The Real Threat to Academic Freedom...

[hobbsyoyo]

I find the notion that universities are hotbeds of liberalism and liberal activism to be overblown but I'll admit upfront I only have my own experiences to base that on.

I think that college activists are very, very good at getting social media attention and that gives them both a wide audience and the perception that they are widespread and common. I feel this perception is out of touch with reality as my own college was extremely conservative, both in student body and faculty.

One day some students were running an experiment in a very large vacuum chamber on campus. They were not being very mindful and allowed the pumps to overheat, culminating in the fail-safe cooling system to kick on. This system dumped a metric ****-ton of water behind the pumps to rapidly cool them. The main side effect of this massive release of water is that the pressure in the plumbing system in the building went haywire. Toilets exploded in literal volcanoes of poop in the building as a result.

A well-known (and highly respected) climate change denying, anti-immigration geology professor (who's from England, btw), saw this literal **** storm and decided to send an email to the entire geology department. He claimed that African students didn't know how to use toilets and had caused the mess on purpose. He urged whites students to show the poor, ignorant Africans how to properly use the toilet. If that wasn't bad enough, the editor of the school newspaper published an op-ed lauding the professor for taking a stand against PC culture and calling out the Africans for poor hygiene.

At no point did the professor or editor question the feasibility of a small group of students all squatting over toilets and pooping into them as turds piled up and tickled their butt cheeks in every single toilet in the building. They saw a pile of poop and reached the obviously logical conclusion that Africans must have done it based on no evidence whatsoever.

I wish this was a one-off type of occurrence but the campus was infested with both virulent and casual racism. Obviously one campus and one anecdote doesn't make a trend but I don't feel like the media attention that SJW's and other liberal activists get prove a trend either.

 

[Lexicus]

Stories like that provide a useful background for explaining why we see some of the activist stuff that can be quite confusing without any context.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Oh and I forgot a relevant and crucial detail-

I wrote an op-ed in response to the situation (I even posted it here) where I tore the professor and editor a new one and defended the school's foreign students.

Guess who was censored? Yeah the editor absolutely refused to run my peice and after he was confronted about his censorship by the rest of the staff the most he would give was to publish an apology in the final issue of the year.

 

[rah]

Bah, the activism on campuses now is nothing. [old man rant] back in the days there were almost daily protest about the VN war. Many turned violent and in one case students were killed. Any protest speakers were considered pinko sympathizers. What do you pussies know [/end old man rant] But then we streaked.

 

[Lexicus]

Bah, the activism on campuses now is nothing. [old man rant] back in the days there were almost daily protest about the VN war. Many turned violent and in one case students were killed. Any protest speakers were considered pinko sympathizers. What do you pussies know [/end old man rant] But then we streaked.

We're facing a much harder battle than you all did in those days, because they had to resort to violence to put you down. They don't have to do that to us because most of us have been defeated in our own minds before we even get to college.

 

[rah]

Based on your posting here, you have never been defeated in your own mind.

 

[Lexicus]

I was only being half serious, but it's sort of true. The most sophisticated techniques of rule don't involve overt violence and terrorism, they involve mental domination which is upstream of the need for coercion. Part of the reason we've never seen a repeat of, say, Kent State, is because that kind of protest against [whatever] is simply beyond the mental horizon of most college students.

I don't meant to present this as some sort of tinfoil hat conspiracy theory where "they" control our minds, but rather to suggest a different interpretation of the cultural change you noted there. It reminds me of an article I read a couple of years ago, which asked whether the problem with contemporary campus activism on the issue of sexual assault/harassment is that it's insufficiently radical. As an example, many women at a college will attend a rally denouncing some fraternity for being a hotbed of rape culture but suggest that they boycott the parties and social events of that fraternity and they'll look at you like you're speaking Sanskrit. Another issue where this is evident is the potential resistance to Donald Trump firing Mueller. Folks like Robert Reich are talking about "taking to the streets" but if I were to suggest a general strike (ie, not just a "March For _____" but actually bringing the normal operation of society to a halt until Trump resigns his office) I will have a bunch of cowards explaining why we can't do that.

 

[rah]

Yeah, agree with most. But, the me too movement may reach a similar level of intensity. There is enough pent up anger and outrage. It will be interesting to watch.

 

[Traitorfish]

The greatest threat to academic freedom is the way academics becoming increasingly overworked and underpaid, and how this becomes more pronounced the more junior the academic. Young academics struggle to get even insecure, part-time work, and are scarcely given the resources to do original work. As the article Lexicus linked pointed out, modern universities are dominated by administrators, by management, not by scholars. Academics are reduced to technicians, and research that isn't readily translated into patents, publicity or prestige is increasingly pushed to the margins.

What we're seeing is essentially the proletarisation of academia, because in capitalism, anything that does not turn a profit, even for a theoretically non-profit organisation, anything which does not lead to capital accumulation, is an unnecessary luxury, and the frantic, intensely short-sighted form of capitalism that reigns in the twenty-first century, there's scarce room for such luxury.

"there you go, bringing class into it again." "but that's what it's all about!"

 

[Mouthwash]

I'll conclude with one more piece on the same phenomenon, this one a slight variation:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/09/steven-salaita-university-of-illinois_n_5793370.html

This happened a while ago, but involved Steven Salaita having the offer of a position at University of Illinois revoked after pissing off powerful Zionists with Tweets critical of the Israeli military operation in Gaza at the time.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were taken in by the article, but that's a categorical falsehood. Salaita's offer was revoked because he posted violent and antisemitic sentiments toward Israelis.

The greatest threat to academic freedom is the way academics becoming increasingly overworked and underpaid, and how this becomes more pronounced the more junior the academic. Young academics struggle to get even insecure, part-time work, and are scarcely given the resources to do original work. As the article Lexicus linked pointed out, modern universities are dominated by administrators, by management, not by scholars. Academics are reduced to technicians, and research that isn't readily translated into patents, publicity or prestige is increasingly pushed to the margins.

What we're seeing is essentially the proletarisation of academia, because in capitalism, anything that does not turn a profit, even for a theoretically non-profit organisation, anything which does not lead to capital accumulation, is an unnecessary luxury, and the frantic, intensely short-sighted form of capitalism that reigns in the twenty-first century, there's scarce room for such luxury.

You wouldn't happen to be a junior academic, now would you?

 

[Berzerker]

well thats ironic, I thought Lex was leading the vanguard combating antisemitism

 

[Dachs]

The greatest threat to academic freedom is the way academics becoming increasingly overworked and underpaid, and how this becomes more pronounced the more junior the academic. Young academics struggle to get even insecure, part-time work, and are scarcely given the resources to do original work. As the article Lexicus linked pointed out, modern universities are dominated by administrators, by management, not by scholars. Academics are reduced to technicians, and research that isn't readily translated into patents, publicity or prestige is increasingly pushed to the margins.

What we're seeing is essentially the proletarisation of academia, because in capitalism, anything that does not turn a profit, even for a theoretically non-profit organisation, anything which does not lead to capital accumulation, is an unnecessary luxury, and the frantic, intensely short-sighted form of capitalism that reigns in the twenty-first century, there's scarce room for such luxury.

"there you go, bringing class into it again." "but that's what it's all about!"

You have to marvel at the sort of institution that is so toxic that it drives qualified applicants to seek employment in American middle and high schools, or in industry outside their field of expertise, rather than do something that, were it not for the compensation, work, and risk factors, would be the job they spent their whole lives training to do.

Universities are not so much eating their own seed corn as burning it.

 

[Lexicus]

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you were taken in by the article, but that's a categorical falsehood. Salaita's offer was revoked because he posted violent and antisemitic sentiments toward Israelis.

What he said about the West Bank settlers was out of line but not grounds to revoke his position. His comments about antisemitism are clearly in reference to the right-wing Zionist attempts to redefine antisemitism into opposition to any Israeli policy, but I can easily see how his words could be misunderstood there if taken out of context.

well thats ironic, I thought Lex was leading the vanguard combating antisemitism

 

[Samson]

The greatest threat to academic freedom is the way academics becoming increasingly overworked and underpaid, and how this becomes more pronounced the more junior the academic. Young academics struggle to get even insecure, part-time work, and are scarcely given the resources to do original work. As the article Lexicus linked pointed out, modern universities are dominated by administrators, by management, not by scholars. Academics are reduced to technicians, and research that isn't readily translated into patents, publicity or prestige is increasingly pushed to the margins.

What we're seeing is essentially the proletarisation of academia, because in capitalism, anything that does not turn a profit, even for a theoretically non-profit organisation, anything which does not lead to capital accumulation, is an unnecessary luxury, and the frantic, intensely short-sighted form of capitalism that reigns in the twenty-first century, there's scarce room for such luxury.

"there you go, bringing class into it again." "but that's what it's all about!"

What do you mean by "proletarisation" in this context? I googled it, and except for a french dictionary entry the top hit was a 1921 letter to nature that was advocating for the bolshevic science education changes. It ends:

It would be difficult to imagine the present Government of any of the nations of Western or Central Europe, envincing such a faith in science, as able to bring about the "change of heart" on which alone a new society could be founded, that in the midst of all the horrors of blockage, invasion and civil war its publishing department would issue broadcast to the "proletariat" a whole library of introductions to scientific thought.

 

[Lexicus]

What do you mean by "proletarisation" in this context?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletarianization

Many intellectuals have described proletarianization in advanced capitalism as "the extension of the logic of factory labor to a large sector of services and intellectual professions."

A better word for this would probably be "precarization" - the precarization of academic work since technically academics who don't become part of management are already proletarians.

 

[schlaufuchs]

To paraphrase my Historical Methods Professor:

As an academic, a successful career is publishing a text which is read and subsequently cited by the six other academics in the field for 5-10 years, after which point the book goes on a shelf in the university library and is never touched or read again.

 

[BvBPL]

...is, of course, the right. The notion of PC leftists stifling the free exchange of ideas on college campuses has become a trope at this point. But it is also absolute nonsense.

Now, at this point I'm going to prove my own point to some extent by engaging in a mandatory disclaimer: I don't agree with every bit of campus activism that's ever occurred. Totalitarian, or potentially totalitarian sentiments are sometimes aired by leftists on college campuses.

“Occasions of activism should not be cherry-picked to describe a general trend.”

There does exist a serious threat to academic freedom in the United States today and it comes from the organized right, like pretty much all serious threats to freedom of any kind. I got to thinking about this because of my post in the Clown Car III thread where I said that conservatives almost always engage in the practices they (mostly baselessly) accuse liberals of. The narratives around free speech on campus are one of the better examples of this phenomenon.

This article is fairly long but well worth reading:

https://thebaffler.com/the-poverty-of-theory/no-re-turning-point-u-s-a

It discusses, with plenty of specific examples, the tactics of the Group Turning Point USA (TPUSA for short) on college campuses. TPUSA is a group ostensibly founded as a kind of support network for supposedly oppressed conservative students who find themselves increasingly alienated on college campuses. The main thrust of this article can be summarized in one short quote from it:



The government officials in question were, naturally, Republicans, and they hold elected offices. They got the graduate student dismissed, and submitted a records request for the university employee (professor)'s emails that name Republican politicians.

“I’m going to cherry-pick an occasion of activism to describe a general trend.”

 

[Lexicus]

“I’m going to cherry-pick an occasion of activism to describe a general trend.”

Your description of what TPUSA does as "activism" renders your 'argument' ridiculous.

 

[BvBPL]

Your description of what TPUSA does as "activism" renders your 'argument' ridiculous.

Thanks for welcoming me to the club, then.

 

[Berzerker]

The main threat to academic freedom is the academic funding model.

Where is funding not a threat?