Over at an interesting Weblog called BlueOregon, billed as a place for Oregon progressives to gather around an online water cooler to discuss the news, there is an interesting discussion going on about civil society and academic freedom under the headline:
Assassinating the intelligentsia
An excerpt:
A few weeks ago the World Affairs Council’s Young Professionals met in the upstairs room of a Portland brew pub to ponder the definition of “civil society.” The conversation wandered like a Bedouin, touching on questions of health and elder care and personal freedom vs. social order. But by the third microbrew all had agreed on one thing: a civil society cannot exist unless critical thought is promoted, from kindergarten through the university level.
The subject came up again last weekend at PSU, where a panel of academicians spoke calmly but urgently on the matter of “Academic Freedom Under Siege.” Unbeknownst to most of us, the neo-conservatives have been taking a mighty swipe at academia, that last American bastion of critical thought. They’ve targeted female, foreign and minority professors, “outing” them as leftist liberal intellectuals. If you don’t believe it, check out a popular new web site, www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org.
We’ve discussed these issues before here at The Locust Fork and it is a real problem for the future of our democracy, so check it out.
Like any other “Bushism,” the title is a gross misnomer. Instead of opening a discussion of academic freedom, the site has created a forum for conservative students to rail against faculty and “inform on” controversial professors who criticize the U.S. policy in Iraq. The site also suggests that legislative funding for public universities should be linked to the promotion of “equal” agendas, including those of the Christian right, who feel disenfranchised by the liberal bent on most campuses.
These rumblings can be heard at Portland Community College where one Christian student expressed frustration that her American Sign Language instructor taught the class signs for “Gay” and “Lesbian” but would not teach the signs for “God” and “Jesus Christ.” The instructor did teach her the signs, but not on class time. Bob Liebman of the PSU Sociology Department says, “equal time is (indeed) part of academic freedom.” He just laments the informant mentality and warns that funding cuts based on political agendas would weaken the role of the college/university as a safe place for the exchange of ideas.
Lauded as off-campus learning institutions, museums have also come under fire. Take, for instance, Roseburg’s Douglas County Museum. The hullabaloo started in February amidst controversy over the resurrection of a city center fountain. From 1908 to 1912, the Greek goddess Hebe hovered above the three tiered cascade (or, at least her statue did before it was mysteriously pulled down by a team of horses). Hebe, the goddess of youth, was a misunderstood creature, often shown bare-breasted and later associated with Wicca. Douglas County Museum Director Stacey McLaughlin decided to host an exhibit on the beleaguered goddess in conjunction with women’s history month (March). This way, people could discover the history of the town’s public art. But, in the minds of appalled Roseburgers, Hebe’s Pagan leanings constituted an anti-Christian endorsement by a public institution. The exhibit was pulled by county commissioners, which caused one museum advisory board member to cry “censorship!” Two months later the commissioners called for the embattled McLaughlin’s resignation, on trumped-up charges of failing to share a building access code with them. She has refused to resign.
Christopher Zinn, Executive Director of the Oregon Council for the Humanities calls Oregonians to heed this warning: public funding has become – and will become – more and more tied to partisan politics. He says the National Endowment for the Humanities has come under recent scrutiny and academicians are being ruined if they do not agree with the Bush administration and powerful conservative lobbies.
At an October 2004 “Rethinking the Humanities” conference sponsored in part by the NEH, Zinn says he and his colleagues were invited to Aspen and subjected to what was, in his opinion, a “three day indoctrination session. They conveyed the message that academic humanists think seditious thoughts,” he says. “They also charged academics to work more closely with business and faith-based organizations because ‘that’s where the people are.'” If they failed, conference organizers said, the humanists would risk being “left behind with all the other liberal intellectuals in the universities,” according to Zinn.
Academics are alarmed at one more censure of campus life, the shift in international enrollment after 9-11 and subsequent obstacle courses set up for foreign students wishing to obtain student visas. For American students who cannot afford semesters abroad, a foreign presence on campus may provide their only direct exposure to other cultures. Additionally, international students and their families pump over $13 billion dollars into the US economy each year, spending $130 million in Oregon alone. Citing red tape, high fees and rude treatment by embassy officials, many foreign students have opted to learn in such “competitor” countries as Germany, England and Australia, who have launched aggressive marketing campaigns to capture US market share. By discouraging foreign student visitors, we are losing our share of a very lucrative market, not to mention the passion and intelligence of people who often graduate, settle in their host country and contribute to its economy.
Hostility toward intellectuals is nothing new among power-hungry regimes. Take, for example, the Khmer Rouge, who, emulating Stalin’s model, murdered thousands of doctors, lawyers, philosophers, writers and university professors a mere 30 years ago. As for Stalin, the “intelligensia class” was among the first groups targeted in his Great Purges of the 1930s and 40s. Survivors (and those with the foresight to flee) came, in large part, to America, where they found thriving academic and scientific communities. With the exception of the McCarthy era, the US has always been a refuge for inventors, innovators and progressive thinkers. Although the NEH, acting under the influence of the current administration, cannot be compared to the tyrannies of Stalin and Pol Pot, we would be wise to watch this issue closely. Otherwise, the result could be similar: a brain drain, or dumbing down of American higher learning, which would leave us struggling for generations to regain the civil society we have lost.
© 2005, Glynn Wilson. All rights reserved.
