ACTA's Must-Reads

Your blog post begins with a reference to “two interlocking types of bad faith.” But it itself evinces a third mode of disingenuous thinking: misrepresentation and conscious misunderstanding.

First off, Reisart never “denies the existence of internal political problems in academe,” as you would have it. He instead argues that such problems aren’t “widespread.” So from the start, ACTA misrepresents another scholar’s words. Now, you might reply that there is not big difference between denying the existence of a problem and denying that a problem isn’t widespread. But logically that wouldn’t hold water. The Black Death is still around – and when it appears it’s a serious problem – but it’s not, medically speaking, a widespread problem. I’m not saying Reisart’s position is correct, but ACTA immediately loses rhetorical effect by misrepresenting an opposing position. And it’s entirely up for debate whether the uniformity of private belief among professors poses a problem for the pursuit of knowledge and education of students. Conservatives assume that professors who share liberal politics will distort their research and pedagogy. But somehow we never read the ACTA critique of, say, religious schools, where many of the professors may hold Christian ideas. UCLA is a den of demons, but what about Baylor? When feminists criticize an education system once ruled by men, they are accused of ad hominem attacks or genetic fallacy. When Marxists criticize an education system once dominated by the bourgeoisie, they are accused of ad hominem attacks or genetic fallacy. But somehow, if the faculty all voted Democrat, their research and teaching are immediately suspect, and if they argue or teach unpopular ideas, it must be because of their political bias. (This isn’t to deny that there are real examples of political bias. But the question is whether it’s a problem needing, say, state intervention, as David Horowitz thinks. The question is whether left-wing political bias is really the most important issue facing college education. Are there more instances of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment on campus than instances of political bias? If so, might we not say, along with Reisart, that political bias just isn’t the widespread problem that the Right claims it is? That, relatively speaking, others problems might be far wider-spread?)

You represent Lazere’s position a bit more accurately, but I still think you misunderstand his point. Note the key word in the phrase you quote: “the authority of governments, churches, the wealthy, and majority opinion.” The key word is “authority.” Lazere’s argument rests on the rather old-fashioned reading of history in which new ideas are always first opposed by “the powers that be,” like the ideas of Socrates and Galileo and Upton Sinclair and Scopes. His logical error is to assume that, because the ideas that turned out to be right were so often in opposition to the dominant ideas of their time, the dominant opinions are necessarily wrong. This leads him to argue that being a liberal in an overwhelmingly Republican (I nearly wrote “conservative,” but I don’t think many Bush supporters are really conservatives in the classical sense) society is also to be closer to a potential truth. At the same time, Lazere’s basic point is one often heralded by conservative thinkers and often leveled by them at the “groupthink” of academia itself. For Lazere, all authority must be subjected to dialectical thinking, to disagreement and criticism. Groups like ACTA agree with that when the authority is overwhelmingly liberal, as in their war against intellectuals. But when intellectuals subject the authority of the rich, the lawmakers, and the dominant social groups to critique, then suddenly skepticism becomes “brainwashing” and “politicizing of knowledge.”

Then there’s David French’s reply. Take at look at this sentence: “What is it about 10 years of expertise in a particular field of the humanities that grants a person any greater knowledge or insight into such things as economics, religion, and war and peace?” His own words should answer his question: it’s the “expertise” that, by definition, grants a person greater knowledge and insight. That’s what expertise means. But beyond this obvious problem with French’s position, let’s examine another example. What is it about ten years of classical piano study that makes a person a better piano player than someone without such training? Well, nothing necessarily. Of course, someone can be an excellent piano player with no formal study. Likewise, someone can be a brilliant literary mind without formal study. Someone can become a great surgeon by experimenting on people that show up at one’s house at night in need of a telephone (see Paris Hilton’s fabulous film, House of Wax).

But French is being totally disingenuous here. Lazere never claims that academic expertise should free a scholar from non-professional criticism. He also doesn’t argue that academic credentials are only way to become an intelligent contributor to the pursuit of knowledge. Lazere instead argues that the truth as seen by a scholar might very well not be in agreement with the truth as seen by the government, by the wealthy, or by the majority of the American citizenry. Lazere doesn’t wish to free scholars from critique but instead to free scholars from the need to conform to outside pressure. (And of course, scholars shouldn’t have to conform to forces inside OR outside the academy.

As I already wrote, Lazere overstates his case, and dissent doesn’t necessarily mean truth. But pressure is increasingly mounting in the state and federal government to force professors to conform to the “dominant” beliefs and practices of the society at large. Arizona politicians are outraged that a professor might teach a novel (i.e., Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm) that some Americans might find distasteful (even if that novel was very successful and was adapted into a popular film). French uses a ridiculous example of professors talking about business practices about which they know little. But that’s not what’s at stake. Neither Lazere nor anyone else has suggested that scholars be allowed to pontificate on subjects about which they possess little knowledge. Lazere instead wants to protect professors’ rights to research and teach ideas that might be outside the mainstream (and that might oppose mainstream ideas).

Let’s remember what Lazere really writes: “There is a difference, however, between just any such opinions and those derived from standards of professional accreditation (upwards of 10 years graduate study for a Ph.D. and 7 more for tenure), systematic scholarship, and academic discourse.” It’s not just the ten years as a graduate apprentice and seven years as a journeyman that sets one’s ideas apart from “just any such opinions.” It’s also the scholarship, the arguments, and evidence that French includes under the term “academic discourse.” Again, let’s remember Lazere’s simple point: professors, guided by the rules of scholarly pursuit, should be allowed to argue and teach positions that differ from majority opinion.

Thanks for your incisive analysis and evaluation of Professor Lazere's passionate, but at bottom, specious claims. Quoting substantial portions from the texts put under scrutiny (not only from Professor Lazere's article, but also from David French's critique of the article as well as from Anne Colby and Thomas Ehrlich's study, which Professor Lazere seems to have misused to support his claims) lends all the more credence to your general arguments that academics can scarcely be relied upon to critique themselves fairly (proving again that one cannot be a fair judge in one's own case) and that some measure of oversight of institutions of higher education by trustees, alumni, donors, legislators, taxpayers and the general public is warranted.

During my wartime military service, we soldiers all knew we might be required by the exigencies of combat to call down artillery or air strikes on our own positions, as did several in the unit in which I served overseas. Accordingly, as a university student and later college professor I also was prepared to do this when I thought it necessary to preserve the integrity of the institution, faculty, and students I served. So appeals to departmental or factional solidary disguised as "collegiality," or to institutional omerta in the face of fair non-academic criticism (i.e., "stonewalling," with ancillary support from bureaucratic "damage control") were not persuasive in my case. Likewise with Professor Lazere's unsuccessful appeals, which I have remarked on in greater detail in my comments on his article in "Inside Higher Education."

Thanks again for your insights and trenchant commentaries. I'm a newcomer to your site and to knowledge of your organization; know that I'll look forward to reading more of your posts in future. Cheers

Jacques,

You are quite forgiving when characterizing Lazere's piece as "specious." It is perfectly cartoonish. It is impossible not to worry about the future of American education when such cartoonish substitutes for intellectual engagement are thrust on vulnerable students and carefully insulated from any critical questioning.

I read at first with disappointment, then amusement the above contribution of "Karen Elliot," which is a miniature compendium of wilful misreadings, freshman comp--like logical fallacies, histrionic overstatement, and crudely-cut innuendo. It seems that yet another danger facing Professors Reisart and Lazere in this debate is from the "friendly fire" of inept supporters like KE. Again, I urge those interested in this important debate to read the incisive commentaries in "Inside Higher Education" on Lazere's and Reisart's articles and resume the discussion here in light of the challenging ACTA postings on them. Cheers

Jacques, thanks for the adjectives! They brought to mind the Socratic injunction to always characterize your opponent's ideas with a string of adjectives.

So which of my claims are misreadings? Logical fallacies? Overstatements? Innuendo? I'll make a handy-dandy list of them, and you can just click-n-drag em into the proper, clunkily modified category. Here goes:

1. There's a difference between saying X is not a widespread problem and saying X is not a problem.
2. Professors should be allowed to explore, argue, and teach positions that differ from the mainstream opinion.
3. We might take more seriously ideas that reflect expertise in any subject -- whether academic or otherwise -- and the framing of ideas through the rigors of academic discourse than we might opinions tossed out in a public opinion poll.
4. Politicians are increasingly trying to force professors to adhere to mainstream public opinion and taste.
5. When liberals question authority, conservatives accuse them of political bias. When conservatives question authority, they see themselves as brave rebels against conspiratory groupthink. (And the related idea; when liberals criticize the wholesale dominance of a social institution by one way of thinking, they are committing a genetic fallacy by equating the substance of one's ideas with the personal origins of those ideas. But when conservatives equate a scholar's research and teaching with his or her voting record, they are proving unequivocally that the secret motivation behind the research and teaching can be found in the voting record.)

To "Karen Eliot": Thanks for your challenge, which I can't profitably take up during my afternoon repast, but will later. I see then, that at least we have something in common in being, i.e., "out to lunch." Cheers for now

Thanks for your schema, KE, but I'll stick to your previous message to avoid the easy confusion of proposition and proof your list introduces. What follows is more a brief commentary; for I'm not quite up to a weighty tome of correctives this evening, though so far you've certainly given me ample opportunity for that ("[h]ad we but world enough, and time").

You may be conceded a small point at the beginning of your piece on the ACTA "denial" claim, though you yourself anticipated the debatable point over "denial" and "denial it's a widespread problem". From there, however, you blithely drift down the current towards the falls by introducing a series of irrelevancies, red herrings, and other logical faults that are not traceable to the ACTA essay in question and thus not germaine to its analysis, e.g.: ACTA's alleged pro-Christian bias (irrelevant, unverified in ACTA's text, plus an unconvincing tu quoque); ACTA's implied position, its idee fixe, its fatal Cleopatra, is that leftist political bias is "the most important issue facing college education" (red herring unless you can verify this claim from the ACTA text--it also implies ACTA has few other serious concerns about higher education, which is a rank over-simplification; it's also a fault in diction, for "education" "faces" nothing unless you wish to personify it); ACTA's implied approval (?) of David Horowitz's supposed claims (possibly an instance of guilt by association, though delivered as a parenthetical remark); ACTA's nebulous "accusations" against feminists and Marxists are not present in ACTA's essay ("shotgun technique" loaded with tu quoques--plus the implication that ACTA reflexively equates "unpopular ideas" with political bias-- pure ventriloquy and oversimplification);and (finally, but by no means exhaustively), the climactic red herring irrelevancy in comparing violent sex crime with political bias--perhaps we could also throw in terrorism, meningitis, abortion, sports injuries, and alcoholism into this absurd farrago for further pointless comparisons. Know also that I actually referred to a freshman comp text (I years ago used for my classes) for a quick review of examples in assessing your claims.

Though your second paragraph contains some defensible claims supported by analysis, it does rely heavily on the tu quoque at the end--and opponents well-equipped with tu quoques, like two evenly matched tennis players, can sustain long volleys. Incidentally, what I think got Professor Lazere off to a lamentable start in his essay was his unwarranted ad hominem attack on David Horowitz and his windbagging about "media blowhards" (though he detonated himself with his own petard there). And why, may I ask, does Professor Lazere think that the most suitable target for his negatively critical eye is the government, or business, or religious institutions, or "bourgeois society"? Could it be the paucity of defenders of those institutions to be found in overwhelmingly leftist academic echo-chambers? Why not begin his critical program close to home in the cloistered, "little" world of academia--of lectures, conferences, seminars, guest dinners, park-like grounds, quiet libraries and offices, and faculty clubs with comfy wing-chairs? (Not to mention profitable annuities--but on this, see my story tomorrow--hat tip to "LL" for the stimulating the idea). As a great humanist cleric recognized as the most learned of his age writes: "Adeo foris oculata, domi coeca est hominum natura" ("It is the nature of humanity to be so keen-sighted out of doors and so blind at home"). Aside: Now I ought to exclude "theorists" (i.e., those afflicted with theorrhea) at university, for whom all the world's their stage and all the "texts" their rightful province--yet--it does strike me (a mere translator and texual scholar) as ironical that this imperial race given to issuing incontrovertible decrees for the most part relies heavily on what they trust as verbally and semantically accurate English translations of French and German originals conveying assertions of radical linguistic indeterminacy as well as flashily rhetorical rejections of the Laws of Thought. Perhaps Professor Lazere would serve his vocation (or his logical-dialectical crusade) better by helping emancipate falliblist goals such as truth, knowledge, intention, and meaning from the "scare-quote" manacles with which "theorists" have shackled them? Could not Professor Lazere engage his adversaries at home before he launches his armada upon the epic "ingens . . . aequor" ("wide . . . ocean")? (For humanities abolitionists and fallibilists, unlike theorists, who haven't their feet firmly planted in the air, I might recommend the always sensible Susan Haack's essay "Staying for an answer" in the TLS seven or so years ago). And if we are defer to Professor Lazere's tribe of expert critics and "dissenters," do we not owe so much more to the great thinkers, scholars, and artists of the past (including many who were social, philosophical, and political conservatives--nay even, reactionaries) often abused (as racists, misogynists, colonialists, capitalists, classists, or just faithful believers and hereditary aristoi) by those whose very existence should depend on them ("Cessate uccidere i morti! "Stop killing the dead!" cries the poet Ungaretti)?

The salient issue in your criticism of David French's point about "expertise" in countering Professor Lazere's (arguably) arrogant appeal to it (ne sutor ultra crepidam!), is of course that of false authority. I believe French's point that "expertise" in academic specialties (especially today, I might add, given our woefully fragmented curricula no longer firmly founded on classical languages, mathematics, sciences, and traditional humanities disciplines) does not prepare academics to instruct students on weighty matters like economics (at least not in literature or physics classes, and, mutatis mutandis, extending to the following areas), religion, and war and peace. Included also in areas beyond professorial "instruction" should be what social or political causes to support and whom to vote for or against. Nevertheless, abuses of professors' positions of authority in these matters are legion (e.g., English profs profligately denouncing capitalism to their students while quietly hoarding up tax-free pelf in annuities), and French and ACTA are right to point them out. In life's great existential moments, "humanist" professorial "expertise" can rarely come to the rescue. As Kierkegaard has it, there is a system of logic but there is no system of human existence. But, perhaps tiring of argument (as I am in writing this riposte), you delivered your last sentence, which may either evoke an indulgent smile or a scoff that you have thereby delivered a sarcastic and sadistic gangland-style kick in the ribs to your previous appreciative and generous remarks about untutored talent. Ma, forse c'era un scherzo! ("But, perhaps this was a joke!")

Tomorrow I'll conclude my commentaries on your piece, KE. And I know you won't hold your breath until the peroration. I've enjoyed this little dian ton logon poreuesthai ("voyage of discourse") with you. Cheers,

FedDog: thanks for your post--I'm in sympathy with your wonderment. Cheers

Corrections (mea culpa): strike the first "the" after my "LL" reference; in penultimate sentence of paragraph four read: "ribs of your previously appreciative and generous readers who approved your remarks about untutored talent" (omitted words)

further correction (mea culpa): close quotation after " . . . i morti" in last sentence of paragraph three (just before English translation)

further correction (sigh): read "to defer to" at the beginning of the last sentence of paragraph three of my commentaries.

KE: I noticed this morning that the debate in "Inside Higher Education" over what academic freedom means and includes has begun again. And as predictable as the cadence of a washing machine, the author of the lead article (like, alas, Professor Lazere in his) begins by invoking the spectre of our academic age's great Bogey (as there was in years long past the spectre of the great Boney, with whose mere invocation English nannies could at once hush their wayward charges with "Ol' Boney'll ge' ye'!"), David Horowitz (sans academic portfolio), scourge of academe and literary terrorism, intellectual gunslinger, ne plus ultra of retrograde opinions, very personification or living synecdoche of everything not generally desirable for academe, and, perhaps most unforgivable, Swiftian critic of academic critics (reread Swift's wickedly delectable "A Digression Concerning Criticks" in his A Tale of a Tub [1696] while whispering to yourself the names of your favourite academic adversaries) and academic reformer. That you avoided the temptation to make such a gratuitous and pandering invocation (i.e., ad hominem attack) in your above argument is to be commended.

And this aside leads me into my sparing commentaries on the last three paragraphs of your critique, KE, though I defer to the sound observations of William Voegeli in his commentaries on Professor Lazere's article in IHE that public and legislative oversight of tax monies spent on institutions of higher learning (as with other publicly-funded institutions) rightly falls within their purview (thus reducing Professor Lazere's fustian claims about looming public vengeance on academic dissenters and critics to mere non-sequiturs and red herrings), though we would doubtless all agree (Professor Lazere, William Voegeli, and David Horowitz included) that this oversight ferule should not be wielded for ideological reasons tout court. And when you rightly claim that Professor Lazere generally overstates his case, could we not include in this corrective his outre suggestion that "ten years of graduate study" (which you dutifully--and, alas, uncritically--convey in your last quoted reference) necessary for apotheosis as an academic expert is similarly overstated? For I remember six or seven years of graduate study to be most common among my contemporaries (save the minority, now perhaps legion, who prefer arguing radical politics in leftish bookstores, bars and cafes--especially during the sidewalk lotus and latte seasons--to sitting their doctoral exams and completing their dissertations). But so as not to end this commentary with a whimper of protest, I offer the following fantastical tu quoque of my own:

Take the case of a generic academic whose socialist-egalitarian ideology may not always exactly coincide with his or her role as well-to-do annuities rentier, but whose guilty conscience and hieratically-annointed rank compels him or her to speak out firmly in support of the oppressed and underprivileged mascots so dear to the "politically-aware" class of champagne bohemians (Wyndham Lewis's tag) to whom he or she belongs. Does this description not call to mind a variation of the old story about the terribly anxious young man's first and reluctant visit to a psychiatrist, who, gently and reassuringly, step by faltering step, at last coaxes the young man into his office and invites him to sit, and when the young man attempts to do this, shrieks: "No! No! Not there! That's my chair!"? For might not we imagine similarly such a scene played out for our generic academic, who has only just delivered in his or her favourite journal, lecture-hall or wing-chair yet another egalitarian homily against the rapacious ogres of high finance, being solicited by a ragged beggar (or doctoral candidate without a preferment)?--"Date eleemosynam," "Give alms," the beggar implores, and the importuned academic, seeing no public purse at hand, hustles away chez Mrs. Jellyby, head down, muttering, "No . . . not my money!" Multa cetera desunt. Cheers for your indulgence,

PUT UP -- OR SIT DOWN

To the point:

Lazare is an old, retired English teacher and Socialist (see him in "The Nation") who, thanks to a $1 million TIAA-CREF account filled with cigarette and oil stocks, has enough time to continually submit his unfunded, dreamy Utopian concepts to IHE.

If Lazare had the courage of his convictions, he would take $50,000 out of his TIAA-CREF and promote his ideas like Michael Moore does.

No one will respect his dreamy Utopian ideas until he puts up his own money. Why?

Lazare does not have enough confidence in them to invest his own money. Why should anyone else put their money into his unfunded scribblings? Given the "tax everyone but me" Socialist has so much money in the bank?

A quick one before he returns:

It seems highly odd to defend David Horowitz as some non-credentialed outsider in a noble war against credentialed academic insiders. Horowitz himself uses the lack of proper credentials continually to attack particular professors and what they teach. For example, here's Horowitz himself:

"I did object to the use of the Zinn book in a single case, noted earlier, which had nothing to do with his discredited ideas. My objection was in regard to the Social Work Program at Kansas State University where Zinn’s book was the principal assigned text in a class on “Social Welfare.”[4] But the reason I objected was that Zinn’s text was irrelevant to the subject matter. I objected because it was being taught by a faculty member not trained in history or in any field that would provide the necessary expertise to evaluate its claims."

So when Lazere defends the expertise of professors, he is arrogant. But when Horowitz demands that professors only use books in which they have received the proper institutional training, he is a brave outsider.

Finally, as regards the issue of ten years of graduate study, we'd have to turn to the statistics on the average time to completion of a doctoral degree in the different disciplines and at different schools. We'd also have to include the many students who spend pre-doctoral time working on an MA or MFA, and the many professors who do years of post-doctoral research before taking up a full-time academic position. So ten years doesn't sound like a high estimate to me. But, ten years or so of professional training marks the difference between, say, a nurse's aide and a surgeon, a paralegal and a top lawyer. So let's not denigrate the effects of ten years of professional training.

I'll try to respond to Jacques' other points as time goes by. And I might begin using an intimadatingly high percentage of Pig Latin in all my future text.

KE: Thank you for responding to my answer to your challenging post. I'll in turn respond to your response in due course if you've anything to offer. You needn't write or quote "Pig" Latin; I can and shall read the real Ciceronian item if you're offering.

As you doubtless know, to read and understand Latin (in addition to at least some gentleperson's passing knowlege of Greek) has been the hallmark of what has been recognized as an "educated" person for two thousand years before in the States it was decided that at university courses in "recreation studies," "advanced food management," "transgendered 19th century art history," "feminist logic" and "radical social welfare theory" should, alas, replace it. Then one studied Latin and Greek while one "acquired" modern languages (Goethe notes this even 200 years ago); now, "one" acquires little (even in ten years of graduate study) except an antinomian (im)posture, an "attitude". As the historian Titus Livius has it in sum (describing the barbarian response to Roman entreaties to spare the fledgling city from pillage and destruction)--"Vae Victis!," ("Woe to the vanquished!"), but the truth is that we (like Rome) are not entirely vanquished. As when Horace claims, "non omnis moriar" ("I shall not wholly die") and "exigi monumentum" ("I have erected a monument . . .", which Shakespeare echoes and elaborates on in Sonnet 55), the noisily triumphalist "But we're here now!" claims fade very quickly in comparison. Cheers until my next post,

Thanks again for your last message, KE, though in it you managed but a paltry whimper in response to my above posts' many points--do consider, if you wish to play lance-wielding Camilla in defending the academically indefencible, "quid valeant humeri ferre, quid recusent" ("what the shoulders may be able to bear, [and] what they refuse"--Horace, Ars poetica).

Your charge (based on an obviously tendentious misreading) in your post above that David Horowitz "attack[s] professors" is unsubstantiated by the quotation you have chosen to "illustrate" your point, for nowhere in your quotation does such an ad hominem attack by Horowitz occur. For he there deals with the questions of false authority and imbalanced presentation, not deals out ad hominem attacks. Such a false charge against Horowitz constitutes in itself (at best) a careless misreading and more probably merely another routine ad hominem attack on Horowitz. And further, note that Horowitz does not himself presume to have the "expertise" (if, as I suspect, compiling litanies of social, economic, and political grievances against the US in the interests of "professionally preparing" a leftist phalanx of social workers requires such "expertise") to teach the class, but only criticises the apparently uncritical, unmonitored adoption of a clearly parti pris source.

Now for the "j'accuse" bit.
The whole issue of what constitutes "certified expertise" in the humanities and the social-behavioural sciences (along with their professional school extensions such as education, social work, business, public administration, "hospitality studies" [i.e., the "theory" and practise of managing hotels], journalism and the like--rightly and collectively referred to as the university curriculum's "soft" underbelly) is one of the greatest challenges confronting profligately-paid educators and administrators to defend. Add to this the problem of leftist academics who've succeeded in seizing greater control of once-respectable disciplines like history, literature, anthropology and art history, and who now require that these departments reflect in teaching and research orientations their own antinomian social and political prejudices. Not to mention metastasizing bogus "disciplines" like ethnic and "gender studies" (whose "professors" and attendant epigones seem anything but "disciplined"). And perhaps in near future "experts" in remedial, basic, or whatever the next euphemism for "bonehead" education may be will form a department of "Study Studies". Perhaps this department too will dabble in the seven (or ten if you insist) year shakedown racket vis a vis its graduate students and doctoral candidates (whose "research" results, rather than contributing to the traditional humanist quest for knowledge and truth, will all too predictably consist of politically tendentious or meretricious theses and dissertations ending with appeals for "further revisionary research" [read: lavish research funding and grants for future well-to-do radicals]). All too often today universities and their professorial appendages prosper in this shameless pyramid scheme (pointed out by several Marxist thinkers as well, I might add) by peddling "expertise" in what amounts to pseudo-intellectual quackery. And these new ducks fattening up on public corn in these lazy departmental barnyards de temps en temps will also be tempted to strut their stuff before the gaping rustics of the public at large. But they're not ducks, they're humans, you say. Or at least, following the mighty Michel Foucault's lead, "post-humans". It does seem, though, given the overweening scorn and snobbish condescension of academic "experts" like the "humanist" Professor Lazere, that truly, with Lucan (Pharsalia) we might nod in agreement that "humanum genus fecit paucis" ("humanity was made for a few men"). Like himself. Not like Horowitz or the inexpert public (no "republic of letters" in his fiefdom!).

Perhaps here I'll leave off the debate and wait for replies. I shouldn't want our adversaries to think we've been rereading our F. R. Leavis too closely and following his customary critical strategy of not only attacking the city, but storming the citadel, sowing salt on the fields, and selling the entire population into slavery. Again, cheers

clarification: in the closing line of the third paragraph, read "Lazere's" for "his"

Jacques -- Don't flatter yourself that anyone's shoulders are not strong enough to bear the weight of your "heavy" thoughts.

Your reply to my brief critique of David Horowitz makes no sense. You're missing your own contradiction. Lazere asks that critics of the academy (like, say, Horowitz or Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity) be as informed as the academics they criticize. Horowitz himself demands that people in positions of authority be properly informed. That you think Horowitz's position is brave and Lazere's arrogant cannot be reduced to the issue of ad hominem attacks. You are logically inconsistant.

More later!

1. Jacques claims that I’m wrong to point out ACTA’s double standards, especially when they step outside the purview of the individual ACTA document at hand. But of course, any individual statement by a political group must be evaluated in relation to other statements by that group and by its supporters, unless the organization officially distances itself from such supporters, which never happens on this blog. (As an aside, let me just remind Jacques that ACTA’s position on professors who use Marxist or feminist ideas can be found in their survey of course descriptions as evidence of political bias.) ACTA’s long-standing failure to criticize religious education as politically biased forces me to question the motives of the organization.

2. Jacques was right that ACTA probably doesn’t see left-wing bias as the most important problem facing higher education. But judging from this blog and many of their official statements, left-wing bias would constitute one of maybe two or three of the most important problems facing higher education. Still, these other problems – like the lack of a “best of the West” standard college curriculum – are often reduced to the larger issue of political bias by ACTA and its defenders.

3. Yet, if the goal of a college is to educate its students, we’d need to (a) evaluate the extent of a university’s successes and failures; and (b) show these to be the effect of a problem like left-wing bias, before we could state that ACTA is right to argue that left-wing bias is as important a problem as it suggests.

4. Jacques’ own replies are often simply confused. I never stated that ACTA equates unpopular opinions with political bias. We have to return to Lazere’s article to unravel Jacques’ mistake. Lazere’s article is not about ACTA. It’s a defense of academics in the face of uninformed pundits and politicians who see academics as out of step with popular opinion or mainstream American values (and so who see the role of academics as simply confirming popular opinion or mainstream values). The critiques of Lazere that sprung up at this website and in the IHE comments section saw Lazere as disingenuously defending bias by defending academics’ right to argue and teach unpopular ideas.

5. The true red herring, then, is the recurring claim made by ACTA, Jacques, and others that Lazere is arrogant. That’s ad hominem, last I checked. I only raised the issues summarized in (4) above because Lazere’s basic ideas were so misrepresented here. Lazere simply asks that those who criticize academics be as informed as those academics. He never suggests that all critics of the academy are uninformed. But let’s take a simple example. Many critics of the academy see discussions of literature and empire as a sign of “political bias.” Yet, anyone with even the slightest familiarity with world literature will continually see representations of conquest and colonialism and territorial warfare. Such critics come off as uninformed in exactly the way Lazere suggests.

6. I don’t want to get into a huge argument about David Horowitz. He criticized a teacher for using a text from a field outside the training of that teacher. At the same time, I wonder if he has the training necessary to criticize the research and teaching in the wild variety of disciplines with which he engages. Michael Berube has made a mini-career out of deflating Horowitz’s claims and revealing the intellectually dishonest strategies Horowitz uses. Finally, this is a man who uses the term “Islamofascist.” (see the Front Page Magazine website) Now, I’m no political science major, but fascism doesn’t seem to be an accurate term to describe Islamic fundamentalism. But maybe Western Civ teachers should take Horowitz’s lead and start referring to Alexander-the-Great-fascism, Roman fascism, Holy Roman Empire fascism, Protestantofascism, Zionistofascism, and so on. Not everyone bent on world domination is a fascist.

7. Jacques then writes: “And why, may I ask, does Professor Lazere think that the most suitable target for his negatively critical eye is the government, or business, or religious institutions, or "bourgeois society"? Could it be the paucity of defenders of those institutions to be found in overwhelmingly leftist academic echo-chambers? Why not begin his critical program close to home in the cloistered, "little" world of academia--of lectures, conferences, seminars, guest dinners, park-like grounds, quiet libraries and offices, and faculty clubs with comfy wing-chairs?” I suppose Jacques doesn’t think that those with the most power deserve the most rigorously critical eye. We always hear so much about the failure of colleges to educate students, and yet why not ask why our politicians, business leaders, and religious leaders, provide such horrible models of wide learning and humane behavior? Jacques will say that this is a tu quoque fallacy, but we have to remember that much of the kerfuffle over political bias in the classroom is a mere red herring, a distraction technique, to shift American attention away from the true locations of power and onto fairly powerless institutions (like colleges).
8. Furthermore, the lack of defenders of an institution is not a logical reason NOT to criticize it. (And what about the lack of defenders of college education outside of the body of college professors?) Jacques himself enjoys a little ad hominem fun here, accusing Lazere of am personal lack of experience with the world outside the academy. Jacques is, of course, in love with the ad hominem. Note his repeated references, like nervous tics, to the annuities and investments of professors.
9. I am duly impressed by Jacques knowledge of Latin. Still, quoting Latin writers on authority is a logically challenged strategy. Jacques would have us all restrict our discourse to the appeal to logos (and cast ethos and pathos out the window). But his own prose uses Latin mostly as an appeal to ethos.
10. I can’t even begin to engage Jacques’ oracular statements about expertise and programs like ethnic studies. His lack of evidence, his vast generalizations – well, let’s just say, that freshman comp book could be as useful to him as to me. (And I really enjoyed Jacques obscene condescension in referring to his use of a freshman comp book to undermine my argument. I think this entire exchange should send us both back to the basics.)

En attendant KE . . .

In reply to your last post: as an academic with appropriate scholarly and teaching credentials, I (et alii) do hereby endorse, approve and applaud David Horowitz's general programme of academic reform as well as his percipient assessment of the ills that currently plague the vocation I (et alii) have taken up. "Taken up", note--not undertaken, as the leftist devotees of Libitina the Gravedigger would have it. So then may I assume DH's views now have the academic cachet necessary for you to engage them without summarily dismissing them because they haven't academic benediction? Is that too an "inconsistant" [sic] position?

DH seems a particular bete noire of the academic left (as he has kindly offered his services as their scourge), and sinister-side reactions to his trenchant spot-on criticism of academe range from sulphuric ad hominem denunciations to cognoscenti sneering to vigorous forensic combats (with their attendant battle-boasts) to pleading, plaintive whisperings of the boudoir billet-doux. Accordingly, he also seems to have helped break the sinister omerta in academe that stifles all self-criticism before it can be expressed (and sometimes even within reach of the hound-like ears of campus speech police!). "Zut alors!" he seems to say to
L'oltracotata schiatta che s'indraca
dietro a chi fugge, e a chi mostra l'dente
o ver la borsa, com'agnel si placa
(Dante, Paradiso; "The insolent breed that
makes itself a dragon/behind him who flees,
and to him who bares his teeth/or else his
purse, becomes mild as a lamb")
Or better, perhaps: "Oderint dum metuant" ("Let them hate, so long as they fear").

If you regret your lost (or never acquired) latinity, not to worry--there's always time; the elder Cato conned his Greek while in his sixties (for he said he knew not what tongue would be spoken in the nether-world). For as the generous and genial Horace has it, "dimindium facti qui coepit habet: sapere aude" ("To have begun is half the task: dare to be sensible").

I'll be away for a day or so, but I'll return soon to consider your anticipated "sun-clear report".
Cheers . . . en attendant KE . . .

KE: Quelle surprise, mon ancienne nouvelle! I've just now en passant scanned your latest post, and shall answer soon after I return in a day or two following a short peregrination. Thank you (even bless you!) for your having thrown some very savoury bits of meat to a starving lion (as Aesop has it, to "ena, alla leonta"--to "one, yes, but a lion").

I'm pleased also that we'll get beyond amateur logic-chopping (see my Kierkegaard reference above) and now treat some broader issues in this whole debate (as I did in my last posts). But just a quick riposte on your erroneous claim that we've so far restricted the debate on Messieurs Lazere and Horowitz to rhetorical appeals to logos: though you bewail any references to Professor Lazere's apparently assiduous devotion to Plutus's shrine (actually I'm following "LL"'s posts here, for I've done no op-ed research on this score), it is an ethical matter concerning what Professor Lazere advocates for others and what he does for himself. And whatever the justice (or rather, hypocritical puffery) of his socialist-egalitarian views he so freely expresses in "The Nation" and elsewhere, his appeals must also be evaluated by his character--his trustworthiness, i.e., which is precisely the appeal to ethos tout court. The Socrates of the Apology and other dialogues distinguished himself, unlike his sophist-rhetorician adversaries, by taking no money for his teaching. Would that the egalitarian leveler Professor Lazere could claim such an honour!--"Mais on fait ce qu'on peut" ("But one does what one can").

But I've to be elsewhere now and will answer in due course. Cheers

Thanks for your usual stimulating contribution to the above fray, KE. Let me add that my finishing Swiftian bit is dedicated to "LL", who thinks that perhaps I'm a bit too indulgent with Professor Lazere and his minions. And KE, please to receive my sincere praise neat and without any ironical dilution or diminishment whatever. For your outstanding contributions (your "sun-clear report" heretofor anticipated by so many of us with proleptic trembling pleasure) have now predictably acted as such spurs to our ingenii and copiae that we would act the base ingrates were we not to applaud your recent critical apotheosis--whereupon even the god so dear to so many academics, Momos (or Momus) the Critic and Carper, the raker-up of writer's faults in Cacus's lair, must yield up to you half his puissant throne of judgment. For one would have to be blind not to see that you both seem equally worthy of deference as proud children of Night (see Hesiod, Theogony 214; also Callimachus, Lucian, Swift et al). For so rarely do you deviate into sense (thanks here to the master, Dryden, and his even greater pupil, Pope) that the occasionally apt remark you make must by your servants and fervent devotees be excused as errantly or accidentally induced--merely a trivial, chance default, we say, and no diminishment of the already celebrated consistency with which you pursue Dame Darkness, your beloved parent in tenacious obscurity. And your ivied followers by now are doubtless legion:

And now had Fame's posterior trumpet blown,
And all the nations summoned to the Throne.
The young, the old, who feel her inward sway,
One instinct seizes, and transports away.
None need a guide, by sure attraction led,
And strong impulsive gravity of Head.
**********************************************
She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold
Of Night Primeaval, and of Chaos old!
**********************************************
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal Darkness buries All.
(Pope, Dunciad)

Serio ludere aside, I shall respond to KE's points laid out (or better, sprawled out) in the military way (as befits a former soldier), i.e., "by the numbers". Again, as above, I'll run a corrective commentary.

1. A useless quibble, begging the dubious question of whether ACTA is a political group and assuming all its supporters agree on all points (I suspect there may be many points that ACTA and its supporters differ on; this includes possible objections to my own comments above). Does ACTA unequivocally state that no Marxist or feminist (parti pris political ideologies of variously bitter tastes though they are) could possibly teach a non-biased course? Followed by a stunning question-begging non-sequitur: religious education is simply political propaganda. It appears that for the likes of KE, like for Marxists, it's no use, for it's "politics (not tortoises) all the way down". And murky "motives" innuendos merely dodge the ad rem question of veracity. And further, your welcomed appearance (like Voltaire, you'd have to be invented if you didn't exist!) on the ACTA site commentaries section shows that, unlike some websites, all germaine comments are posted and silent corrections are uncommon (unlike the alleged practices of leftist commentators like Professor Juan Cole, e.g.) A trifling start.

2. "One" higher education problem (e multa seriosa, a mio parere!) addressed by ACTA--a fair correction and thanks for the concession.

3. That is precisely what ACTA, SAF, David Horowitz (he may make use of my services as dragoman or factotum as he pleases to translate his points--on which I agree--for KE, who [like the notorious feminist at Boston College who refused to allow males in certain classes] does not admit DH unchaperoned by certified academics [in our roles as Spanish aunts] to the intellectual agora to present his views), FIRE, NAS, and others systematically investigate and "out". Their evidence takes the shape of general conclusions based on numerous cases as well as analyses of course descriptions, reading lists, required courses and the like. You obviously disagree, employing the "further research is indicated" ploy. Perhaps then you could vary this with its twin, the "exact science just around the corner" or "young science" song and dance that psychologists often employ. In any case, I add my own assent to their findings based on my own first-hand experience.

4. KE's dubious formula for defending Professor Lazere's disingenuous attacks on outside critics of what seems (or surely waddles or swaggers like) unchecked leftist bias in academe is: unpopular ideas=leftist political ideas=sophisticated ideas=my ideas=scholarly consensus, which in turn must be the very mirror image of the conservative half of the nation's ideas--QED. Any internal opposition to this axiomatic formula must be denounced, then stifled, and any academic defectors from our intellectual Kremlin must be hounded down by our ever-vigilant cultural commissars. Our extra-academic critics, on the other hand, are not only wrong, but haven't even the right to speak. (the Stalinists in academia [and there are such beasts in the academic zoo!] might even phantasize a bit here: "perhaps even . . . hmm--yes, perhaps a purge! Yes, yes!--slay them all-- Marx will know His own!"). Not perhaps a unreasonable "final solution" arrived at by especially bellicose academics, since, according to KE, ACTA zealously pursues a "war on intellectuals" (corollary assumption: all or nearly all intellectuals must be or perceived to be leftists--the few who are not must be political mutants). Analysing an argument is not equivalent to promoting an argument and suggesting that widely-held views in the country are impermissible in classes (see DH's "The Professors" for many examples of professorial abuse of their obligations to analyse, not to act the part of leftist John the Baptists making way for the second Marx's coming).

5. Lots of juicy low-hanging fruit in this one. The first part is debatably impressionistic but the example is particularly revealing. "Anyone with the slightest familiarity with world literature . . .", etc. I'd be interested in comparing my own world literature reading list with KE's. On the lit-crit front, if KE is obliquely referring to vastly overrated polemics such as Edward Said's "Orientalism" and the like generated by the post-colonialism industry--or bandwagon--again I beg to differ. Said's tendentious litany of false accusations against orientalist scholars from Europe has been thoroughly discredited by real historians such as Bernard Lewis and Kieth Windschuttle; and further, Said himself has been exposed as a pampered fraud by Jon Wiener and others. (Personal aside here: I once heard a feminist colleague of mine extoll Said's "scholarship" for what seemed to me an endless 15 minutes of undeserved praise. Wishing to take my leave, I ended the conversation after she brought up Said's acknowleged skill as an amateur pianist with: "well, then, at least I can esteem him for SOMETHING") It is difficult to forgive Said's vicious transmogrification of Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park". In my own reading list for a course on South Asian writers of English, however, I included both Nehru's anti-colonialist "The Discovery of India" as well as Nirad Chaudhuri's pro-empire autobiography among many others. And I tried to bring out as objectively as I could the ideas as I thought the writers of these important works treating 20th century India.

6. Again, KE appeals to "big" authority (as if Michael Berbube were such), but drifts away from ad rem arguments. Incidentally, there are many arguable reasons for using the term "Islamofascism"; among them, the pro-Hitler support (including even troops) given by influential radical Muslim clerics and political leaders during WWII, persistent Holocaust denials, fetid streams of vicious anti-semitic propaganda promoted even by certain Muslim regimes, commonly-held hysterical conspiracy theories about 9/11 and most other terrorist plots, repeated terrorist outrages with extremist-led mobs sometimes taking the lead, repressive laws stifling basic human freedoms, bellicose irredentism (e.g., designs on former Muslim fiefdoms in Europe, South Asia and elsewhere), etc. An obviously childish over-simplification for which correction here is too ponderous a task.

7. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam" here ("Let not the shoemaker go beyond his last"). Academics would do better to avoid political polemics in their classes and teach their students how, not what to think. Otherwise they defraud and demean their students. Potential candidates for academic positions should not have to swear a disloyalty oath first. Not to mention an utterly indefencible generalisation about our political, religious and business leaders (And KE has the effrontery to score my alleged generalisations about ethnic and "gender" studies programmes!).

8. Here you seem to get tangled up in your own indignancy, for (dropping out the double negatives for clarity's sake, your first sentence reads: in part, "the lack of defenders of an institution is a logical reason to critise it") Is this, mon dieu, what you meant?! Had a "road to Damascus" reversal while writing your piece? The next (parenthetical) sentence is so clumsy that I'll leave to others what dregs of sense they can find in it. And on Professor Lazere's obvious struggle with personal "live high, talk low" hypocrisy, I'll perhaps leave that to LL's assiduous attentions.

9. I've already done to death KE's absurd canard about restricting my arguments to only logos--simply return to your freshman grammar and then look for examples of ethos and pathos in my pieces--they're everywhere. In addition, I gave reasons why I think Latin is essential to humanist learning above--see my comments again, ending with the Ungaretti quotation (obvious appeal to pathos). She's obviously fading fast into incoherent nonsense again. And know that the voices of the (even distant) past present real alternatives for thinking, creating and living if we just stop shouting them down (Ungaretti's point for those like KE who are apparently "verse-challenged".

10. We can all discover something in "going back to the basics"--like Latin and Greek. They even prove Darwin's evolutionist theories, for what is a backside for but(t) to facilitate the study of these two basic and venerable languages?

The following Swiftian fragment is drawn from a much longer work and is offered above all to "LL":

(From a purloined copy of a Marxist-feminist tract spawned during a recent faculty wing-chair-sitting contest):

". . . Again, and ever, we are and shall be infirm in our conviction that in all our professions and pursuits, literary economics shall be the whole aim and end of this faculty of letters, and WE, LIKE SACRED CHICKENS OF ROME shall resist all entreaties, reproaches, and indignations to the contrary. For we recall the shameful action of that Roman admiral who wished to seize the advantage presented to him by the careless disposition of the enemy Carthaginian fleet; and we remember that when a Roman naval commander wished to join battle, he was first obliged by custom to receive a sign from the sacred chickens on deck, that sign consisting of the chickens' pecking at some meal flung to them; on this occasional, however, chickens being wise and sensible creatures, they must have sensed some hazard, for they firmly, rightly, nobly, and economically would not eat of the meal that the Roman commander caused to be laid before them, and thus gave no propitious sign to allow him to engage the foe, so the admiral proposed another solution to the prudent, sagacious, and economical fowl, by admitting that though the sacred chickens would not eat, perhaps they might instead drink, and sacrilegiously (and disrespectfully):
KICKED THEIR FEATHERY ARS-S INTO THE OCEAN"!!!

correction: in my above commentary (#8) read: "your first sentence reads in part: 'the lack of defenders . . .'" (mea culpa and cheers to all who read this). An en passant familiarity with Latin (and English) double negatives might have rescued KE from plunging over the falls here, but that's purely optimistic speculation on my part; nevertheless, a very "little learning is a dangerous thing" (Pope, Essay on Criticism), nicht wahr?

correction: #8, read: "doubled negatives" (typo)

Apologies for hurting Jacques delicate grammar sensibilities by using two negatives in one sentence. I suppose I better go back to my grammar textbook for re-education. All that Shakespeare and Chaucer done screwed my head up! Litotes schmitotes! But any decent reader would see the difference between:

a) "The lack of defenders of an institution is not a logical reason not to criticize it." --and--
b) "The lack of defenders is a reason to criticize."

Double negatives only cancel out one another when they modify the same term. Thus, the difference between "I don't want nothing" and "I do not want what I do not have."

So let me translate that sentence for Jacques, whose mind is clearly blown right now. Let's put it this way: the fact that an institution lacks supporters cannot be employed as logical justification to avoid criticizing that institution. And let's then ask in what world do "the government, or business, or religious institutions, or 'bourgeois society'" lack a defenders? Last I checked, the institutions in Jacques' list have an army, a navy, some marines, even some seals. And a national guard busying defending the nation in another nation.

As far as logos goes, it is *only* in terms of logos that ad hominem, tu quoque, genetic fallacies, etc. are rhetorical problems. You spent so long labeling rhetorical devices that I figured you were pretending to value only logos -- a strategy, along with your use of Latin text cited only as authorities and not as evidence, that appeals to ethos, as I wrote before. I didn't mean to accuse Jacques of only using reason (or of *ever* using reason). I only meant to accuse him of wrapping himself in a cloak of O Altitudo! Latin! Logos! while disguising his own reliance on logically questionable rhetorical techniques.

Next on the list: fascism as a political system has no essential tie to anti-Semitism. Fascism is, as I don't need to remind Jacques, what with all his classical classics knowledge, a system of government in which the executive becomes identified with the State and all becomes subordinated to the State and its Leader. Islamic terrorism is a mish-mash of state, anti-state, and trans-state groups without allegiance to one leader (or at times, any single leader) or state or institution. (And don't accuse me of defending terrorists by pointing out Horowitz's faults.)

And forgive me for wanting empirical evidence proving that left-wing bias is a key element in the failure of today's universities. I agree that bias is wrong, both in instruction and in hiring. But I wonder how universities compare to other institutions and businesses in terms of wrongful hiring/firing practices.

Jacques is correct to point out a flaw in my phrasing in one instance. Religious education isn't *only* politically biased. It is intellectually biased as well. Thanks for the heads up!

Jacques is confused, though, when he asserts that I've ever argued that Horowitz needs academic validation to be taken seriously. It's akin to his general confusion about Lazere's argument in the first place. Neither Lazere nor I argue that a person needs academic credentials or validation. We simply ask that people who weigh in or legislate on an issue know a good deal about that issue. Horowitz is often over his head intellectually, and as an editor he frequently publishes writings that are factually wrong (for example, a recent piece in Front Page equated all Islam with terrorists).

Jacques is also confused about the point of education. Teachers must teach both how AND what to think. To do the former and not the latter would mean that students never learn about, say, the basic givens in geometry, or the equations defining a circle, or the facts in the history of a nation, or the skeletal structure of the human body. A teacher must teach what he or she sees as the truth about his or her subject, as well as how to go about testing such truths.

Jacques is once more confused about the difference between a citation and an appeal to authority. Michael Berube has no authority, last I checked. But he has done extensive writing on Horowitz's errors, both in his essays and on his blog.

Finally, Jacques thinks that all work on the relationship between literature and empire can be summed by Said's *Orientalism*. That's funny, because *Orientalism* doesn't deal much with fiction or poetry. His book has a simple thesis: knowledge collected about "the East" was often produced for and used by imperial governments. Clearly Jacques isn't familiar with the vast body of research on the relationship between literature and empire. It's not my specialization either, but I'd be happy to whip up a brief bibliography. (And don't think that you can bash a few rock-stars like Said-Spivak-Bhabha and think you've demolished the field. I think Spivak and Bhabha are more often wrong than not, but I still think there's a relationship between literary texts and the social and historical conditions under which they were produced.

Even more finally, here's one more tu quoque: Jacques should worry about his own prose before criticizing my hastily composed blog comments. Here's a doozy from the Master himself: "And I tried to bring out as objectively as I could the ideas as I thought the writers of these important works treating 20th century India".

correction: in my 9/06/06 post, #5 (end) read: "And I tried to bring out as objectively as I could their ideas as I thought the writers of these important works treating 20th century India would want them presented." (incomplete sentence--thanks to KE for pointing this out
"[e]ven more finally," [ipsa dixit!] with all the post-mod elegance her epicene "drive-by," "whatever, dude" prose "style" can deliver. I confess here that I was so eager to move on to KE's next cluster of risible howlers that I didn't complete the sentence outside my thoughts. Mea culpa to all my readers but KE, who was obviously tickled). Since I'm away from my desk until tomorrow, KE will have to wait for her next caning till then. This is (sigh) perhaps what comes of excessive reading of the Marquis de Sade and Michel Foucault. Cheers

Thanks again for your most revealing last post, KE. Although I had a much longer post of my own ready for you last night (but was inadvertently lost, alas!), I'll dutifully soldier on today from memory (4th in the list of a speaker's resources, if you recall--or ever learned--your rhetorical Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Martianus Capella or their Renascence commentators) nevertheless. So I may have to send my analyses of what amounts to your mirror-image syllabus of errors (alas, also a mirror of our times--"O tempora! O mores!", as Cicero has it) in parts to ensure their survival. But your Parthian strategy has utterly failed, for "cum e dimicatione denique pedem referres, adjecisti tela . . . non tam ad pugnam, quam ad pompam & speciem; lente siquidem, & imbecilliter acciderunt" ("when at last you were retreating from the fight, you hurled back darts . . . not so much for combat as for pomp and show, since indeed they aimlessly and feebly").

Yet that you have by your last post defeated yourself openly (not unlike--yes, litotes here, a form of meiosis--that unfortunate servant in the 18th century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber who is forced to beat himself up publicly before his superior) removes a portion of that anticipated reward for my correctives on your piece that I had savoured. For in your piece not only do you deviate into frivolity and wilful ignorance (apparently proud of itself), but also stray into brazen displays of anti-religious prejudice and bigotry (vergogna!, KE). And by the last error you unwittingly provide self-confessed evidence against your side's claims that, in the absence of many academic defenders of our major institutions mentioned above, that you can be trusted to present several points of view fairly and accurately to the students you teach--more likely, as we suspect, you seem to approve (both by your precepts and your examples) proselytising before them and importuning them with propaganda.

But first let me concede a small point to you (first the carrot). For you were right to point out that what I incorrectly analysed as an instance of litotes was actually a legitimate presentation (mirabile dictu!) of a logical proposition. And please to accept my minor concession to you on this point (softly spoken mea culpa here). Nevertheless, your point also points to a systemic error in your analysis that ought to be identified and extirpated once for all, i.e., your promiscuous mixing of propositional logic with rhetorical logos. Because I concede that your proposition ("A lack of defenders . . .", etc.) yields to your explanation of it, that by no means proves your claim, for it is clearly false. I'll here admit that you have "translated" it well for us, which, incidently, reassures us that on occasion you can actually form a coherent sentence (this also reminds us that you are not an entirely unworthy foe, thereby augmenting our distinction in defeating you). Nevertheless, let David Mitchell in An Introduction to Logic begin the corrective to your confusion:
For all that logic can tell us, there may be
other kinds of necessity than logical
necessity . . . That certain organisms die
when deprived of oxygen might seem to be not
something that, in some sense, is necessarily
true. But if this is so, the necessity is not
logical but biological and, from the point of
view of logic, the proposition is a contingent
one. To contradict it might be to commit a
mistake in biology; it would not be to make a
logical error. (2)
Then follow this with the description of logos set out in a representative freshman grammar and composition manual (the Harbrace Handbook, 2nd ed.):
Logos demonstrates your effective use of reason and judicious use of evidence, whether facts, statistics, comparisons, anecdotes, expert opinions, personal experiences, or observations. You employ logos in the process of supporting claims, drawing reasonable conclusions, and avoiding logical fallacies. (196)
We now see that we are well on the way to identifying and chastising KE's erroneous misidentification of the two. For on countless occasions above, KE seems to fancy that merely presenting a properly-formed propositional claim (only one aspect of logos) guarantees its acceptance as truth--detto-fatto, in aeternum, and with all the elegance of tautology. But this is by no means the case. Furthermore, question-begging claims like "A teacher must teach what he or she sees as the truth [save this for the post-structuralists who openly defy the Laws of Thought, KE!] about his or her subject . . ." do not persuade, for since when is Professor Lazere a recognised authority on political philosophy? Or, for that matter, Homi Bhabha, Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, et al.?--or, further, even convincing rhetoricians? Here one might note that Bhabha and Butler ran a hot race in recent years for the coveted honour of "Philosophy and Literature"'s prize for the two fields' worst writing award--but Butler's turgid, jargon-laden inanities outweighed Bhabha's in the end and she "won" the prize. And further, KE, when will you abandon your customary tactic of the argumentum de silentio (this term perhaps even the Latinless can manage without a translation) and answer questions like my query as to where ACTA unequivocally states that Marxists and feminists are by nature incapable of teaching a subject fairly and objectively? And we see above what follows from your apparently giddy reaction to making a small (and, as we have shown, minor, point in your own favour) in your 4th "paragraph". I've supposedly "blown" my mind! (thank you for sharing, KE!). This resort to "head-shop" argot (apparently KE's adopted facon de parler, for there's more of it from her below) perhaps provides us a clue ("heads-up" KE!) as to why she has so woefully treated the question of "Islamofascism", for even a lazy eye could not miss clear points of congruence of fascist and Islamofascist ideologies (that I suggested above) after reading the description of "fascism" provided in Webster's Collegiate (4th ed.). But then perhaps head-shops don't stock 'em--nicht wahr, KE?

I'll pause here before moving on to KE's expressions of anti-religious prejudice and bigotry before offering her (remember that she's apotheosized or "translated" herself above) a further honour that can easily best that of the likes of Judith Butler. A chair for KE!--perhaps even a job too! Multa cetera desunt. But
like Arnold the "termination-man", I'll be back . . . Cheers

I've returned for another foray or two against KE. Just a quick question, KE. When you say Horowitz is often "over his head intellectually" and offer the paltry example that Horowitz published something written by someone else that you claim equated "all" Islam with terrorists, do you mean to suggest DH wholly endorses every point of view from every author he publishes (guilt by association?--the old noscitur a socios again?--bit like a nervous tic, is it?)? But to your weighty bibliography of lit-crit "polemsters" like Said, Butler, Bhabha and the like (historians or legal scholars are they?--pas du tout!) I might counter with a few of those who might legitimately lay claim to your self-arrogated right to speak authoritatively on Islam and terror, e.g., Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis, Ibn Warraq, Robert Spenser, Bat Y'eor, Martin Kramer, Alan Derschowitz, Victor Davis Hanson, Keith Windschuttle, etc. Unlike the "rock-stars" above whom you clearly admire, my authors write for both scholars and general readers, not tenure, and they tend to appear in venues more widely accessible to the educated public rather than in smarmy quid pro quo "refereed" academic journals (one thinks of the precious rubbish passed on the nod into the PMLA, Critical Inquiry or Social Text) and some university presses. As for the "great body" of literature on "literature and empire" you crow about, KE, apply my coming award presentation encomium for KE to assessing its worth.

At any rate, I'll move on to the following point, since KE clearly opposes generalizations about and bias against religion (well, Islam at least). Obviously not Christianity, perhaps not Judaism either, for her prejudicial remark about "religious education" being no more than political and intellectual indoctrination overreaches bias itself and strays into the dark underworld of rank anti-religious bigotry. Though you sarcastically claim I've given you a "heads-up!" there, your head ought rather to be hanging low with shame--if not, can we not return to an author I translated for a timely corrective to the "muliera modo ne sit nimium sese diligens, sibique placere volens" ("some chit too self-loving and too willing to be pleased with herself") that I know could not apply to you? Cheers for now

correction: last post, 2nd paragraph, last sentence, read: "for you", instead of "for KE"

Jacques: not only are you tone-deaf, you simply can't read. Here's what I wrote: "And don't think that you can bash a few rock-stars like Said-Spivak-Bhabha and think you've demolished the field. I think Spivak and Bhabha are more often wrong than not, but I still think there's a relationship between literary texts and the social and historical conditions under which they were produced."

What part of "more often wrong than not" makes you think I "clearly admire" these folks?

This ridiculous see-saw ride is over.

Back after some marking, KE.--with several other points on the substance and style of your above arguments.

Your remarks about the necessity for teaching the "what" are useless (given your obvious examples), for my above examples of the "what" not to "teach" students in class were not the axioms of geometry or the incontrovertible donnees of history, but what personal values or political beliefs were "correct" (e.g., whom to vote for or against--the error of an appeal to false authority compounded by fraud). Threadbare logic-chopping again . . . and again, comme d'habitude, shifting the subject. And David Horowitz as well as many other individuals and organisations--conservative and liberal alike--never tire of pointing out notorious examples of propagandising for the uncomplicated reason that they are "toujours deja" occurring.

And believe it or not, KE, I do read some "post-colonialist" or "new historicist" lit and history. Who could avoid them if one's acquired a graduate degree in history over twenty years ago as well as a doctorate in English in the late 1990s? These "isms", however misconceived and tendentious they are, are also phenomena of our time, and perhaps necessary to know, in small portions of course, just as some in danger of being murdered have made themselves less vulnerable to poisons by taking small portions of the banes over an extended period of time. Or, I suppose, there are other ways to avoid poisoning, among them, feeding them to mascots and servants first. That's what some professors do to students. In this way some profs are, vis a vis their students, of Falstaff's mind vis a vis his men: good enough to fill a pit. I even dabble in the works of Stalinist hacks like Howard Zinn. Just to see. For, as Tertullian has it somewhere (I've not the Latin handy) "the Sun shines his rays into the sewers and is not polluted". The trouble with this apparently tolerant attitude is that a call to read one book (given our limited time here) is an implied suggestion not to read another, and what sensible humanist would prefer to read the just discovered scribblings (perhaps on some helpless roll of bath tissue) of the mighty maitre a penser, Jacques Derrida, to spending a lovely stolen hour with one's Horace? Who would prefer a barren roll in the hay with that premiere empty vessel, Jane Tompkins, to an hour reviewing one's German subjunctives? Who a week's dreary lectures from that smarmy crank, Frederic Jameson, to rereading all one's Jane Austen . . . again? Who an hour with that vicious miscreant, Michel Foucault, to an hour at the feet of the little "unknown Indian", Nirad Chaudhuri? True, I've a bias for authors, not critics, for the latter seem always "behind" their authors, e.g., Vittorio Alfieri--"Pedanti, Pedanti,/Che fate voi"?-
--"Ansanti, sudanti, Stiam dietro a voi" [ai poeti, per criticarli]("pedants, pedants, whatcha doing?"---"Panting, sweating, staying just at your behind" [of the poets, to criticise them--(reads the gloss)]. Like Virginia Woolf, I'd rather be studying a language, reading a history, painting a picture, or writing a novel than merely be critiquing like Charles Tansley, "who was studying the influence of something on somebody".

And speaking of curatives, I might also mention a great curer of literal and well as physical ills, the astonishing Raymond Tallis, who weighs down no humanities chair, though he is clearly a significant literary critic and philosopher as well as no mean writer of fiction and poetry. I hope he could pass muster with you and Professor Lazere, considering he's a lowly professor of medicine and but a renown expert on gerontology who heads a neurology center in Manchester that serves several millions. And his prose, as is his critical nose, is sharp.

And finally, what to make of your statement that "quoting Latin writers on authority is a logically challenged strategy"? You knew I'd get round to this howler, didn't you? And yet you wrote it anyway. Here you probably sensed that you'd gone "ektos ton elaon" (it's ok--it's Greek; "beyond the line of olives"; I'll explain the idiom if you're interested)--clearly offending a cardinal principle (for more on principal and principle see my encomium and award of your chair, KE) of Greek reason, harmony, and aesthetic taste--"meden agan" (it's ok again--it's Greek--I could slip in a naughty and forbidden "ne quid nimis" or "nothing too much", but I won't). No substance or sense or pathos in the Latin quotations? Nonsense. Latin and Greek are essential, as I said, for entry into the world of Western humanism. Get them as soon as you can before you "get out as early as you can" (Larkin). Perhaps Horace can teach us all something about diction and style before we rush into print, for "simul emissum volat irrevocabile verbum" ("the word once out takes flight never to be recalled").

Don't sneer at ACTA and David Horowitz anymore. And I'll in turn pledge not to pursue my enemies BEYOND the grave. I know as lit-crit folks, we've all assiduously and critically practiced sneering in the mirror while masticating Pope's description of the "cold Parnassian sneer" or Shelley's "sneer of cold command"--not to mention often consulting our nearly de rigeur manual, "Great Moments in Academic Insolence", but conservative non-academics are not all drooling bigots spawned on red-state chicken ranches.

But the excitement is building, and soon the prestigious chair and award will be announced. Cheers (sans sneers)

IT IS STILL -- PUT UP OR SIT DOWN

Apparently, Mr. Lazare is NOT going to put up his own money for his dreamy, Utopian ideas.

Well, I won't either, and no one else will, either. There are much-better places to spend one's money than fund a retiree's Euro-Socialist fantasies.

correction: last major post, 3rd par., 5th line--read: "incidentally" for "incidently" (typo)--as one medieval pope once commented, when peasants looted his wine-cellar, that it was a case not of "invidia" (envy), but "invinia" (wine-intoxication). One too many glasses and--voila!--one's spelling suffers, as in the above case (mea culpa)--in any case, I'll be more prudent in future and proof-read before I post.

I see, KE, that for you, everything has been uttered, everything has been said, and there is no hope for further revelation--alors, soit! I see also that your "word-hoard" (I'll resist the temptation to issue an exultant Anglo-Saxon battle-boast here) has at last flinched (as Leon Bloy has it) before both the stars and the dictionary. Yes, "[t]his ridiculous see-saw ride is over" (ipsa dixit!). The ultimate argumentum de silentio. The big sleep. D'accord! et zut alors!, pour elle est--enfin--completement disparue!--or perhaps rather, she's some students' marking of her own to do. . . . or the cat's got to go out . . . or even (my fervent hope), she's fondly conning her newly-purchased copy of Wheelock's Latin Grammar at Borders right now (see Horace's encouragement for this above). And know that I'm no talented linguist either--it's just that like Kent in Lear, my best part may be a dogged Trollopian ("It's dogged as does it"!) kind of diligence (in Latin the word also denotes love and care). And when the ancients speak, I try, with Ungaretti (now departed), to listen, for with Chesterton, the only kind of democracy I prize consists of the living AND the dead. Indeed, all our futures end in becoming part of the past. But on the contest, the battle, the struggle, etc., well . . ., as the redoubtable Clint Eastwood says in some vulgar spaghetti Western: "It's not the money--it's not the land--it's not even the woman--it's just you and me, pardner. . . ." (puffs on slim cheroot).

One of the problems I have with mine own academic tribe is the disjunction between what we say and how we live. Somehow we manage to sound like pipsqueek Nietzsches, Lenins (of "kill more professors!" fame) and Robespierres while, as "LL" has it, keeping our firm lip-locks on the public teats. Nay more--we're at once fusty and "progressive", while (as was said of Byron), we safely dabble in evil in order to make ourselves interesting. Ma basta! On to the coveted chair and award, for I can hear the emcee's voice now:

Academic Emcee: But now, with deepest regrets I must say to the ghost of KE, the jury is in, the votes have been counted, and the winner is . . . PROFESSOR ROLAND LAZARUS!! (strains of "Here he is . . . "):

Professor Lazarus:(Ahem)--Ladies, gentlemen, and the transgendered undecided here--academics all . . . my profound thanks for this honour . . . Oh my, a chair AND a job! . . . What can I say, but . . . how much? . . . for my cup runneth half empty . . . (laughter) . . . Seriously, folks, we are justly proud of the glories of this distinguished academy, and especially this recently-established Frederic Jameson Distinguished Endowed Chair of Critico-Theoretico-Ethnoculturogendered Bolshevism, awarded each year to one among us swarms of deserving daiquiris-by-the-poolside Marxists and other theoreconomical posthumans who've most distinguished themselves in academic presses, conferences, lecture halls, wing-chairs, tennis courts, bath-houses and tanning shops in defence of totalitarian ideals at no cost whatever to ourselves or our fortunes. Let us also remember with just pride the cash-value of our deft, critical, and economical emendation of the now discarded ancient critical principle "to kalon" ("the beautiful"), which once guided the lettered, to the now nearly universal principal (!) of "to kakon" ("the vile"), which was once left untouched (improperly, we hasten to add), as if befouled by avenging Harpies and shunned by all who wished to avoid defilement; but which principal (!) now, by our banishment of one seductively aesthetic lamda, much better accords with the entire criticoeconomical bent (!) of the last four decades. For if an impartial judge but examine our wondrous, prodigal (!) critical schools in all their diversity, duplicity, and infirmity, he or she or it cannot but sustain our enemies' bitter reproaches to us (hmm--who wrote this speech? . . .oh well . . . whatever . . .) (ahem) Our judge would, without doubt, wholly re-prove (!--hmm) our enemies' Platonic and inspirited opposition this our new principal, which we could easily expel (!--hmm) by setting before him, or her or it the fundamental (!), bulky, and pungent issue of our faculty's, ponderous, theorrhoeacal, digestions (applause) (hmm . . .got to preread these speeches in future!)

(NB: to be concluded after Mass)

Before returning to Professor Lazarus's graveful speech, one last parting kick at KE's last post as she goes out the door in a huff: KE writes: " . . . I still think there's a relationship between literary texts and the social and historical conditions under which they were produced". Revealing--after the general effect of such a plainly bald truism wears off (KE specialises, it seems, in posturing that she's arguing a simple, obvious point and that (by implication, or rather, innuendo) any opposition to it must be perverse counterfactual obstinacy). Corrections: for "texts", read "works" or "opera"; for "under which" read "during which times"; for the Marxist passive here (shades of Walter Benjamin are fluttering about this clunker) read: "the writers (Sidney's makers of that Maker) created" or "breathed life into" them. Lit-crit folks will know why I've suggested these corrections. I think sometimes the Arnoldian (Thomas, i.e.)way to deal with the customarily effete but "rebellious" Marxist mouthpieces is best: "Rebellion, sir! We deal with that in the old Roman way--flog the rank and file and hurl the ringleaders from the Tarpeian Rock!" Now in a few minutes we'll return to Professor Lazarus's graveful speech. Cheers

OH, MY ..

" .. Apparently, Mr. Lazare is NOT going to put up his own money for his dreamy, Utopian ideas .. "

P.S.: Mr. Lazare must be afraid, if he spends his own money, he'll become a Republican. Oh, my ...

To "LL": I'm sure ACTA would welcome guest appearances from academic leftist blowhards--et que la joie de combat regne supreme! On les aura!" ("and let the joy of combat reign supreme! We'll get 'em!")

(As the servers and waiters bustle about tables pouring wine and collecting dirty dishes while silently smirking their approval of a promised extra twenty-dollar-a-butt bounty from each lefty lemming at the conference, Professor Lazarus foghorns on, though not without increasing puzzlement at what he has just been made to say)
And with proleptic excitement we return to sneak a peek and listen to the end of Professor Lazarus's magniloquent peroration:

Professor Lazarus: (ahem, ahem) In sum (!--hmm), colleagues and fellow condescendants (jeez--is that word?) of the unsupported post-doc beggars and ingrate neo-con rebels who call our writings silent babbling and our lectures noisy scribbling, WE answer that our whole enterprise is beyond (turns page) value (hmm--must be some kind of joke!--well, I've got the golden fleece, no prob), and on this principal (!--well, at least the unwashed herd can't hear the mistake--got to finish this stuff quick!) we are infirm (!): If any wish to undertake (what?) the real study of letters, we add vice (hmm-some Bushie-hick print job!) to them, in the heart-warming, economical words of the great historian Guizot, also of valued memory--"Et alors, enrichissez-vous!!" ("So then, get rich!"--how's my French vowels?). Only the six proflatulous (!--wha th') words of our members of the faculty Kremlin Klub could overgird the density of Guizot's obiter dictum, for when we hear such marvels as "IT TAKES MONEY TO MAKE MONEY" we can but nod in silence (as Palinurus sopitus somno, Aeneid V, etc. blah, blah . . .), owning the truth of Leon Bloy (jeez, he was some Catholic reactionary!--whatever--it's over anyway and I'm thirsty-- then there's that tidy little waitress chit I promised to ruin myself for . . .) that when these eight syllables have been spoken, everything has been uttered, every has been said, and there is no hope for further revelation. Again and ever, we are and ever shall be (hmm--sounds high-church fundy) infirm in our conviction (!) that in all our professions and pursuits, literary economics shall be the whole aim, and, of this faculty of letters, . . . the end. (enthusiastic applause as the staff rolls out the port-a-bar and the faculty start careening towards them shouting double orders, while Professor Lazarus jealously eyes a colleague at All Souls (which has no students), thinking that they must have dragged the river for this bloke--"jeez!--what's my 17 years for if not that?--Kremlin State'd be an ok place to hang out if it didn't have students . . ." Multa cetera desunt.

Cheers

correction: in my penultimate posting read "Marxist passive here 'were produced'" before the parenthetical expression (omitted words)