Must Professors Be Apolitical In The Classroom?

Here's a comment that I posted to the New York Times in response to an article by Stanly Fish, who writes about PC on campus and the "liberal bias" in academia:

My question is…can professors be apolitical? I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone can totally check their beliefs at the classroom door. Not even professors. Nor should they. The students, all of them old enough to think for themselves, are smart enough to recognize what they are presented with from the podium. Of course, grading students on ideological conformity or stifling or ridiculing students for their views are clearly wrong, but stimulating thinking, discussion, and learning based upon on rational arguments is desirable even if those arguments are politically charged. Fish insists that professors must be apolitical or else outside forces (courts, legislatures?) will “clean up” academia somehow. Methinks he frets too much. That is a fight that academia would take to the finish. Where’s the beef, anyway? The right wing has been accusing academia of left wing bias for a long time. Let’s look at how that horrible lefty bias has affected us. We’ve had but two Democratic presidents in the last 39 years. The current Supreme Court includes a majority of five sitting right wing ideologues including the Chief Justice. Half of our population doesn’t vote, and half of the half that does vote gave George Bush two terms. Yes, the left wing bias of academia has had a devastating effect on the right wing in terms of political and electoral successes.

One of the best comments posted in response to the Fish opinion piece comes from someone named "EdK," obviously, a college professor. Go and read the whole exchange if you're interested.

If, as has become commonplace, the right is upset that most academics are
‘left leaning’ and that many academic discussions tend to discredit deeply held
right wing beliefs, perhaps the right would do better to come up with coherent
positions and arguments for those positions that can stand up to attentive
rational scrutiny. As long as they fail to do so, most academics, who are
committed to the principle that beliefs should be rationally justified, will
most likely — one would hope, at least, that they would — continue to reject the
right. In response, the right continues to try to suggest that the academy has a
political agenda, thus showing how deeply they misunderstand both the rational
basis of academic discussion and how little they care about it.
And I find
the idea that we need to police ourselves or avoid drawing intellectually
significant conclusions from our own discussions within the academy, or shield
our students from these so that they aren’t subject to some kind of ‘political’ discourse,
to be tantamount to abandoning *the* distinguishing foundation of academic
activity.

This is a very sophisticated way of saying that the right wing is full of it.

Jim

Just Say NO! To An Imus Return

The IMUS show replacement disc jockeys on New York's WFAN 660 AM dropped the hint this morning that maybe the I-Man will return to the station in two weeks. I doubt that this will happen.

No, I think Imus is gone, and that's a good thing. His "humor," done largely at the expense of others who are not in a position to hit back or defend themselves, is not funny. That type of humor takes little talent to present. Imus, I've seen and heard real comedy and you're not talented enough to do it. Instead, you relied upon your clearly bigoted on air cronies to feed you sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic hard balls that you were usually smart enough not to repeat, but for the times you slipped up, like with the Rutger's women's team. You're not fooling most of us. We know what's in your heart, because it came out of your mouth.

Some of the members of your all white circle of political media cronies have defended you with lame references to you being "an equal opportunity offender," but that doesn't wash. I don't have any friends or associates who use the epithets or say the kinds of things I heard on your show, and I don't want any that do. So why would I want to hear you and your on air thugs use such language? Oh yes, and there is the defense that you do a lot of charity work. Too bad that good work cannot offset or negate the massive amounts of offense and hurt you've caused over the years to so many people including myself. Well, now you'll have more time to devote to your causes.

Oh, the hypocrisy of it all! - that's the defense of Imus coming from supporters like Frank Rich, who should know better. But he's a straight, white man, and didn't present much of a target for Imus' bigot squad. Others in Imus' former circle of cronies have seen the light, like John Meecham at Newsweek. Still others remain in hiding, such as Harold Ford and Tim Russert. It was wonderful to watch Gwen Ifil criticize Russert on "Meet The Press" for his tacit complicity in all of this as a repeat Imus guest. Yes, there are hypocrites out there, but how does that in any way excuse what happened?

Finally, there's the attack on PC that is used as a defense of Imus, as if being civil and respectful of diversity is bad. The right wing has managed to so demonize calls for civility using the pejorative tag "political correctness" that people run from it, just like they've demonized "liberals" to the point where no one wants to be called one. However, the Imus story has shown that we must return to a culture of civil discourse in the media and elsewhere, one that respects our sexual, social, ethnic and cultural diversity. What we need is an end to the uncivil antics of the rest of the bigoted shock jocks and pundits. They're on notice now. I can't wait for the next firing.

Jim