In but not of Academe

My new tenure-track digs include a large office in a historic building with leaded-pane windows, sills deep enough to stack files on, and shelves on three walls filled with my own books, departmental gems, and junk from years past.

All the signs point to it: I'm finally a bona-fide member of academe. Yet I'm gradually coming to realize that my membership card should read "in but not of" -- something the 2004 presidential election set in stark relief. Maybe I should have seen it coming all along.

I was just finishing up the requisite two-year temporary appointment last spring -- at my alma mater, of all places -- when a relatively small group of conservative students asserted itself more publicly than the administration wished. Their claim: A leftist bias emanating from the college administration and faculty stifled discussion and real thinking in the classroom.

I had reached the same conclusion when I was a student there. During an "Introduction to Political Science" class, for example, I was required to write paper on how to solve global warming. My paper suggested that perhaps there was no reason to, since the scientific evidence was inconclusive. I got a D.

In another class, I fell victim to my own indignation at having to use inclusive language in my papers. Flexing the muscle of my perceived linguistic superiority -- the masculine third-person singular pronoun across many languages functions as the generic, genderless third person, after all -- I argued that "he" should be in and "s/he" should be out. Another D paper.

Although I paused briefly to enjoy my own righteous contempt at the politicization of the classroom, I took such setbacks in stride and without public incident. Last year, it was different. My advocacy on behalf of the conservative students gradually became more public. Nowadays there is much more at risk for me: the respect of colleagues, students' perception of my openness to all thoughtful ideas, and, not least, the long-term career repercussions of marching to the beat of a different drummer -- in this case one that weighs several tons and has a trunk.

You see, I am a Republican. And strive though I may to conform, to be in the academic in-group, I cannot.

My political leanings posed a special challenge during faculty job interviews. With ample practice over the years -- and after several naïve attempts to present myself as an enlightened conservative ended in rejection letters -- I finally mastered the art of the unnoticed evasion. At the mere mention of politics, I would smile knowingly, roll my eyes, maybe grimace for good measure, and then return to an earlier thread in the conversation. If you can use "speaking of which" to make the segue, all the better.

For a while I thought that my view of academe's leftist leanings might itself be skewed. After all, in my childhood home, The New York Times was known by several less-flattering names, and our neighboring state, the liberal-leaning Minnesota, as "The People's Republic of Thereof." So you can only imagine my wryness as I went on to spend most of my early academic life in Minnesota. By contrast, my new position is at a tradition-bound college in the South, in a state that the Kerry campaign had given up on by the time I arrived on the campus this summer. Had I found the conservative academician's nirvana?

My delusion was short-lived. I first suspected that when I drove my Minnesota-seasoned '91 Honda Accord wagon -- sans bumper stickers -- into the Volvo-Subaru showroom that is our college's faculty lot.

Sporting "Peace" and "Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home!" and "Kerry-Edwards" bumper stickers, the rustless Volvos and Subarus exuded a clear semiotics of inclusion and exclusion, boldly proclaiming in unison: "Here we are enlightened thinkers; here we drive academic cars; here we vote Democrat -- or Green. We belong; you don't."

But maybe, I thought, I'm being oversensitive. This is, after all, an old, traditional institution, with a traditional curriculum, in a largely Republican state.

As if to confirm that I was indeed just being paranoid, I sat through 50 minutes of my first faculty meeting on the campus with nary a mention of politics. I must have read the parking lot wrong, I thought. Then, in the final few minutes of the meeting, a senior faculty member arose to make an announcement: A faculty panel would discuss the impact of September 11 on the United States, with the dean of the college offering summary remarks.

There was no hint of a leftward lean -- until, that is, the senior faculty member added, "And just in case the students don't get our message on how to vote in November, we have arranged for a showing of Fahrenheit 9/11 directly after the panel."

That remark was met with unrestrained chuckles and applause. I merely grinned. It was funny after all, but I half expected the dean to turn into Governor William J. LaPetomaine and in her best imitation of Mel Brooks point at me and say, "Hey, I didn't get a harrumph out of that guy."

I might have, but a few days before it was held, one of my classes finished reading the Aeneid. My lectures and class discussion all along had been leading up to what would be the culminating discussion: Did Virgil give us a world that is fundamentally just or unjust, fundamentally good or evil?

Getting the typical who-cares-the-guy-died-2,000-years-ago look, I said: "You think this doesn't matter? This is, after all, what the humanities are about. We're reading profound thoughts by a profound poet, and they help instruct us how best to live as humans in a human world. Being a human and thinking humanly and living in a world of contingencies is complex. And Virgil can help us think about what's going on now. Take Iraq, for example. How might we use Virgil's view of the world to comment on what's happening in Iraq? Who's Aeneas in Iraq? Is there a Juno? A Turnus? Where's piety? Who's in the right?"

I had finally pushed the right button to get a reaction, but not the right button to encourage discussion. The students objected en masse to the political nature of the question. So I gave a cursory sketch of two opposite ways one might relate the Aeneid to Iraq, and moved on.

After class, I asked one of the students for his read on what had happened. How could the response be so heated but the question left unengaged? He replied: "You know how it is. Students don't want to disagree with their professors. Most of the students around here are pretty conservative, but they get the strong sense that their professors are liberal. And on issues like these, they're afraid to disagree." They had made assumptions about how I would think and were reluctant to contradict me.

A couple of days later, during the Republican National Convention, I ate lunch with several colleagues. The discussion turned, inevitably, to politics. The anti-Republican tenor at the table remained unbroken, but reached its zenith with this vehement comment from one colleague, "I'm not even going to watch [the convention]. I can't stand it."

I could no longer blame the students for shying away from hot-button issues like Iraq: For them, the academy does not foster thoughtful discussion of thorny issues, but harbors the potential at any time to unleash the visceral reactions of their superiors to what students think are their own reasoned political positions. For students, the risk of speaking up is much the same as it is for me: They risk losing the respect of professors and perhaps endangering their long-term aspirations.

I've come to see that, as passionate about traditions as it is, my new college leans with equal rigor to the left. That was never more apparent than in the days after the election when people like myself came under heavy attack from my colleagues for our "stupidity" in failing to vote for the enlightened candidate. "That just tells you how stupid they are; now they have no one to blame but themselves," said one. Another insisted that the result of the election was "criminal."

So I guess my parking-lot suspicions were not just paranoia. Which is not to say I'm not happy here. I am. I wouldn't trade life in this most idiosyncratic of human institutions for anything. By design, academe is meant to transcend human foibles, the better to understand them. But in a masterstroke of delicious irony, academe's very humanness turns out to be the best justification for its own existence.

William Pilger is the pseudonym of an assistant professor of classics at a university in the South.

"But in a masterstroke of delicious irony, academe's very humanness turns out to be the best justification for its own existence."

Ummmm, NO Mr. Pilger. I was interested until this last sentence. Back away from the idiocy. And what's your real name?

My husband is in a tenure-track position at a university here in California, and he gets his fair share of that. He says the guy in the office next to him is a poli-sci teacher, and he appears to be a card-carrying Communist, judging from the rants my husband can hear when he leaves his door open. This article really hits home .... Just this morning my husband asked if I thought it was a good idea if he started talking to people about getting ROTC back on campus. (My husband paid for his college through ROTC, and he'd like to see students have that option.) I told him I thought it was a good idea -- but since he doesn't have tenure yet, go slow and don't alienate people. Sigh. A shame he has to worry about that.

"Actually, it's ridiculous."

. . .if it were not so painfully true; it would be.

. . .what is so amazing is that the Left cannot see itself for what it is; imagines the 'Right' as the stifler of independent thought; views every Repubican as the policeman at the door. . believes that Republicans embrace the the antiithesis of individual freedom.

. . .and the stifling, mind-control, anti-freedom imposition, under threat of government retaliation - and guaranteed slippery-slope of INjustice known as. . .political correctness is viewed innocuously by it's creators as no more than a moral justification to make the world a 'kinder, gentler place'. .

. . .despite the facts of tortured histories; tortured lives; that speak the truth to those who are not already bound - and corrupted by the fraudulent and therefore inferior - idiology of the Left.

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