An Assault on Academic Freedom

It started slowly.  The first indicator I had that something was afoot was an email demanding that I stop teaching about global warming.  As an alleged climate change denier, I obviously had no right to corrupt what my students learned.

Although this is not my habit, I quickly sent off a misspelled response via my i-phone.  In it I suggested that my detractor needed to read more about the issue.  Next came a contact from a reporter at a local television station.  He informed me that two students approached him to complain about my transgressions.

These students, who never discussed this directly with me, explained that they dropped out of my class because they were deeply offended by my misstatements about well-known facts.  My contravention of academic protocols plainly needed to be broadcast to the world so that I would desist.

The reporter next contacted me to find out what happened.  I explained my side of the story and he eventually came to my office to record my explanation.  The real problem, I opined, was not what I said in class, but the subsequent attack on academic freedom.

In the meantime, I received two new emails demanding that I reform.  One simply reiterated my purported ignorance of the relevant science, while the other asked for a copy of my syllabus.  This latter person was under the impression that this needed to be approved by the Board of Regents for my course to be funded by the state.

This second individual did not realize that I am a tenured full professor and this is not how courses are created.  Were this the case, academic freedom would truly be a thing of the past.

So let me explain what I believe occurred.  The course in question was about social change, while the materials I was then teaching concerned revolutionary change.  To be specific, I was explicating Charles Tilly’s theory about WUNC displays.  These are purportedly designed to promote social movements.

According to Tilly, social activists try to recruit supporters by demonstrating that their cause is Worthy, that those who favor it are Unified in endorsing it, that they have large Numbers on their side, and, lastly, that they are deeply Committed to its success.  All of this is put forward to establish that victory is inevitable.

The idea is to create a bandwagon effect.  Since most people want to be on the winning team, if they can be persuaded triumph is assured, they are more likely to jump aboard.  This is what Karl Marx did when he insisted that communism was historically, and scientifically, preordained.

To make my point, I employed several contemporary examples.  One concerned global warming.  I explained that when partisans maintained that 97 percent of climate scientists believe in it, they inflated these numbers in order to intimidate potential skeptics.  The research they cited was actually deeply flawed.

Claims that a climate apocalypse is nearly upon us is “settled science” are likewise bogus.  There is no such thing as settled science.  Isaac Newton’s ideas about gravity were brilliant; nevertheless Einstein amended them.  Someday Einstein’s may also be replaced.

In any event, the current controversy about global warming does not concern whether there has been warming.  This is measurably true.  The disagreements are about the rate of change and its physical causes.  To what extent are these the result of human actions—or something else, e.g. sun cycles?

At the moment, reputable scientists differ.  It is primarily politicians who converted legitimate discrepancies in empirical opinion into a policy debate.  It is they who played the numbers game in order to defeat their opponents.

My students merely got caught up in this political dispute.  Their idealism, combined with a relative lack of knowledge, made them the perfect foot soldiers in these culture wars.  Given their passion and genuine desire to improve the world, they were poised to do vigorous battle.

The trouble is that in the process they undermined academic freedom.  In their rush to do good, they interfered with our ability to seek—and test—new truths.  Sadly, unless intellectual dissent is protected, in the long run we will all suffer.  Improvements will cease and we will be trapped in an imperfect status quo.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Tweets and Me

I have never been an early adopter.  When a new technology comes along, I wait to see how it will turn out.  Even then, I am hesitant.  Sociologists would say that I am a perfect example of cultural lag.  In other words, I am usually behind the curve.

This was the case with the cell phone.  For years, I dismissed these devices as the spawn of the devil.  When I students argued they were essential in case one got into trouble, I explained that I had, upon occasion, been in trouble and got out just fine.  Thus, in one case, when my car slid off a snowy road, I was able to trek to a nearby farmhouse to call for assistance.

Eventually, however, my wife wore down my resistance.  She explained that we needed these gadgets so that we could keep in touch when we were in unfamiliar territory, for example, on a foreign vacation.  It turned out that these phones were also useful for keeping track of our emails and checking on the weather.

Which brings me to my current struggle with technological progress.  For years, I condemned the simplemindedness of Twitter.  The idea of using a few sentences to communicate complex ideas to unknown strangers seemed to me to be a waste of mental energy.

Plainly, I write columns and books.  I am, therefore, personally aware that it takes time and space to explicate important issues.  To reduce them to what amounts to slogans does intellectual violence to topics that require more thought.

Besides, the tweets that popped up on television news programs were often vulgar and insulting.  They reduced the standard of public discourse to its lowest common denominator.  Why would I want to participate in this dumbing down of our already dumbed down society?

But—wonder of all wonders—I am now tweeting.  Not long after passionately explaining to a colleague that I had better things to do with my limited time, I broke down.  I opened an account and began to make routine comments under my own name.  At the moment, I have a grand total of four followers.

What happened?  Why did I abandon my convictions and join the throngs who are on the social media?  Have I sold out in order to modernize my crusty image?

The answer is more mundane.  I recently started a non-profit foundation.  It is called the Social Individualism Foundation.  The goal is to promote a conceptual alternative to the outmoded ideological instruments currently at our disposal.  Having long argued that we are in an ideological crisis, I sought a viable way out.

If Liberalism, traditional Conservatism, and Libertarianism are indeed holdovers from an obsolete past, we need a more relevant alternative.  Happily, I believe I found one.  It entails “principled realism,” “emotional maturity,” personal “professionalization.”

The idea is for more of us to become self-directed decision-makers, whose choices are in accord with social realities.  Instead of pursuing fantasies derived from simpler times, we need to deal with the actual demands of the mass techno-commercial society in which we reside.

I have written about this at length and will shortly be publishing more detailed accounts, but I also came to the conclusion that I require other outlets to promote new ways of understanding confusing challenges.  While I post my columns on a blog (professionalized.blogspot.com), I need more.

This more includes a weekly podcast, but also involves tweets.  The goal is to make ongoing comments about current events so as to put them in an updated perspective.  On their own, no single comment is very enlightening, yet en masse they may add up to a useful corrective.

As it happens, I find I enjoy tweeting.  It takes me almost no time to do several a day and enables me to vent my frustrations via a means other than yelling at the television set.  While I have few illusions that this will change the world, neither do I believe that I am corrupting it.

My father always said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.  In fact, I am older than he was when he asserted this.  I would consequently like to amend his contention to read that you may not be able teach an old dog over night, but some of us are quite capable of learning.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Roots of Corruption Run Deep

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, political corruption had gotten out of hand.  The industrial revolution provided the incentive, and the means, for capitalists to bribe office holders.  Businessmen could receive special benefits if they greased the right palms.

Big city bosses also got in on the act.  By pandering to immigrants, they could control the ballot box and, in turn, the graft available for delivering social services.  In New York, for instance, boss Tweed and his henchmen scooped up thousands by appropriating money intended to build a courthouse.

Things got so bad that there was a reaction.  The goo-goo’s, that is, the good government types, and the muckrakers exposed many of these shenanigans.  They made it known that Rockefeller was getting kickbacks from the railroads and that meatpackers were including rat feces in their products.

The outrage was national.  Progressives, often at the urging of journalists, demanded reform.  It was time for politicians to stop buying votes.  It was essential that laws protect ordinary citizens from being cheated.

So well did the correctives succeed that by the end of the twentieth century belief in the integrity of the system was widespread.  As a consequence, people became less vigilant.  The media, in particular, became more concerned with promoting their ideological commitments than defending against corruption.

Liberal politicians eventually became exempt from harsh scrutiny.  Because they were perceived as the good guys, they were allowed to get away with serious infractions.  They could lie about what they were doing with impunity and injure their opponents without fear of the spotlight.

The adventures of Bill and Hillary Clinton provide a cautionary tale.  Even in Arkansas, they were allowed to get away with unethical behavior.  It was not for nothing that Bill was referred to as slick Willie.  He could turn on his s—eating grin and reporters melted.

Lots of folks knew about Bill’s sexual peccadillos.  They were aware that he used the police to recruit sexual talent.  Many were also cognizant of his long-term liaison with Gennifer Flowers.  They kept it quiet because they liked him and his policies.

Later, when he ran for president, reporters winked when told that he did not inhale when he tried marihuana.  They likewise believed his account of staying out of the military draft.  As president, they even covered for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.  After all, it was nobody’s business but his wife’s.

Meanwhile Hillary also got a free pass.  She was not as likable as Bill, but few cared to delve into her indiscretions at the Rose Law Firm.  Nor did they dwell on the failures of Hillarycare or the implications of her contention that it takes a village to raise a child.  As a symbol of female success, she was to be celebrated—not criticized.

The chickens, as they say, came home to roost when, as Secretary of State, Hillary broke the law and kept classified documents on a private server.  More of this hanky-panky followed when she used the Clinton Foundation to facilitate pay-for-play politics.  This too was evidently in a good cause.

Immoral appearances could thus be explained away.  This included averting a skeptical eye when the Clinton campaign spied on Trump.  What would have been a scandal of epic proportions under Richard Nixon was quickly consigned to a historical footnote.

As for Barack Obama and his acolytes, the Clintons paved the road for their sleaze.  What's more, as a man perceived to be Black, Obama’s reputation needed to be protected.  Were he exposed as a charlatan; this might cast aspersions on an entire race.  Besides, he was as charming as Bill.

Which brings us to our current impasse.  Once upon a time, journalism provided a barrier against corruption.  Today its practitioners collude in covering-up a host of misdeeds.  As long as the perpetrators have liberal credentials, they are exempt from critical examination.

Nonetheless, politics, because it is about power, breeds corruption.  It often attracts people who attempt to get what they can.  Whether their means are fair of foul, they subsequently hide their offences lest they be thwarted.

This is natural.  As a result, we must be on guard.  A century ago, we were.  In recent years, however, many public sentinels have grown lax.  This has to change.  Sunshine, they say, is the best disinfectant.  Let’s have more sunshine!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Neo-Marxists Have Tunnel Vision

When I teach about social change or social class at Kennesaw State University, I always include a segment about Karl Marx.  Contemporary sociology cannot be understood without recognizing how he shaped present-day thinking.

The same applies to our larger society.  Liberalism, progressivism, social democracy, and social justice are all variations on a Marxist theme.  As a result, contemporary politics cannot be understood without identifying its neo-Marxist underpinnings.

The trouble is that few Americans see through the moralistic smokescreen thrown up by left-wing activists.  This is certainly true of my students.  As naïve idealists, many are convinced that elementary decency can only be guaranteed by a government that dictates economic equality.

Marx himself believed that economics determines how societies operate.  Everything else is secondary to who controls the means of production.  Because the capitalists, who, in his day, were in charge, were irredeemably selfish, they had to be overthrown.  A government run by the people obviously needed to take over.

There are many problems with this idea—notably that government bureaucrats can be as corrupt as business owners—yet there is a more fundamental difficulty.  We humans are much more than economic creatures.  We also have spiritual, artistic, family, and moral dimensions.

Let me concentrate on the moral aspect of our condition.  It is crucial that we do so because shouldering this facet aside to focus exclusively on economics has resulted in raging immorality.  Our current climate of political corruption owes, in large part, to ignoring this component of who we are.

The neo-Marxists are convinced that we humans are basically good.  They assume that once they wrest economic control from the grip of egotistical capitalists, ordinary people will share the wealth.  They will cooperate with one another such that everyone benefits.

Marx’s disciples further believe they have a right to tell lies in the service of their ideals.  Because the rich are so unprincipled, those who oppose them have a duty to defeat them.  They may therefore justifiably resort to any means of doing so—be this via violence or verbal deception.

If morality has no existence apart from what those who dominate the means of production say it is, once the liberals and socialists take over, they can rectify our definitions of good and bad.  Hence, if, in the meantime, they need to tell noble lies in order to achieve ascendancy, this is in everyone’s interest.

From this it follows that FBI agents have a right to manipulate the FISA courts in order to stymy the political ambitions of those who oppose them.  It likewise follows that IRS agents have a duty to deprive their enemies of funding.  As for reasonable journalists, they have an obligation to present the news so that it protects liberal politicians.

Lies, it develops, are not lies when they further the Marxist agenda.  Similarly, omissions of fact are not mendacious when they advance deeper truths.  Since morality is relative, it must be manipulated in the service of those who facilitate the inevitable triumph of collectivist institutions.

And yet morality is not whatever the neo-Marxists say it is.  If we are more than economic creatures, morality has an independent existence.  Some might say—and I would be one of them—that economic justice cannot exist without a prior foundation of moral principles.

If we are not honest, for instance, we cannot have the social cohesion necessary to sustain a massive society.  Without a widespread commitment to truth telling, strangers would not be able to trust one another.  They could never be sure as to who might stab them in the back.

The same applies to economics.  When people are dependent on strangers for the food on their plates and the clothes of their backs, they must feel confident that they are not being swindled.  Anything less would drive a wedge between them and result in social fragmentation.

Isn’t that what we are seeing today?  Don’t, for instance, fervent partisans nowadays have difficulty speaking to one another?  Don’t they try to deceive others in order to gain a political advantage? 

What may not be appreciated, however, is the degree to which neo-Marxist doctrines encourage this chaos.  By making morality entirely subservient to economic considerations, these ideologues have corrupted us all.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University