ACTA's Must-Reads
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How Many Misreadings?
ACTA's most recent report, How Many Ward Churchills?, has, quite predictably, met with harsh and dismissive response from certain academic quarters. Anne Neal's response to John K. Wilson and Timothy Burke, the report's most vocal critics, has, in turn, drawn quite a revealing array of responses. Over the next few days I'll discuss a number of them.
The first response worth noting is that posted by Wilson himself. Wilson's comment shamelessly duplicates the mistakes he made in his initial critique of the report. Rather than admit he misrepresented (and misread) ACTA's report when he characterized it as threatening professors with censorship, Wilson digs himself into an even deeper and more mendacious hole with still more wilful misreadings:
Neal's essay shows why I worry about right-wingers dramatically expanding the meaning of "research misconduct," since she accuses me of research misconduct for my essay expressing concern about her group's report.In fact, my concerns about ACTA wanting a regime of censorship are quite correct. Consider these quotes: "far from trying to silence politically engaged professors, ACTA defends academic freedom while at the same time noting that 1) academic freedom does not mean freedom from criticism or freedom from accountability; and 2) students have academic freedom too." "greater accountability means more responsible decision-making on the part of academic administrators" "We must insist that, in their classrooms, they teach fairly, fostering an open and robust exchange of ideas and refusing to succumb to a proselytizing or otherwise biased pedagogy."
What, in practical terms, does ACTA want? If it means only criticism of professors, that's perfectly fine (although I will continue to criticize ACTA's criticism if it's unfair). But ACTA explicitly separates "freedom from criticism" and "freedom from accountability." So what does "accountability" mean? ACTA never defines it, although they demand that administrators do it.
Until ACTA and Neal explicitly define accountability and explain how their proposed system will work, I will have to continue to presume that accountability in fact means what it seems to mean: an administrative process for banning professors from teaching certain kinds of classes that seem too left-wing.
Wilson might--might--have a point if ACTA really had left the concept of accountability wide open and ominously undefined. But ACTA has defined what it means by accountability in elaborate, extended detail; its December report, Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action, painstakingly documents how administrators can work to ensure the accountability of professors to their scholarly and pedagogical obligations as well as how administrators can work to ensure the accountability of institutions to the public; the report is careful at every point to frame ways administrators can do this work while still respecting academic freedom and the tradition of self-governance. How Many Ward Churchills? references this report, and outlines accountability measures drawn from it; likewise, Anne Neal's response to Wilson and Burke links to this report, noting that "ACTA has already outlined ways campus leaders can review departments and programs while still being fair, respectful, and sensitive to academic freedom and academic autonomy. Our 2005 report, 'Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action,' was praised for its sensitivity to academic freedom and self-governance.' Again, either Wilson has trouble reading carefully or he's hoping his readers don't check his claims against his sources.
UPDATE 5/27/06: Another commenter, "Unapologetically Tenured," has followed in Wilson's footsteps. "One of the amusing aspects of Ms. Neal's argument is the claim that ACTA wishes to be 'fair, respectful, and sensitive to academic freedom and academic autonomy,'" UT writes. "By 'academic freedom', ACTA apparently means that professors have the freedom to cover course material in any manner they wish as long as it satisfies Ms. Neal's standards of objectivity. By 'academic autonomy', ACTA evidently means that departments can hire anyone they want, so long as they meet the proper quota of conservatives and libertarians. The term 'Orwellian' is overused these days, but I think it fits here."
UT's first claim--that academic freedom is whatever Anne Neal wants it to be--is not one that can stand up to even moderately close examination of ACTA's work. When ACTA discusses what academic freedom is, as it does in this most recent report, ACTA cites AAUP statements about academic freedom to define the term; ACTA is not inventing its own standard of academic freedom, so much as it is suggesting that colleges and universities have lost track of parts of the AAUP's own, universally accepted definition of the term. UT, like Wilson, appears to be counting on his readers not actually reading ACTA's report. If they did, they would see how spurious his claim here is.
UT's second claim--that academic autonomy means departments can hire anyone they want as long as they hire a proper quota of conservatives and libertarians--is also patently false. Nowhere does ACTA call for hiring quotas for conservatives and libertarians; quotas are not and never have been consistent with ACTA's mission. UT would do well to get his facts straight before opining in paranoid terms about what's wrong with ACTA's work.
Posted by acta online at May 27, 2006 01:35 PM
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Comments
"Again, either Wilson has trouble reading carefully or he's hoping his readers don't check his claims against his sources."
He knows his audience: Academics have wholly abdicated the responsibility of fact-checking and logical analysis if either risks countering prevailing academic orthodoxies. They see exactly what they want to see, and no more.
And they have destroyed the universities in the process.
Posted by: Federal Dog at May 28, 2006 07:49 AM
To Federal Dog: Wrong, wrong, wrong. Thomas Brown, Ward Churchill's most dogged critic, is a professor of sociology and all members of the review committee at CU were academics. You can't simply dismiss Timothy Burke's critique of "How Many Ward Churchills?" as an abdication of responsibility.
Posted by: Ralph Luker at May 28, 2006 04:01 PM