Am I a contrarian? In response to several of my recent columns in the Marietta Daily Journal, several readers have concluded that I am. In this, they are probably correct. I do tend to disagree fairly vociferously with opinions I believe to be wrong, even when I am in the minority.
As a consequence, I am very fond of academic freedom. My right to say out loud what others may not appreciate strikes me as an essential tool in pursuing the truth. While I know that I make mistakes, a constant fear of retribution would hamper my efforts to rectify where I have gone astray.
Much of this attitude derives from my childhood in Brooklyn, New York. To this day, I warmly remember my high school teachers quoting Voltaire as saying “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This always struck me as the essence of fair-minded scholarship.
My teachers back then were all liberals, so I assumed that liberalism implied the encouragement of diverse ideas. It was only when I migrated to neo-conservatism that I discovered this was not the case. Previous allies suddenly became extraordinarily intolerant of disagreements emanating from my new direction.
In time, it became apparent that liberals are in favor of free speech—for liberals. When it comes to effective competitors, they are all too eager to suppress articulate dissent. While they fancy themselves contrarians, they are not nearly as approving of determined opposition.
This, sad to say, is the situation on most American college campuses. Dominated as they are by a liberal consensus, they do not welcome efforts to challenge what they take to be obvious truths. For many university professors, criticism of their views—in any form—is tantamount to an assault on academic freedom. So surrounded are they by like-minded colleagues that is does not occur to them that silencing those who dissent is an attack on the latter’s academic freedom.
Yet if truth is to emerge, academic freedom must be even handed. Criticisms must be tolerated, not as evidence of a desire to stifle particular views, but as part of the process of testing what is correct. However convinced people are of the validity of their positions, if these cannot survive scrutiny from doubters, the odds are they are not well-founded.
These considerations apply to our college campuses, but also to a larger social context. Universities have acquired a vital role in our techno-commercial society. They prepare large numbers of individuals to perform difficult tasks, in the absence of which we would all suffer.
Put another way, ours is becoming a professionalized society. More people than ever must be self-motivated experts in what they do if they are to supply the goods and services upon which we rely for our survival and/or comfort. Furthermore, it is our universities that groom millions of people for these professionalized jobs.
This fact positions institutions of higher education as social gatekeepers. Like it or not, the degrees they confer have become tickets to socially responsible activities. As a result, for most people, if they hope to achieve social mobility, they must first obtain evidence of academic success.
This means that society as a whole has a fundamental interest in overseeing how universities perform their jobs. We, all of us—not just professors and students—are legitimately concerned with how effectively colleges train their graduates for the chores they must eventually execute.
Which brings us back to academic freedom. If what universities are teaching interferes with people becoming effectively professionalized, they deserve to be criticized. If, to be more specific, a pervasive neo-Marxism undermines the capacity of college graduates to participate in a market economy and democratic traditions, it is not just the right, but also the duty, of ordinary citizens to say so.
Academics accustomed to being ensconced in a bubble of impunity may recoil at this prospect. Nevertheless it is not their comfort that should determine social policy. There are larger issues at stake. One is social survival, and another is the truth itself.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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