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Bergman on academic freedom
Central Connecticut State history professor Jay Bergman has some sharp words for college professors who take uninformed or ill-timed stands on contemporary issues. His criticisms are double-edged, directed both at professors who use their academic credentials to make extracurricular comments on matters far removed from their areas of expertise and at professors who turn their classrooms into ideological soapboxes, preaching their political beliefs to captive audiences of students.
On the first type: Last spring, eighty-eight Duke professors signed a letter prematurely condemning the lacrosse team, and one went even further:
Three Duke lacrosse players were accused, falsely and in flagrant disregard of their constitutional rights, of raping a black woman.
Before their culpability had been determined legally, and even before the public had information on the facts of the case, Houston Baker, the George D. and Susan Fox Beischer Professor of English at the university, wondered "how many more people of color must fall victim to violent, white, male, athletic privilege" before Duke will finally be a place "where minds, souls, and bodies can feel safe from agents, perpetrators, and abettors of white privilege, irresponsibility, debauchery and violence." Baker assumed that the players had raped a woman because they were white, male, and athletic--and according to Baker that is what males who are white and athletic do, or secretly wish they could do.
On the second: One of Bergman's colleagues at CCSU provides a classic instance of using the classroom to proselytize:
Last fall a professor sent the students in one of her courses more than 100 e-mails containing articles advocating the professor's opinions on matters entirely extraneous to the course--for example, that Israel committed war crimes while fighting Hamas in Gaza last summer, and that comparisons between the Bush administration and Nazi Germany are not unreasonable. She also invited students to join her in attending seminars, such as Workshops on Peace, that were designed to advance the professor's political agenda.
What is even worse, during one class, as a way of demonstrating how the American colonists stole Indian land, the same professor took a student's backpack without permission and in front of all the students emptied its contents onto the floor, naming each item one by one. It is hard to imagine a more egregious violation of a student's privacy, or a more flagrant abuse of the power professors have over students by virtue of their grading them and writing recommendations for them for jobs after they graduate.
Bergman observes that while academic freedom protects professors' rights to make public comments--even when their comments are ill-advised and wrong--it does not protect professors who abuse their pedagogical responsibility to stay on topic and to introduce students to the applicable range of scholarly opinions so that they may make up their own mind on the issues at hand. Academic freedom, he notes, citing the AAUP's 1940 statement on that topic, is the freedom to teach, not to preach. But, Bergman goes on to argue, this distinction is often lost in the day-to-day operations of university life.
Bergman claims that during his 17 years at CCSU, about half his students have told him "that one or more of their professors not only interjected personal political opinions in class on a regular basis, but that they did so in an effort to convert their students to their political point of view." This figure, he notes, corresponds to the results of a survey the student paper conducted in 2004: 54 percent agreed that "some professors use the classroom to present their personal political views," while 53 percent agreed that "there are courses in which students feel they have to agree with their professor's political or social views in order to get a good grade." The survey paralleled ACTA's own study of politics in the classroom, which found that 46% of students said professors "use the classroom to present their personal political views" and 29% felt they had "to agree with the professor's political views to get a good grade."
The solution, Bergman observes, is simple: "The remedy for these abuses is oversight, followed by appropriate action where it is necessary, by university administrators and trustees. In the case of state institutions, legislators and other government officials whose responsibilities include the supervision of public education can make clear their disapproval without dictating the content of the courses professors teach, or how they teach them."
He's right. Oversight that respects both students' and professors' academic freedom can be implemented--all that's needed is the will to do it.
Posted by acta online at June 12, 2007 07:59 AM
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Comments
PRIVATIZE
The AAUP/AFT/NEA crowd knows how good they have it, at the public trough.
They claim "academic freedom" -- the brutal truth is, "we're not going to let anyone take away, our paychecks."
Now is the time to let them prove how good they are -- privatize. If they are so good -- then students will flock to them, reducing overhead costs.
Hoping, some day, these paycheck-loving "freedom fighters" will actually show how good they are.
Posted by: L.L. at June 12, 2007 11:37 AM
Professor Houston Baker, former president of the left-wing Modern Language Association (an "honour" he shares with the now departed personal and professional fraud, Edward Said) is notorious for his intemperate anti-American rantings. His failure to apologise for his early incendiary comments concerning the Duke fake-rape fiasco (along with over eighty of his fellow
hangin´-judge colleagues) should stick to whatever reputation he fancies he has like pitch.
Posted by: Jacques Albert at June 22, 2007 07:14 AM