Posted on 10/24/2007 8:56:38 AM PDT by Lorianne
At the end of my previous column on Evan Maloney’s documentary “Indoctrinate U,” I invoked the American Association of University Professors’ 1915 statement on academic freedom. In the years since 1915, the AAUP has revisited the topic and issued new or qualifying definitions like this one, from the statement of 1940:
Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject.
The problem is that it is not clear what is meant either by “relation” or “controversial.” What is needed are some principles and examples that would be a resource for those who are attempting to navigate these waters, and this is precisely what a new draft report by a subcommittee of the association promises to provide.
But the report gets off to a bad start when its authors allow the charge by conservative critics that left-wing instructors indoctrinate rather than teach to dictate their strategy. By taking it as their task to respond to what they consider a partisan attack, they set themselves up to perform as partisans in return, and that is exactly what they end up doing.
(Excerpt) Read more at fish.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Ahab harpooned the wrong fish.
Evern if you disagree with him Fish is always interesting.
I visited Melville’s house in Mass. a couple weeks ago, along with Dickinson’s and Emerson’s. Melville’s is a beautiful place in the Berkshires. But Dickinson’s is in Amherst, a hippy pinko commie town loaded with impeach Bush, end the war etc. posters everywhere. It made me sick.
What’s green & slimy, and weighs 20 tons?
a.) Moby Snot
b.) Senator Clinton’s thighs
c.) Owen Wilson’s Secret Pain
d.) The senior senator from Massachusetts
The Whale is the first novel of American Literature.
I always thought Moby Dick was some kind of a Venereal Disease!
I know Fish, and have read most of his work. As you say, he is highly intelligent, although usually wrongheaded. He is always interesting, but on the whole he has had a malevolent influence on the academy.
He’s right, here, of course. But, frankly, the problem is not to set rules for leftist academics to follow, because they won’t follow them. The problem is to break the absolute headlock that leftist academics have over higher education. Nobody else can get hired or achieve tenure any more, with a few accidental or remarkable exceptions.
It’s Gramsci’s forumula: Seize the levers of power. Once that has been done, rules like this become meaningless. Fish glances at the problem when he admits that there are a lot of Bush-haters in academia, but then he ignores it.
What he says about the rule is good, but no such rule can solve the problem of an institution that is overwhelmingly biased and ideological to an almost totalitarian degree.
Arhur “Pinocchio” Sulzburg and Melville’s Ahab: Discuss!
Grap the levers of Power. Almost impozssible to do. When I was at grad school in 1960 at the University of Texas, then ruled by a concervative board of governors, the professors of history and political science were mostly liberal. Most of the students I knew were already radical in opinion if not tone. They are the ones who took the tenured positions in the 1970s and have never let go.
In my opinion it all started with dodging the draft during the Vietnam war. You could be deferred by going to graduate school, and first thing you know all these draft dodgers find themselves with PhDs, and they are professors.
Then they start using their positions to mobilize the students against the draft and the war. Most students naturally don’t want to be drafted either, so they are ready to listen to the message.
Once into the profession, these draft dodgers moved up and took over departments. Then they started screening out anyone who didn’t think as they did. Now they control many of the deanships and presidencies as well, so they are pretty much unremovable. And they are still making sure that like minded disciples move in to take their places when they retire.
What you are saying about the draft-dogers is true. They also flooded the public schools. But the universities were already liberal, in part because during the ‘50s anyone with an ivy league degree was welcomed everywhere as these schools tried to maintain standards as enrollments rose and rose. As it was, many departments dropped their standards and awarded Phd”s —union cards—to many who were not really qualified. But my popint is that the climate of opinion was still liberal. The differencde was that the liberal professors still respected those professors who differeed with them and still gave conservativate applicants fair play. THAT changed during the seventies as the older professors retired and were replaced by radicals.
the whale has better teeth and a nicer disposition...
teeman
Yes. I graduated from Harvard in 1957. The faculty was largely liberal and secular, but they were also highly qualified. And there were many exceptions to the rule, who were respected by their colleagues and not just grudgingly tolerated.
Among others, I took a course on the politics and demographics of the Soviet Union that was extremely honest and revealing about the vile nature and methods of Communist oppression. Some of the most knowledgable Kremlin watchers of that time were at Harvard.
None of that is true now. The departments I am familiar with have all gone downhill, and they will not tolerate any breath of dissent, as we saw very clearly in the case of Summers.
Sad. My concern is: Can we survive as a leading nation If our “best” schools have been taken over by ideologues and incompetents?
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