What can it possibly mean to ask candidates what they’ve done lately to demonstrate their “public commitment to equity?” Any chance that an acceptable answer would be the following: “In view of what happened in the USSR, China, Cuba, Cambodia, and many other parts of the world under communist rule, I believe that the best thing I can do to promote equity in our society is to help strengthen capitalism and democracy in every way I can and, toward that end, I actively promote Republican candidates”?
Daphne Patai notes yet another effort to ensure faculty display the “correct” political orientation:
The legality of the questions suggested by Sandler and her co-authors seems dubious, though I am not aware of any lawsuit that has challenged them. They are also patently inappropriate. Gauging levels of “commitment” to what are essentially political issues has nothing to do with one’s academic expertise. Rather, it resembles the effort by Schools of Education to gauge potential teachers’ “dispositions,” a practice challenged and publicized by K. C. Johnson. It is also in the same league as the still widely prevalent speech codes and harassment policies that elevate sensitivity and comfort into major academic concerns… Potential faculty are thus being pressured to adopt and embrace – or merely pretend to do so – the requisite “attitude” toward minorities, political activism, and social issues, and to provide evidence that they have acted on these supposed commitments. And, scarier still, these questions by implication are presented as legitimate requirements for employment, though they have nothing to do with either education or intellectual and scholarly accomplishments. And, even worse, the questions are designed to weed out the merely formal assenters from authentic true believers.
KC Johnson’s encounter with the academic policing of “disposition” is unlikely to reassure:
[As] the hotly contested campaigns of 2000 and 2004 amply demonstrated, people of good faith disagree on the components of a “just society,” or what constitutes the “negative effects of the dominant culture,” or how best to achieve “world peace… and preservation of the environment.” An intellectually diverse academic culture would ensure that these vague sentiments did not yield one-sided policy prescriptions for students. But the professoriate cannot dismiss its ideological and political imbalance as meaningless while simultaneously implementing initiatives based on a fundamentally partisan agenda. […]At the undergraduate level, these high-sounding principles have been translated into practice through a required class called “Language and Literacy Development in Secondary Education.” According to numerous students, the course’s instructor demanded that they recognize “white English” as the “oppressors’ language.” Without explanation, the class spent its session before Election Day screening Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. When several students complained to the professor about the course’s politicized content, they were informed that their previous education had left them “brainwashed” on matters relating to race and social justice.
Again, worth reading in full.
I’ve been told I make too much of these academic issues, as if such things are unimportant or indicative of nothing in particular. But given the number of incidents of this kind gradually swelling the archives, I’m inclined to wonder exactly how egregious and pervasive this phenomenon has to be before concern becomes legitimate. After all, if you want to propagate tendentious ideology and make it seem normative, respectable and self-evidently true, insinuating that ideology into schools and universities would be a pretty good way to do it. “Debate” can then be had on what is most likely an unequal footing, thus arriving at the approved conclusions with a minimum of informed and realistic opposition. If faculty and students are obliged to regurgitate that ideology and perhaps internalise it, while mouthing fuzzwords like “social justice,” all the better. Is it enough to bemoan certain socio-political trends or bias in areas of the media if one doesn’t also address the place where many of these things originate? And are we supposed to believe that the ideologues who push for such measures are going to get tired and desist of their own volition, and then politely roll back the idiocy they’ve been so keen to put in place?
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From Johnson’s article:
“When several students complained to the professor about the course’s politicized content, they were informed that their previous education had left them “brainwashed” on matters relating to race and social justice… Troubled by this response, at least five students filed written complaints with the department chair last December. They received no formal reply, but soon discovered that their coming forward had negative consequences. One senior was told to leave Brooklyn and take an equivalent course at a community college. Two other students were accused of violating the college’s “academic integrity” policy and refused permission to bring a witness, a tape recorder, or an attorney to a meeting with the dean of undergraduate studies to discuss the allegation.”
Academic integrity! Social justice! Priceless.
Does “social justice” include ending the racist policy of affirmative action?
Well, as Johnson says,
“Education programs could define a number of causes as demonstrating a commitment to social justice — perhaps championing Israel’s right to self-defense, so as to defend innocent civilians against suicide murderers; or celebrating a Roman Catholic anti-abortion initiative, so as to promote justice by preventing the destruction of innocent life; or opposing affirmative action, so as to achieve a socially just, color-blind, legal code. Yet… adherents of such views are scarce in the academy.”
Given how often the term “social justice” is used, it’s odd how rarely and poorly it’s defined. But it *sounds* like something one ought to be in favour of – as opposed to, say, “social injustice” – and I suppose the meaning is tacit and absorbed via some kind of social osmosis.
By refusing to define terms explicitly one can preserve their utility as a bludgeon. In language, the large blunt instruments can be as effective as a sharp, precise one- especially when the goal is conformity and not enlightenment.
How easy would it be to use the phrase “social justice” as a compelling argument if it was defined? What if it was understood to mean “favoring an individual based on arbitrary criteria of no relation to the needs of the academic position?” Doesn’t sound much like justice anymore, does it?
“Social justice” is a chameleon phrase. It can adapt itself to whatever ideology is using it and has no substance behind it – except, perhaps, an ill-defined element of coercion and sanctimonious bullying. At the risk of invoking Godwin’s law, it occurred to me while reading this post that the phrase could easily have been used in Nazi Germany (and maybe was), where it would have had an ostensibly different content, but would have had precisely the same intent: to brainwash, to eliminate open discussion, and to cow dissent.
And no, David, I don’t think you make too much of this sort of thing. I am constantly astonished and alarmed at the unsubtle, intolerant, narrow and highly ideological indoctrination that I see happening around me these days. It is the opposite of what should happen in an open and vibrant society.
It’s rather like how the words “inequality” and “inequity” are often used interchangeably, as if inequality must always be unfair, which isn’t the case at all.
“And no, David, I don’t think you make too much of this sort of thing.”
I’ll carry on then.
This is part of the Gramscian strategy to get your ideas accepted by society. By saying them often enough that older non-“critical thinkers” accept them as truth, and by inculcating the young, so that they don’t learn critical thinking processes, and never hear alternative explanations. In some ways, it is like the way tht the military trains recruits – you have to beat them down to nothing before you can build them the way you like.
It is amazing how frequently these techniques are used in our society. Business uses them, the education system is set up to use them, and the mainstream media serves as a major conduit for the disinformation. I am starting to think that I need to stop thinking about it, and just live with it – no kids to worry about, and when I die, I don’t care.
Drink more wine and eat more French food….
David,
This is good on “social justice” education:
“The first roadblock I hit is in the first sentence: “debating.” In a classroom setting, with one teacher and a pack of students, exactly whom is the teacher supposed to be “debating?” Perhaps the word was chosen because “indoctrinating” just doesn’t sound too good, even if it’s the right word. The pitch is that this is hands-on education, that its recipients not only learn, they apply the learning as they go. But the problem is, this approach conflates the methodology of scientific inquiry or the skill of reading with the required opinions and theories that are leavened into the lesson. It falsely sets them up as equal, and mutually supporting. They are not. You can use statistics, close reading, lab experiments to reach conclusions that are anathema to the “social justice” fetishists. The “purpose of learning” is higher than “political ramifications.” The ways of perception obey no ideologies.”
http://vernondent.blogspot.com/2008/02/social-justice-education.html
Anna,
Thanks for that. It does highlight the pretty standard assumption that a teacher automatically has an *equal* and *reciprocal* relationship with his students – including children – and that this therefore qualifies as “debate” rather than grooming and indoctrination. We’re supposed to believe that, despite the tendentious nature of the project, the “debate” will somehow work both ways and students, including children, will be able to press their teacher on *his* assumptions and refute any errors. And that they too will have the time and wherewithal to gather evidence to support a contrary position and argue it on an equal footing.
This is, to say the least, not entirely convincing. It sounds much more like an opportunity for adults to indulge their own political leanings – of one kind in particular – and imprint them on people who are at an obvious disadvantage and cannot adequately defend themselves. If “indoctrination” sounds a little too harsh and realistic, I suppose we could replace it with “steering those who can’t argue back terribly well towards the political conclusions you feel they ought to have.”
So much for fairness and equality.
“In a classroom setting, with one teacher and a pack of students, exactly whom is the teacher supposed to be ‘debating?'”
I can “debate” politics my 12-year-old and win every time. Funny that.
A big one now is “sustainability”. Who could be against that? But the word is now a Trojan horse, carrying within its belly a strongly socialist agenda.
As an example, see
“http://www.myacpa.org/task-force/sustainability/docs/TFSJ Sustainability.ppt”
What’s especially worrisome is that many universities have officially adopted the concept of sustainability as a basic principle. The University of British Columbia, for example, has the UBC Sustainability Office. One is left wondering how much socialist political baggage this office carries.
All The Good Words Are Taken
Support for conservatism may be growing among Canadian voters, but the left has one considerable reserve strength that’s going to help them for a long time: language. Through what amounts to propaganda the left has been successful at co-opting formerly…