While settling down on the patio with a tasty but simple bagel-cheese-espresso combination, I idly reached over for the LA Times, and ran across three interesting articles that I thought I’d point out to you. Like me, if you teach, you might well have varied from the script a few times and ad-libbed a joke with a little political flavour. We’ve all done it from time to time, right?
Well if so, be careful…you could find yourself a target of certain groups that would like to claim that you’re part of a movement to indoctrinate your students with political ideology. A read of the article entitled “Witch hunt at UCLA”, by Saree Makdisi (a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA) gives you a good taste of the debate raging in the press right now. It seems that there is a website, created by the Bruin Alumni Association, which offers money – real folding money – to students who help them “expose” professors who “can’t stop talking about President Bush, about the war in Iraq, about the Republican Party, or any other ideological issue that has nothing to do with the class subject material…”. Wow. Makdisi notes however, that a lot of the specifically targeted professors on the website are targeted mostly for what they’ve been saying outside of the classroom, rather than inside. The case is made that it is part of an academic’s duty to engage in such discussion:
I earned my own inaccurate and defamatory “profile,” for example, not for what I have said in my classes on English poets such as Wordsworth and Blake — my academic specialty, which the website pointedly avoids mentioning — but rather for what I have written in newspapers about Middle Eastern politics.
My colleagues and I are being targeted for speaking out on the kinds of urgent social matters and universal principles that it has always — in every society and every age — been the task of intellectuals to address.
The article goes on to say:
The website assumes that any professor who speaks out in a public forum must at the same time be indulging in ideological abuse of his or her students — proselytizing them, indoctrinating them. And it’s actually not just any professor; it’s only the supposedly “liberal” ones, since “conservative” faculty are not targeted on the website.
Ah. That’s what this is about. The usual case of trying to stop someone from saying something when it is something you don’t want heard. (This can take place on both sides of the divide, of course…..) Alongside the article (and the other two I’ll mention in a moment) is a sidebar which has some very interesting numbers in it. The numbers (if the self-reporting they are based on is to be relied upon) seem to support the often made statement that university campuses are becoming more left-leaning in recent years. It’s all very interesting, and so I did a separate post on it for you to discuss the data if you like.
The data are silent (as far as I can see) about whether the presence of left-leaning professors (and to a lesser extent, students) actually is having a significant effect on the student body. Well, it almost certainly having some effect, but what is the effect and what is its extent? Surely, data like that is what the worried Conservatives who started this whole discussion should (perhaps) be waving around, no? Let’s hear from them next….
An example of such a worried conservative is the author and activist David Horowitz, who started something called the “student academic freedom movement”, who has an article alongside the one discussed above, entitled “Ideologues at the Lectern”. He is a supporter of the Academic Bill of Rights, introduced, its authors believe to protect students from the sort of classroom abuses (if that is what they really are) discussed earlier. He (and other supporters) are trying to use this as an instrument to bring what they call “balance” and “neutrality” into the classroom, since if these are not present (they argue) then the students’ rights are being violated. Apparently (I learn this from the third article on this topic in the section…the one by Joan W. Scott (professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study) entitled “Professors as Liberators”), the Bill would require students’ opinions to be counted as valid “even if they are right or wrong”. (Now I’d be careful there. An opinion itself (in my opinion) cannot be easily (ever?) judged as right or wrong; rather the facts upon which that opinion is based can be evaluated thus, and then the opinion weighed accordingly…but I digress.) Scott reminds us (thank goodness):
It’s one thing to insist that differences of opinion be respected. It’s another to claim that all opinions have equal weight. For the most part, students lack the training and knowledge of their teachers. They are in college to learn. Final judgment on what counts as serious academic work and legitimate course content rests with faculty.
Horowitz says:
The Academic Bill of Rights is a modest attempt to improve a bad and deteriorating situation on our campuses. It would restore the idea of intellectual diversity as a central educational value. It would make students aware that they should be getting more than one side of controversial issues and that they should not be browbeaten (or graded) on the basis of their political opinions.
It seems to me (based on no data in front of me, I admit) that this last part is a bit alarmist: Are students really being browbeaten and graded on the basis of their political opinions, even if (as Horowitz reminds us) the faculty in disciplines related to politics (political science, sociology, anthropology and others; see above) are leaning a lot toward the Democratic side of the aisle? I’m not sure of how widespread this is, but is this really the way of keeping a check on such practices? Might not our existing mechanisms for quality control in the classroom play a role here?
Scott’s article points out (and that of Horowitz denies) that this sort of Bill raises the possibility of a student being able to claim that their rights were violated if creationism was not taught in their Biology class (here we go again) of if Holocaust denial was not showing up on their History syllabus.
I’ll end with the two rather good (imho) closing paragraphs from Scott’s article, and step back to let you have your say:
It’s hard not to conclude that the demands for “balance” and “neutrality” by supporters of the Academic Bill of Rights are actually intended to stifle critical thinking of any kind by insisting that all ideas are of equal merit. Aside from the fact that this approach omits the role judgment must play in scholarly work, it cancels higher education’s critical mission.
The best teachers are usually those whose commitment and point of view, thoroughly grounded in knowledge of a field, inspire students to think differently about the world by challenging the pieties and certainties they bring to college. It is precisely this kind of experience that opens students’ minds, engages them in learning and sets them on paths they never knew they could take. Such critical thinking is the hallmark of American education — an education designed to create thinking citizens for a free society. It is that education that is under attack by supporters of the Academic Bill of Rights.
(Pity about the insertion of the phrase “American education” in there, and a point off Scott for such silliness: We’re talking about education here, whether it is American or in any other country……but anyway, I’m getting off the point. That sort of nationalistic langues just annoys me.)
So, he says, taking cover behind the sofa….. what do you think?
-cvj
January 22nd, 2006 at 6:04 pm
[...] Sean « Yellow Heaven Taking Liberty at the Lectern » [...]
January 22nd, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Wow.
I had a look at the Bruin Alumni Assoc page, and my first thought was “this has got to be satire. There’s no way this is for real.”
The tactics of this group are incredible. Paying students for recordings of lectures and class notes? The professor profiles discuss political writings and activities *outside* of class though — they don’t discuss remarks *in class*. There’s details like the number of petitions the profs have signed, and a lot of loaded language and groundless speculation. Here’s a sample:
I shall be watching this one closely.
–Q.
January 22nd, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Patience and prudence warrants that i recommend those particularly interested in this topic need become better informed. For a very detailed and well sourced history of this problem please see:
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/829/
this is just one thread of a few dozen on that site that detail this manufactured “problem.” The exchanges between Berube and DaHo (as Horowitz is known) have ranged from hysterically humorous to the ugliest vitriol (on DaHo’s part).
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/823/
Berube also has a forthcoming book on the topic examining the few studies that have provided reliable data, and a whole host of side issues.
“What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? is now that much closer to publication, and I am this much closer to collapsing with a thud. ” M Berube (01/06)
January 22nd, 2006 at 6:52 pm
I’ll second spyder’s recommendation of Bérubé, who has been on top of this stuff for a long time.
Horowitz may seem like a bombastic crazy person, but he’s a danger; plenty of attention-mongering state congresspeople are fond of jumping on his bandwagons.
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:00 pm
In other news, Mr. Horowitz has trashed the work of the Bruin Alumni Association.
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:47 pm
spyder (and Sean):- Thanks for the recommendation to read those links. For those of us who are not as fabulously well-informed as you (I’ve certainly not followed the discussion anywhere other than these articles), do you have an opinion on the matter you’d like to share with us plebs?
I’m rather curious about where people sit on this matter. Are these pundits making a mountain out of a molehill, or not? Is this going to be another ID-type battle, or not? Actual thoughts of your own on the matter are welcome.
Thanks!
-cvj
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:53 pm
I was actually thinking to tell my class of 200 (intro physics for premeds)
‘Hey who wants to make 100 bucks ? Just come to my office hours and I’ll say bad things about Bush !’. But alas, I am not sure whether the idiots at UCLAprofs would cough up 200 times 100 dollars.
January 23rd, 2006 at 2:51 am
Having had a prof who used the words “jack-booted thugs” and said all sorts of stupid things in a physics class (several actually — my life is not better for having had more classes with him as an undergrad than anyone else in that department, but you take what you can get in a small department), I can see the efficacy of the argument these people are using. One does not pay one’s tuition, or have tuition paid on one’s behalf, to go have one’s time wasted on diatribes from professors (and this applies whether the prof is in a politically-related field or not). Since anecdotally there is no shortage of professors who do this, it makes for a powerful smokescreen.
As to whether or not this is good, I think not. I also think it’s pointless, as $100/50/10 (depending on what is turned over to the payors) is well beneath the amount that would make this sort of abuse widespread. Hell, that’s only the deposit on a keg and a couple of bottles of liquor. That hardly shows a real desire to stick it to the Leftist Man.
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I for one dread the day that instructors of any tenure are devoid of personal conviction, even insofar as it might completely oppose mine or anyone else’s.
“…[T]he peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” – John Stuart Mill
This is in defense of those bombastic professors of any creed (as well as the more demure). So long as they are competent in the presentation and elucidation of the material of their field; and so long as their diatribes don’t consume class time in such a way that diminishes the opportunity of learning the material; and so long as the expression of the professor’s opinion is not in such a fashion that silence’s someone else’s: all the better. Physicists and professors and mathematicians and beauticians and politicians and preachers and satanists are all people. It would be a shame to reduce them to their social functions (as physicists and professors and mathematicians and beauticians and politicians and preachers and satanists).
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:09 pm
All who agree that Michael Berube has taken Horowitz to the cleaners say (type) YA! Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker describe Horowitz and others like him as 60’s naive radicals that switched sides but never grew up. Rather then hating the MAN (the military industrial complex), they rage against academia with the same tactics and vigor and idiocy.
Thomas Frank remarks in “Whats the matter with Kansas?” that these conservatives employ the language of depression era Communists where the idealic social order is being eroded from an omniprescent powerful force. In this case, the vague term of “liberalism.”
For those who think this fight is restricted to the humanities and social sciences, you are sadly mistaken. This is another tactic for pseudo-science as promulgated by the neo-creationists to get their views established in higher education. Pop over to PandasThumb.org to get better aquianted with the danger to scientific education by this nonsense.
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:49 pm
We saw the attack on PBS. It was deemed the PBS was not balanced. By that they meant that PBS had things that these “conservatives” didn’t like. It didn’t matter that they had “Wall Street Week” or “The McLaughlin Group” which tend to have a slight conservative slant. They had a program that didn’t rail against a homosexual couple. Heaven forbid! They treated the lesbian couple as normal.
The same can be true of any “public” institution and the attacks are the same. This is what they are trying to do with the University. I find it interesting that on one hand they treat the students as fully comprehending adults. They are totally fit to make up their own minds when exposed to different ideas. However, in the next instant they act like they’ll be instantly brainwashed by exposure to a “liberal” ideology.
Is this dangerous? Absolutely! Instead of doing scholarly research, professors (especially those of a “liberal” beant), will be forced to explain every statement and action. If a “conservative” student fails, they will likely be forced to explain it to a judge. Many professors (I know I would) would find this another difficulty in being an instructor. Thus, they will leave the profession. (I’m guessing that is the hope anyway of these people.) Hopefully, it will get nipped in the bud. But, we always must be vigelant against the ideologs…
January 23rd, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Taking up a tangent you provided in the post:
(Now I’d be careful there. An opinion itself (in my opnion) cannot be easily (ever?) judged as right or wrong; rather the facts upon which that opinion is based can be evaluated thus, and then the opinion weighed accordingly…but I digress.)
Well an opinion can be blatantly counterfactual:
“The earth is flat.”
“Earth was created 5000 years ago.”
…
We used to call these opinions wrong. In a twist that reveals that history has a sense of irony the conservative rightwing has adopted structuralist and postmodern arguments (i.e. extreme relativism) to defuse any rational argument that can be thrown at them.(1)
Of course everybody is entitled to their opinion, even if it’s wrong. But as soon as we leave the level of pure discourse and come to actions that affect people in reality we should strive to act out of an understanding of reality.
(1, citing from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community)
It is downright scary how explicitly these ideologies and disregard of opinions are manifest in the concrete strategies and plannings of the Iraq War for example.
January 23rd, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Hi fh:
you say
I guess I just don’t call those opinions…they’re just wrong statements. Those are easy cases to deal with. But imagine an opinion about how much a country should spend on a healthcare system, public transport infrastructure, or something like that. This might be an opinion that may have been formed using only a partial picture of the facts, etc…… that is of the type that is hard to say is right or wrong…. In that case, you do as I said:
-cvj
January 23rd, 2006 at 5:54 pm
To all of you who earn stipends or salaries, or have any income of any kind:
$50 or $100 is a lot of money to an indebted undergrad. No, you can’t live on it for very long, you can’t party on it for very long, but it buys you a decent amount of food and that is not to be sneezed at. Hey, even $10 buys you a couple of sandwitches. Easy money is pretty tempting to a lot of students if they already share UCLAprofs views.
–Q.
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:11 pm
In my logic and reasoning class at community college the prof has us analyze arguments like:
P1 – All members of the Bush family are criminals.
P2 – George W is a member of the Bush family.
——–
C – Therefore George W is a criminal.
Granted, he takes shots at both sides of the ideological aisle, so he’s an equal opportunity offender, but I think the students would learn better if he used more generic examples. Since it’s a logic class we’re not really concerned with the truth values of the proposition.
We also discussed what differentiates a good and bad rapist. :\
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Technique? Seriously, WTF!
January 24th, 2006 at 5:09 am
Well it’s just semantics then, but I don’t think the line between were true and false is applicable in principle and where it is not is easily drawn, in fact it’s a grey area again. Nevermind how easy or difficult it is to determine truth even if applicable.
It is also unquestionable that there is a wide array of topics were true and false do not apply uniquely, however, while there may be several different opinions which are indistinguishable truth wise there may still be others which can be found to be false or inconsistent. Even here we have some grounds to differentiate right and wrong opinions, even though there might be many right ones (inherently, not due to lack of knowledge).
Then there are also some fields were all opinions are equal. “Does this taste good?” Though now the gourmets will shout…
On issues like the Death penalty I would say that it can reasonably shown to be wrong.
However if we already initially say “It’s a matter of opinion and all opinions are value judgements and can not be argued about.” we are eliminating all basis for rational discourse in these fields, and that’s a grave mistake, because if we can’t point out they are wrong then ideologues will run rampant.
And I’ve been seeing this alot over thepast few years on the internet more and more people block of all rational critizism of their points and views, no matter how absurd they are, with a blanket “Well that may be YOUR opinion…”
Uhmmm…. not saying you said anything to that end, but this is an issue that has been irking me for a while now…. *G*
January 24th, 2006 at 10:16 am
The *opinion* that all opinions are equally valid is a stupid opinion. Like giving equal weight to the opinion about the validity of string theory of Joe Student in Physics 101 and Frank Wilczek. C’mon!
Well, if the Brownshirt Acephalic Association (aka Bruin Alumni Asses) wants to hand out $100 bills, then take ‘em for all they’re worth, and punk ‘em good. A website detailing how students pulled one over on the BAA would be needed, of course:
“They gave me $100 for telling how my Prof advocated drinking the blood of innocent children! Kewl!”
Maybe some ‘how-to’ articles on lecture-note fabrication is needed.
Now pardon me, I have to get back to indoctrinating my students into the Satan messages that you hear if you play a Bach chorale backwards.
January 24th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Not a String Theorist said:-
cvj says:- Brilliant! I think that everyone agrees with this. Nobody said anything to the contrary here.
Cheers,
-cvj
January 25th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
a quick word on opinion–i hazard to surmise that the issue is very much semantic and needs to be addressed. A statement that is based on one’s faith and belief is not mere ‘opinion’–such as the 5000 year old earth–but rather a religious fact of a particular faith and sect. We need to keep in mind that mythos and logos have differing constructs, and as such require differing sets of argumentation. The danger comes when mythological statements of faith are presented as logos, factual evidence for verification and proof. In this case using a religious fact to create a common ‘opinion’ concerning the nature of the cosmos, which is easily dismissable and found to be wrong, threatens both the faith, and the believer.
“I’m rather curious about where people sit on this matter. Are these pundits making a mountain out of a molehill, or not? Is this going to be another ID-type battle, or not? Actual thoughts of your own on the matter are welcome.”
Thank you for asking Clifford. Yes they are making a case for something that exists only in perception of those that want to see it. The proverbial misphrase: bias is in the eye of the perceiver. Ask a hundred people the same prejudicial question and you will get a spectrum of responses. Most of the anecdotal evidence for various specific “problems” has been refuted; and i am also sure there are professors and TA’s who have inappropriately crossed the line in hyping and proselytizing their own views (there are plenty of remedies within the university system to address this). I like the question being asked a lot these days: “Is it not the case that the study of liberal arts and enlightened thought (the US Constitution for example) is a liberal practice? While we may differ on how we define conservative/liberal stances, i would suggest that even the more conservative among us are far more liberal in our views than say those people who would support dictatorships, fascist military police states, and totalitarian regimes. The straw man in Horowitz’s world is used to create an opportunity to inject mythos into the pursuit of the study of logos. It is not conservative versus liberal, but faith versus logical and rational thought. In this sense YES we will have more ID battles in academia, particularly in the “liberal arts” wherein students in say history will demand that biblical interpretations of various events must be held to be true and rational. How would we respond to our students if one stands and state unequivocably that the Pope is infallible and has said such and such and that must be held to be true??? That is an example of the problem.
This doesn’t mean that those who perceive that their views, their opinions, and their faith, are being challenged, need to feel they are powerless in the academy. Students need to be encouraged to seek resolution of their issues of faith with those around them. If a student refuses to acknowledge(to believe to be true and valid) a lengthy set of factual references and citations that delineate that the US has acted in a way that is detrimental to itself, then there does need to be a remedy that works for this conflict. Simply dismissing the student’s beliefs will not help.
January 25th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
After i wrote the above, and realized it was a bit vague, i found this interview with Steven Colbert. He says it so much better it seems in his own ineffable way.
Stephen Colbert: Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don’t mean the argument over who came up with the word. I don’t know whether it’s a new thing, but it’s certainly a current thing, in that it doesn’t seem to matter what facts are. It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the president because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?
AVC: You’re saying appearances are more important than objective truth?
SC: Absolutely. The whole idea of authority—authoritarian is fine for some people, like people who say “Listen to me, and just don’t question, and do what I say, and everything will be fine”—the sort of thing we really started to respond to so well after 9/11. ‘Cause we wanted someone to be daddy, to take decisions away from us. I really have a sense of [America's current leaders] doing bad things in our name to protect us, and that was okay. We weren’t thrilled with Bush because we thought he was a good guy at that point, we were thrilled with him because we thought that he probably had hired people who would fuck up our enemies, regardless of how they had to do it. That was for us a very good thing, and I can’t argue with the validity of that feeling.
But that has been extended to the idea that authoritarian is better than authority. Because authoritarian means there’s only one authority, and that authority has got to be the President, has got to be the government, and has got to be his allies. What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press. They call the press “liberal,” they call the press “biased,” not necessarily because it is or because they have problems with the facts of the left—or even because of the bias for the left, because it’s hard not to be biased in some way, everyone is always going to enter their editorial opinion—but because a press that has validity is a press that has authority. And as soon as there’s any authority to what the press says, you question the authority of the government—it’s like the existence of another authority. So that’s another part of truthiness. Truthiness is “What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.” It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.
January 27th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
I know this is way down here, and unlikely to be read; but if you truly are interested the battle over “academic freedom on campus” and do not like its “war on christmas” feel–please read Berube today!! This is why he is so important to read (or be viewed/heard) on this topic.
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/838/
January 27th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
#18 Not..Theorist: Actually, “The opinion that all opinions are equally valid” isn’t so stupid if it’s presented as ‘just an opinion’. On the other hand the hypothesis (or, more properly, the meta-hypothesis) that all hypotheses are equally valid would be a stupid hypothesis. (opinion subjective/hypothesis objective)
#21,22 spyder: Surprisingly little interest in this thread. All we need now is some sort of economic disaster and a charismatic leader and we have all the ingredients for the Fourth Reich.