Harry Targ
(Some
of the text below appeared in Jacobin and Monthly Review Online, and
various essays in Diary of a Heartland Radical).
Students with Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation (GTFF)
holding a sign for the protest. (Saj Sundaram/Emerald). University od Oregon
“Wasn’t
That a Time” (a song by the Weavers and Pete Seeger)
https://youtu.be/y096F_jFy3c?si=b9GEmAaClMjveZzk
Ellen
Schrecker documented the enormous impact that the red scare of the 1940s and
1950s had on higher education in her book, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and
the Universities (1988). She
interviewed academic victims of McCarthyite attacks on faculty at prestigious
universities. They were subpoenaed to testify before state legislative or
Congressional committees about their former political affiliations and
associations. As was the requirements of the times, those ordered to
testify could not just admit to their own political activities but were
required to give witness against others who they may have known.
https://academeblog.org/2021/09/12/yes-these-bills-are-the-new-mccarthyism/
Some victims were former members of the Communist Party,
others were signatories to petitions supporting the Spanish loyalists during
their civil war, and still others had supported banning atomic weapons.
The most troubling element of the red scare story was the fact that university
administrations refused to defend those of their faculty attacked and in fact,
as she reported, some university officials demanded that their faculty
cooperate with the investigatory committees. Her subjects reported that
they received little or no support from administrators because officials wished
to protect their universities from funding reductions.
Since
the collapse of the cold war international system, some scholars began to
examine other aspects of the anti-communist hysteria as it related to the
academy. Fones-Wolf[1] and others addressed the multiplicity of ways
in which funding priorities, rightwing assaults, official pronouncements from
government officials, lobbying efforts by big business groups, and shifting
electoral political currents affected and shaped the content of academic programs.
For
example, disciplines can be seen as reflecting dominant “paradigms” which
include assumptions about what the subject entails, what aspects of the subject
deserve study, what theories are most appropriate for understanding the subject
of the field, and what methods should be used to study subjects in the
field. All the social sciences and humanities privileged paradigms that
did not challenge ongoing U.S. cold war assumptions about the world.
In
each case, dominant paradigms of the 1950s and beyond constituted a rejection
of 1930s and 1940s thinking, which was shaped by the labor and other struggles
of the Depression era. For example, literature shifted from privileging
proletarian novels to the “new criticism,” separating “the text” from
historical contexts. History shifted from a model of historical change
that highlighted conflict to one that emphasized consensus-building.
Sociology shifted from class struggle/stratification models of society to
“structural functional” approaches. Political science shifted from
“elitism” and institutional approaches to emphasizing “pluralism,” in political
processes. For political science, every citizen in a “democracy,” it was
said, could somehow participate in political decision-making.
In
other words, the military-industrial-academic complex shaped personnel
recruitment and retention and the
substance of research and teaching. Some new disciplines, such as Soviet
studies, were funded and rewarded at selected universities and the scholars
trained at these institutions then secured jobs elsewhere. Thus an
anti-communist lens on the world was propagated. Disciplines with more
ready access to research dollars — from engineering to psychology — defined
their research agendas to comport with government and corporate needs.
In
response to the university in the “permanent military economy,” students in the
1960s began to demand new scholarship and education. Opposition to the
Vietnam War particularly stimulated demands on professors to rethink the
historical character and motivation of United States foreign policy.
William Appleman Williams and his students, the so-called revisionists,
articulated a view that the United States practiced imperialism ever since it
became an industrial power. Classrooms where international relations and
foreign policy were taught became “contested terrain” for argumentation and
debate between the older and more benign view of the U.S. role in the world and
the view of the U.S. as imperial power. Dependency and world system
theories gained prominence.
The
contestations spread. Students demanded more diverse and complicated
analyses of race and racism in America, patriarchy and sexism in gender
relations, and working-class history. Every discipline and every dominant
paradigm was subjected to challenge. The challenges were also reflected
in radical caucuses in professional associations and even in some of the more
upright (and “uptight”) signature professional journals. As a result
there was a diminution of red scares in higher education, for a time.
The
spirit of ideological struggle in the academy diminished after the Vietnam War
and especially after Ronald Reagan became president. Reagan brought back
militant cold war policies, radically increased military expenditures, declared
Vietnam a “noble cause,” and developed a sustained campaign to crush dissent
and reduce the strength of the labor movement. The climate on campus to
some degree returned to the 1950s.
However,
a whole generation of 60s-trained academics were now tenured faculty at
universities around the country. They had institutionalized programs in
African American Studies, Women’s Studies, Peace Studies, and Middle East
Studies. Critical theorists populated education schools, American Studies
programs, and other pockets of the university. These faculty continued
the debate with keepers of dominant paradigms, created interdisciplinary
programs, and developed programs shaped by key social issues such as racism,
class exploitation, gender discrimination, and war.
A New
Round of McCarthyism
But by
the 1990s, a new red scare was surfacing. Some conservative academics and
their constituencies talked about declining standards brought by the new
programs. Others criticized what they regarded as an insufficiently rosy
view of United States history. They claimed that the United States was
being unfairly condemned for being complicit, for example, in a holocaust
against Native Americans or because slavery and racism were central to the
history of the country. They formed academic associations and interest
groups to defend against critical scholarship.
Then
David Horowitz came along. Overseeing a multi-million-dollar foundation
funded by rightwing groups, Horowitz launched a campaign to purify academia of
those who had records of teaching, research, and publication that he saw as
unduly critical of the United States, ruling political or economic elites, or
the global political economy. He opposed those scholar-activists who
participated in political movements or in any way connecting their professional
life with their political lives. And he opposed those academics who
participated in academic programs that were interdisciplinary, problem-focused,
and not tied to traditional fields of study.
Horowitz
published a book in 2006, The Professors: The 101 Most
Dangerous Academics in America (2006), in
which he presented distorted profiles of illustrative faculty whom he believed
had violated academic standards because of a variety of transgressions.
Most of those identified either engaged in political activity and/or
participated in interdisciplinary scholarly programs that he found offensive: again
Middle East Studies, Women’s Studies, African-American Studies, American
Studies, and Peace Studies.
In
conjunction with the book and similar assaults on those he disagreed with on
his electronic news magazine, Horowitz encouraged right-wing students to
challenge the legitimacy of these professors on college campuses and tried to
get conservative student groups to get state legislatures to endorse so-called
“student bill-of-rights legislation.” Such legislation would have established
oversight by state legislatures over colleges and universities, especially
their hiring practices.
In addition,
Lynn Cheney, the former vice-president’s wife, and former Senator Joe
Lieberman, senator from Connecticut, helped create an organization called the
American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). As Giroux summarized it,
“. . ACTA actively supports policing classroom knowledge, monitoring curricula,
and limiting the autonomy of teachers and students as part of its larger
assault on academic freedom”.[2]
Horowitz,
ACTA, and others who attacked the university targeted visible academics for
scrutiny and persecution. Ward Churchill, a provocative professor
of Ethnic Studies, at the University of Colorado, was fired after a
university committee was created to review his scholarship because of
controversial remarks he made off campus. Norman Finkelstein, a DePaul
University political scientist who had written several books critical of
interpreters of Israeli history and foreign policy, was denied tenure after a
coordinated attack from outside his university led by Harvard Law Professor
Alan Dershowitz. Distinguished political scientists John Mearsheimer and
Stephen Walt were the subject of vitriol and false charges of antisemitism
because they published a long essay and book analyzing the “Israeli lobby.”
This
red scare against higher education of the last twenty years had failures and
successes. Horowitz had a visible
presence on national cable television and radio, particular on Fox News
He used it to attack some of the 101 dangerous professors. However, his
supporters were not able to get any of their legislative proposals
accepted. Also, most university administrators defended their faculty
from the crude assaults from Horowitz and his followers. In addition,
many of the 101 and others like them stepped up their public defenses of their
scholarship and teaching. In addition, it was unusual then for any
students to level attacks against targeted professors. If anything, they
defended the right of professors to be critical analysts in their subject areas
in the classroom.
But,
the new red scare reinforced and legitimized the dominant paradigms in various
academic disciples and created an environment of intellectual caution in the
academy. While the impacts were immeasurable, younger faculty could not
help but be intimidated by the public attacks on their senior colleagues.
The system of tenure and promotion in most institutions remained vulnerable to
public pressures, individual reviewer bias, and honest disagreements among
faculty about whether published work and teaching is worthy of promotion and
tenure. Therefore, just as the administrators and faculty of the 1950s
felt intimidated by outside assault on their institutions, those passing
judgment on faculty might saw the
necessity of caution in hiring and retaining faculty whose perspectives were
new, different, radical, and engaged.
Intellectuals,
the Critical Organic Discourse Model, and Higher Education
The red
scares of the past rekindled debate concerning the role of higher education and
faculty as to research, teaching, and activism. Those propagating the red
scare insisted that education should focus on celebrating American society,
history, and institutions. Anything less, to them, constituted bias and a
violation of the principles of academic freedom. In addition, educators,
it was argued, should not engage in political activism. Being an academic
and being a citizen must remain separate.
While
ACTA and others complained about the negativity of those reflecting on United
States history, more sophisticated red scare spokespersons, including Horowitz
himself, emphasized one or another of two different approaches to the
academy. Some argued that the professorate must be “fair and balanced” in their academic work.
That is, they should in the classroom present all points of view, indicating
favoritism to none. Presumably their research and writing should strive
for this balance as well. Some asked whether portraits of th inquisition or 20th
century fascism necessitated telling “both sides of the story”).
Parallel
to the fair and balanced position was the argument that teachers and
researchers should be objective, that is,
apolitical, and indifferent to the merits of competing sides to a conflict
being studied. The objectivity standard required that the professor
abstain, in his/her public role from participation in society. (It should
be noted that some targets of the red scare attacks responded by claiming they were
fair and balanced and objective, and occasionally their students have defended
them on these grounds as well). In fact, when Horowitz was asked on
national television if he had proof that his victims had not been fair and
balanced and objective in the classroom, he was been forced to admit that he had
no way of knowing since he and his researchers had not had occasion to observe
the professors in question.
While
being fair, balanced, and objective are worthy goals, they stand in
contradiction to the history of the university alluded to throughout this
paper. What I call the critical and organic discourse
model is a more appropriate standard of scholarship, teaching,
and engagement for these critical times. It has several dimensions:
speaking truth to power; critically reflecting on all institutions and
processes in society, privileging unpopular ideas, and applying those ideas in
social settings where they may be helpful to bring about change.
The
last point, inspired by Gramsci’s idea of the “organic intellectual” and the
discussion by Jacoby and others about the role of the “public intellectual,”
suggest that knowledge in the end comes from and should be used in support of
those in society who have been disenfranchised politically, economically, and
culturally. As Gramsci put it, “The mode of being of the new intellectual
can no longer consist in eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary mover of
feelings and passions, but in active participation in practical life, as
constructor, organizer, ‘permanent persuader,’ and not just a simple orator. .
.” [3].
Gramsci’s “organic intellectual” is the intellectual who is connected to
various social groups or movements and acts in concert with and stimulates the
activities of such groups. The organic intellectual in class society is
linked to the project for historical change of the working class.
Historically the university has not served their needs, and those who embrace
this model of teaching, research, and engagement should stand with the
disenfranchised, such as the working class.
The
New Context
However, since the rise of candidate and President
Trump and his MAGA allies, the pervasive influence of the Koch Foundation and
its various instrumentalities such as the State Policy Networks and ACTA, and
US escalated military involvement in Ukraine and support for Israeli violence
in the Middle East, a new “red scare” has emerged. Politicians of both
political parties lave launched in Congress and state legislatures attacks on
what was known as academic freedom.
The Purdue Exponent story linked above refers
to just one effort of politicians and administrators to shape and constrain what goes on in the classroom.
Faculty are being subjected to regular reviews about the content of their curricula;
their syllabi are subject to scrutiny by those
who may not be familiar with the subject matter; students are encouraged to
report any discomfort they may feel in a class; and certain stances inside the
classroom or out by faculty who criticize United States history, polices or
practices can be deemed supportive of
authoritarianism or “antisemitism”.
In short, the university as a place where students are
exposed to the breathe of ideas from the past, debate new ideas, and are
encouraged to develop their own identities and perspectives on the world based
upon their educational experiences is being replaced with a site for
indoctrination to whatever political or economic dogma is being promoted at the
current time. This is a very dangerous time for the survival of higher
education.
[1] Ellen
Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and
Liberalism, 1945-60, University of Illinois Press, 1994.
[2] Henry Giroux, The University
in Chains, Paradigm, 2007, 16).
[3] Antonio
Gramsci, Selections From the Prison Notebooks, International Publishers,10.
