Today, see-Dubya posts about the British professors' union, the Universities and Colleges Union, which is poised to introduce new rules to harass Israeli and Jewish professors and institutions. Even if you--like me--do not believe that Hitler and his cronies were right-wingers at all, still one must admit that anti-Semitism has often been a right-wing phenomenon. Today, however, anti-Semitism is much more prevalent on the Left. And it isn't backwoods hicks, the electoral bogeyman of elitist progressives; it's college and university professors.
In other news from see-Dubya, the UCU has refused to help the British Government identify potential jihadists on college campuses. Here's the reasoning: "Universities must remain safe spaces for lecturers and students to discuss and debate all sorts of ideas, including those that some people may consider challenging, offensive, and even extreme. The last thing we need is people too frightened to discuss an issue because they fear some quasi-secret service will turn them in."
There is a valuable question here about the level of academic freedom on college campuses, and I will not presume to answer that question here. But set that aside for a moment. The reasoning of the UCU is totally disingenuous in light of their anti-Israel rules changes. No commitment to truth--which should be the central aim of institutions of higher learning--can be found here. That sort of commitment ended when universities became political tools, and predictably so; after all, politics is not about truth, but about power. Now, so are universities--and because they are controlled by the political Left, they demonize some groups in order to kowtow to others. Increasingly, the focus on Jihadism has given them an opportunity to cast new groups in the same old roles: Israel is a capitalist, colonialist Western power, and the Arabs represent a large, oppressed indigenous underclass. (Ignore the supreme challenges from its neighbors that Israel has faced since its founding, the truly older claims to "indigenousness" possessed by Israelis, and the vast wealth of surrounding oil states that fight Israel indirectly through proxies like Hezbollah.) The idea of the underclass fighting the overclass, the indigenous peoples fighting the colonialists, has immense appeal to academic leftists; thus, the truth takes a back seat to power plays like this: overt exclusion of Israelis, covert encouragement of jihadis.
Moving on...
Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times published an excellent column by Professor Crispin Sartwell, who teaches philosophy at Dickinson College. In it, Dr. Sartwell notes the recent attempt at the University of Colorado to raise an endowment to fund a professor of conservative studies and uses it as a springboard to discuss the politics of American academia. Read an excellent tidbit:
That the American professoriate is near-unanimous for Barack Obama is a problem
on many levels, but certainly pedagogically. Ideological uniformity does a
disservice to students and makes a mockery of the pious commitment of these
professors simply to convey knowledge. Also, the claims of the professoriate to
intellectual independence and academic freedom, supposedly nurtured by tenure,
are thrown into question by the unanimity. Professors are as herd-like in their
opinions as other groups that demographers like to identify -- "working-class
white men," for example. Indeed, surely more so.That's partly just a result of the charming human tendency to nod along with whomever is sitting next to you. But it's also the predictable result of the fact that a professor has been educated, often for a decade or more, by the very institutions that harbor this unanimity. Every new generation of professors has been steeped in an atmosphere in which the authorities all agree and in which they associate agreement with intelligence -- and with degrees, jobs, tenure and so on. If you've been taught
that conservatives are evil idiots, then conservatism itself justifies a
decision not to hire or tenure one. Every new leftist minted by graduate
programs is an act of self-praise, a confirmation of the intelligence of the
professors.That this smog of consensus is incompatible with the supposedly
high-minded educational mission of colleges and universities is obvious. Yet
higher education is at least as dedicated to the reproduction of Obama-ism as it
is to conveying information. But academics are massively self-deceived about
this, which makes it all the more disgusting and effective.
The good doctor--an anarchist, and neither a conservative nor a liberal--lends his relatively disinterested voice to the chorus of conservative critics that has decried the deliberate exclusion of conservatives from academic departments. (Learn about the remarkable case of Mark Moyar, the brilliant author of Triumph Forsaken, here.) This distressing tendency is a major reason that I myself elected to pursue secondary teaching certification in Latin rather than a Ph.D. in Classical Studies, against the counsel of my professors. I can think of at least one fellow conservative student who has expressed anxiety about his chances of obtaining a tenured position once he achieves his doctorate.
Too often, academic freedom is nothing more than the freedom to believe that whatever academia says is true.
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