It would be fair to say that I'm not a renowned admirer of Stanley Fish's contributions to legal and literary theory, but now that he's become an administrator, he's been rather good on the subject of the growing right-wing campaign against universities--for example, here.
Another salvo in the campaign came last night via Nightline's giving national coverage to the latest bit of sleazy stupidity from the Young Conservatives of Texas, a group that manages to give youth, conservatives and Texas a bad name simultaneously. The YCT has produced a "watchlist" of UT faculty who, it is alleged, "push an ideological viewpoint on their students through oftentimes subtle but sometimes abrasive methods of indoctrination."
A quick review of the list, at least by anyone knowledgeable, reveals that it is primarily a list of UT faculty to the left of the YCT. True enough, the YCT throws one free-market utopian econ professor on the list, but that's just public relations. And their "honor roll"--presumably of faculty who never, ever push an ideological viewpoint--includes at least one faculty member who so patently deserves to be on the Watchlist as to make a mockery of the whole thing.
Now the odd thing here is that I'm rather inclined to the view that, at least in any subject with genuine intellectual content, the intellectual content, rather than a particular "ideology" (whatever exactly that is), ought to be at the fore of the class. (This doesn't mean, by the way, necessarily teaching "both sides" [are there always only two?] of an issue; not all sides are equal, after all.] In the case of some of those on the Watchlist and on the Honor Roll, it's rather clear from every report I've heard from students (and I mean students unconnected to the YCT smear machine) that intellectual content in fact takes a backseat to pontification.
The real question is whether a "watchlist"--even one created by an honest group not committed to pushing its own ideological agenda--would make any constructive contribution to encouraging better pedagogical practices? And on this count, the answer is surely not. As some of the criticisms mounted by the YCT informants make clear, such watchlists inevitably impinge upon uncontroversial and genuine rights protected by academic freedom. A Government professor, for example, is criticized for requiring two books that reflect a "pro-Paletsinian bias." But presumably the professor assigns them because he thinks they are better books than those the YCT hacks would deem to be pro-Israel. Yet surely one part of academic freedom is the right of a professor to choose the materials that he or she deems most reliable and sound. That the YCT or Hamas doesn't share that professor's scholarly judgment is neither here nor there: academic freedom has to protect the right of faculty to choose materials that, in their informed judgment, are meritorious.
Relatedly, what exactly would be the remedy for the complaints lodged in the Watchlist. Should administrators, or student committees, edit the syllabi to insure "balance" as they understand "balance"? Surely even the YCT hacks must recognize what a catastrophe this would be.
Consider: most of what is written on natural law theory is an argumentative and analytical embarrassment, which poses a challenge when teaching a serious course in jurisprudence: if you're having students read H.L.A. Hart, Joseph Raz, and Ronald Dworkin, you can't, all of a sudden, ask them to read--for the sake of "balance"--Hadley Arkes or Harry Jaffa or any of the others in the legions of natural law preachers who couldn't argue their way out of a paper bag. In my informed scholarly judgment, there are exactly four major natural law theorists who can be assigned in a serious jurisprudence class: John Finnis, Mark Murphy, David Brink, and Michael Moore. (I usually assign at least two of them, by the way.) If academic freedom does not encompass my right to make that judgment, then I'm not sure what it does protect.
There will always be bad, simple-minded professors who don't care about students, don't take their subject-matter seriously, don't have any intellectual depth or argumentative skill, and who end up demeaning their subject-matter. Some of these folks will be on the left, some on the right, and some inbetween. I'm confident what they will not have in common is that they show up on a Watchlist of the Young Conservatives of Texas. How to improve pedagogy in higher education is a serious issue (I think, for example, that faculty who are, in fact, borderline incompetent teachers ought to be required to receive tutoring from skilled teachers who are knowledgeable about pedagogical techniques). YCT has nothing to do with the serious issue. They're just another part of the enormous right-wing lie-and-smear machine that demeans so much of public and intellectual life in the United States, and that is now settings its sights upon higher education.
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