March 06, 2006
Academic Reform -- Can We Trust the Professors?
I've never suggested reading an op-ed from "The New York Times"-until now. And, I'm doing this because an op-ed contributor got something right rather than half-cocked in the wrong direction. What's even more scary to me is that I even agree with a statement in the article by radical Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. The issue has to do with problems in the field of academics--partly about the forced resignation of Harvard University's President Lawrence H. Summers, who was tarred and feathered by liberal professors, and it has to do with the future of who runs our universities. The current crisis should force academe to re-assess and reform itself--but it likely will not. If not, maybe contributors to the university might re-assess where their money goes and maybe someone else will step up to the plate to reform out-of-control professors. Here are selected passages from the article, but be sure to read all of it to get the full message from an excellent piece.
Academic, Heal Thyself
The New York Times, 03/06/06
By Camille Paglia, Op-Ed Contributor and
University Professor, University of the Arts in Philadelphia
What went wrong at Harvard?...Larry Summers, a former Treasury secretary, assumed the presidency with a high sense of mission. ...But whatever his good intentions, Mr. Summers often inspired more heat than light. His stellar early career as an economics professor did not prepare him for dealing with an ingrown humanities faculty that has been sunk in political correctness for decades. As president, he had a duty to research the tribal creeds and customs of those he wished to convert. Foolishly thinking plain speech and common sense would suffice, he flunked Academic Anthropology 101.
...(T)he controversy that will inevitably symbolize his presidency was the manufactured outcry early last year over his glancing reference at a conference to possible innate differences between the sexes in aptitude for science and math. The feminist pressure groups rose en masse from their lavishly feathered nests and set up a furious cackle that led to a 218-to-185 vote of no confidence by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences last March.
...Mr. Summers's strategic blunders unfortunately took the spotlight off entrenched political correctness and changed the debate to academic power: who has it, and how should it be exercised?
...It now remains to be seen whether Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences is capable of self-critique. Will its members acknowledge their own insularity and excesses, or will they continue down the path of smug self-congratulation and vanity? Harvard's reputation for disinterested scholarship has been severely gored by the shadowy manipulations of the self-serving cabal who forced Mr. Summers's premature resignation.
...If Harvard cannot correct itself in this crisis, it will signal that academe cannot be trusted to reform itself from within.
Unfortunately, I'm betting that the faculty will only get worse from this "victory." In one divergence from the writer, I don't even want them or trust them to reform and keep power. They've had their chance and it's been too long. Maybe it's time to take away the somewhat phony and over-used "academic freedom" shield and make professors responsible for their words and actions. Maybe it's time to dismantle tenure and make them earn their jobs like we do. If you do a good job, you can come back the next day. If you don't, then you're gone...and, you don't get an extra year and a big pay-off like Chief Ward Churchill did from Colorado.
But, what's the first step and who is willing to take it? Who will have the nerve after this?
Posted by Woody at March 6, 2006 09:30 AM | TrackBackDershowitz is his own man, and doesn't feel obligated to toe a party line. I have many times agreed with him. He is sort of a left-libertarian (like Paglia, perhaps), very smart, and more than a little sure of himself.
He is liberal on the basis of first principles, not because he is just anti-conservative. That's becoming rare these days.
Posted by Assistant Village Idiot at March 6, 2006 05:15 PM
Right. And the NYT is going to review and revamp their editorial processes. Still waiting.
These professors are labeled as radical for a reason. It's one thing to employ radical ideas in seeking out progress and another to be radical in seeking a path to past and present failed social experiments.
The ironic part is that these guys are poking holes in their own boat. Don't they know that?
Posted by Oyster at March 6, 2006 05:55 PM
My take, and some personal observation, is many professors are mostly children with extensive vocabularies.
One wonders where they get their egos. In the "soft" sciences, a mostly sheltered life and not much real experience...but with someone's money and someone's time, they have a doctorate (awarded, please note, by other lefties) and now feel qualified to blather on about damn near ANY subject.
Gad, it must make real professors ill.
Posted by Tad at March 6, 2006 11:54 PM
yeah, Tad. It would be a travesty of democracy if citizen from across the country found ways to share their political views - even those who aren't political experts. We're lucky it's only college professors so far. Soon it could end up being accountant and psychologists or any shmo who signs up with blogger. Oh wait.
What a lame article. When the whole brouhaha originally arose, there were a number of interesting perspectives: female science professors who felt that Summers' conjecturing (blathering on about damn near ANY subject, as it were) undermined the trials they'd face trying to break into the male-dominated fields of science and math. There were those who felt that the academy should be primarily a place for unbridled thinking (the protection of that "academic shield" Mr. Roper hates) and that Summers shouldn't be taken to task for even crass questions. Regardless, this essay you've linked to hardly offers any real critique or understanding of differing perspectives. Instead, it demeans the arguments of the peeved by suggesting their anger is mere, "entrenched political correctness." They are guilty of "ideological groupthink," we are told, though the faculty split 218-185 in a vote of confidence, hardly the stuff of groupthink. Both sides have a real point in this debate. Paglia foolishly flushes one perspective and you all sing her praises. Hogwash.
Posted by Mavis Beacon at March 7, 2006 12:20 AM
Mavis, Paglia isn't exactly one of "ours." Most of the arguments and perspectives that you noted were lacking have been presented numerous times by others since Lawrence Summers' "mistake" of saying the truth that men and women come with a different set of tools in academics. There was no need to present them again.
This article addresses who should or should not be trusted to determine the direction of universities. Clearly, to me, it's not the entrenched, self-servinig professors. If someone doesn't wake up, major contributions to universities, if they don't dry up, will be designated primarily for the business schools and athletic departments--which actually accomplish something of value to society and the alumni.
"Academic freedom" doesn't mean what it originally did. Now, it is just a shield to deflect arguments that professors should be teaching their subjects rather than focusing on their politics--almost always left-wing and out of the mainstream. It keeps the professors from admitting and defending their indoctrination efforts. Talk to me about academic freesom after the professors teach the basics, for which they haven't seemed to do a very good job since about the mid-1970's.
The vote represents "group think" when you break it down between departments and find that the humanities vote in concert and the way they are taught to vote--always radical left. The vote shouldn't have even come up, much less be a vote of no-confidence. Only radical, group-think, block voting made that possible. It is a very rare professor who will stand up for what he believes this day if he thinks that it will draw attention from the politically correct departments. The article mentioned that none would speak to the school newspaper for that fear.
It seems to me that most professors couldn't make a living in the outside world if their lives depended on it, so they have to find comfort and dollars within the walls of academe.
Maybe it's time to put "term limits" on professors just like U.S. Presidents and just like we should for those in Congress. Eight years and you're out. Go make a real living for four years and then re-enter the universities--smarter for seeing the reality of the outside world.
Posted by Woody at March 7, 2006 09:41 AM
When personal politics starts to penetrate academia, the truth suffers. Both right and left are at fault here. The irony of it is that the discipline of economics, Summers' background, has been perverted by right wing ideology, just as much as the humanities have been perverted by left wing ideology.
So where does the truth lie? In many cases, I'm sad to report, science tends to support the right wing position. Yes, there truly are innate differences between humans, and many are genetic in origin. But that doesn't give the right wingers carte blanche to exploit other humans as they have so routinely done down through the ages, and contimue to do.
Respect at an individual level is what is needed, while observing the fascinating and never ending differences between individuals. It's an old saw, but every individual is unique. Put technically, within-group differences are usually much larger than between-group population differences, which are the well spring of mindless prejudice and discrimination.
Posted by Alan Robinson at March 7, 2006 09:46 AM
When I query faculty as to the purpose of the university I am told it is "to create and disseminate knowledge". This being the case then is it not the responsibility of the university (the faculty) to ensure that such knowledge contributes to the ongoing development of the society in which the university resides and for which it is educating the future leaders?
The self-serving attitudes of tenured "children with extensive vocabularies" with no accountability clearly fall well short of this standard. Worse, this abrogation of societal responsibility has resulted in the continuing degradation of "education" - the process of acquiring knowledge and development.
Students, particularly at graduate level, have an expectation that faculty will indeed deliver both knowledge and development. The rapid growth of for profit providers, accredited online providers and inhouse "corporate universities" reflect the migration of value in a university education, a migration fostered by faculty who fail to practice what they teach.
Posted by Peter Withers at March 7, 2006 12:56 PM
Mavis, I keep rereading your post and trying to find a way it is not contradictory. Does the president of a university have the right to voice an opinion? If yes, what is the basis for forcing him out on that basis? If no, then where do the other academics derive their permission to speak.
You seem to be saying that it is the job of the academy to protect some ideas from being challenged, so that they may blossom as hothouse flowers.
Side point -- the trials of breaking into male-dominated fields -- you are clearly assuming without sufficient evidence that the popular explanation, that women are being kept down and kept out, is the true one; many educated women have that subjective impression, but evidence for the proposition is proving elusive.
Posted by Assistant Village Idiot at March 7, 2006 05:48 PM
Well. I was thinking of something clever to say in my own defense, however, is it more than evident that isn't necessary.
BTW, I AM impressed with the thinking and writing abilities of many who've contributed above.
Semper Fidelis
Posted by Tad at March 7, 2006 09:33 PM
