Take Back the Ivory Tower

[n2doc]

By Alice Dreger


Before we reach the point where we all have to check with our Diversity and Inclusion officers to find out which thoughts we are allowed to think, before we must clear with the guards of university-branding everything we want to say, before every type of scholarship that cannot obtain external funding is abandoned, before tenure is completely replaced with tenuousness, and before the icecaps melt away into the sea, let’s see if we can come to some agreement about taking back the Ivory Tower.

Before I describe the sorry state "we" are in and call "us" to arms, I should disclose that I currently live outside the Ivory Tower. This situation is due primarily to an instance of fellatio to be described later. (Eyes up here.) Without a university affiliation affixed to my name, you may think of me as an outsider who has no right to weigh in on all this. But, given my experiences as a scholar who has been subject to disinvitation attempts by the left, purchasing attempts by the right, and outright censorship by my dean, I think I do. Besides, being an academic is largely a state of mind. Which is kind of the point of this essay. And also something that will be confirmed by thousands of adjuncts who can’t make rent.

Rather than spending time on one campus, I now spend time moving from one campus to another, engaging faculty, students, and administrators in the cause of academic freedom. This is partly because of what’s happened to me personally, but also because I believe our democracy is going to fail if we do not have a healthy academia, one that has at its core a faculty unafraid.


Democracy depends on having a public capable of thinking, not merely being. And the academy is the last organized place we have to teach millions of adults to doubt authority, to look things up, to weigh ideas and evidence, to argue in a nonviolent fashion, to do the hard work of changing their own minds. This is not work the government or religious institutions or the media is going to do. Democracy depends on a large public capable of at least occasionally being moved by principle and mind, not only tribe and gut, and a healthy academy functions as a model and fomenter of that attitude.

more

http://www.chronicle.com/article/Take-Back-the-Ivory-Tower/241304?key=WhHS38M9G9-059eUbwiBOvreKxCF-Q0Q2etnCUcPvvZc3p42liuapbj7YmS8R6YqNWJKNnVFTnJLOHhIY3lLUm5YblJzZmhrRndIaTBzeGlMMmhBcU9veHdHaw

[eppur_se_muova]

1. A very worthy read. Thanks for posting this, n2doc.

"In other words, the brilliance of the many depends fundamentally on the right of the one to be stupid."

I know some of us on the left are leary of any charges of excess on the left, because we fear it may be just the minions on the right pushing the old "both sides do it" meme when we know it's overwhelmingly untrue the overwhelming majority of the time, as if admitting a single, occasional flaw will invalidate the whole effort. But we can't dismiss such accusations out of hand just because they sound just like something the shills on the right would say -- they choose such red herrings most deliberately, knowing that nothing grows a big lie better than a small kernel of truth. We need to be able to admit those small kernels when we encounter them, even as we discard the concretion of deceipt which has been built around them. It should be added, however, that in this essay, the real wrongdoing lies not on the left, but in increasingly corporatized administration officers who are concerned about "branding" and corporate grants to such an extent that they are willing to prostitute formerly untouchable academic principles. It all comes back to the Powell Memorandum.

[ProfessorPlum]

3. great link

[ProfessorPlum]

2. It's an interesting article and well written

one caveat is that Alice Dreger seems to be on (what I would call) the wrong side of issues concerning transgender people. She seems to have an ax to grind against them.

This is why she refers to protests against her talking at college campuses, etc.

Transgender issues are very complex, and it is sometimes hard to figure out who is on the side of what I would call the progressive vision - inclusion for everyone, respect for all as people and members of the human race - because things get very bogged down about trans women versus cis women, etc.

Dreger seems to be on the side of divide and conquer, though, which doesn't make her much of a Democratic ally - I do, however, support her free speech argument with respect to the academy, though.

See http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2015/04/alice-dreger-and-making-evidence-fit.html for more on her history.