ACTA's Must-Reads

I sincerely hope this post is a joke. Civility? Respect? Who is being respectful of whom here? The sentence

We chose to include Anthropology 268 in our report because it exemplifies certain anti-intellectual politicized trends that have come to characterize research, teaching, and scholarship in the social sciences and humanities over the past twenty to twenty-five years

is respectful neither of the letter-writer nor -- more importantly -- of the faculty member who wrote the course description for Anthropology 268. Indeed, insofar as the ACTA report implies that said faculty member -- a stellar, award-winning professor -- is one of "many Ward Churchills," it is actually quite vile.

Civility is as civility does, indeed.

Aretha,

Okay -- I'll bite.

How could Anne Neal have been more civil and still present her point of view?

Are you sure you aren't distressed at the message, rather than how it was presented?

Aretha--

"Civility" does not exclude reasonable and measured criticism. This basic confusion that you express is at the heart of academics' distress about public questioning of the caliber of higher education. If academics cannot tolerate even simple, civil questions about professionalism and responsible classroom conduct, that does not mean the questions disappear. Far from it. All that proves is that academics are incapable of reforming the mess they have made of what used to be respectable work. They therefore require help from the outside to do so.

Franklin, thanks for biting. Here are two ways Ms. Neal can be more civil in the future:

1. Stop referring to perfectly good teachers and fellow Americans as "Ward Churchills."

2. Stop interpolating her own little fantasy materials into course descriptions. For example, when Ms. Neal writes, "The language of the course description is highly tendentious (students are advised that they will be 'challenged' to 'interrogate' implicitly Western 'ideologies')," the "implicitly Western" bit -- which then dominates the next paragraph -- is entirely of her own invention. As it happens, the professor teaching the course in question is a comparatist with expertise in the Beng people of the Ivory Coast, and has no history whatsoever of the kind of crude West-bashing Ms. Neal attributes to this course. When Ms. Neal tosses in the tendentious (and I use the word advisedly) remark that the "ideologies" in question are "implicitly Western," she is being intellectually dishonest, and disrespectful to the person who wrote the actual course description.

Thus, Federal Dog, Ms. Neal's criticism is neither measured nor reasonable. Neither is your own remark. "If academics cannot tolerate even simple, civil questions about professionalism and responsible classroom conduct," you write, "that does not mean the questions disappear." But Ms. Neal has not demonstrated anything about this professor's professionalism or classroom conduct -- both of which, by the way, happen to be unimpeachable. What Ms. Neal has done here is to serve notice that anyone using the term "race" in scare quotes -- despite the fact that, as the letter writer patiently points out, there are intellectually sound reasons to do so -- will be accused of "politicizing" higher education in such a way as to warrant governmental regulation of their classroom conduct.

Aretha apparently has personal knowledge of the content of the course.

My question: if the ideology "interrogated" in the course is that of the Beng people, why does the course description speak of "ideologies" in the plural? Are they all non-western? And is the Beng ideology a "widespread" ideology? Are all the "widespread" ideologies that will he interrogaged non-western?

Contrary to Aretha's claims about "fantasy," it strikes me as entirely fair inference from the course description that the ideologies that "define 'other' populations" -- the ideologies to be "interrogated" -- will include among them western ideologies. Perhaps this is wrong. Perhaps the course is merely going to challenge and interrogate the Beng culture's way of defining the "other." In that case, though, the course description is poorly written for other reasons.

Given the way the course description is written (is antisemitism a problem among the Beng people?), it strikes me as overstatement ( and arguably an uncivil overstatement) to describe the inferences Ms. Neal has drawn about what will be "challenged" and "interrogated" as "fantasies."

With 1,000 respects to all -- all this borders on the absurd. Hyper-sensitivity to any and all terms. If, in the real world, this kind of activity was the norm, nothing would be accomplished. Only argumentation.

As someone who, with the encouragement of Alfred Kahn, helped disassemble the original AT&T/Bell System monopoly -- I think it is time to charter the higher education monopoly.

Let the "Ward Churchills" have their programs, via charter. Let the "anti-Ward Churchills" have theirs, via charter. Let everyone have their choice. Let those who play with themselves, play with themselves.

Charters aren't perfect. Neither is the Higher Ed Monopoly. In other words -- no significant difference between the two.

Just don't ask me to pay for something that I don't believe in.

So George Fredrickson's book is tainted to the point that it should not be assigned in class because it does not treat racism as a human universal?

This is precisely the definition of "bias" that so gravely concerned me about the report. Or lack of definition. How can someone like Erin O'Connor, who has written eloquently about the dangerous managerial excesses of "political correctness" on college campuses, support this kind of tendentious micromanagerial view of higher education? How is this different from someone isolating a single word or phrase or act of a professor deemed to be racially or politically insensitive and calling for boycotts, marches, disciplinary action, protests, complaints?

By this standard, it would be impossible to teach a course on modern biological racism which focused on its origins or spread out of Western Europe, because to do so would be inevitably "political" rather than merely heuristic (e.g., courses can't be about everything) and empirical (e.g., there is a legitimate argument that what we know as racism today is rooted in the rise of the West). All courses which discuss racism, in order to avoid Anne Neal tagging them as "biased", would be required to take a basically global, universal, transhistorical perspective on the phenomenon. (About the only intellectually respectable way I can think to do that is either through Enlightenment-era debates about "human nature" or through sociobiology.)

This isn't a standard which suggests opening up a wider frame of debate and approaches: it's a standard which is far more narrow-minded and prescriptive than anything it seeks to displace.

Fredrickson's book actually makes the argument that there is a distinctive intellectual and cultural way of conceptualizing difference in the Western tradition that is rooted in classical Greek thought which was a crucial precondition of modern racism. The problem with Neal's response, as with the report, is that it wants to have its argumentative cake and eat it too. Neal wants to rule that argument out of bounds from the outset without actually HAVING the argument. What if Fredrickson is right? Or, if you think this argument is wrong, on what grounds is it wrong? It certainly can be criticized, but you'd have a much better chance of having a critical response to Fredrickson in reading his book than in trusting to Anne Neal's tendentiously high-school-debate characterization of his book. Fredrickson supplies the grounds for arguing with his conclusions in his book, as good scholarship frequently does. He defines his terms, sets out his argument, marshals his evidence, considers the alternatives. His tone is reasonable, scholarly, controlled. What is wrong with assigning such a book?

If you insist that every single assignment of a text must be met by its equal and opposite text (and what would that be to Fredrickson's Racism?) in order to avoid being tagged as "politicized", then take the next step, and show us how those kind of courses--the only kind of courses which ACTA would evidently approve of--might actually look. This is a vastly more restrictive dictat than anything the "politicized" left has to offer, I'm sure of that. ACTA is not only ruling out of bounds "politicization", they're ruling out of bounds any courses with any meaningful topical focus whatsoever in favor of a kind of rigid point-counterpoint talk-show format.

Timothy,

Do you believe there is or is not a problem with political bias being palmed off as objective scholarship in the classroom?

If you are sure there is no problem, how do you know? If you aren\\\'t sure, how, specifically, should it be determined, and by whom?

Forgive me, but you seem to be willing the goal of \\\"non-bias\\\" without providing the means even to determine whether or not \\\"non-bias\\\" obtains.

" .. you seem to be willing the goal of \\\"non-bias\\\" without providing the means even to determine whether or not \\\"non-bias\\\" obtains."

Academic incumbents, worried about their next paycheck, always try to talk, to death, the "bias" debate. Nothing really empirical -- just talk everyone to death.

Well, with empirical data like this --

http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol3/iss1/art2/

There is no doubt that gross political bias exists in soft-side academia. That is unacceptable for a publicly-funded activity, gross political bias to one major political party.

So, given the crushing budget debt, there is a state of financial exigency and tenure can be ended.

With the public unburdened, one-time three-year contracts can be offered in academic areas with a gross oversupply of PhDs. For high-demand areas (e.g., engineering) and for authentic outstanding performance (no Churchills), longer contracts can be offered.