THOUGHTS ON HIGHER EDUCATION: 2021

 Harry Targ

(State legislatures, prominent politicians, special interest groups, and university administrators and boards of trustees have placed the character of higher education on the public agenda for the first time in years. Unfounded criticisms of the teaching and study of racism in US history, shifting to online education, further encroachments by university administrators on what is taught and how, all necessitate a serious reexamination of the transformation of the university in incremental and non-transparent ways. For example, even the teaching of STEM courses is being examined with a grant from the Charles Koch Foundation at one prominent university.

(https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2021/Q2/instruction-during-pandemic-provides-foundation-for-future-stem-education.htm

 The materials below were written a few years ago but reflect some of the issues that are currently being raised, and decided, without sufficient public discussion and without input from most educators. (Some organizations, such as the American Association of University Professors, have committed themselves to stimulating a broad-based public discussion of higher education in the 21^st century.  See for example the emerging discussion of a New Deal for Higher Education which addresses the process and content of higher education and the support for students pursuing higher education. The campaign includes the idea that higher education is a public good. https://newdealforhighered.org/)

 

REMODELING LIBERAL ARTS IN THE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY

Harry Targ

In the recent book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Nancy MacLean traces the intellectual development of the libertarian right and its connection with the Koch Brothers and state programs to promote an ideologically-driven policy agenda.  She argues that many of the libertarian right’s policy proposals would be opposed if public discourse and majoritarian democracy prevailed. Consequently, she suggests, efforts are made to limit transparency, public discussion, and legislative and electoral participation in major public policies.

Public universities are among the institutions in which the lack of transparency is becoming the norm. The tradition of shared governance is being trampled on. Educational decisions are being made by politicians, and administrators and boards of trustees without any advice and consent from educators and taxpayers. Under the guise of a “business model” driven by metrics and profit-making, many years of educational practices are being overturned by administrators with little educational experience. Great state universities such as those in Wisconsin, Michigan, Texas, North Carolina, and Indiana are being reconstructed. Programs of teaching and research are being uprooted. Sometimes ongoing programs are abolished. And new liberal arts curricula measure success by creating narrowly trained job seekers. Further, research is increasingly channeled to meet the needs of corporations or the military.

The Vision of the 21st Century University

The President of Purdue University, Mitch Daniels, on October 12, 2018 received the Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education presented by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). Daniels reported with enthusiasm that Purdue University is the third “most STEM-centric school in the country,” with over 60 percent of its undergraduate students matriculating in engineering, chemistry, physics, and agricultural and biological sciences. And he implied that there is a struggle going on in great universities everywhere about what should constitute liberal arts (Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. “Re-liberalizing the Liberal Arts,” Washington, October 12, 2018, goacta.org.) From Daniels’ point of view, administrators cannot wait for liberal arts programs in the twenty-first century to transform themselves. This is so because liberal arts education today consists of “conformity of thought, intolerance of dissent and sometimes an authoritarian tendency to quash it, a rejection of the finest of the Western and Enlightenment traditions in favor of unscholarly revisionism and pseudo-disciplines.”

Daniels then railed against the “one-sided view of the world” being presented in liberal arts classrooms in opposition to critical thinking. He appropriately celebrated the “clash of competing ideas,” but characterized liberal arts curricula and research as dogmatic and authoritarian. (Many liberal arts educators would argue that old ideas are always revisited bringing new, diverse, perspectives to bear on traditional disciplinary formulations in the social sciences and humanities). In other words, while most scholars and students appreciate the openness and creativity of education and scholarship that has resulted from the last fifty years of ferment, debate, and thought characteristic of the intellectual life of higher education, Daniels advocates to the contrary that the newer scholarship and education should be challenged and expunged (Daniels referred in his lecture to some of his intellectual mentors including Charles Murray and Jeb Bush).

Daniels added that the tenure system protects dogmatists rather than what he would regard as free thinkers. He characterized modern liberal arts education as “the celebration of mediocrity;” the liberal arts as the home of “illiberal viewpoints;” and as the transmitter of “conformity of thought.” He condemned what he called “shoddy scholarship” as well. “Hopelessly abstruse, jargon-laden papers from so-called ‘studies’ programs read like self-parodies.” He claimed, with no evidence, that “…fewer than half the published studies across the social sciences can be replicated.”

And the final and most damaging claim Daniels made was that practitioners of liberal arts make their subject matter boring. He asserted that histories are written without heroes, excitement, “…glory, the human elements…”

All this, Daniels suggested, requires reform of liberal arts from outside the clutches of the educators in the various fields he condemned. At Purdue University change is occurring because of a program called Cornerstone which brings STEM students to specially crafted liberal arts courses. “Enrollees will read Locke, Hobbes, and Jefferson as well as other works in the Great Books tradition.” Reading the great books, which according to Daniels are not already being taught in existing courses, and offering various dual degree and fast track three-year degrees, he said, are responses to the needs of the business community for liberal arts graduates.

And as to free speech on campus, Daniels castigated students who, he asserted were coached by faculty, made unwarranted demands on him to denounce fascist and racist flyers on campus. And without any sense of irony, Daniels quoted 1960s Chancellor of the University of California system of higher education Clark Kerr who said that a proper university “is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.” He apparently did not recall that students at the University of California launched the Free Speech Movement on their campus in 1964 because Kerr’s administration banned literature tables on campus.

Discussions of Higher Education Are Held in Secret

Lastly, Daniels praised the work of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). ACTA, formed in 1995, says it works “…to support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure that the next generation receives a philosophically rich, high-quality college education at an affordable price.” Henry Giroux has characterized ACTA as “…not a friend of academic freedom, nor is it comfortable with John Dewey’s notion that education should be responsive to the deepest conflicts of our time…” (Henry Giroux, The University in Chains, Paragon Publishers, 2007, p. 161).

ACTA, while claiming to be independent, is an associate member of the State Policy Network. SPN is a “think tank” with affiliates in 49 states. SPN groups are affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which was a creation of the billionaire Koch brothers and rightwing organizations such as the Bradley Foundation, to promote a radical libertarian policy agenda in virtually every state. Jane Mayer, Nancy MacLean and others have shown that ALEC, SPN, and ACTA leaders realized that public discourse and transparency in political and other institutions might lead publics, often majorities, to reject their anti-government, “free-market” agendas.

Universities historically have had public discussions about curricula and most universities, including Purdue University, have institutionalized mechanisms for decision-making on educational policy matters. Faculty Senates, curricula committees, and promotion and tenure committees, have been the lifeblood of higher education. And, appropriately enough, as a result of student movements on college campuses, students have been included in conversations about educational matters as well. And some state universities value the input of citizens and a broad representative array of alumni from their universities, not just the wealthy who become the core of boards of trustees or the small number who can afford to donate millions of dollars.

What the speech represents is a capsule summary of the Daniels vision of what liberal arts should be. It is largely a series of claims about modern liberal arts programs, diametrically opposed to the reality. It is a policy brief for his campus that Daniels presented to the non-transparent ACTA, an affiliate of a larger covert institutional network with a presence in every state. The network is committed to a radical transformation of economic, political, and educational institutions, a radical libertarian America. Since the liberal arts tradition includes a rigorous conversation about this and other visions, questions of the direction of higher education at Purdue University deserve a rich diverse public conversation among educators, students, and citizens. Private conversations within and between organizations that restrict this conversation violate the spirit of higher education.

 

21st CENTURY UNIVERSITIES: THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND CORPORATE POWER

(This essay, originally posted in June,2014, reflects the continuing and growing debate about the vision and purpose of higher education. As Purdue University celebrates its 150-year anniversary, conversations about the purposes of higher education are in order).

The university is a site for intellectual excitement: debate about new theories and hypotheses; rigorous examinations of competing ideas; and research, teaching, and community service. Most men and women who pursue a career in the academy are inspired by intellectual curiosity, the prospect of educating and inspiring students, and serving diverse communities of citizens.

Moreover, the Morrill Act passed by Congress in 1862 committed the United States to construct and support state universities which would serve the people, in those days largely rural populations. Great state-funded public universities grew over the subsequent 150 years to facilitate the education of a growing population.  They enriched that population with varieties of knowledge and the tools to improve the lives of the citizenry and, as a result, helped build a more vibrant democracy.

But there are darker truths about the growth of the modern university. First, higher education is stimulated by, and financially beholden to, governments, political processes, corporations, and banks. These institutions affect what research is done and what subjects are taught in the university.

Second, and related to the first, conceptions of disciplines, bodies of knowledge, appropriate methods, ideas accepted as unchallengeable truths in various fields, and the basic principles of whole universities are shaped by economic interests and political power.

Third, professional associations, journals, forms of peer review, and general procedures for validating the quality of academic research and teaching are also affected by the same economic and political interests that dominate universities.

Fourth, therefore, in the main, the university as an institution is, and has always been, designed to serve the interests of the status quo, a status quo again that is governed by economic and political interests.

The following examples are from one university, Purdue University. Similar examples can be found at virtually every large and prestigious university in the country. David Smith and Scott Bauer (The Lafayette Journal and Courier, “Daniels: Georgia Trip Was Good for Purdue,” May 1, 2014) reported on Purdue President Mitch Daniels’ attendance at a conference of the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. Daniels said he attended the meeting to learn and to touch base with one of Purdue’s biggest donors.

The meeting, held every year since 1982, was populated by presidential candidates, and conservative governors from Michigan and Florida. Other attendees included former Vice-President Dick Cheney, former CIA Director David Petraeus, and former Amway President Dick DeVos, and current or former CEOs from TD Ameritrade, Apple, and Google. Karl Rove, premier Republican operative, also attended. Inadvertently highlighting the connection between corporate and political power and the university President Daniels said: “I considered this a trip of use to Purdue.”

Academic advocates for large-scale government and corporate commitments to increased space exploration, such as President Daniels, who served as co-chair of the National Research Council, can be seen as serving the economic needs of research universities. The NRC issued a 286-page report in May, 2014, suggesting that a huge and redefined commitment would be needed to land on Mars by the 2030s (Reed Sellers, “Report Calls for Increased NASA Budget,” The Exponent, June 9, 2014). Despite the document’s skepticism about the possibilities of achieving new goals in space, Daniels said “human space exploration remains vital to the national interest for inspirational and aspirational reasons that appeal to a broad range of U.S. citizens.”

The report outlined a range of steps that would be needed to achieve long-term goals in space, from a one-year mission of persons living on the international space station, to flight tests, rovers exploring Mars, and the development of new technologies involving health, transportation, robots, vehicles, and many other components of space travel. These multi-billion-dollar research-based programs could occupy the research agendas of academic departments in universities such as Purdue for decades and enrich the biggest corporations in America.

Daniels was not the only university affiliated spokesperson of note who recently made news. Board of Trustees member Don Thompson, President and CEO of the McDonald’s Corporation, weighed in on the debate about raising the minimum wage for fast food workers after a nationwide set of protests against McDonald’s on May 22, 2014.

Thompson at a shareholders’ meeting declared that “McDonald’s is often a first job for many entering the work force. About one-third of our employees are 16 to 19. We are proud that we open doors to opportunity” (Bruce Horowitz, “McDonald’s Plays Offense on Wages,” USA Today, May 23). Thompson praised his corporation for being a worker-friendly employer and added that it was the largest employer of veterans in the nation. Later he hinted at the possibility of raising the minimum wage at McDonald’s. However, protestors argued that the median age of fast-food workers was 29, most worked at today’s minimum wage, and economic survival on McDonald’s wages was virtually impossible.

Finally, the Purdue news service has announced increased collaboration of the university with the notorious Duke Energy Corporation, most recently in the news because of its responsibility for a coal ash spill in North Carolina that coated 70 miles of the Dan River along the North Carolina and Virginia border with 60,000 tons of toxic sludge. A North Carolina judge ordered Duke Energy to immediately eliminate the source of groundwater pollution from company coal ash dumps. A criminal investigation of links between the spill and Duke Energy and state government officials in North Carolina is still underway.

Purdue News (June 11, 2014) reported that the university would collaborate on the expansion of an education program to create the Duke Energy Academy at Purdue, a six-day instructional program to inspire high school students and teachers to work in STEM-related disciplines related to energy. The article erroneously claimed that “the amount of students entering the STEM fields is declining.” Other co-sponsors of the six-day educational experience include Bowen Engineering, General Electric, Kidwind Project, Siemens Energy, and Windstream Technologies Inc.  

Higher education is at a fork in the road. One path is to maintain its traditional mission to educate and inspire students while sharing knowledge with communities at home and abroad. Another path is to expand the needs of special interests, political and corporate, at the expense of the traditional role of higher education. Growing social movements should include demands that universities continue to serve the needs of the people, rather than politicians and corporations.

 

 

The Ideological Justifications for the Permanent War Economy and the Globalization of Empire Continue

Harry Targ

(President Biden reinitiated G7 collaboration and rekindled the NATO alliance while raising the specter of the spread of Russian and Chinese “authoritarianism.” And the corporate media continues the same narrative that was developed after World War II: eternal enemies, threats to our virtuous society, the need for continued military preparedness, and American exceptionalism. As Pete Seeger long ago wrote: “Oh when will they ever learn?” )

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Ideological Justifications for the Permanent War Economy and the Globalization of Empire (originally posted on February 12, 2009)

Constructing and maintaining a permanent war economy was a policy commitment made by virtually every U.S. administration and Congress since the 1940s. It meant that budget decisions would be based on the primacy of military spending. And, military spending served ever since World War II as an economic stimulus to overcome recessionary dynamics in the economy as a whole and to support secure contracts for huge corporations engaging in military production and service.

The permanent war economy paralleled and supported the fifty year development of U.S. capitalism on the world stage. During this time frame global capitalism shifted economic activity from direct investment in goods and services at home and abroad to financial speculation. Those corporations which continued to manufacture goods for domestic and international consumption shifted their productive operations to poor countries where lower wages could be paid. These changing features of the international political economy were extended by globalization, the dramatic increase in cross-national economic, political, and cultural interactions. In short, the global political economy of the last fifty years has been significantly shaped by the building of a permanent war economy, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization.

While these processes are critical to understanding the U.S. role in the world, scholars, pundits, and most importantly politicians explained the U.S. role in the world in different ways. The American people were told that the U.S. faced diabolical enemies, that our place in world history was special, and that we had an obligation to bring the American experience to the world.

The ideological campaign for the Cold War was articulated in speeches by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1946 and President Harry Truman in 1947. The former, addressing a college audience in Fulton, Missouri warned that “…from the Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” One year later, President Truman in his famous Doctrine speech argued that there were two ways of life in the world, one based on freedom and the other tyranny. The United States, he said must defend the forces of freedom against “totalitarianism.” Of course, the threat came from the Soviet Union.

Three years later, an “in-house” document, National Security Council Document 68 (NSC 68) was drafted and circulated in the Truman administration by Secretary of State Dean Acheson. It recommended that military spending be the number one priority of every administration. And the recommendation was necessary because the Soviet Union constituted a military threat and an economic challenge. When the Korean War started, NSC 68 became publicly articulated policy and vision (even though the document itself remained classified until the 1970s).

The ideological construct, “good versus evil,” “freedom versus totalitarianism,” was rigidly imposed on a frightened public in the 1940s and 1950s as anti-communism pervaded the society. What came to be known as “McCarthyism,” imported images of domestic traitors, subversives, and foreignness into the American cultural stream. The threat was so great at home as well as abroad that state repression was justified to protect the nation.

In addition, academia contributed to the public face of this ideology through its development of “modernization theory.” Economic historian and Kennedy and Johnson foreign policy advisor Walt Rostow described what the world faced: Communism was “…a kind of disease which can befall a transitional society if it fails to organize effectively those elements within it which are prepared to get on with the job of modernization.” The disease must be expunged so that poor countries could develop market-based economies as did Europe and the United States. The ideological ground was laid for Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Central America, and Iraq and Afghanistan in our own day.

And, of course, we can reflect on the words of President Reagan who proclaimed shortly before he left office:

“We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, 'The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.’ We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth.”

And finally in our own day, and when the Soviet “evil empire” was long gone, a new enemy, “international terrorism” was identified. And, like the former Soviet Union, this enemy threatened our being and necessitated a strong military response. President Bush said in 2002 (and again in a similar way just days before he left office):

“But the best way to secure the homeland is to find the enemy wherever they try to hide and bring them to justice. The best way -- make no mistake about it. You should not be confused about the nature of the people we're dealing with. They hate us, because we're free. They hate the thought that Americans welcome all religions. They can't stand that thought. They hate the thought that we educate everybody. They hate our freedoms. They hate the fact that we hold each individual -- we dignify each individual. We believe in the dignity of every person. They can't stand that.

And the only way they know to express themselves is through killing, cold- blooded killing. And so we need to treat them the way they are, as international criminals. And that's why my defense budget is the largest increase in 20 years. You know, the price of freedom is high, but for me it's never too high because we fight for freedom.”

In sum, while American imperialism has its roots in military spending, financialization, deindustrialization, and globalization, it has been explained to the American people in terms of high moral principle, coupled with a sense of the special mission that American brings to the world. For Puritan America, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush, America is “a city on a hill.” While peace activists need to work against military spending, oppose the speculative economy, demand worker rights at home and abroad, and oppose unbridled “free trade,” they must challenge the ideological justifications that have served to mobilize a troubled and pliant citizenry to support US policy for decades.

 

OPEN BORDERS: A PROGRESSIVE RESPONSE TO THE IMMIGRATION CRISIS (a repost)

Harry Targ

(Taking a modified "world system perspective,' leads us to view human migration as a global process that is intimately connected to the global political economy, particularly the mobility of capital and war (now hybrid), which lead to millions of people fleeing violence and starvation. These are intimately connected to the US and the global political economy. In sum, migration is a foreign policy issue as well as a political economy issue, Vijay Prashad updates the story as follows:  
https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/migration-underdevelopment/)

Why Migration

People migrate from one place to another for a variety of reasons. A good part of that migration has to do with international relations, national economies, and the increasingly globalized economy. Literally millions of people have moved from one geographic space to another in the twenty-first century, in most cases for reasons of physical fear or economic need. Two prominent causes that “push” people to leave their communities and homeland relate to “hybrid wars” and neoliberal globalization.

Hybrid wars refer to the long-term policies of imperial powers to systematically undermine political regimes that pursue policies and goals that challenge their global hegemony. Over long periods of time imperial powers have used force, covert operations, supporting pliant local elites, and funneling money to disrupt local political processes. If targeted countries still reject outside interference the imperial power uses force to overthrow recalcitrant governments. In the 1980s all these tactics were used by the United States to crush revolutionary ferment in Central America. Of course, the US hybrid war strategy has been a staple of United States policy in the region ever since President Franklin Roosevelt declared the policy of “The Good Neighbor.”

 Neoliberalism  refers to the variety of policies that rich capitalist countries and international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization have imposed on debt-ridden poor countries. These policies require poor countries to cut back on public services, deregulate their economies, reduce tariffs that protect their own industries and agriculture, and in other ways insist that poor countries open their economies to foreign investment and trade penetration. The impacts of neoliberalism have been to impose austerity on largely marginalized populations. Their agriculture and industries have been undermined by subsidized agribusinesses from the Global North and global investors. Since the initiation of neoliberal policies in the 1970s gaps between rich and poor nations and rich and poor people within nations have grown all across the world, with a few exceptions such as China.

In sum, peoples everywhere have experienced the creation of repressive regimes and economic policies that have shifted vast majorities from modest survival to deep poverty. (Susan Jonas once wrote that the Guatemalan people lived more secure lives before the arrival of Spanish colonizers in the fifteenth century than ever since). The globalization of the economy, increased violence and repression within countries (largely involving United States interference), increasing income and wealth inequality and poverty, and the rise of repressive regimes everywhere, has led to massive emigration. Some estimates indicate that 37 million people left their home countries (some 45 countries) between 2010 and 2015 for humanitarian reasons.

One of the ironies of world history is that capital in the form of investments, trade, the purchase of natural resources, the globalization of production, and military interventions have been common and necessary features of capitalism since its emergence in the sixteenth century. But, paradoxically, and except for the global slave trade and selected periods of history, the movement of people has been illegal. (Sometimes branding migrants as “illegal” has been a device to cheapen their labor). The idea of national sovereignty has been used to justify categorizing some human migrants as “illegal.” If capital is and has been legal, the movement of people should be legal as well. It makes no sense, nor is it humane, to brand any human beings as “illegal.”

 

The Concept of Open Borders

This sketchy analysis of the “root causes” of emigration suggest the need to oppose imperialism, both in the form of hybrid wars and promotion of neoliberal economic policies. This traditional task of peace and anti-imperialist campaigns is ongoing and needs to continue. And the analyses of the deleterious effects of hybrid wars and neoliberalism should be linked to movements fighting against  cruel and inhumane immigration policies in recipient countries, such as the United States. In addition, drawing on history, law, ethics, and a humane and socialist vision of the universality of humankind, progressives should expand on a conversation raised by some about the concept of “open borders.”

The idea of open borders has not been sufficiently discussed as the immigration crisis in the United States and Europe has unfolded. The core concept, with much room for discussion of implementation, suggests that, as a recently endorsed Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) statement calls for, there should be an “uninhibited transnational free movement of people….and a pathway to citizenship for all non-citizen residents.”  The idea of open borders implies that no human being by virtue of her/his presence in any geographic space can be defined as “illegal” and that the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights apply to everyone, everywhere.

In a 2017 article Aisha Dodwell, Global Justice Now, wrote in defense of open borders (Aisha Dodwell, “7 Reasons Why We should Have Open Borders,”   New Internationalist, November 29, 2017, https://newint.org/blog/2017/11/29/why-open-borders) . Among her arguments are the following:

-Borders are tools to separate the rich and powerful from the poor.

-Borders do not stop efforts to emigrate but exacerbate violence against already victimized people.

-Immigrants are erroneously blamed for declining employment and jobs when, in fact, it is the demonization of immigrants that divides workers from each other.

-Open borders would allow for emigres to return home when the brutal repressive and economic conditions that led them to flee were reduced.

-Open borders would lead to greater employment, increased earnings, rising demand for goods and services, and through income repatriation, more money sent back to families in countries the emigres fled. In short, open borders would be a stimulus for economic growth in both the country of origin and the host country of emigres.

-Open borders would mean the equalization of the rights of people to emigrate; thus avoiding the current policies that allow for immigration of certain populations (such as skilled workers) and not others.

-Historically, open borders have always existed for corporations, banks, the super-rich, tourists and other select populations who are beneficiaries of the global capitalist system.

Earlier Roque Planes, Latino Voices, (“16 Reasons Why Opening Our Borders Makes More Sense Than Militarizing Them,” Huffpost, September 2, 2014, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/open-borders_n_5737722?guccounter ) adds to the list of reasons justifying open borders. Planes quotes an immigration expert who has argued that, with glaring exceptions such as Asians, open borders existed until the 1920s. “‘Legally’ meant something very different then than it does now. At the time, the United States accepted practically everyone who showed up with few restrictions other than the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and a brief health examination. The foreign-born share of the population, 12.9 percent, is lower today than it was during the entire period from 1860 to 1920, according to data published by the Brookings institution.”

Planes posited arguments pertaining to open borders:

-Today capital and goods flow across borders but not always labor.

-Rich people have the privilege of open borders.

-the US immigration system is broken.

-Open borders within the European Union, while increasingly volatile politically, did not lead to the collapse of European economies.

-‘Illegal’ immigration is a direct resultant of US policies. Planes sites overthrowing governments, financing militaries in poor countries, promoting policies that destroy domestic agriculture in poor countries, and, he could have added, the war on drugs.

-Open borders increase the possibility of immigrants returning to their homelands.

-Immigrants, in the main, are not the cause of stagnant wages in the United States. Using anti-immigrant and racist policies divert attention from the primary causes of economic exploitation.

-The broken immigration system has provided huge profits for the prison/industrial complex and large budgets for law enforcement agencies.

As to the last point, Todd Miller, Empire of Borders: The Expansion if the U.S. Border Around the World,  Verso Books, 2019, argues that United States policy is “pushing out the border,” such that allies tighten their own borders to serve the needs of expanding imperial control. In addition, by pressuring other countries to tighten their own border security, the U.S. is expanding its border security apparatus, to include new special forces and expansion of State Department and other agency activities. 

A reviewer of Miller’s book, (Cora Currier, Pushing out the Border: How the U.S. is Waging a Global War on Migration,”  Portside, August 4, 2019, https://portside.org/2019-08-04/pushing-out-border-now-us-waging-global-war-migration) quotes Miller who writes that U.S. Customs and Border Protection “has trained new patrol and homeland security units for Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan borders.” The reviewer points out from Miller’s study that “…the U.S. Department of Homeland Security can be found assisting border projects in the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, India, Poland, Turkey, and Vietnam.” In addition the Border Patrol has offices in Mexico and Canada and a presence in Puerto Rico to oversee the Caribbean. Quoting Miller: “Hundreds of millions in U.S. funds have flowed to Central American borders to turn them into U.S.-style defensible zones.” And soldiers from around the world are flown to the U.S. southwest to gain experience in border control. Clearly, Miller is describing a growing military/corporate/immigration complex. The ideological glue justifying this massive enterprise are claims about national sovereignty and presumed racist threats that people fleeing repression and starvation represent.

What To Do?

Along with the panoply of proposals for immigration reform, campaigns to combat racism, and the movements to provide sanctuary to desperate migrant peoples, progressives need to look at the history/ theory/ and practice of anti-immigrant policies. A central conclusion that needs to be raised is to call and work for open borders as suggested by the DSA resolution on open borders.

In sum central elements of a truly radical and humane response to the immigration crisis in the United States and the world should include:

-Increased efforts to challenge imperialism everywhere in both its political/military dimensions and its intrusive neoliberal economic policies

-Rejection of the idea that people can be deemed “illegal.”

-Mobilizing around the concept of opening borders to people fleeing repression and economic deprivation, similar to the U.S immigration policies of the early part of the twentieth century.

-Using the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a guide to law and practice all across the globe.

-Revitalizing programs of humanitarian assistance on a global basis including revisiting the possible value of instituting economic regulations of global capitalism that were once proposed in the United Nations, referred to as “The   New International Economic Order.”

-Work to dismantle the military/corporate/immigration complex.

While these larger demands will be difficult to achieve, working for them and articulating a vision of the world where human beings are not deemed illegal will add clarity to the reasons behind more modest demands for reform.

 

 

 

PURDUE ADMINISTRATION CLAIMS TO SUPPORT CIVICS EDUCATION

 Originally posted THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 2019

Harry Targ

“Trustee Malcolm DeKryger compared time at Purdue to an eye of a hurricane, where students were focused on the rigors of getting a degree.

‘There’s a lot of stuff going on in our country and our civics going around us,’ DeKryger said. ‘But when you’re in the eye, it’s pretty quiet. … I guess that’s why I personally agree with that idea that we’ve got to make sure there is that touchpoint out there, so when you do go out into the world, you’re prepared.’”  (quoted in Dave Bangert, “Purdue Trustees, Mitch Daniels Reiterate Call for Civics Test Get A Diploma,” Lafayette Journal and Courier, June 18, 2019.

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. A more desirable form of information and analysis is one that is diverse, sensitive to ones own past and present, and shows respect to narratives and experiences of other peoples and nations. This kind of “civics” education is a 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 recently endorsed the idea and implicitly castigated faculty for not moving expeditiously to establish a civics certification process for graduating seniors. But faculty have 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 can be 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,” describes a survey it sponsored in 2015 that demonstrates that college graduates and the public in general lack 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 has 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 takes aim at community service programs, which it asserts “…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 has motivated the recommendation of President Daniels, himself an award recipient from ACTA) and the Purdue Board of Trustees regards as civics education is a narrative that celebrates the American experience. These sources presume that specific facts about the Constitution and the Founding Fathers and basic truisms about the United States as a “melting pot” constitute 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. For example, a real civics education might address questions such as:

-What is democracy? Is it just about voting or does it also include the distribution of society’s resources?
-What is power? Who has power in the United States political system? How did they get it? Is the distribution of power and influence in the United States democratic?
-How are people elected to public office? What kind of resources do they need to run for public office? What kind of people are likely to be elected to public office such as relating to their class, race , gender, nationality, and occupations?
-How do policies get introduced, discussed, debated, and passed? Who influences the policymaking process? What role do powerful interest groups play in the policy process?
-What role do political parties play in the electoral and policy process?
-In the United States have there been population groups who have not been the beneficiaries of the political system? Who are they? Why have they not enjoyed the benefits of the political system? What is gerrymandering?

To answer these questions requires that students take a course or more that addresses these issues, perhaps in Departments of Political Science and/or History. For sure, if students lack civics literacy (and that is an empirical question) it cannot be achieved by answers to a series of short answer questions but thorough study, recognizing that answers to the questions are complicated with differing possible answers. And addressing these questions in multiple ways would constitute a real civics education.

CHALLENGING IDEOLOGICAL HEGEMONY: THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION

Dear Colleagues, Over coffee this morning I found this USA article published in the Lafayette Journal and Courier. My two immediate reactions included first pride in being a former colleague of Professor Brown and second thinking that sharing our knowledge among broader publics, with syllabi being a great example, is wonderful way in which those of us in higher education can be engaged in civic literacy. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/05/20/post-george-floyd-public-syllabi-highlight-work-scholars-of-color/5060681001/ ********************************************* 

Friends, Life is contradictory. Federal programs, in my view to the good, wish to encourage anti-racism education. The Purdue Board of Trustees supports some kind of “civics literacy” that looks like a sanitized rendition of the US political system, probably privileging narratives of US exceptionalism. And the Indiana Attorney General and AGs from other states are filing suits against civics education. As our own Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “So it goes.” https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/ag-todd-rokita-sends-letter-condemning-federal-anti-racism-education-efforts ******************************************** 

All this reminded me of elements of “ideological hegemony,” both media and educational systems, that occupied my thoughts some years ago. I suspect these old examples are still relevant today.

From Diary of a Heartland Radical Thursday May 19, 2011 

MORE ON IDEOLOGICAL HEGEMONY: THE EDUCATION SYSTEM 

 I have been thinking a lot about “ideological hegemony;” how and why we think about the political world in the ways we do. I do so not to add another layer of theory to an already complex set of arguments about economics and politics. Nor am I interested in immobilizing political activists. Rather, I think progressives need to think about how to challenge the ideas that most of us are supposed to accept and believe. 

 Of course, the primary public institutions that transmit ideas and ways of thinking to people, from the start to the end of their educational careers, are schools. Our friends on the Right know how important it is to shape schools at all levels. Early in this century I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh say on one of his radio programs that “the only institutions we do not yet control are the schools” With this as a goal, just the other day we read stories about Koch brothers’ money financing faculty positions at Florida State University in economics (presumably Marxist or structural economists need not apply). 

Just a week earlier a story broke about rightwing efforts to cut and splice public recordings of lectures in a labor studies class at the University of Missouri to leave the impression that the instructors are advocates for labor violence. Using the methods of vilification and distortions that worked successfully against green jobs advocate Van Jones, community action group ACORN, and Shirley Sherrod, an African American employee of the Department of Agriculture, attacks on education are growing. The use of more sophisticated technologies than in the days of McCarthy or David Horowitz’s print crusades against “dangerous professors” are becoming common.

 In addition to smear campaigns and using money to shape hiring practices at universities, access to varieties of knowledge remains very much constrained by institutional and political pressures, from kindergarten through high school and college. For example, we can talk about two subject areas, militarism and economic orthodoxy. Both subjects were prominently featured at an elementary school, Mayflower Mill Elementary School in Lafayette, Indiana. As the local newspaper, the Journal & Courier reported approvingly on May 12, 2011: “When Mayflower Mill Elementary students were told they would be able to hear the approaching helicopter that would land behind the school before they saw it, their ears perked up.” Although the noise they first heard was only a delivery truck, soon a Bell UH-1H Huey helicopter which was used in Vietnam, and piloted by a group of veterans, arrived. The pilots were part of an organization committed to maintaining a positive public image of the helicopter. The helicopter and its veteran pilots spent the day at the elementary school, called by the school “Operation American Pride,” “After Wednesday’s landing, students broke into groups…..including lessons on flag etiquette and the life of the soldier.” Kids got to go in the helicopter, sit behind a Humvee, and a military truck. The whole day was a celebration of the military, military values, super-patriotism. One student referred to experiencing the helicopter as “cool” and “exhilarating.” 

Organizing the day’s activities took combined efforts of members of military families, community donations, support from the Army National Guard and members of Purdue University’s ROTC. Of course, the activities required the full cooperation of teachers, the principal, and members of the school board. I wonder what would have happened if a parent or brave teacher had proposed that “Operation American Pride” include an historical discussion of the millions of Vietnamese people who died in the U.S. war in that country; or perhaps, if course material include reference to the 57,000 American soldiers who died in the war or the lingering effects of Agent Orange on subsequent generations of Vietnamese and U.S. veterans. 

In addition the J & C reported on May 16, that fourth and fifth graders at the same school recently completed a class project simulating commerce and manufacturing. Students designed and sold products to their school mates (and the money earned went to recognized charities such as the American Heart Association and the local fire department). Kids produced “slime,” decorated pencils, and chocolate coated plastic spoons. Students designed their products, shopped for supplies, and produced and sold them. The teacher, it was reported, has done a similar project every year because she said about students that “they need to understand finance.” 

The newspaper reported that the project was supported by long-time economics education lobbyist and think tank, the Indiana Center for Economic Education. An ICEE spokesperson, who offered a program that the teacher had taken years ago, spoke about the lessons kids learned: “The basics of operating their own business, the fact you’ve got to produce a product customers want and counter the cost of resources you need.” The spokesperson claimed the exercises such as at Mayflower Mill highlight real issues which sometimes get lost in teaching more dominant subjects. I wonder if students learned anything about the historic role of organized labor in the state, high unemployment in Indiana, growing economic inequality, the forty year deindustrialization of the state economy, and the differences in economic opportunity between African Americans, other minorities, and whites, and between men and women. 

Almost accidentally, I accessed stories about political struggles from 2004 until today at my old high school, Senn High School, in Chicago. It seems that the high school which over forty years ago was white and middle class was now populated by young people from working class and poor African American, Latino, and immigrant families. By the new century it was experiencing problems in reference to academics and social order. 

The authorities, the City alderwoman, the head of the Chicago Public Schools, Arne Duncan, Mayor Daley, and the military came up with a “great” idea. They created in 2005, over the objections of students, teachers, and community activists, the Hyman Rickover Naval Academy which occupies a large physical space in the high school and has enrolled at least 25 per cent of the student population. Meanwhile programs to teach English as a second language and advanced placement courses for college preparation were reduced. The teaching staff in the non-military portion of Senn High School was cut by 33 per cent. CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) continues to challenge the militarization of the Chicago school system. In our communities we need to work in solidarity with those immediately involved in educational institutions. 

Where issues of militarism and economic orthodoxy shape school curricula our voices need to be heard. Our political agenda, in sum, needs to address as best our resources allow what we learn, how we learn it, and who controls the institutions that shape our thinking and the thinking of young people.

GANNETT CHAIN OWNS 250 NEWSPAPERS (INCLUDING THE JOURNAL AND COURIER) AND SHAPES POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Harry Targ

The Journal and Courier serves Lafayette and West Lafayette and all of Tippecanoe County in the state of Indiana. This onetime locally owned newspaper with roots going back 100 years was purchased by the Gannett newspaper empire which was further consolidated with a media conglomerate, New Media Investment Group, a holding company, in 2019. One source reported that this most recent consolidation would create a mega-corporation that owns more than 250 daily newspapers and hundreds of weekly  and community newspapers.

https://www.inquirer.com/business/gannett-new-media-newspapers-local-philadelphia-20190805.html

I enclose below a Letter to the Editor I sent to the digital version of the Journal and Courier in April. As expected, I received no response beyond the initial “thank you” for submitting a letter. Today, May 16, 2021, one of Indiana’s two Trump supporting US Senators, Mike Braun had an “opinion piece” prominently published on page two of the Sunday edition of the paper. Braun, in this guest column, opposes any federal legislation that would regulate police conduct. He implies that the Biden Administration is anti-police, as opposed to the prior administration. In the body of the column Braun refers to last summer’s “riots,” and his own narrow reading of the “defund the police” slogan.

This “guest opinion” is at least labeled such. Prior editorials, such as the one referred to below, have not been so labeled. However, the newspaper no longer prints guest columns or letters to the editor, longtime staples of the old newspaper. And as indicated the Letter to the Editor below was not published in the digital edition.

The more important story than this letter is that, to the extent people still read newspapers, a sizeable portion of newspaper consumers are reading from publications that are owned by a handful of media conglomerates. At this point such conglomerates have little or no journalistic background and have invested in newspapers for purposes of making huge profits from their shift to advertising circulars or selling newspaper assets. As Margaret Sullivan, media critic from the Washington Post, has pointed out, 2,000 local newspapers have been shut down and thousands of reporters have lost their jobs since 2004.

https://lithub.com/margaret-sullivan-on-the-epidemic-of-news-deserts-and-ghost-papers/

https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/07/margaret-sullivan-has-written-a-brisk-and-useful-guide-to-the-horrifying-decline-of-local-news/

It is time for progressives to give some thought to the role of media in defending the flow of ideas and information, vital to the maintenance of democracy. Attention should still be given to print media, television, and radio along with social media. The concept of “public trust,” should be reintroduced into policy debates, and conversations must be held about reviving regulations concerning media monopolies. In addition, ideas should be generated about ways for governments to support and incentivize the maintenance of local media. Local media are public goods, much like roads, bridges, schools, and libraries. A vibrant democracy cannot rely on the good will and expertise of small numbers of corporations with their own pecuniary interests to provide information and knowledge.

*********************************************

Dear Editor,

I have been a Journal and Courier subscriber for over fifty years. I did not always agree with their coverage and interpretation of the news. I surely did not agree with many of their editorials or guest columns. But they always provided useful information to the community, had a livelyletters to the editor page, and often guest columns from a variety of points of view. But all that has changed. Stories are largely about crimes, taken from police blotters, and are racist in tone. Further they eliminated letters to the editor and guest columns. And they fill up the paper with stories grafted from other Gannett papers, obituaries in huge type, and full page ads for roof repairs and new shower installations.

Today they posted in the first section an anti-union story, really an editorial comment, as news. It is an opinion piece endorsing Governor Holcomb's support of legislation allowing teachers to more easily and frequently opt out of their union. Again, as an opinion piece it is legitimate, but it is not news. I think now is the time for community members to say to the Journal and Courier: "Enough is Enough." The paper has lost all of its journalistic integrity and does not serve the community any longer. The monopolization of the media, downsizing newspapers, eliminating community input is occurring all around the country. For those who are concerned about the declining awareness of the citizenry about what is happening to them, put some of the blame on the Gannett's and Journal and Couriers of this new world order.

April 18, 2021

 

 

ON DEMOCRACY: “CAN WE TALK”

Harry Targ 

(With the growing threats to democracy across the United States and conservative advocacy of "civics literacy" educational programs I thought it would be appropriate to repost an essay that appeared in The Rag Blog, October 24, 2014).

Through her decades of entertaining on stage and screen, [Joan] Rivers developed numerous classic bits and catchphrases, but three small words stand above the rest: "Can we talk?" (Kelli Bender @kbendernyc, 09/04/2014, also at People.com)

I never liked comedienne Joan Rivers who died recently. But her famous one-line introduction to talk show interviewers and stand-up performances is a powerful reminder that certain subjects might be dangerous to discuss in polite company. Whether the United States political system is a democratic one is such a subject.

Everything we Americans have learned since infancy suggests that the United States is a democracy. In fact, the United States political system, we are told repeatedly, is the gold standard for the world. Distinguished data source Freedom House claims that freedom can only exist in democratic political systems. Democratic systems are those in which governments are accountable, the rule of law exists, and associations and speech are guaranteed to all. Polity IV, another data-based source of information about governments, has a more refined definition of democracy: procedures by which citizens can express their preferences about leaders and policies and there exists both constraints on executive power and guarantees of civil liberties.

University of Iowa Political Science Professor William M. Reisinger prepared a chart summarizing the key components of democracy reflected in the writings of political philosophers (such as Aristotle), politicians (John C. Calhoun), skeptics (H. L. Mencken), and a variety of contemporary political scientists. He appends to his chart 25 quotations that illustrate variations in the understanding of the concept “democracy.” Reisinger identifies five emphases in most writings on the subject.

“1)it is a dangerous form of government; 2)it includes genuine competition for power; 3)it permits mass participation on a legally equal footing; 4)it provides civil and other liberties that restrict the sphere of state power within the society; or 5)it promotes widespread deliberation about how to make and enforce policy so as to promote the common good” (William M. Reisinger, “Selected Definitions of Democracy,” uiowa.edu).

Reflecting on these five elements of democracy might lead to a more sober understanding of the United States political system than what most people learned in school (from kindergarten through graduate programs in political science). Particularly looking at Reisinger’s last four features might suggest that the United States does not meet broadly endorsed criteria for a democracy.

Does the political system afford “genuine competition for power?” The answer is no for a variety of reasons. Campaigns for office from local through federal positions require enormous amounts of money. Supreme Court decisions have enshrined the right of the wealthy (often the one percent) to pour unlimited financial resources into elections. Koch Brothers affiliates have even invested in local school board elections to influence school curricula and give support to the privatization of education.

Funding of elections is reinforced by rules and regulations limiting political participation to two parties. Also states, from Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan to the South and Southwest, have imposed rulings making it harder for citizens to vote. Some voter suppression laws, sometimes overturned by courts because of their egregious violation of constitutional principles, have survived serious challenges (such as the Supreme Court decision to allow the Texas disenfranchisement of an estimated 600,000 minority voters) at least for the next election. In the end money, institutionalized procedures, state laws, and judicial decisions have undermined the possibility of competition for political power.

Everything that has been said above limits equal and mass participation in politics. Money, power, institutions, and media propaganda conspire to limit political participation and the entire weight of the political system works to impair workers, minorities, young people, and the elderly. In the 1970s, Political Scientist Samuel Huntington wrote a paper for the then influential foreign policy organization, The Trilateral Commission, warning of the “danger of democracy.” The danger he identified all across the globe was the “excess of democracy.” In other words, in the 1970s, (and one would only surmise the condition is worse today) too much participation in politics would challenge the status quo and stability.

Reisinger pointed out that some definitions of democratic states (on his chart six of 25 entries) highlight “civil and other liberties that restrict the sphere of state power within the society.” There is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that local police have garnered vastly increased power to arrest, charge, kill, and incarcerate more citizens on a per capital basis than most countries in the world. The most overrepresented targets of the expanding police state are young, African/American males but the class character of the criminal justice system has been prevalent as well. In addition federal government surveillance, criminal conduct by the National Security Agency, and long-standing practices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to undermine and crush dissent have been significant features of the historical landscape.

Finally, Reisinger has found some references in discussions of democracy to “deliberation” on public policy to “promote the common good.” Less than ten media conglomerates control most of the information consumed by the citizenry and think tanks generating “expert” analyses are bought and paid for by corporations, government agencies, billionaires, and political parties.

Two recent stories have been ignored in the mainstream media. First, the German government has decided to provide free college education to all its citizens (and thus eliminating crippling student debt). This is a policy that should warrant discussion. 

Second, Cuba has transported a delegation of 160 Cuban health care professionals to Sierra Leone and expects to provide another 260 for Liberia. The first delegation was sent before President Obama announced a U.S. program of medical aid to West Africa. It could be that if Americans were aware of the special training received by medical personnel in Cuba, particularly in Third World settings, they might suggest that United States and Cuban collaboration would increase the effectiveness of ending the threat of a spreading Ebola epidemic in Africa. These are just two policies worthy of conversation in the United States. (To its credit the New York Times on its opinion page on October 20, 2014 published an editorial entitled “Cuba’s Impressive Role on Ebola”).

In sum, the Joan Rivers one-liner is critical now. We need to talk about the reality that the United States is not a democracy. And as a few commentators have pointed out, democracy is dangerous. It is dangerous because the people will be able to participate in the decisions that affect their lives; class, race, and gender will not exclude participation in politics; and the whole reason for democratic institutions is to “promote the common good.” As Pennock put it the ideal democracy is one characterized by:

“Government by the people, where liberty, equality and fraternity are secured to the greatest possible degree and in which human capacities are developed to the utmost, by means including free and full discussion of common problems and interests.” (Roland J. Pennock, Democratic Political Theory, Princeton Press, 1979, 7).

To be clear the United States is not a democracy. Progressives who believe it fool themselves at the peril of the country. BUT, rather than disengagement, they should struggle all the harder “inside and outside” conventional political processes to achieve it. And struggles for equality, justice, and a sustainable environment are also struggles for democracy.