(Critics of the Israeli war on Gaza, particularly on college campuses, are being erroneously labeled as antisemitic. The campaigns in the media and by politicians such as former Indiana Governor and Purdue University President Mitch Daniels are designed to stifle dissent. The Fox News interview below and the attack on Howard Zinn's work a decade ago suggest the continuing threat to academic freedom in higher education. https://youtu.be/HkelVbykuUk?si=We7nSCA8qbBqWB3d )
Harry Targ
On July 17, 2013 an Associated Press story was
published in several newspapers quoting from 2010 e-mails Governor Mitch
Daniels of Indiana wrote to “top state educational officials.” The e-mails
encouraged the suppression of popular historian Howard Zinn’s book, “A People’s
History of the United States” in Indiana public education, including university
level teacher training courses. Upon the death of popular historian Howard
Zinn, Daniels e-mailed that “this terrible anti-American academic has finally
passed away.”
When challenged on the seeming threats to academic
freedom, Daniels claimed that his directives “only” referred to K through 12
instruction despite the fact that his e-mails made it clear he opposed
instruction that used Zinn’s writings as tools for in-service training for
teachers.
Ninety Purdue University faculty (including this
author) signed a letter to President Daniels objecting to his implied
threat to academic freedom. In addition to defending the university as a place
for debate among competing ideas, the faculty objected to the negative
characterization of Zinn’s scholarship as an historian. They also objected to
Daniels’ claim that although he was not interested in censoring scholarship and
teaching at the university, when he was governor he had the responsibility to
oversee school curricula from kindergarten through high school.
Faculty pointed out that restricting what was being
taught to teachers pursuing advanced credits and restricting the right of
teachers to use Zinn’s work in pre-college curricula violated academic freedom.
Many Purdue faculty believed that extreme statements damning the substance of
Zinn’s work cast a pall on the university and made serious reflection on
American history in elementary and high schools more difficult for young people
and their teachers.
It is important to note that the Daniels e-mails,
and their threat to free discussion and debate in educational institutions in
Indiana, reflect the deep struggles being waged in the American political
system. Rush Limbaugh once remarked on his radio show to the effect that “we”
have captured most institutions in the society with the exception of the
university. Since politics is usually about the contestation of ideas and the
development of ideas comes from an understanding of the past and its connection
to the present and the future, schools and universities can aptly be seen as
“contested terrain.” That is teachers and students learn about their world
through reading, writing, debating, and advocating policies, ideas, and values in
educational settings.
Consequently, if one sector of society wishes to
gain and maintain political and economic power they might see particular value
in controlling the ideas that are disseminated in educational institutions.
During the dark days of the Cold War professors who had the “wrong” ideas were
fired. Professional associations in many disciplines rewarded scholars who
worked within accepted perspectives on history, or political science, or
literature, or sociology and denied recognition to others. The preferred ideas
trickled down to primary and secondary education. In most instances, professors and teachers
who suffered as a result of their teaching were merely presenting competing
views so that their students would have more informed reasons for deciding on their own what interpretations
of subject matter made the most sense.
American history was a prime example of how
controversial teaching would become. Most historians after World War II wrote
and taught about the American experience emphasizing that elites made history,
men made history more than women, social movements were absent from historical
change, history moved in the direction of consensus rather than conflict, and
the United States always played a positive role in world history. European
occupation of North America, the elimination of Native Peoples, building a
powerful economy on the backs of a slave system, and a U.S. pattern of
involvement in foreign wars were all ignored or slighted.
Howard Zinn, a creator and product
of the intellectual turmoil of the 60s presented us with a new paradigm for
examining U.S. history, indeed all history. His classic text, “A People’s History of the United States,”
which has been read by millions compellingly presented a view of history that
highlighted the roles of indigenous people, workers, women, people of color,
people of various ethnicities, and all others who were not situated at the apex
of economic, political, or educational institutions. He taught us that we
needed to be engaged in the struggles that shaped people’s lives to learn what
needs to be changed, how their conditions got to be what they were, and how
scholar/activists might help to change the world.
Perhaps most importantly, Zinn demonstrated that participants in people’s struggles were part of a “people’s chain,” that is the long history of movements and campaigns throughout history that have sought to bring about change. As he wrote in his autobiography, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times:”
“What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
Perhaps most importantly, Zinn demonstrated that participants in people’s struggles were part of a “people’s chain,” that is the long history of movements and campaigns throughout history that have sought to bring about change. As he wrote in his autobiography, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times:”
“What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
In the 1970s the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC) was formed by wealthy conservatives and corporations such as
Koch Industries, ExxonMobil, and AT&T which invested millions of dollars to
organize lobby groups, support selected politicians in all 50 states, create
“think tanks,” and in other ways strategize about how to transform American
society to increase the wealth and power of the few. ALEC lobbyists and
scholars developed programs and legislation around labor, healthcare, women’s
issues, the environment, and education that were designed to reverse the
progressive development of government and policy that social movements had long
advocated.
Speakers at ALEC events have included Governors Rick
Perry, Scott Walker, Jan Brewer, John Kasich, and Mitch Daniels. ALEC
legislative programs include lobbying for charter schools, challenging teachers
unions, revisiting school curricula to include materials that deny climate
change and more effectively celebrate the successes of the Bill of Rights in
U.S. history.
The conservative Bradley Foundation, has awarded
$400 million over the last decade to organizations supporting school vouchers,
right-to-work laws and traditional marriage laws, and global warming deniers.
Two of the four recipients of the organizations 2013 award for support of
“American democratic capitalism” were Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, and Purdue
President Mitch Daniels.
Associations which lobby for restricting academic
freedom in higher education include David Horowitz’s Freedom Center and the
National Association of Scholars, funded by the conservative Sarah Scaife,
Bradley, and Olin Foundations among others. NAS seeks to bring together
scholars whose work opposes multiculturalism, affirmative action, concerns
about climate change, and the “liberal” bias in academia.
The NAS current president Peter Wood, contributed a
blog article in the Chronicle on Higher Education on July 18, 2013, entitled
“Why Mitch Daniels Was Right About Howard Zinn.” Wood wrote that “a governor
worth his educational salt should be calling out faculty members who cannot or
will not distinguish scholarship from propaganda, or who prefer to substitute
simplistic storytelling for the complexities of history.”
Howard Zinn’s “A Peoples History of the United
States” is a history of how social
movements of workers, women, people of color, native peoples and others often
left out of conventional accounts have made and can make history. This is a
part of history that political and economic elites, influential organizations
such as ALEC, the Bradley Foundation, and education-oriented groups like NAS do
not want included in course curricula; in middle school, high school, or the
university.
If education at any level is to be shaped by the
principle of academic freedom it must encourage student exposure to varieties
of theories, perspectives, and points of view. It is in an environment of
discussion and debate that rigorous and critical thought emerges. Efforts to
expunge certain scholars such as Howard Zinn from educational curricula
contradict the spirit of free and rigorous thought.
A similar version of this essay appeared in the Fort Wayne, Journal Gazette, August 5, 2013.
