Harry Targ
Recently, with the rise of the far-rightwing forces
around former President Trump, combining corporate elites, religious
fundamentalists, extreme free market advocates, and military contractors, the
attacks on education have become fierce.
Now politicians close to such powerful groups launch
attacks on education in state houses and the halls of Congress. Critical Race
Theory, rather than being a short-hand description for a body of legal
scholarship, has been redefined as ideology. Politicians running for office
talk about the Civil War without mentioning slavery as a root cause. Charges of
antisemitism are being used to challenge expressions of intellectual and
political points of view on campuses. Presidents at our most prestigious universities,
women and persons of color, have been attacked for defending academic freedom.
Further, Professor William Robinson recently reported that the government of Israel
has organized campaigns to interfere with discussion and debate in US
universities about Israel’s war on Gaza. ”Israel Has Formed a Task Force to
Carry Out Covert Campaigns at US Universities.”
The whole edifice of what used to be regarded as
central to education- discussion, debate, reflection, and criticism of every
subject- has now come under assault.
A prominent Big Ten university, Purdue, has led the
process of transforming itself into a model neoliberal university, in keeping
with the Koch Brothers/ ALEC model of education. The transformation of Purdue
University has involved significant changes including privatization of public
control of the institution; moving into the increasingly competitive online
education market; shifting programs away from an educational mix of science,
technology, the social sciences, and humanities to more STEM and less liberal
arts; currying the favor of huge corporations and enlarged Department of
Defense contracts; establishing programs whereby wealthy alumni fund students’
education with contractual guarantees by which students pay back the alums; and
the establishment at the university of a “country club” ambience to attract
students.
The Beginnings of Civic Literacy at Purdue
University: Round One in the Fight to Control Curricula
No one can dispute the value of education about the
nation, the world, and the issues that have and will affect peoples’ lives in
the short-and long-term future. Schools and universities, of course, have
historically been primary venues for disseminating such information. However,
most often politicians have preferred narratives about themselves and others
that they wish to inculcate in the young. But a more desirable form of
information and analysis is one that is diverse, sensitive to one’s own past
and present, and shows respect for narratives and experiences of other peoples
and nations. This kind of “civics” education is complicated and not achieved by
learning isolated facts.
President Mitch Daniels, Purdue University, in the
spring, 2019, proposed that the university require that each graduating senior
at the university demonstrate a knowledge of what he called “civics.” The
members of the Board of Trustees endorsed the idea and implicitly
castigated faculty for not moving expeditiously to establish a civics
certification process for graduating seniors. But faculty questioned the need
for such a certification, what civics education is, and how to provide for it. Specifically,
they asked whether claims about civics ignorance at Purdue and elsewhere were
true. They also asked whether taking a short-answer test really demonstrated
knowledge of the United States government, its constitution, and the political
process. Some faculty argued that such a need could only be satisfied by at
least one course, perhaps in Political Science or History, that would provide a
richer knowledge, raise competing understandings of the development of the
United States government, and would allow for serious discussions of the
strengths and weaknesses of the American political experience. A ten or twenty
item short answer test, they argued, would not reflect the more subtle and
sophisticated needs of civics education.
Some faculty were puzzled by why, in the context of
the existence of a set of university core requirements already in existence,
this idea of a civics certification emerged. One possible source of the idea of
some kind of civics education was seen in a January 2016 report published by
the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), an organization founded by
the State Policy Network, which is tied to the American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC) and the Charles and David Koch Foundation. The report called “A
Crisis in Civic Education,” described a survey it sponsored in 2015 that
demonstrated that college graduates and the public in general lacked knowledge
of “our free institutions of government.” It listed examples of some basic
facts about government and history that respondents failed to answer correctly.
These included a lack of understanding of how the constitution could be
amended, which institution had the power to declare war, and who was “the
father of the constitution.”
Perhaps ACTA’s underlying concern was suggested by a
quote in the preface of the document attributed to Louise Mirrer, President of
the New York Historical Society, who received an ACTA award in 2014 “for
Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education.” She said that in the
contemporary world of conflicts between religious, ethnic and racial groups,
Americans need to be reminded of US history “…especially as that
history conveys our nation’s stunning successful recipe, based on the
documents of our founding, for an inclusive and tolerant society.” (Apparently,
she forgot the limitations on the rights of Blacks, women and those without
property to vote in “the documents of our founding.”) In
addition, the report took aim at community service programs, which it asserted
“…give students little insight into how our system of government works and what
roles they must fill as citizens of a democratic republic.”
It is clear, therefore, that what the ACTA report (and
one could reasonably assume what motivated the recommendation of former
President Daniels, himself an award recipient from ACTA), and the Purdue Board
of Trustees regards as civics education was a narrative that celebrates the
American experience. These sources presumed that specific facts about the
Constitution and the Founding Fathers and basic truisms about the United States
as a “melting pot” constituted civics education. Although civics education is
surely a desirable goal of education at every level, K through college, it
requires moving beyond memorizing basic facts to more subtle examinations about
the American experience, including exposing students to debates about how and
why that experience has unfolded in the way that it has.
Now the State of Indiana Has Passed Senate Bill SB 202: Continuing Efforts to
Control University Curricula
It is interesting to note that Indiana State Senator
Spencer Deery who introduced Senate Bill 202 in January 2024 which is now law
defended the bill by suggesting that distrust in higher education has
increased. While this claim is of dubious merit and has come from politically
conservative places such as ALEC and so-called “think tanks,” many citizens on
and off campus are skeptical of ill-placed and self-interested investments in
the privatization of higher education, collaborating with real estate and military
contractors, and working to expunge from curricula any courses that promote
critical thinking.
To minimize debates, discussion, and critical thinking
about the great issues of our time in public universities SB 202 was
introduced. It includes a number of provisions that are designed to eliminate
discussions of controversial subjects on college campuses by threatening the
job security, or tenure, of faculty. The provisions of SB 202, signed and
approved by Governor Eric Holcomb include the following:
1.Establish a process where university trustees
evaluate faculty up for tenure
2.Require trustees to review a faculty member’s tenure
status every five years.
3.Require state universities to establish procedures
that allow students and employees to submit complaints that a faculty member
isn’t meeting certain criteria related to free inquiry, free expression and
intellectual diversity.
4. Require trustees to adopt a “policy of neutrality”
that limits universities from taking official positions on “political, moral or
ideological issues.”
5.Allow the Indiana House Speaker and Indiana Senate
president to appoint a trustee to a university’s board.
6.Make universities account for spending on diversity,
equity and inclusion efforts on campus and add to those programs to include
“intellectual diversity.
Dave Bangert, Deery
defends tenure reform bill as blowback grows at Purdue, IU
(basedinlafayette.com)
https://www.basedinlafayette.com/p/deery-defends-tenure-reform-bill
Conclusion
Just as academic critics of child labor, anti-union
policies, World War I, and financial speculation a hundred years ago faced
censure and unemployment, universities are being pressured to circumscribe
accepted debates. While the higher-education system has extended academic
freedom and provided job security for some through tenure, attacks on these
provisions are spreading as the twenty-first century reconstruction of American
higher education proceeds. From
Florida to Indiana SB 202 bill, (now law) circumscribes tenure and what is
taught in the classroom. Politicians and many university administrators, and
perhaps foreign governments, are
committed to destroying the academic freedom, and the free exchange of ideas,
that has made universities in recent times a haven for the pursuit of knowledge
useful for the advancement of society.
