What Liberal Academic Bias?
Via Instapundit, Mike Rosen has an excellent article on the politicization of the academy:
Richard Rorty is a philosophy professor at the University of Virginia. He's also editor of an unabashedly socialist magazine, Dissent, and a hero of the academic left. Here's his political assessment of academe: "The power base of the Left in America is now in the universities, since the trade unions have largely been killed off. The universities have done a lot of good work by setting up, for example, African-American studies programs, Women's Studies programs, and Gay and Lesbian Studies programs. They have created power bases for these movements."
Movements? If you had any illusions that these programs were simply "studying" these areas, now you know better. Like Churchill's Ethnic Studies program, they're all "movements." And American universities have become "the power base of the Left."
In the past week (Monday thru Friday - five days), various faculty members from my program have sent some of the following emails to all graduate students through the official departmental listserv:
- An article from antiwar.com darkly hinting that either Sharon or Bush was responsible for the Lebanon assassination (I mean, what you have to ask yourself, is "who benefits?". The conspiracy theorists' question).
- A polemic that encourages everyone to wear only grey sweatshirts in order to avoid "dissent through conscious differentiation [that] simply feeds the fashion system" (money line: "Our symbolism spreads like anthrax across the anorexic bodies of fashionistas everywhere. They look frantically for the next trend but there is nothing. Only grey sweatsuits. What's hot for next season? How about the death of your vanity?" That's real resistance for you!)
- An article from democracyrising.us entitled "Bush Family's War Profiteering" (don't strain your imagination trying to figure out what side of the political spectrum that article falls on)
- An article from dailykos arguing that Gannon was used by the White House to slip Dan Rather fake memos (of course! It makes sense! I mean, what you have to ask yourself is, "who benefits?" Also, you have to ask yourself "how could Rove have known that CBS would fall for 30 year old memos created on Microsoft Word or that Mapes would work to intentionally subvert the internal editorial checks and balances that might have caught the obvious forgeries?" Unless you're think the Democratic Underground "breaks news," in which case I suppose that the second question is optional).
One of the things that's kind of getting lost in these debates about academic bias is that it's not just the case that universities are being consciously and explicitly used in order to "develop knowledge" in the interest of Leftist social movements (the classic question asked at humanities conventions all over the country: "yes, but how can we use this knowledge to help our students oppose the Bush Administration's colonial imperialism?") It's also that the knowledge being "developed" is just a caricature of Leftist conspiracy theory absurdity. Or it would be a caricature, if it wasn't the model for that absurdity.
More so, it leads to not very strong, not very publicly relevant arguments like this:
The Harvard Crimson reports [that Jada Pinkett Smith] appeared on campus recently as part of the 20th annual Cultural Rhythms show, and what she had to say was quite inflammatory:
"Women, you can have it all--a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career," she said. "They say you gotta choose. Nah, nah, nah. We are a new generation of women. We got to set a new standard of rules around here. You can do whatever it is you want. All you have to do is want it."...
The [Harvard] Crimson reports that "some students were offended" and that "the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations have begun working together to increase sensitivity toward issues of sexuality at Harvard."...
BGLTSA Co-Chair Jordan B. Woods '06 said that, while many BGLTSA members thought Pinkett Smith's speech was "motivational," some were insulted because they thought she narrowly defined the roles of men and women in relationships. "Some of the content was extremely heteronormative, and made BGLTSA members feel uncomfortable," he said.
Now, let's be clear: I think that the implicit assumptions of heteronormative discourse account for at least some of why homophobia seems so hard to alleviate. The problem is that academia is so insulated that it seems reasonable to make "heteronormative discourse" the big issue of the day - and even that "activism" occurs within a petulant, resentful context of victimization. So we have the one-armed Eskimo lesbian standing up in a Shakespeare class and railing about how King Lear "doesn't speak to her oppression." We have identity groups like Harvard's BGLTSA focusing eating their political young for not being radical enough. And one of the big reasons is that genuine rigorous political deliberation has been swamped by a fog of smirking, self-righteous conspiracy theories passing off as speaking truth to power. The final result? Thinking that this outrage might ever be a valuable contribution to politics.
Richard Rorty is a philosophy professor at the University of Virginia. He's also editor of an unabashedly socialist magazine, Dissent, and a hero of the academic left. Here's his political assessment of academe: "The power base of the Left in America is now in the universities, since the trade unions have largely been killed off. The universities have done a lot of good work by setting up, for example, African-American studies programs, Women's Studies programs, and Gay and Lesbian Studies programs. They have created power bases for these movements."
Movements? If you had any illusions that these programs were simply "studying" these areas, now you know better. Like Churchill's Ethnic Studies program, they're all "movements." And American universities have become "the power base of the Left."
In the past week (Monday thru Friday - five days), various faculty members from my program have sent some of the following emails to all graduate students through the official departmental listserv:
- An article from antiwar.com darkly hinting that either Sharon or Bush was responsible for the Lebanon assassination (I mean, what you have to ask yourself, is "who benefits?". The conspiracy theorists' question).
- A polemic that encourages everyone to wear only grey sweatshirts in order to avoid "dissent through conscious differentiation [that] simply feeds the fashion system" (money line: "Our symbolism spreads like anthrax across the anorexic bodies of fashionistas everywhere. They look frantically for the next trend but there is nothing. Only grey sweatsuits. What's hot for next season? How about the death of your vanity?" That's real resistance for you!)
- An article from democracyrising.us entitled "Bush Family's War Profiteering" (don't strain your imagination trying to figure out what side of the political spectrum that article falls on)
- An article from dailykos arguing that Gannon was used by the White House to slip Dan Rather fake memos (of course! It makes sense! I mean, what you have to ask yourself is, "who benefits?" Also, you have to ask yourself "how could Rove have known that CBS would fall for 30 year old memos created on Microsoft Word or that Mapes would work to intentionally subvert the internal editorial checks and balances that might have caught the obvious forgeries?" Unless you're think the Democratic Underground "breaks news," in which case I suppose that the second question is optional).
One of the things that's kind of getting lost in these debates about academic bias is that it's not just the case that universities are being consciously and explicitly used in order to "develop knowledge" in the interest of Leftist social movements (the classic question asked at humanities conventions all over the country: "yes, but how can we use this knowledge to help our students oppose the Bush Administration's colonial imperialism?") It's also that the knowledge being "developed" is just a caricature of Leftist conspiracy theory absurdity. Or it would be a caricature, if it wasn't the model for that absurdity.
More so, it leads to not very strong, not very publicly relevant arguments like this:
The Harvard Crimson reports [that Jada Pinkett Smith] appeared on campus recently as part of the 20th annual Cultural Rhythms show, and what she had to say was quite inflammatory:
"Women, you can have it all--a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career," she said. "They say you gotta choose. Nah, nah, nah. We are a new generation of women. We got to set a new standard of rules around here. You can do whatever it is you want. All you have to do is want it."...
The [Harvard] Crimson reports that "some students were offended" and that "the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA) and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations have begun working together to increase sensitivity toward issues of sexuality at Harvard."...
BGLTSA Co-Chair Jordan B. Woods '06 said that, while many BGLTSA members thought Pinkett Smith's speech was "motivational," some were insulted because they thought she narrowly defined the roles of men and women in relationships. "Some of the content was extremely heteronormative, and made BGLTSA members feel uncomfortable," he said.
Now, let's be clear: I think that the implicit assumptions of heteronormative discourse account for at least some of why homophobia seems so hard to alleviate. The problem is that academia is so insulated that it seems reasonable to make "heteronormative discourse" the big issue of the day - and even that "activism" occurs within a petulant, resentful context of victimization. So we have the one-armed Eskimo lesbian standing up in a Shakespeare class and railing about how King Lear "doesn't speak to her oppression." We have identity groups like Harvard's BGLTSA focusing eating their political young for not being radical enough. And one of the big reasons is that genuine rigorous political deliberation has been swamped by a fog of smirking, self-righteous conspiracy theories passing off as speaking truth to power. The final result? Thinking that this outrage might ever be a valuable contribution to politics.
