Presuming to Take Back the Academy
K.C. Johnson, Brooklyn College—CUNY

A recently released collection of essays called Taking Back the Academy: History of Activism, History as Activism -- which grew out of a 2002 conference at Columbia examining the links between historical scholarship and political activism -- described history as a "liberal profession." As I wasn't aware that my discipline was supposed to subscribe to a political ideology, I thought I would read some more.

It's not entirely clear from whom the 14 contributors to Taking Back wish to take back the academy. ("Taking Over the Academy" might be a more appropriate title.). Few would be surprised by the content of the volume's mostly non-academic essays. Several pieces celebrate the movement toward graduate student unionization in terms that many would find alarming, as they demand that new unions involve themselves in academic as well as economic matters. Other articles call for curricular reorientation to include mandatory segments on student activism in all(!) U.S. history classes, mandatory readings in gay and lesbian history for all graduate students, and increased coverage of theories relating to deconstruction, representation, and power.

The book copiously illustrates the ways in which what Mark Bauerlein termed the academy's "groupthink" produces what could be charitably described as a peculiar intellectual perspective.

• Kimberly Phillips-Pen condemns Columbia for hiring a "prestigious New York law firm" during the fight over graduate student unionization, while criticizing the faculty members who spoke out against the union (p. 75). Columbia wasn't supposed to have legal representation? Academic freedom applies only to pro-union professors?
  
• Glenda Gilmore accuses Campus Watch of engaging in a "censorship campaign." In what way? Campus Watch is a "group designed to listen to and report to the right wing media what professors are saying on campus" (p. 120). I wasn't aware that more fully publicizing what someone says constitutes censorship.
• David Rosner analyzes "the important ways that historians' skills can be used on behalf of people victimized by a variety of industries as well as the ways that these same skills can be abused in order to defend the activities of large corporations" (p. 103). There isn't even one lawsuit in which the plaintiff's cause is not morally just?
• Jennifer Manion reasons that "even" liberal faculty must "be aware of the political and personal impact of homophobia and heterosexism in the classroom on all students" (emphasis in original, p. 145). This argument seems, at the very least, a bit overstated.
• Co-editor Jim Downs recalls the struggle of convening the conference (in spring 2002), a time of "blind nationalism sweeping across the country," but the volume's contributors nonetheless persevered, "even in these oppressive times of restricted civil liberties and threatened intellectual freedom" (p. 7). I'm no fan of aspects of the Patriot Act. But to describe the intellectual environment in 2002 America as one of "blind nationalism" is, to be frank, insulting; and the threats to intellectual freedom in the contemporary academy are not coming primarily from the government. One wonders how someone with such an ideologically skewed interpretation of the present offers anything approaching an objective view of the past in his classes.

The volume's contributors sometimes are a bit too revealing in their comments. Nancy Hewitt confesses that she decided to become a professor only after working for a few years as a community organizer in Berkeley, after which she "came to grips with the difficulties of supporting oneself as an activist" (p. 95); nowadays, her "activism has become university, rather than community, based" (p. 89). Jennifer Manion goes one step further, contending that her reading of theories of sexuality, deconstruction, and power "irrevocably changed my orientation as a historian," requiring her to redefine her relationship to history. She "needed space to do this, so the time I previously would have spent at university functions, I put into my activist community in Philadelphia" (p. 149).

In other words: after discovering that professional activism doesn't pay very well or provide much in the way of job security, the book's contributors interpreted theory as justifying either their engaging in activism at the university level, or continuing to be full-time activists -- but now on the college's dime. How convenient.

The book's most alarming sections come when the authors discuss how pedagogy "can be a form of activism" (p. 162). A favorite approach in this regard is so-called "service learning," in which students receive three or six credits for supervised "volunteer" work in (ideologically acceptable) private or community-based organizations. This is a winning situation for everyone except for the students. The organizations receive free labor. The colleges still receive tuition money for the credits. The supervising professors get to pick which organizations receive college patronage.

A good example of how "service learning" can serve as a cover for forced student labor in ideologically acceptable organizations comes in Portland State's 6-credit interdisciplinary "capstone" courses, which address "a real challenge emanating from the metropolitan community," aiming "to further enhance student learning while cultivating crucial life abilities that are important both academically and professionally: establishing connections within the larger community, developing strategies for analyzing and addressing problems, and working with others trained in fields different from one's own."

Sounds unobjectionable and ideologically neutral. So, what are the organizations affiliated with 2004-2005 "capstone" courses? Groups devoted to:

• immigrants' rights (at least seven "capstone" courses);
• homeless rights and "food security" issues;
• environmentalism;
  
• gay rights;
• bilingual and multicultural education;
• non-profits;
• community activism;
• "social change through music";
  
• the Boys' and Girls' club;
• two on-line "activist" publications--Born Magazine and Global Education Xchange (gex.org).

With the exception of the Boys' and Girls' club, all of these organizations tilt in one direction ideologically. Conservative students therefore have no choice but to volunteer for organizations whose mission they might find suspect -- and to pay for the privilege, in terms of six course credits, which, according to Portland State's website, is $682.

Such policies have generated student activism -- though not of the type that the book's co-authors desire. Organizations such as Students for Academic Freedom have played a critical role in bringing the academy's lack of intellectual diversity to national attention. Ellen Schrecker recently noted that this movement's agenda was "often phrased in the language of academic freedom. That's what's so strange about it." Given Schrecker's vision of the academy, no wonder she's befuddled by calls for intellectual diversity. Undoubtedly the contributors to Taking Back the Academy would share her puzzlement.
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