Paid to Rat: A note thrown from the window of the Ivory Tower

OK, I don�t have much time for this one. Just a few quick paragraphs while I fling a few tweedy garments into a trunk, and then I�ve gotta run.

Why?

Because my home, the beloved Ivory Tower, is on fire.

In my last article, I reported about �Academic Bill of Rights� legislation that was appearing on the state and federal levels. That includes my home state, California, where the offender is SB 5. Here�s an excerpt:

(1) Students shall be graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the subjects and disciplines they study, not on the basis of their political or religious beliefs.

(2) Curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences shall respect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas, and provide students with dissenting sources and viewpoints. While teachers are and should be free to pursue their own findings and perspectives in presenting their views, they should consider and make their students aware of other viewpoints. Academic disciplines should welcome a diversity of approaches to unsettled questions.

(3) Exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major responsibility of faculty. Faculty shall not use their courses or their positions for the purpose of political, ideological, religious, or anti-religious indoctrination.

(4) The selection of speakers, allocation of funds for speakers' programs, and other student activities shall observe the principles of academic freedom and promote intellectual pluralism.

(5) An environment conducive to the civil exchange of ideas being an essential component of a free university, the obstruction of invited campus speakers, the destruction of campus literature, or any other effort to obstruct this exchange shall not be tolerated.

It looks great, doesn�t it? Scratch under the surface, though, and you�ll find a mess. For example, provision #1 suggests that students are, in fact, being graded on the political or religious beliefs, and that they need to have this legislation to protect them. In fact, any grade can be disputed by a student, usually by the simple means of going to the professor, or the department chair, or, if that fails, the dean. Believe me, if the professor has misused his or her authority to give a student an unearned bad grade, that grade will be changed and the professor reprimanded. The reason it doesn�t happen often is because it�s not needed.

Much the same thing could be said of the other provisions, which talk about �the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge� in the same tone that the former Dover PA school board talked about intelligent design. But that isn�t the only reason why my tower is on fire.

I blame myself for not smelling the smoke. As recently as September, in the same article, I said naively: �I tend to get a free pass�sometimes�because almost all the literature I teach is written by dead people. Also, it�s my choice not to discuss politics during class time unless it directly impacts the study of literature, and in twelve years of teaching, I�ve only done it twice. Both times were on the First Amendment issue of �the Constitution says you can read whatever the heck you want to.� �

Those days are now over. The LA Times reported in its January 18th edition that an alumni group, the Bruin Alumni Association, is paying students up to $100 per class to�there�s no nice way to put this�spy on their professors. Again, the ostensible purpose is to protect students by tracking the reality behind the conservative impression that radical lefty professors are indoctrinating their captive charges. That�s what they claim. A look at their web site, uclaprofs.com, reveals that they don�t stop at classroom activity. The professors they are currently targeting, the �Dirty Thirty,� often don�t teach about their political opinions in the classroom. How can they? One of them, Saree Makdisi, specializes in Romantic literature. Another, Robert Watson, like me, specializes in Shakespeare. Indeed, the website admits of Watson: �Professor Robert Watson has been, for the majority of his academic career, a fairly indistinguishable part of the English department faculty. In fact, a bare-bones review of his academic record shows nothing questionable. In fact, Watson�s role as a long-term Shakespeare scholar makes him as an unfashionable retrograde in a field that increasingly disregards the Bard�s centrality.�

This last statement alone reveals the abysmal ignorance of the Bruin Alumni Association. Shakespeare studies are hardly faltering, if papers presented, size of the Shakespeare Association of America, and number of books published are any indication (one of them by me, thank you very much.)

So what�s Watson�s crime? He wrote letters to the Daily Bruin criticizing the Bush administration, partly out of admiration for his father, who stood up against McCarthyism. Well, that�s enough. Much of the profile is devoted not to Watson, but to his father, criticizing him for his progressive or left-wing or radical politics. The fact that Goodwin Watson was hounded by HUAC is glossed over, because eventually the Supreme Court agreed that what was being done to him was unconstitutional. What a whiner, the profile implies.

Most of the rest of the profile targets Robert Watson�s letters to the Daily Bruin. Lost in this rabid diatribe is the fact that they can�t come up with any evidence of classroom indoctrination conducted by Professor Watson. Why? Because there isn�t any. After years of metaphorically scrabbling through the garbage, the best they can come up with is the syllabus for a class he taught on the 1960s, which includes Thomas Pynchon�s The Crying of Lot 49. Oh, yes, and the profile smacks Watson�s daughter, too.

Makdisi comes in for the same treatment, largely for being the nephew of the eminent scholar and former Modern Language Association president Edward Said. (Said, according to the website, was a �Palestinianoid.�) The rest of the profile is devoted to Makdisi�s political activities and writings. Where�s the bit about his actual classroom activities? Stuck down in a lonely sentence at the bottom. And again, why is there no evidence of classroom indoctrination by Professor Makdisi? Because there isn�t any.

The site slams the external political activities of professors, any speeches they've made, organizations they belong to, even their families and the petitions they've signed. Anyone who thinks that the information collected on their academic targets is only going to be used to improve student life at UCLA is even more na�ve than I was. The Republican donors to the site aren�t giving up to 5,000 apiece for that; it�s almost certainly going to be used to pressure for the passage of those �Academic Bills of Rights.� And after that, the fact that Watson, Makdisi, and I have mostly kept our political commentary outside the classroom simply won�t matter. If we�re lucky, we�ll only be muzzled. If we�re not, we�ll be investigated, harassed, fired, despite having tenure, and who knows where it will end. I don�t know either Watson or Makdisi, but maybe I�ll get to meet them some day in a NeoCon gulag in International Falls, Minnesota.

Gotta run. The building is really on fire now. But if you care about your state colleges and universities�if you care about academic freedom�find out about whatever legislation may be on the table in your state. And speak up for us, as my days of speaking up for others may be limited.

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