Wednesday,
August 7, 2013
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.
