Something that will burn you up

An article at CNN for December 28 addresses the growing tendency of rightwingers on college campuses to make accusations of "anti-American bias" against their instructors and to issue demands for an increased focus on their own particular views even to the exclusion of others. In one case, students actually sued the University of North Carolina, claiming that including a book on the Qu'ran in a required reading list for incoming freshmen violated their freedom of religion.

Traditionally, clashes over academic freedom have pitted politicians or administrators against instructors who wanted to express their opinions and teach as they saw fit. But increasingly, it is students who are invoking academic freedom, claiming biased professors are violating their right to a classroom free from indoctrination.

In many ways, the trend echoes past campus conflicts - but turns them around. Once, it was liberal campus activists who cited the importance of "diversity" in pressing their agendas for curriculum change. Now, conservatives have adopted much of the same language in calling for a greater openness to their viewpoints.

But that is absolute crap. This doesn't "turn around" past conflicts, it makes a mockery of them and a mockery of the term "academic freedom." It has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with dominance.

To many professors, there's a new and deeply troubling aspect to this latest chapter in the debate over academic freedom: students trying to dictate what they don't want to be taught.

"Even the most contentious or disaffected of students in the '60s or early '70s never really pressed this kind of issue," said Robert O'Neil, former president of the University of Virginia and now director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.

Damn straight. In the '60s, the struggle was to include ideas. These corporate-toadies-in-the-rough want to exclude ideas. In the '60s, the goal was a wider range of opinion; the goal here is a narrower range. In the '60s, it was about exploring new ideas; for these smug, intellectually-slothful buffoons it's about avoiding them.

In short: For us, academic freedom meant freedom to. For campus reactionaries, it means freedom from. Freedom from anything that will challenge their constricted, constrained, constipated view of the world around them. Like many such self-referential efforts, it finds comfort in internal sharing of tales of woe, nowadays of course on websites, where cries of "oh woe is me, I'm such a victim and anybody that challenges me is just MEAN and UNFAIR! And they're all anti-American, that's what they are!" ring across their postings.

Well, I say they're narrow-minded, immature, whiners who've arrived on campus with too great a sense of their own importance and their own entitlement and too little awareness of the real world and the rights of others and who, if they can't stand the rigors of a open intellectual environment where their ideas have to compete rather than being blindly endorsed by all and sundry, should just go back home where they belong until they grow up. Assuming they ever do.

Footnote One: According to some recent poll cited in the article, 31% of students said they felt there were some courses in which they needed to agree with a professor's political or social views to get a good grade. Perhaps that's even true - but so what? I mean in terms of the immediate issue. That is, is this supposed to be a new thing? When has it not been that way? I recall some years ago reading a paper my wife had done for a sociology class about "rites of passage" in societies. I disagreed with the conclusion she reached - what it was is irrelevant - but said I would have given the paper a high mark because it was well-written and clearly argued. She was surprised: She expected I would have marked it lower because of my disagreement. She figured that was just the way it was: Disagreeing with the beliefs of the instructor resulted in a lower grade. I remember, too, when I was in college, there was always advice floating around about what professor thought what about what topic, so you'd know what to say in your papers. It was, again, just assumed.

That doesn't mean it was true, mind you, although I'm sure that in some cases then and now it was. (I actually knew one professor who was very definitely that way. I was working as a learning aide in the polisci department of a community college and I heard this professor counseling a student about a paper she was going to write. She wanted to write about problems with health care in the US, but he said that was too big a topic and she should narrow it down. "Why not write about why socialized medicine always fails?" he asked. Not only did he give her the topic, he told her what conclusion to reach! But then again, he was a conservative so I guess that doesn't count as an example of "bias," does it?) The point is, the belief among students, right or wrong, that agreeing with the prof was a requirement for a good grade is not anything new.

Footnote Two: The guru of the movement, at whose shrine the rest worship, is David Horowitz. To give you an idea of the level of "intellectual" rigor he brings to the field, consider the case of Prof. George Wolfe of Ball University. After a student posted claims he was "anti-American" in his peace studies course (a charge refuted by other students and the university provost), he began to receive volumes of hate mail.

Horowitz, who has also criticized Ball State's program, had little sympathy when asked if Wolfe deserved to get hate e-mails from strangers.

"These people are such sissies," he said. "I get hate mail every single day. What can I do about it? It's called the Internet."

I could just see his chest puffing up - if not something else puffing up - when he said that, splashing his machismo all over the questioner. And at the same time, let's note, avoiding the question: He wasn't asked if he got hate mail, he was asked if Wolfe deserved to. But never let answering a question take the place of a cheap slammer, eh, Davy?

Oh, and by the way, Davy-boy, how much of that hate mail you feel so tough and manly because you get threatens you with actual physical harm as opposed to merely engaging in name-calling? And of that portion, how much do you actually feel obliged to take seriously?

Another memory from years back: picketing with about 20-25 other folks outside the local FBI office; one lone counter-demonstrator, a middle-aged man, in the middle of our circle. I didn't care: I knew full well anyone driving past, lacking the time to read all the signs, would assume he was with us. But it did occur to me that he was there because he felt safe enough to do it. He knew that, despite being outnumbered 25-1 (and no cops in sight), he was safe. And I wondered - and I still do wonder - if the situation was reversed, if it was 25 of them and one of us, would that one be able to feel safe the way he did. I very strongly doubted it - and, again, I still do.

And that is a fundamental difference between the left and the right.