The Chronicle of Higher Education often publishes articles with which I take exception, but the July 2 issue contained a real doozy – a rant entitled “The Contradictions of Cultural Conservatism in the Assault on American Colleges” by Donald Lazere, an English professor at Cal State-San Luis Obispo (here’s the link to the article, which requires a subscription). It’s one of the most preposterous bits of writing (well, something that rambles on for 29 paragraphs may be more than a “bit”) I have come across in a long time. Such ranting should usually be ignored, but Lazere is attempting to justify the use of classrooms for leftist proselytizing. I can no more ignore that than I could ignore an attempt to justify the burning of politically unpopular books.
What set Lazere off was the momentum that has been building for the “Academic Bill of Rights.” Formulated by David Horowitz as a means of reducing the leftist bias that students encounter in many college courses, the Academic Bill of Rights (ABOR) seeks to eliminate the unnecessary emphasis political and ideological belief that interfere with the teaching of many subjects. If the course is English literature, stick to teaching that. If the subject is one where there are diverging professional opinions, let the students know that there is more than one intellectually respectable point of view.
That doesn’t establish perfectly sharp lines, but it’s better than leaving it entirely up to faculty members to decide what to include in a course. ABOR isn’t a panacea, but as a general guideline, it’s very reasonable.
Lazere is all hot and bothered because he thinks that, contrary to Horowitz and many other observers of American higher education, most universities are actually terribly conservative places that badly need whatever dashes of “progressive” thought that professors in the humanities and social sciences can inject. Therefore, efforts to depoliticize the campus would actually increase the ideological tilt toward conservatism.
People have laughed at many an apparently ridiculous idea that later turned out to be true, so let’s hear Lazere out.
He begins with the observation that most students “as early as high school, come to regard the only purpose of schooling as vocational or pre-professional training.” How he knows that he does not disclose, but I suspect that he may be correct. So what? Now we get to the heart of Lazere’s argument: “Conservative culture warriors would have us regard both vocational/preprofessional education and its prime mover, corporate employers, as politically neutral. The obvious facts, however, are that large corporations and their wealthy CEO’s and stockholders are predominantly conservative (notwithstanding occasional exceptions like George Soros and Ted Turner); that they are the most powerful political players in America, through lobbying and PR, campaign contributions, foundations, think tanks, ownership of media, and influence on them by advertising; and that in all these realms, they strongly favor the conservative wings of both the Republican and Democratic parties.” Whew.
Now because of all that influence, according to Lazere, “all of the branches of universities (are) devoted to serving corporations, the lucrative professions, and the military through job training and research – which vastly outweigh the humanities – also indoctrinate students in pro-management, anti-labor, anti-government (but pro-military) ideology. Students’ desperation to get and keep jobs in corporations and professions pressure them into compliance with corporate ideology so they tend to be impervious to any liberal deviations that they get in humanities courses.”
There we have it. The old military-industrial complex secretly controls higher education in America. Those like Horowitz and, well, me, who would like to see professors get back to teaching rather than preaching really intend “to unleash the most ignorant forces of the right in hounding liberal academics to death.”
Where do you begin with something like that?
First, Lazere wishes to have the reader believe that the sole source of criticism against the leftist politicization of many courses and departments is “conservative culture warriors.” By creating the impression that he and his allies are defending against an “assault” by the likes of Bill Bennett, Lazere hopes to win people to his cause with the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” idea.
The trouble is that many of those who think that the kind of classroom proselytizing that so many students have complained out – see, e.g., the NoIndoctrination.org website – are not “conservative culture warriors.” There are liberals who think that academic discourse is being poisoned by professors who insist on turning every class into an exercise in political activism. Professor Kenneth Lasson’s recent book Trembling in the Ivory Tower is a liberal’s plea for a return to campuses where professors concentrate on teaching their subjects rather than trying to act as “change agents.”
There are also libertarians who find much to disagree with in the cultural conservative agenda and are no more allied with Bill Bennett than they are with Bill Clinton, who oppose the use of classrooms for the spreading of the professor’s political beliefs.
Alas, Lazere wants to dump all his opponents in one bag for easy disposal.
Second, Lazere would have us believe that when leftist professors use their classrooms for political purposes, it’s just a small and necessary counterweight to the overwhelming “corporate ideology” that dominates colleges and universities. Remember, students are saturated with “pro-management, anti-labor, anti-government (but pro-military) ideology” in college, so it’s only fitting that they hear a little bit of “the other side” in a few courses. That statement can only make you wonder if Lazere has ever set foot in another classroom.
In what class, at his university or any other, for example, are students taught to be “anti-labor?” Now, in some economics courses, students might learn that labor unions are not nearly as beneficial to workers as is generally thought, but that’s hardly an “anti-labor” position. (I would hazard a guess that the economic analysis of the effects of unions would cause as much cognitive dissonance in Lazere as did his efforts at enlightening his conservative students.)
Similarly, a few professors, most likely in economics or political science, might point out to students that a lot of government programs have very high but largely unseen costs (such as Social Security) and are arguably counterproductive. It is hardly “anti-government” to show that government programs and policies may be undesirable, but to the limited extent that that happens, it is the sort of mind-expanding, preconception-challenging experience that Lazere lauds when he does it. The only difference that I can see is that the analysis of Social Security fits in an economics course whereas it is hard to see the academic justification for harangues (for or against) American foreign policy in an English class.
And just what does Lazere mean by “corporate ideology?” American corporations run the gamut from Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream (green and liberal) to, say, Milliken & Company (conservative and protectionist). Few American corporations can be counted on to stand up for any economic or political principle. Their lobbyists and associations are happy to coexist with Big Government. They may be philosophically united in opposition to a Stalinist confiscation of all private property, but little else.
So where does Lazere find evidence for his notion that these frightful things called corporations exert such tremendous influence over colleges? He finds it in vague “commercial pressure” that has led to a focus on vocational education. Apparently, Lazere believes that the reason why we have lots of courses in business administration, marketing, accounting, and so on, all promoting a “business-friendly” message, is that college presidents have sold out to the denizens of the business world. Otherwise, students would yearn to study Shakespeare, Aristotle, and Beethoven.
But this notion is light years from reality. For one thing, those “business-friendly” courses are about as devoid of free-market philosophy as the moon is devoid of water. More importantly, though, students aren’t clamoring for courses that they think will help them get a job because of the spread of “corporate ideology” and colleges aren’t offering such courses because college presidents are so eager to please business moguls. Colleges are simply giving students what many of them want, and the reason why many students today want job-related courses is that our K-12 education system leaves most young Americans with little intellectual curiosity. These “disengaged students,” as Professor Paul Trout calls them, just want an easy degree that will, they think, land them a nice job. I don’t care for the vocational training drift in higher education any more than Lazere does, but we need to correctly identify the root of the problem. It isn’t his bete noire the corporate world; it’s our collapsing system of government schooling.
Lazere’s theory of the “conservative” dominated American university scene is a house of cards. The fact that many students want to take courses that might be vocationally useful tells you nothing about the political/philosophical content of those courses. Usually, there isn’t any. A marketing course is neutral as between organic bananas (which Lazere presumably approves of) and hunting rifles (which I’d guess he doesn’t approve of). It’s even harder to see any particular “ideology” in preprofessional training. Do pre-med or pre-law students receive some kind of capitalist brainwashing in their courses? If so, it must be too subtle to “take” since many doctors and lawyers turn out to be very liberal politically.
Enough already. Suffice it to say that if leftist professors are looking for a sound justification for their desire to turn their classrooms into pep rallies for all their pet causes, they will have to do much better than this.