Thursday, April 10, 2008
Last Friday I attended New York University's "Academic Freedom in the Age of Permanent Warfare" conference.
Here's the report I wrote for Campus Watch:
The speakers and attendees gathered around the pastry-laden table at NYU's new Frederic Ewen Academic Freedom Center last week didn't appear to be oppressed or under attack. But once they wiped the sugar from their mouths and stood up to speak, they assured the audience that they were, in fact, victims in an "age of permanent warfare."
According to keynote speaker Roger Bowen (of "Revolting Behavior" fame), director of the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows Program, the purported enemies of academic freedom include the "rabid right" and/or "Republicans, conservatives, the elderly, and the uneducated."
Joan Scott of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, decried the loss of academia as a sanctuary, both from public opinion and the "enmity of patriots and trustees." David Hollinger, professor of history at UC Berkeley, noted that fellow academics in engineering and the hard sciences often felt "no solidarity with the humanities."
Sheila Slaughter, professor of higher education at the University of Georgia, criticized the influence of neo-liberalism and globalization. Most agreed with Barbara Bowan of the City University of New York, who equated true "academic freedom" with financial security and tenure for all academics in the social science/humanities "collective." Under this worldview, anyone who does not support pampering the humanities collective with a lifetime sanctuary is an enemy. That's a lot of enemies.
Also posted at FrontPage Magazine
UPDATE: Also posted at University of New Mexico Israel Alliance (UNMIA)
Exit Zero blogger Mary Madigan attended an NYU conference on "academic freedom" (i.e. paranoid professors who equate outside criticism with censorship) last week and she wrote about the experience for Campus Watch. Her funny and informative article, "Victims on Parade at NYU 'Academic Freedom' Conference," is posted today at Frontpage Magazine.
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, p.44
I praise you for your patience in spending an entire day in such surroundings. And I'm sorry to hear the hors d'oeuvres weren't even any good.
Thanks! The pastries weren't too bad. Unfortunately, bland food with free trade coffee is the scourge of all lefty gatherings.
Academia thinking it is a protected class and should be off limits to examination, comment, is elitist.
It's called Freedom of Speech and that applies to criticising rabid marxist, progressive, islamist, communist, conspiracy theorist, racist "professors" coddled by like minded "professors".
This article accurately depicts the twisted logic of parts of academia. At the same time, I think it is unfortunate that supporters of Israel, America and intellectual freedom are not aware of the genuinely poor working conditions of most humanities Ph.D.s Most college teachers are not like those who attended the conferences, tenured and privileged, but are rather underpaid, overworked and financially insecure. At CUNY, 75% of those who teach are adjuncts, part-timers and elsewhere, low paying highly demanding non-tenure track positions are rapidly replacing tenure-track positions. In my view, this system exacerbates the anti-Israel, anti-American problem on campuses. The scarcity of full-time jobs pressures academics to conform to current dogmas in order to find and keep their jobs. It creates unbearable pressures on those of us who want to teach real humanities courses and who offer views currently unpopular in academia. The poor job opportunities for graduate students force a conformity that ensures that the humanities will continue to be veer into silliness and narrow minded, often anti-Semitic dogmas. The current scarcity of teaching positions in the humanities makes it much more difficult for newcomers who do not share the political leanings of those currently in power in academia, to break in and make a difference.