[IP] Michael Berube on threats to academic freedom
Begin forwarded message:
From: Liz Ditz <ponytrax@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: January 30, 2006 6:37:04 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: for IP if you wish: Michael Berube on threats to academic
freedom
For IP if you wish:
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/academic_freedom/
Michael Berube:
Tthe title of today’s presentation, “Recent Attacks on Academic
Freedom: What’s Going On?” can be answered in a single sentence.
Academic freedom is under attack for pretty much the same reasons
that liberalism itself is under attack. American campuses tend to be
somewhat left of center of the American mainstream, particularly with
regard to cultural issues that have to do with gender roles and
sexuality: the combination of a largely liberal, secular professoriat
and a generally under-25 student body tends to give you a local
population that, by and large, does not see gay marriage as a serious
threat to the Republic. And after 9/11—again, for obvious reasons—
many forms of mainstream liberalism have been denounced as anti-
American. There is, as you know, a cottage industry of popular right-
wing books in which liberalism is equated with treason (that would be
Ann Coulter), with mental disorders (Michael Savage), and with
fascism (Jonah Goldberg). Coulter’s book also mounts a vigorous
defense of Joe McCarthy, and Michelle Malkin has written a book
defending the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War Two.
In that kind of climate, it should come as no surprise that we would
be seeing attacks on one of the few remaining institutions in
American life that is often—though not completely—dominated by liberals.
[snip]
Not all college professors are liberals, and attacks on academic
freedom are dangerous partly because, in some instances, they can
undermine the intellectual autonomy of conservative professors. And
I don’t believe that this is the same old same old, either. What
we’re seeing today is actually unprecedented, for two reasons. One
is demographic: college professors have, in the aggregate, become
more liberal over the past thirty-five years—though, as I’ll explain
later on, most of the studies that have been done on this subject in
the past three years are exercises in cooking the data. The other is
strategic: for the first time in American history, there is an
organized, national campaign to undermine academic freedom by
appealing to the ideal of . . . academic freedom. And the reason
it’s enjoyed such success in recent years is that so few people—
faculty, students, and state legislators included—seem to have a good
grasp of what academic freedom really means.
the rest at
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/academic_freedom/
**********
Liz Ditz
ponytrax@xxxxxxxxxx
blog: http://lizditz.typepad.com
Success: fall down seven times, stand up eight.
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