ammunition (that's an interesting dichotomy there: "perceived" excesses of the left, versus right-wing excesses).
Carl Patrick Burkart -
10/4/2004
I think that David Horowitz is not interested in these kinds of schools because he does not consider himself a disinterested guardian of freedom of inquiry. Instead, he is interested in documenting perceived excesses of the left. In other words, he is not looking for right wing excesses. It's not his beat.
Richard Henry Morgan -
10/4/2004
It would be an interesting exercise to tally up the number of students at these types of institutions, versus other types of institutions, and then track their progress through the professions and rank public influence, etc. Interesting, but difficult. I rather suspect that is the basis of Horowitz' lack of interest -- the graduates of these types of schools don't predominate in politics, or the mainstream media, or the courts, or even the public schools.
Derek Charles Catsam -
10/4/2004
Ralph --
Absolutely. This is what i am saying -- that while we liberals are branded as all being part of some huge conspiracy to inculcate ou stiudents, i have yet to see many cases where that has happened. Whereas in a lot of fundamentalist schools inculcation is not only commonplace, it is an expected part of the curriculum. This is why the "liberal professor" trope is bothersome. Liberty, Bob Jones, Brigham Young, and even more significantrly, several hundred other schools are far more ardent and dogmatic about this sort of inculcation of students, yet we never ehar about it. Why? Al of these schools have not only lots and lots of professors in the traditional humanities, but also professors n religious studies departments and the like. very dangerous, and yet where are the Horowitz's and their outrage?
dc
Jonathan Dresner -
10/4/2004
...what my students think of my politics. It so rarely intrudes in the classroom. Actually, talking about Pericles' Funeral Oration the other day, I probably came across as wholeheartedly pro-military (which I am in the sense that I consider their service honorable, laudable, but not uncriticizable), and I've been talking about the benefits of empires a lot in this early history survey.
Ralph E. Luker -
10/4/2004
We can agree -- can't we? -- that if the student's description of the classroom situation is accurate and whether you reverse the political identities cited here or not, that the prof is doing indoctrination -- he's not teaching.
Derek Charles Catsam -
10/4/2004
I have made the case on HNN in the past that when we talk about the allegedly liberal professoriat, we forget entirely about the literally hundreds of religiously affiliated schools at which there may not only be a preponderance of conservatives, but that, far more perniciously than at non-affiliated universities, the conditions of both hiring and being kept on required particular political views. Stanford or Duke may be more visible and "important" than these schools, but they still educate huge numbers of students, which is where, presumably, the professor's politics most matter to the critics.
dc
Oscar Chamberlain -
10/4/2004
I like that student, and you are right, we hear far too little about the evangelical colleges. An evangelical eduation may be weak on evolution, but if it is at all good, the students understand that history is important; they are taught to look for patterns in the world around them, and they have some curiosity about how other people think.
