Carl's Maundering Blog

The dialogue improves: A week after getting the AAUP's spam, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit links to another critique of their academic freedom essay advertised via spam.

This one's entitled Truths R Us, and its authors, Peter Wood and Stephen Balch, did a much more admirable job of responding to it than I could have hoped to do in my previous post. (Um, what can I say, I'm still a novice writer...)

Their complete point-by-point response to the AAUP's essay is here.

Here's a link to the essay: I'm Ok, You're Not Ok.

A very refreshing read, as I received an unsolicited e-mail (that is, spam) from Cary Nelson of the AAUP yesterday, inviting me to download and read a report on the same subject (academic freedom). Here's the content of the e-mail, along with some comments. I've omitted only the advertising and the images containing the Association's logo:

The intellectual independence and integrity of higher education's classroom faculty have been under attack for some time--by the press, by conservative commentators, and by politicians. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is convinced that it is time take back the classroom on behalf of academic freedom. In a clear and carefully reasoned historic new report, we counter these attacks and lay out the principles of responsible college pedagogy. The full report, Freedom in the Classroom, is available in the September--October issue of Academe, our journal of record, and online.

I observe that that public scrutiny of higher education faculty, and the quality of their products and services, has indeed increased. It's interesting that you characterize such scrutiny as "attacks." I'm convinced that it's time that the customers (that is, the students and their future employers) take back the classroom on behalf of academic excellence.

The report differentiates instruction from indoctrination. It addresses demands for "balance" in the classroom and offers a very specific and limited disciplinary rationale for the relevance of balance. It argues forcefully that college instructors have the right--and, some would argue, the responsibility--to challenge their students' most cherished beliefs.

In other words, the report sets up several straw men and proceeds to batter them. At the moment the report is here at this link, so you can read it for yourself. For example, they choose to define "indoctrination" in this manner: "Indoctrination occurs only when instructors dogmatically insist on the truth of such propositions by refusing to accord their students the opportunity to contest them." By this standard, I believe my time in many classes as a university student could well have been emprically characterized as indoctrination.

As for "balance," the report defines it thus: "that an instructor's discretion about what to teach be restricted." There, balance is conveniently defined as the opposite of academic freedom. Please clean up the straw on your way out.

Then there's a section on "hostile learning environment," where the report reads, "Instruction cannot proceed in the atmosphere of fear that would be produced were a teacher to become subject to administrative sanction based upon the idiosyncratic reaction of one or more students." What an arrogant statement. Here, try this edit: Learning cannot proceed in the atmosphere of fear that would be produced were a student to become subject to sanction based upon the idiosyncratic reaction of an instructor or proctor." Now that's a fear I have felt in more than one university classroom, and my communication skills have suffered as a result.

The report also takes up the most controversial issue, politics in the classroom, and offers an analysis for your consideration. We adapt an example from a 2007 New York Times column: "Might not a teacher of nineteenth-century American literature, taking up Moby Dick , a subject having nothing to do with the presidency, ask the class to consider whether any parallel between President George W. Bush and Captain Ahab could be pursued for insight into Melville's novel? Might not an instructor of classical philosophy, teaching Aristotle's views of moral virtue, present President Bill Clinton's conduct as a case study for student discussion?"

I have difficulty separating the New York Times from it's poor reputation of late. Upon reading this quote, in my minds ear, I hear the professor using Ahab as yet another tool to engage in tired old left-wing Bush-bashing. And the context of former president Clinton's conduct is conveniently ommitted; we're thinking of his conduct toward the Kosovars, yes? (There, that's my straw man.)

No matter what the discipline, no matter what subject matter or historical period a course description defines, we suggest, the field of contemporary culture and politics is available for comparison, analogy, and contrast. To say this is to reaffirm the life of the mind, to assert that in human culture anything may potentially be connected to anything else.

Anything may potentially be connected to anything else? What a hollow open-minded platitude. True wisdom is recognizing that there are some connections that should be made and fostered, and a great many connections that should never be encouraged nor tolerated.

In order to be an effective teacher, you must first build a relationship of trust with those you hope to teach. That was the problem with many professors under whom I studied. They arrogantly presumed that such a relationship was an entitlement. The best professors, regardless of whether they leaned left or right in their views, were the ones that recognized their duty to earn their students' trust and respect. The worst were those that delighted in belittling everyone that didn't share their political worldview, and fostered a contentious environment.

This e-mail is being sent to more than 350,000 faculty and academic professionals in the United States and to tens of thousands in other countries. Not all faculty and academic professionals have the sort of academic freedom we value, but they all need to hear these principles articulated and affirmed. We encourage you to read the full report, discuss it with your students and colleagues, send us your comments, and join our efforts to disseminate this message.

See Michael Bérubé's essay "Why the AAUP's New Statement 'Freedom in the Classroom' Matters" online in the September 11 issue of Inside Higher Ed.

Cary Nelson
AAUP President

The AAUP Online is an electronic newsletter of the American Association of University Professors.

Spam acknowledged. I have commented a bit.