Michael Berube on threats to academic freedom

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Liz Ditz <ponytrax () batnet com>
Date: January 30, 2006 6:37:04 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
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 () batnet com

blog: http://lizditz.typepad.com

Success: fall down seven times, stand up eight.

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