The echo chamber of the ivory tower

Last week, I made a passing reference to the Modern Lanugage Association's annual convention, a gathering of humanities profs which happens each year between Christmas and New Year's. The site of this year's fun-filled extravaganza was Washington, DC, and eyewitness reports of what went on there are starting to trickle in.

Here's one:

Last Thursday evening’s “Cash Bar Arranged by the Marxist Literary Group” was a dreary-looking gathering. I stopped by so I could say I’d been to a Marxist cash bar, but also to see what our homegrown Leftists are up to, 16 years after the spectacular collapse of Marxist theory on the world stage. (It turned out there was no nonsense about “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need” at the Marxist cash bar—soft drinks were $4 each, regardless of economic class or ability to pay.)

And:

One member of the audience stood up to share her discouragement since the fall of Soviet communism: She now finds herself wondering whether communist or socialist worlds are really possible. Professor Bennett did his best to cheer her up by pointing out that a Radical Caucus panel is planned for next year’s MLA convention with the title “Other Worlds Are Possible.” I wouldn’t count on any of these folks’ coming to terms with the world we’re actually living in, between now and then.

Here's another:

The panel began with a talk by a youngish assistant professor from Kingsborough Community College. She announced that she'd "adopted an antiwar curriculum" for her freshman English class, then recounted how she'd designed her syllabus around readings meant to expose the lies and treachery of the Bush administration. Though she couldn't be sure how many minds she'd actually changed, she added, with a trace of pride, that she "might have helped to stop some of my students from joining the military."

Next up was another young-looking (or am I just getting old?) professor from the University of Cincinnati who bragged that she'd done graduate research on the expansion of American imperialism and therefore understood full well that the prisoner-abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib "exists within a continuum of racial violence" perpetrated by the U.S.. She had organized an entire English course around a close linguistic analysis of the U.S. Patriot Act. She conceded that her students had struggled with the legalistic text throughout the semester, but in the end she felt confident that several students who'd favored the legislation at the start had had their consciousness raised by the experience.

She was followed to the podium by a professor of women's studies, also rather young, from Penn State University who passed around a sheet of cherry-picked quotations by conservative commentators on the leftist bias in academia. As she read them out loud, without analysis, the response from the audience alternated between horrified gasps and loud snickering. Afterwards, she called the Academic Bill of Rights an "assault on critical thinking" and decried "the political tyranny and proto-fascism of the government."

Once the panelists had said their piece, the floor was opened for questions and comments from the audience. I was the first person the moderator called on, and I directed my question to the first speaker, the assistant professor from Kingsborough Community College. I asked her whether she'd have a problem if a colleague of hers suddenly decided to adopt a pro-war curriculum, and whether, more broadly, she'd have a problem hiring a new teacher who seemed likely to take such an approach.

She replied that she did not currently serve on hiring committees, so she had no control over who joined the faculty at KCC . . . but she would indeed have a major problem if a colleague of hers were to adopt a pro-war curriculum.

She left it at that.

Someone then asked a question about Derrida, whom one of the panelists had faulted for his lack of commitment to radical causes, and I thought, for a moment, my point would be lost. Apparently, however, the KCC prof's response did not sit well with several members of the audience — who felt compelled to answer me themselves. An older man was the next person called on; he turned in my direction and said that he'd served on many hiring committees and that he would never hire a teacher who seemed likely to adopt a pro-war curriculum . . . for the same reason he wouldn't hire a teacher who seemed likely to espouse creationism or intelligent design. The issue isn't political, he explained. It's that the theory is simply wrong. A pro-war curriculum would, by necessity, be rooted in falsehoods and false logic. The classroom, he insisted, is a place for truth.

The next comment was also addressed to me, by a young man sitting in the back. He said that, in theory, he would not be opposed to hiring a teacher who supported the war in Iraq . . . but that situation was unlikely to come up because people who teach in the humanities are trained in critical thinking, and no one who thinks critically could support the war in Iraq.

Several audience members nodded vigorously. Their reactions indicated that the matter was now settled.

I smiled and sank back in my chair; I'd gotten my laugh.

Doesn't it sound like arts and social science faculties are more interested in churning out little far-left ideologues rather than really educating students? What the Patriot Act has to do with the study of literature, poetry and drama escapes me. How this curriculum prepares students to participate in the modern economy is also unclear. Learning how to think critically is one thing, but isn't it the job of the academy to present all options of an argument, deconstruct and analyse them all and then allow the student to pick which one he or she thinks is the most truthful instead of spoonfeeding them Chomskyite pap while not even allowing the other side of the issue to be acknowledged except to sneer at it?