How to Kill the Golden Goose of American Higher Education

Late Friday afternoon (August 22), the University of Illinois broke its three-week long silence on the controversy regarding the Chancellor's revocation of a tenured offer to Steven Salaita, who had accepted a faculty position in the American Indian Studies Program at the flagship campus at Urbana-Champaign. Chancellor Phyllis Wise and Board of Trustees Chairman Christopher Kennedy both issued statements explaining the revocation, but in terms far more alarming than the original decision itself. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Chancellor and the Board of Trustees have now declared that the First Amendment does not apply to any tenured faculty at the University of Illinois.--Brian Leiter, Huffington Post.

I kept quiet on the Salaita affair because while I felt that Prof. Salaita was treated unjustly and I recognized that this was a genuine academic freedom issue, I was not especially eager to strengthen the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (see this petition [about that some other time more]). So, forced to choose between two bad choices, I was happy to have others do the legitimate protesting. But I have asked John Protevi to include me in the philosopers's boycott of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Right now my participation is largely symbolic -- I have not been invited to the UIUC --, but to be frank: Brian Leiter, who is not known for mincing his words, understates the significance of the situation. To be clear: Leiter is absolutely right that this is a classic first amendment case.

In addition, The Chancellor and the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois are changing the nature of academic employment in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and -- in the process -- redefining the nature of tenure.* If you read the statements by Chancellor Phyllis Wise and Board of Trustees Chairman Christopher Kennedy, it is no less an attempt to intimidate and regulate faculty so as to tame them thoroughly and bring faculty into the orbit of the surveillance state. For if some polemical tweets can cost a professor his job in the name of a non-existing and non-desirable "civility," (see here for analysis), then basically it says, we're watching you and we can strike at you whenever we choose (see here). In effect, Salaita has been made an exemplar; and because he defends an unpopular cause -- and it is not my cause at all -- he is an easy target to send a wider message to the rest of us. If this decision is allowed to stand, then the privileged few tenured (I return to this below) are at-will employees, subservient to the whims of technocratic, university management and its ability to monitor approved behavior.

UIUC is one of the world's great research universities. It represents what's finest of the American heartland. (I lived in the Midwest for nine years, seven of which in Illinois.) It, and its sister institutions (the land grant universities and, especially, the "Big Ten"), are engines of upward mobility, the backbone of lots of research and development, job creation centers, and -- to be romantic for a second -- a glorious symbol of civilization that nurtures the arts and sciences (for example, read Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers, who spent a good chunk of his writing life at UIUC). They are also the acknowledged havens for the talented and hardworking misfits (the eclectic, the original, the idiosyncratic, the unpopular, etc.) in society. These institutions are, due to their size and flag-ship status, a key part of the enduring social compact between society, citizens, and academics. But all humane institutions decay if not nourished and cultivated with spirit of generosity.

I know that a lot of folk who are not tenured think of the tenured as spoiled brats and privileged parasites. But if you want to destroy what is arguably one of the ongoing success stories of the American economy and higher education -- and the best kept secret in higher education is that the humanities/social sciences are also extremely profitable at a lot of universities+ -- this decision, if emulated by other institutions of higher educations, is the way to go. In the long run it will reduce innovation and academic talent will be lured abroad (helped by a low dollar and growing demand for higher education in the growing and young economies of Asia, and Brazil). It will also increase the cost of recruiting and hiring academics that are in demand; these will demand better pay and more secure contracts.

Now, I recognize that in many places the privileges of tenure are grounded in the cheap and relatively unprotected labor of adjuncts, graduate students, and temporary faculty. But such systemic problems are not resolved by a further leveling down of working conditions. Finally a skeptic might think that I am just engaged in special pleading to protect my own supposedly outdated, labor market privileges. But while I have deep roots in American higher education, I am not employed Stateside. Rather, I worry that if even America's institutions of higher learning voluntarily turn their backs on the inquisitive spirit of freedom, the American century will shade into every gloomier forms of darkness.

 

 

*I am deliberately excluding the so-called STEM disciplines; for there 'tenure' tends to mean you are as privileged as your last grant.

+Humanities and social science professors tend to have low overheads and relatively low salaries.

Comments

[Bharath Vallabha]

An experience I often had when I was in academia was the feeling that though my teachers and colleagues were nice people, they often did not inspire me. When I became a professor, I found myself not inspiring myself either. I have wondered why this was.

The general academic reaction to "the Salaita affair" helps me understand my own feeling. It is hard to be inspired when people, who have privilages in their jobs which most people could not even fathom having, think that they are entitled to complain about any constraints put on them. When they act as if the constraints not only limit their particular actions, but limit the grand pursuits of truth and justice, of civilization itself. When they act as if they speak for the culture of the society even while defending, what is surely not irrelevant, their own personal positions.

An injustice has been done to Salaita and that UCIC should reinstate him. But academic freedom and constitutional rights are not the reasons why.

Obama has a constitutional right to say anything he wants. But he would be doing a disservice to his job and to himself in that job if he exercised that right all the time. Because, for better or worse, he represents the nation as a whole. Though obviously not like Obama, but most people in jobs are in something like this situation.

But what about the academic? Isn't it her job to pursue the truth wherever it leads? So how can she have any such constraints?

It is the academic who most has such constraints. Imposed not from the society, but from their own standing for peace, truth and justice. Perhaps it is ok for Salaita to tweet what he did; it is certainly understandable, though there must be a line between righteous indignation and seeming hateful. But it does raise the hard question: what does it mean for an academic to be neutral in the pursuit of truth? Perhaps it includes being able to tweet as Salaita did. Or not. I am suspicious of anyone who thinks the answer is obvious one way or the other.

It is inspiring when people address this hard question, realizing that it might complicate questions of academic freedom and what kind of a "social compact there is between society, citizens and academics." What is not inspiring is academics turning this into an us versus them issue, and behaving like any other group which feels threatened. It is hard to really convey to academics how ridiculous the latter approach looks to non-academics. And how uninspiring it is, even if it feels inspiring to academics to try to build solidarity among themselves.

[Eric Schliesser]

I find your response extremely cynical Bharath. It's not as if I don't acknowledge the question of privilege (did you even read my post or did you just decide to share your feelings?); I do not claim that any constraints on academia are problematic. (In fact, the post starts with my reluctance to get involved in this issue.) I certainly do not claim that one can simply tweet whatever one wants if one has tenure. There are indeed complicated issues in the vicinity here. (The reason why I call your comment 'cynical' is that I have a lengthy history of blogging about what I call the 'Socratic Problem'--that is the public role of experts/philosophers/teachers.)
But I am here responding to the claims by Wise and the very senior UofI administrators; just because you were not inspired by your teachers, it does not follow that their policies are not very dangerous. I could be wrong about that, of course, and I am open to argument.
Finally, I don't think there is a neutral pursuit of truth in our world (maybe in some ideal possible world, yes); I think take your comment helps explain why.

[Bharath Vallabha]

Eric, a request: don't psychologize about my motives. I often found and do find academia uninspiring, not just my teachers. And that speaks not just to my psychology or feelings, but to broader realities. And I certainly don't think, due to some supposed resentment I might have, that what Wise is doing is ok.

I realize you have a long history of blogging about the "Socratic problem". Which is why I was puzzled by your post, and its focus on why Wise, et al. are so problematic (killing the golden goose). For if the issues are complicated, and if there are open questions about the public role of teachers, then shouldn't there be some openness to the possibility that there is something to be said in defense of both Salaita's and Wise's positions? That if one is going to say Wise's policies are "very dangerous", then one could say something similar for Salaita's manner of being a public intellectual? And if there is no neutral pursuit of truth, what kind of freedoms should academics have, and why? I raise these questions as examples of what, as a non-academic, I would love to see academics talk about, instead of how academia is under attack or is being killed or how this or that policy is dangerous.

This is my last comment on this post. Thanks for letting me express a few thoughts. Am I cynical? I think not. As a wise man once said, "the comedy of life is constituted by potentially contrary impressions."