Sometimes I write sequels to columns when they generate a lot of comments, blog discussion, and e-mail. Usually, the first column is based on my own experiences and intuitions. In the second one I try to respond to issues and compelling criticisms raised by the readers.
Last month, when I tried to explain why professors are so unpopular these days, the initial response—mostly from inside academe—suggested that I was being overly provocative. Professors, like other professionals, attract some criticism, readers said, but we are still regarded with moderate respect. At worst, we are treated with indifference: Most people don't care about us as much as we'd like to think they do.
And, besides, worrying about whether people like us is a little neurotic.
I was beginning to believe that my initial theory—that I am just a disagreeable person—was the best explanation for all the hostile remarks I've heard over the years about professors. But then my column started to make the rounds of the conservative blogosphere, and the tone of the comments and e-mail shifted to one that sounded both threatening and familiar.
Essentially, the message was that a large segment of the population thinks humanities professors are a bunch of left-wing elitists who hate America, are overpaid, underworked, focused on pointless research, and unwilling to teach undergraduates.
That perspective has been represented most recently by Glenn Beck's accusation that professors are systematically lying about our national history. A few years ago David Horowitz published a who's who of professors who have been reviled by the right: The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Regnery 2006). One blurb on the book's cover says it "reveals a shocking and perverse culture of academics who are poisoning the minds of today's college students." And, of course, that point of view is familiar to anyone who remembers the culture wars of the 80s and 90s. American populism is eternally self-renewing, and that's probably a good thing, since academe—as well as other institutions—should be accountable to the population at large and not just to itself.
But I was disappointed that most readers from outside academe did not notice the self-critical elements of my essay: Once they find out someone is a professor—particularly in the humanities—they just assume that person has a whole set of clearly defined beliefs and attitudes. There's no need to read the essay, and there's no need to construct any new arguments in response, or build any new alliances.
We're trapped in a polarized state of indifference to each other's complexities and conflicts.
So after teaching for 10 years at a Christian, liberal-arts college in the rural Midwest, and writing articles critical of academe under the pen name of a notoriously populist painter, it's almost a pleasant surprise to find myself categorized as an arugula-eating leftist. It makes me feel like I belong in academe, after all, despite a background that might otherwise have made me a card-carrying member of the Tea Party.
I was born in Camden, N.J., and I grew up in a working-class, Catholic neighborhood where professors—when they were discussed at all—were regarded as dangerous subversives (they would turn you into an atheist and a Democrat), but they also had a lot of power to determine your future, so you had to please them if you went to college.
Of course, I didn't know any professors back then—neither did anyone in my immediate family—which made it easy to demonize them. As a new undergraduate at a Catholic university, I regarded professors with suspicion, particularly if they had ostentatiously liberal sensibilities. I believed that they did not like people like me, and I might not have been wrong in some cases.
Even now, I don't really feel at home in some academic contexts, like the big, national conventions: I still regard other professors—particularly from elite colleges (like Harvard University, where I eventually earned my doctorate)—as people living on some other social plane, against whom I have some reflexive and defensive grievances. Always, they seem concerned with social justice, but those concerns almost never extend to working-class Americans, as such, including all the adjuncts who increasingly do the teaching at our universities.
In the small community of academics with working-class origins, it is sometimes noticed that professors at major universities—the ones who attract most of the public's attention—seem to be mostly from the upper half of the income spectrum. I suspect that they are clustering even higher now than they were at any time since before the 1960s.
With few exceptions, elite positions are seemingly filled through a kind of closed system in which academic pedigree (itself the outcome of prior class position) stands in for the more blatant old-boy network of an earlier period. As a result, a large percentage of the faculty members of our leading universities have a limited understanding of the way most people live; they cannot be expected to sympathize with the alienating experience of moving between social classes, or the strain of paying for an education coupled with the fear of not finding a job afterward.
My entire education took place in the shadow of such anxieties, so I think I understand why many people who feel coerced into attending college at great expense, while still being potentially shut out from economic opportunity, might resent those for whom an elevated social position seems to have come as a matter of course. People resent professors even more when they seem to attack the institutions that give people's lives meaning, such as the military, the church, and the traditional family. Denouncing any of those things from behind the shield of tenure and potentially at taxpayer expense is offensive to most Americans.
It is also offensive to many professors who are not at elite institutions.
The "public be damned" attitude of some academic provocateurs ignores the impact that their grandstanding has on higher education as a whole—on the lives of professors farther down in the academic-status hierarchy. Professors at elite institutions can do as they please; they are not going to bear the brunt of cutbacks inspired by their more extreme remarks, or be regarded with suspicion by their students, most of whom think as they do because they come from the same social stratum.
Again, most professors are not part of that small, elite culture of pseudoradicalism. Outside the major universities, most of us have more ordinary social backgrounds and more moderate views. We are people who worked hard at school, won scholarships, invested many years in our educations, became admirers of traditional disciplines, devoted ourselves idealistically to scholarship and teaching, and trusted the system.
A lot of us entered graduate school following the promise of tenure-track jobs being available in the not-so-distant future—the familiar "labor-shortage hoax." But an increasing percentage of Ph.D.'s in the last 40 years have ended up working for poverty-class wages with no benefits or job security. Far from being a leisure class, most college teachers are sharing the economic stresses faced by millions of other displaced, downsized, and outsourced workers who see no relief on the horizon.
Yet, for some reason, most graduate students and adjuncts remain unrealistically aspirational: They do not work together to reform the academic labor system because they still believe that they will, somehow, become tenure-track professors on the basis of individual merit. The thousands of adjuncts who staff most college courses are like the part-time warehouse worker who doesn't want the rich to pay more taxes because he buys a lottery ticket every day.
Whose interest does it serve for most academics to alienate themselves from the working class, and for the working class to regard all professors as elitists with whom they have no common interests? What is it going to take for academe to become part of a broader movement for economic opportunity, instead of being perceived—sometimes rightly—as an impediment to that goal?
Those are larger questions than I can answer in a column. But some changes could take place within academe—in addition to the ones I suggested last month—that could begin to disrupt the unproductive divisions between professors and the broader public.
First, academics should begin to think of ourselves as workers rather than members of an elite profession. We should stop competing with each other individually and look for ways to build solidarity across the divisions of discipline, institutional hierarchy, and academic rank.
Second, academe needs to work harder to deal with the ways that social class has isolated its leading institutions from the perspectives of most Americans.
Third, we need to take the economic concerns of our students more seriously at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It is no longer enough to merely teach subjects we happen to find interesting.
Meanwhile, we need to work together to improve our image in the public imagination. Most of us are working long hours with our students and managing the business of our institutions for relatively modest salaries—when we are reliably employed at all. But a large number of people are convinced, as an article of faith, that we are all millionaires who engage in pointless research with the goal of indoctrinating students into radical beliefs. We need to work harder to crowd out the more polarizing examples of academic work with evidence of our enormous dedication to furthering the public good.
Given enough evidence of good-faith efforts, we might begin to move away from the tired clichés of the culture wars toward a new coalition that aligns academe with the interests of most citizens.
Comments
1. jkline - October 24, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Although I count myself among the conservative, being a center-right libertarian, I often don't agree with the notion that humanities professors are all leftist, elitist, or subversive in their intent.
It has been my experience, however, that most humanities professors have little knowledge about the world outside academe. Unfortunately, the large majority of our students graduate and enter this world and they need the tools to succeed. Humanities professors often go straight through from Bachelors to PhDs. Along the way they rarely maintain a connection to business, industry, or government.
This lack of worldly experience really galls students, parents, and critics of Higher Ed. How can you possibly prepare a student for the world outside when you really don't know anything about it? This dilemma, along with the perception that humanities professors only care about the students who show an interest in becoming a fellow PhD colleague, is the root of people's criticism.
I'm not arguing for humanities to be more like Business, Communication, or Pharmacology. I'm arguing that humanities should understand enough about the critical thinking, communication, and analytical skills that grads need to succeed. Then teach these skills as part of humanities (with some outcomes). Adoring Shakespeare for the love of literature is fine for those disposed to it. But that numbers a small minority. Loving Shakespeare for the ability to learn narrative, rhetorical structures, good story telling, and deep meaning is better when students understand how it will enrich their lives and career skills. To make the connection, humanities needs to have some sense of life outside the walls of the academy.
2. art_vandelay - October 24, 2010 at 10:43 pm
This article is nothing but a collection of sweeping generalizations posing as critical self-analysis. If you are trying to beat the public at their own game (making uninformed assumptions about academia as a whole), you have succeeded (or at least played to a draw).
3. fergbutt - October 25, 2010 at 12:14 am
A few of those part-time warehouse workers are smart enough to know that punishing the rich has a way of backfiring on those looking for work. But, hey, thanks for injecting some class envy into your otherwise intelligent opinion.
4. waldemar - October 25, 2010 at 01:15 am
Academic hierarchies reinforce social distinctions, including but not limited to those related to social class. The graduates of Harvard, like the author, stand at the top of that hierarchy (even if they had humble origins). Meanwhile, the holder of a PhD from Generic State University stands far lower (even if she was born in Grosse Pointe).
These rigid and enduring hierarchies shout "elitism" to the outside world while they influence the whole course of one's life within academe:
http://100rsns.blogspot.com/2010/09/3-your-pedigree-counts.html
5. kevinoconnell - October 25, 2010 at 05:36 am
I think there is a lot of truth in this. I am a PhD in a tenured job, but I have become so disillusioned with the average academic that I tend to keep away from him or her. The general law that they are self-centred, snobbish, left-leaning, anti-religious and ignorant of life outside universities applies so often that the exceptions are a pleasant surprise.
6. daveapostles - October 25, 2010 at 06:21 am
In many UK universities, undergraduates have the opportunity (sometimes even compulsory) to engage with Personal Development Program(me)s, which include the transferable skills assumed to be desired in business and commerce. Quite often the approach includes sophisticated notions of group and team working and communication skills (as well as psychometric testing). I was somewhat surprised to find that at the University of Leicester, where I was employed, it included Belbin-type analysis of contributions to teamwork. OTOH, I am somewhat sceptical/skeptical that knowledge of such techniques is widespread in _some_ of sections of business and commerce, having read some of the advertisements which describe teamworking as if it is just a synonym for 'getting along with people'. It is true, of course, that many academics are not really interested in inculcating these skills and these courses are proposed by people in the Careers Service and other student-related services.
7. ardvaark - October 25, 2010 at 06:24 am
"Reflexive and defensive grievances," indeed. I think responses to these concerns might be even more effective if they are based in knowledge. This essay is fraught with unsubstantiated claims, generalizations, stereotypes, what appear as mischaracterizations, and inflammatory rhetoric. It is the kind of discussion that lends credence to argument, and assault, based in anxiety and envy. We might do better to try to understand the rhetoric better, then to think about next steps. I don't know that these recommendations make much sense or really address what might be happening, given a much more rigorous and should I say academic consideration of these issues.
8. tuxthepenguin - October 25, 2010 at 07:01 am
I think the author has revealed himself to be a member of the Tea Party who watches a lot of Glenn Beck. The rest of the world has better things to do with its time than to think about what professors do. "They" in the mind of this author is actually "Joe the Plumber". Most don't care about a few entertainers who are paid well to build strawmen.
Maybe in some parts of the world (and in the author's mind) blue collar Catholics are Republicans, but those folks tend to vote Democratic (you know, when you look at actual numbers).
Just to add one more point to this essay from Glenn Beckistan. John Paul II was a philosopher. Yes, there may be some Catholics who dislike humanities professors, but please keep the Catholic Church out of it. You're misusing and misquoting the Catholic Church.
And one comment on a particularly strange comment:
"Always, they seem concerned with social justice, but those concerns almost never extend to working-class Americans, as such, including all the adjuncts who increasingly do the teaching at our universities."
Yep, straight from Glenn Beckistan. Fighting against tax cuts for the wealthy is fighting against the middle class, right? Otherwise Joe the Plumber could never buy his business, right? Health care - too trivial to matter. Credit card reform - just hurts the working class.
9. mheffleychron - October 25, 2010 at 08:05 am
No good deed (or word) goes unpunished, eh Thomas Benton (re: especially heartless, blindered tuxthepenguin)? I've been a fan of your screeds for years, and assume and trust you have the thick skin and resilience to process the heat that inevitably comes back on those who generate the most light. Reading through your piece and comments, though, has me musing on that phenomenon as it plays out in our more public political arena (which is where policy changes, in a better world, could help academia get to where you suggest it might begin to get to through grassroots collective organizing; in the better world, of course, both arenas would work for us cooperatively).
I'm thinking of the good deeds and words of Pres. Obama and fellow Dems that have garnered such criticism, mischaracterization, resistance, etc. The argument for our academic and social political process both is that they self-regulate upward through honest and frank dialogue, critical thinking, rigorous debate; the reality is that instead of the cream rising to the top, the milk turns, and we all turn away from it, reflexively.
Agonism is deep in our traditions of both democracy and academic freedom; we have the freedom to tear each other down as much as build each other up, and we seem to prefer it for the former, reserving the latter for the most dire moments of desperate necessity and constraint beyond all such freedom. May we come to those moments soon...
10. mainiac - October 25, 2010 at 08:21 am
When Ivy League royalty (Summers, Paulson, Rubin, Geithner)command the rubes that the US economy shall become a non manufacturing service model, and the country begins collapsing, while Ivey league royalty enriches itself, the rubes become suspicious!!!
FTR: father, brother attended Harvard, Harvard Business School.
11. tiger_stripes - October 25, 2010 at 08:46 am
It would have been helpful actually to have named some academics who are allegedly "part of that small, elite culture of pseudoradicalism."
As this piece stands, it sounds as though the author is going against his own bit of wisdom to "stop competing with each other individually and look for ways to build solidarity across the divisions of discipline, institutional hierarchy, and academic rank." When abused by laypersons, he in turn blames a small subset of academia for being the stereotypical leftist elitists who supposedly give the whole profession a bad name.
This may surprise Benton, but Ivy League professors are also "people who worked hard at school, won scholarships, invested many years in [students'] educations, became admirers of traditional disciplines, devoted themselves idealistically to scholarship and teaching, and trusted the system." They do not teach at Harvard and Princeton because they were born into privileged families; they are there because they've distinguished themselves as the top scholars in their fields. And to say they are unconcerned with the concerns of "middle America," not compassionate enough toward the hoi polloi? Tell that to the departments of sociology, politics or government in any top 10 school!
12. 22228715 - October 25, 2010 at 09:20 am
Perhaps part of the problem is to characterize "academics" or "professors" as a single group. The workday reality of a professor at one type of institution versus another, or one discipline versus another, might be so different as to defy efforts to unify. What is the common thing that makes this whole group "professors"? Is that a good basic criterion? Test it out against another category... if we were talking about internal tensions among "musicians" would we include millionaire rockers, church organists, DJ's for hire, garage bands, and symphony first chairs? Is there other analogy that might fit better?
13. tpul2014 - October 25, 2010 at 10:40 am
If I interpret "class envy" to mean the "working class" envying the "upper class", I have to disagree. First of all, the categories are so fuzzy as to be almost meaningless. Where does one put general contractors, plumbers, electricians and other tradespeople who easily make more than many if not most holders of an MA of PhD? What about the computer programmer and other tech workers? What class do they belong to? More importantly, people in the working class, if they identify themselves as such, envy no one. If you do not believe me, try out the terms "race envy", "gender envy" and "generation envy" to see if they do not ring as equally false.
14. trendisnotdestiny - October 25, 2010 at 11:12 am
The best told lies always contain significant kernals of truth...
Benton has identified significant threads of tension in some of these kernals, but unless we acknowledge that academia has always been at the beck and call of the elite (usually through divide and conquer competitive inculcations; socially produced and reproduced propaganda), then we fail see how easy it is for most academics to sidestep the question: why do the hate us?
As the chorous sings, they are obviously not talking about me; it must be this one over there!
15. tolerantly - October 25, 2010 at 11:30 am
Well, Tom, if your tenured colleagues were to grow some balls, this kind of column wouldn't be necessary. As a nonacademic living on the fringes of academe, and thus a "safe person", I can recite for you chapter-and-verse the "I have to watch what I say among these crazy liberals" professor's speech. It's sandwiched between iterations of the "I didn't really have to come here, I had much better offers" speech. I can understand the fear pre-tenure, but once you've got it, what the hell? So bigwigs don't love you and make you teach freshmen. Nobody said the first amendment was going to make people kiss you.
Use the tenure. It's not there for that reason, but you can use it that way. Not, mind, that I believe that the conservative views of humanities profs are going to be any more realistic or better-reasoned than the liberal views of humanities profs.
16. 3224243 - October 25, 2010 at 11:37 am
I wonder if the public has the same opinion of the professoriate of the professional schools (Business, Nursing, Engineering, etc.)? Probably not. I don't. They're real people, not phony intellectuals with no skills relevant to the world in which most of the rest of us have to live.
17. acreed - October 25, 2010 at 11:51 am
The "VOCAL MINORITY" ... we all need to learn that just being constantly loud, louder and loudest... doesn't mean the whole world thinks like they do.
18. andreology - October 25, 2010 at 12:01 pm
I am a conservative who works at an ivy league university. I, too, have noticed this odd phenomenon, that the most educated and most liberal around me are in practice the least likely to be friendly to the working-class staff who assist us. For example, I am the only one who knows the names of the woman who cleans our offices and the woman who delivers our mail. My colleagues who vote the "correct" way seem to be uncomfortable even introducing themselves let alone having a conversation with a blue-collar person.
19. crunchycon - October 25, 2010 at 01:03 pm
#18 andreology -- I have notice the same phenomenon here at my large midwestern state u -- most faculty are from "elsewhere" and we have our fair share of grads of ivies. In fact, in office conversation, denigration of southerners, country "hicks", and the uneducated is commonplace by the "pc" crowd.
20. snihighereducation - October 25, 2010 at 01:44 pm
You find what you're looking for. In my foray into the College Republicans, I found a lot of emphasis on 'blacks' and 'Mexiacns' and how they're 'changing' America, but always, "it's not about race", "I'm not a racist but...", or my favorite, "It's not just white people that feel this way". It goes both ways, but yes, let's align ourselves into ideological fault lines and vote straight ticket.
21. crunchycon - October 25, 2010 at 02:10 pm
"let's align ourselves into ideological fault lines and vote straight ticket."
What, you mean like the libs do?
22. mspp123 - October 25, 2010 at 02:56 pm
In our little polocy school outside Washington DC we are very concerned with producing students who can succeed in the job market and in the jobs they land. In our world there is none of the self-indulgence and isolation one finds in others corners of academe.
23. samarafoster - October 25, 2010 at 02:56 pm
Why is it that "leftist" carries such negative connotation and is so often equated with "elitist"?
24. softshellcrab - October 25, 2010 at 03:17 pm
Most college professors are liberal, it's true. But I am in a business school, and here, the faculty do not tend to be liberal. They average right of center. But when I go to university meetings with the humanities faculty there, I see the other side. Men with pony tails and wearing sandals. And as andreology said in No. 18, they usually don't seem to be very nice people. They seem to have a chip on their shoulder. Kind of haughty. Anyway, I always enjoy seeing "real" professors after working every day with boring business professors like myself...
25. anonscribe - October 25, 2010 at 03:23 pm
Regional differences matter in this discussion. Higher ed on the East Coast is a different animal than out west. We don't have bluebloods much out here. Public higher ed, partly because of its quality and accessibility, is largely perceived as the ONLY system of higher ed. I grew up in a middle-class suburb. Everyone I know who went to college went to a UC or CSU (or a CC first). This creates an entirely different culture. Some of my friends in college were from wealthy families, most were from working families like mine. We were thrown together in a way that doesn't seem to happen as much back east. Why? Because it doesn't make much sense to send your kid to USC if they can get into UCLA. The same doesn't hold true for Harvard/UMASS or Bowdoin v. U of Maine.
Anyway, I think the web of LAC's and big private unis back east affects how conversation take place nationally and in D.C. too much. Out here, the conversation is still classed, but it takes very different turns. Most people in private schools aren't blueblooded liberals; they're conservatives 'escaping' the public university system that would have their children believing, gasp, that such a thing as democratic solidarity means anything. Compare the "liberal" culture of Harvard/Stanford to that of Berkeley or SFSU to understand what I mean.
We at the UC I attended didn't largely perceive humanities professors as elitists or something. They were the most like us. We perceived the econ professors as elitists. Every one of my humanities courses at the UC seemed relevant and socially aware.
I wonder how much of this is due to a stratified private/public system back east, where quality depends almost entirely on how much money you have. It would seem strange, I admit, to teach a bunch of kids who can afford to go to Harvard or Hope College about social activism, social justice, and the like. It may seem that the insular campuses they attend have little relationship to the world outside.
In CA, where the CSU and UC campuses are largely integrated into surrounding life, it would seem really weird to omit discussions of social relevance from humanities classrooms. Most English and History majors at the UC aren't from privileged families. They're the children of grocery clerks (like my best friend) or the children of a bank teller and a carpenter (like me). The liberal activism on these campuses isn't an arid or hypocritical exercise; it's a natural extension of the social life surrounding and including the campus (such as state funding, etc.).
26. humandignity - October 25, 2010 at 03:32 pm
Ah the lovely, lovely irony. Three of the most commented on articles this week:
Inherently Violent: Why Conservatives Love War
Tea Party Derangement Syndrome
and
Why Do They Hate Us? Part 2
While I respect this author's attempt to bring out an honest question which deserves self-reflection I think the answer is far to clear.
A review of the articles and comments made about those articles in the and many other higher education publications clearly shows that as much as the right may love war the left loves to wage ad hominem attacks on the right tearing down one straw man after another.
The problem for the left is that the rank and file America while perhaps not so well educated in a some specific field can still recognize it when they are asked to buy a pig in a poke and they have little use for or feelings of gratitude toward an education system which they must send their children too knowing the system is full of people who do not respect them or consider their thoughtful positions to be worth considering or citing.
In any case best wishes to all on your continued efforts at understanding why someone who works two jobs to make $45,000 a year to send their kids to college would be more than a little annoyed when the same institution they send their kids to hosts professionals who use obviously weak and questionable arguements to attack their lifestyle.
Me I think its obvious but hey that's just the words of a common man raised by one of those war mongering right wingers so rather than take my word for it I think y'all ought to form some type of committee to look into. I'm sure you might even be able to get the federal government to give you a grant to cover the costs of the research.
27. anonscribe - October 25, 2010 at 04:00 pm
humandignity - Yes, the left clearly loves to wage ad hominem attacks. Luckily, you rose above that and provided so much more than mere rhetoric.
28. merckley - October 25, 2010 at 04:08 pm
Not all working people are conservative simply because they are relatively uneducated, nor do they all use the military, religion, or the "traditional" family as a means by which to give their lives meaning. Nor (as this article and most of its comments suggest) are they all white men. As anyone who has worked with the labor movement or in community organizing can tell you, there are many working-class men and women who are far more "radical" than the average academic. Indeed, the very labor problems that Dr. Pannapacker so often describes (rightly, I think) stem from the fact that so many academics and administrators are "liberals" and _not_ radical when it comes to class and labor-management relations--and thus effectively conservative. Rather than seeking to challenge a labor system that exploits adjuncts and graduate student labor, most either turn a blind eye (not believing themselves to be part of the problem) or actively support a system that is personally and professionally beneficial. As a former graduate student labor activist, I can say that many of the ugliest greivances were against good liberals who couldn't believe they were harming their employees despite evidence to the contrary.
29. crimson_fox - October 25, 2010 at 04:28 pm
Gasp--the author dares to raise the issue of class inequalities, and in the context of U.S. academia--how rude! Nothing but meritocracy rules here! Flay him!
Seriously, though, I appreciate this thoughtful piece. Ever since I entered graduate study at my elite university, I have missed a working class sense of solidarity, and the strength and good things that can be achieved by pooling talents and working together to fight exploitation and subordination.
Most of the tenured professors I have had the pleasure of knowing come from upper-middle class professional families, or higher, on the class hierarchy. Many mean well, but have little sense of how their class position has shaped their perspectives and "individual" choices, compared to the choices and perspectives of other people. They have no idea how snooty they can appear to people from more modest backgrounds, including the students who wind up in their classrooms, labs, and lecture halls.
Others have drunk deeply from the neoliberal kool-aid and pat themselves on the back for their superior achievement. They are quite pleased to be the dominated among the dominant, reassured that they are the smartest kid in the room. They could care less about the troubles and economic anxiety that plague their students, or the support staff, or the adjuncts.
Bravo, Thomas!
30. crunchycon - October 25, 2010 at 04:34 pm
Crimson_fox -- that would be "couldn't care less".
31. marketnow - October 25, 2010 at 04:55 pm
This article made me gag (and I don't mean that as a metaphor), and the comments were even worse. The animosity toward academia is not driven by working people. It is driven by the professional class, including the many neo-liberals posing as intellectuals in our "schools" of business. Many of those who support the current system of free-market fundamentalism don't like the humanities because the humanities (when they function properly) insist that human value transcends "metrics." The humanities are suspicious of claims that the same technology-driven economy that created many of our current problems will save us from these problems. This suspicion is inconvenient for neo-liberals, who use such forums as Fox News to turn intellectuals into strawmen and to scare the hell out of American parents.
32. marketnow - October 25, 2010 at 05:05 pm
And by the way, I'm such an ivory-tower, humanities-insulated elitist that I spent part of my weekend helping family members dress meat so they'd have something to eat as the recession (caused by neo-liberalism) continues on its merry course. God am I out of touch.
33. avalongod - October 25, 2010 at 06:49 pm
While I agreed with some of the critical comments (generalizations toward Ivy League profs...lack of specific examples...although I don't think he'd have any trouble finding some, frankly)...overall I found the discussion in this article quite meaningful.
I do agree that the "social justice" approach of some professors, while certainly having some merit, tends to border on anti-white prejudice, and certainly comes across as hostile, sanctimonious and doctrinaire. Come of the comments which referred to a Glen-Beckistan, for instance, seem unnecessarily hostile (and I'm no fan of Glen Beck).
I do think the vocal radicalism of *some* professors has done quite a disservice to academia, particularly where it has become shrill and doctrinnaire. Rather than retreating to a defensive position, as some of the comments have done, I'd hope we'd be able to consider the gulf in views that exist between the generally left-wing academia and center-right general public, and how we can communicate to bridge this gulf rather than become more entrenched.
34. rear_view_mirror - October 25, 2010 at 08:25 pm
Crimson and Crunchy: Do you conservatives care more than the bigshot profs do about the hardships of the less well off, or do you take the opportunity to point out that wealthy liberal tenured folks are open to the charge of "hypocrite?" Just asking.
35. jsch0602 - October 25, 2010 at 08:45 pm
I remember one professor who taught "working class literature." After I had graduated and found a job she invited me to attend a film screening that took place on a weekday afternoon. She seemed truly astounded that I had to work all day and could not attend the screening. I guess I taught her a little about the working class.
36. tuxthepenguin - October 25, 2010 at 09:54 pm
@avalongod
Maybe my "hostile" comments (which are merely calling out the author for dishonesty) come from the fact that I am both Catholic and dug ditches for many years. It's absolute nonsense to characterize working class Catholics as anti-professor and conservative. Among the Tea Party faithful, there really is a belief that the working class are part of the Republican party. That's true if you define Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh as working class.
37. aisoc - October 25, 2010 at 10:55 pm
I think "Dr. Tom" hasn't covered one reason why people tend to dislike professors, especially humanities professors: An English professor may have majored in English and teach Lit, but damnit, he's going to tell you about social justice and why the economy failed.
It seems strange, but why have so many of my humanities professors had such strong opinions for fields in which they lack expertise? I'm in EECS now, and rarely has any professor expressed an overt political opinion. But the one historian in the faculty feels the constant obligation to argue his viewpoint on the economy and who screwed up and why. Of course, he has no real methodology for his beliefs and he's been shown up by econ majors. But that doesn't deter him from believing that his opinion has validity and he continues to spout his reasoning lecture after lecture.
Ok, so one vapid guy on the internet is supposed to represent all the humanities professors? Well, it kind of does. It isn't just the radical or hypocritical aspect of profs the author describes, it is the feeling that a professor believes that her opinion is more valuable because of a status. A plumber, no matter how successful at running a business, can only credibly tell you about plumbing and running a business. A Chinese classics professor, however, can tell you about Laozi, anthropological global warming, the evils of investment banking, and why god or God doesn't exist.
38. lapcas - October 25, 2010 at 11:20 pm
At Anonscribe:
I absolutely agree with you that there is a real difference between the east coast and the west coast in regards to "elitism", particularly because of the way class is defined in the east. I attended a very prestigious, very stuffy boarding school for part of high school where roughly half of my graduating class did go to Ivy Leagues. The class stratification at the prep school totally shocked me as a Californian. It wasn't just the money but the cultural capital which really seemed to define social boundaries - the society balls (I remember being shocked that they were real because I thought they only existed in old movies), the parents who were very powerful people who were friends with very powerful people, the fluencies in foreign languages earned with the help of an "au pair" (never a babysitter) or summers abroad, the access to super prestigious internships. I remember saying that I wanted to attend UCLA and other students looking at me weirdly and saying things like, "Then why are you here?" I was terribly uncomfortable and didn't relate at all. When I was growing up in California, Berkeley and UCLA were the places everyone wanted to go,rich or poor. Although tuitions are now up, when I started undergrad in 1997 at UCLA, these places were also affordable. I paid roughly $8000 a year in tuition; my four years at UCLA cost what approximately 1 1/2 years at USC would have at the time. With some loans and a part-time job, most kids could swing that. My professors also seemed to be, for the most part, normal people. The professors I knew at my graduate school, a second tier land grant university here in the West, also seemed very middle-class and normal to me. Those who charge academics with being elitist seem focused on one small part of academia and fail to take into account the broader picture of higher education in the USA.
39. crimson_fox - October 26, 2010 at 12:26 am
@rear_view_mirror: I do not consider myself conservative, and I am curious why my comments on Thomas B's essay would be construed as conservative. I think what he is proposing--an alliance between people who work in the academy and are getting messed over by neo-liberal market worshippers, and people who work outside the academy and are getting messed over by neo-liberal market worshippers--is refreshing.
40. langrishe - October 26, 2010 at 01:18 am
This may be a trivial question, but why have a penname if, just below the signature, the author's real name is given? I mean, really, why bother with the penname? Double double boil & trouble.........
41. samwise - October 26, 2010 at 08:15 am
I have read two of these articles about why the public hates us and the author misses the point in both. I came from the middle of no where with nothing and managed to survive in the profession for decades. This is not an issue of liberal or conservative but an issue of communication with the public about the difference between training and education and the differences in what one would experience in both contexts. The faculty of most universities have failed to recognize that over time the understanding of those differences have disappeared from the public mind and it is particularly salient in periods when the economy lacks sufficient jobs to employ the graduates of institutions who paid good money to be "educated" but way too much money if they expected training. They hate us because they have lost sight of what "education" means and because we have reinforced the notion that college is necessary for everyone we have played right into that ignorance. If student's want training for the job market that is what should be sought at a much lower price and NOT at research Universities that do not have training as their mission. This lack of understanding in missions has led to a lack of respect both for those faculty that instruct at training institutions because they have been portrayed as second class instructors and for professors at education oriented institutions that are supposedly elitist. Elitist I am not but when I am figuratively spat upon as a lazy elitist who does nothing I brissle because no one handed me a career nor was that career a walk in the park. What needs to happen is administrations to go on the offense (not defense) and begin the process of re-educating the public about the missions of all facilities regardless whether it is training or education and stop suggesting that college is for everyone or necessary for every job. They have not done this in Europe or decades why do we continue this falsehood here at great expense. Is it a numbers game on who can get the most college students? I suspect that is the case but it only serves to widen the gap of understanding.
42. marketnow - October 26, 2010 at 10:14 am
@aisoc: You've made a classic and wrongheaded argument designed to discredit actual intellectuals. You pick a stereotype (the know-it-all professor) and you use that stereotype as a means to undermine the notion of interdisciplinary scholarship. This is done constantly in our popular culture, and it serves the purpose of keeping the powers that be in place. So, the humanities, by this thinking, have no business talking about, say, economics -- never mind that one can't engage American literature or history, for example, without engaging modern and postmodern capitalisms (how else to understand how the characters or people are living?). I write about war literature. Am I confined only to talking about the strength of metaphors, or is it okay for me to learn something about trauma so I can understand what the characters go through and see how that might apply to the wider world? Where's the cut-off point, precisely?
43. anonscribe - October 26, 2010 at 03:13 pm
@marketnow - You make a good point. I am teaching a week or so on Douglass' Narrative right now, and it would be extremely difficult (and misguided) to teach it without also teaching something about slavery, Southern/Northern economic differences, and how theories of the autobiography related to larger world affairs at the time. Many disciplines - literature, history, sociology, economics - have to tread many spheres of knowledge to say anything relevant. I've heard many an econ professor say naive things about history, but I give them a little leeway because their point isn't usually a historical point, but a point about how recent economies function. I can only hope that when I'm discussing Southern slave economies to make a point about Douglass' text, any economists in the room would give me a little leeway since my point is about the production and circulation of Douglass' text and not a treatise on the ins-and-outs of slave economies.
The real problem is that many humanities profs aren't capitalist apologists, so if they say anything not a part of the current orthodoxy in econ departments, they're cast as idiots who can't add and have no business discussing anything but catachresis in their lectures. Silly.
On the other hand, I've been in enough English lectures to be sick of the prof who wants to turn every discussion of literature - from whatever period - into a discussion of Iraq or Bush's failed presidency. It's boring and irrelevant. I'd be as happy as anyone if lit profs avoided these sorts of anachronistic tangents and stuck to doing what their students need most: to understand history, including literature, in detail and with deep understanding. Really though, I think most humanities professors do this very well.
44. humandignity - October 26, 2010 at 04:25 pm
anonscribe - Thank you for pointing out the irony of my own position as I pointed out the irony the opposite position.
So let me ground my discourse by not citing the hypothetical man but rather my own case as a working class individual and a military brat who is working on a doctorate himself.
As the parent of multiple children in college, including a foster son on a leave of absence from college serving his country in Iraq, please let me know exactly why I should not hate or at least be slightly disgusted by the liberal lean of the academy. I have sat in classes and kept my mouth shut like most good conservatives as I have heard more professors than not use their academic platform to launch attacks, against the military, my faith, and my political positions.
My family income sits at around $40,000 a year, the only avenue toward meaningfully increasing our economic earnings potential has been through the academy. I sit in these classes with professors making twice the income I do and while I will grant they work hard I will not grant they work harder than I or many of my fellow middle-class workers, then use the monies that I and my children pay for our education to promote political ideologies and positions which have nothing to do with the subject being studied in that class.
Indeed many conservatives much like one I posted a message to on the "Inherently Violent: Why Conservatives Love War" article have self-selected to not go further in the academy because the culture is so hostile and strongly positioned against them.
So the question becomes how then would you suggest I and those like me feel about this academic ivory tower?
Awaiting your reply...
45. unemployedacademic - October 26, 2010 at 04:50 pm
@ humandignity (#44): I also await anonscribe's answer, but if you will allow me to offer my own answer, I hope it can help illuminate the situation a bit.
The academy is really a group of conversations among scholars. In the classroom, students are made privy to some of the results of those conversations. What you see as the inappropriate intrusion of extraneous political ideology into a classroom is often, I would guess, a professor's attempts to draw connections between his or her own material and current events in order to illuminate the material. You might not see the connection, but that does not mean that one does not exist.
Unfortunately, too many students have been trained to think that their task is to parrot back whatever the instructor wants them to know. Too many students and Americans fail to grasp that what is presented in courses is only one expert's argument about the truth. Too many people are uncomfortable with our lack of certainty.
The appropriate response to such apparent disjunctures as the ones you perceive is not to assume that you know what is happening, but to assume the contrary. Then, you should politely (and I stress politely, given the dysfunctional nature of political conversation in contemporary America) explain that you do not see the connection and would the professor please explain. After this, you can -- again, politely since you are not an expert in the subject -- ask why the professor's point is not contradicted by your own belief or logical argument. You don't have to agree with the answer. What a passing grade says is merely that you understand the arguments taught by a given professor, not that you agree with them.
On those occasions when you do find someone who is abusing his or her power over students, you can take your concerns to the individual's department. My guess is that once notified that some students might feel put-upon by his or her rhetoric, the offending professor will take more care. Students are so often passive and so often offer little feedback that one can sometimes forget that they have opinions that differ from one's own.
46. humandignity - October 26, 2010 at 05:00 pm
unemployedacademic - Ah I understand the concepts of the social construction of reality at least as developed by Berger and Luckmann (1966) and modern constructivism quite well. I have over 8 years of graduate education from a top tier research institute in the United States.
While it is true that I may not fully understand the motives of each professor it is also true that I have observed a strong bias and since I am already aware of the positions of most of the PICs, Department Heads, and the Deans that I am dealing because I have had classes with them. I wouldn't even bother to take it up to them because it could only harm my position within the academy. The issue of power and social capital is a signficant factor in this discussion that cannot be forgotten.
47. rear_view_mirror - October 26, 2010 at 05:28 pm
crimson: Yes you're not a conservative; you're a union supporter. I'm pretty sure I've seen Crunchy's blog and he's a self identified conservative. So how could a conservative criticize a liberal for "exploiting" adjuncts? You don't hear conservatives complaining much about exploitation. I don't have anything against him; I just wanted to hear what he'd say.
48. unemployedacademic - October 26, 2010 at 05:57 pm
@ humandignity (#46): I'm sorry if I seemed patronizing to you. I was trying to lay out a basic position that I think is too often forgotten in interactions between students and academics. I was not talking about the argument for the social construction of reality, which I think is silly. I merely intended to point out that students' expectations, especially conservative students' expectations, are based on a false understanding of the responsibilities of academics.
There is, of course, a liberal bias in the academy. Academics are generally milquetoast right-wing apologists, committed to fighting for freedoms that the ruling elite do not really care about. They, along with the rest of our society, have meekly submitted to the destruction of our community by capitalists and the destruction of our debates by their neanderthalic minions. I understand their position (and yours) since I hide behind a pseudonym for the same reason.
The only solution I can see is to open up the debate in person (not on a blog) without attacking academics whole-cloth as conservatives tend to do.
49. humandignity - October 26, 2010 at 06:48 pm
@unemployedacademic - Any time you wish to sit down over a beer and engage in a deep discussion of our collective frustrations with the current state of the academy I would be happy to do so.
The only problem is you live in the East and I live in the West based on our respective posting times so perhaps Kipling was right in more ways then he knew. "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet."
50. categorical - October 26, 2010 at 09:00 pm
I'm not convinced that a liberal-leaning faculty has any meaningful societal effect. Academia is so fundamentally conservative in the way it structures and conceptualizes knowledge that liberal opinions, agendas, etc. within it are mere window-dressing of what would be liberal or radical in the real sense.
51. aisoc - October 26, 2010 at 10:16 pm
@marketnow #42: Really? You can't tell the difference between a statement explaining why many people dislike professors and a screed against interdisciplinary academics?
Because, this article, at its very core, is about stereotypes. Why do so many people hate professors? Why do humanities based professors take a disproportionate amount of wrath?
An explanation that I put forth was: Humanities professor are often seen as dealing as dealing with controversial topics that fall outside of their fields of expertise and that priveledge is given to these opinions based on their status, not on scholarship (to be fair, I should have stated that more clearly). A stereotype? Certainly.
Now, I'm not advocating that academics be kept in a little box as defined by their thesis. I'm also not in favour of ending interdisciplinary scholarship (it is great when research is conducted in tangential fields). What I am doing is theorizing on what people see and think about the people who work academics.
"I write about war literature. Am I confined only to talking about the strength of metaphors, or is it okay for me to learn something about trauma so I can understand what the characters go through and see how that might apply to the wider world?"
Wow. You learn something and apply it. What would in my first statement would even remotely suggest that this would be bad? Expanding your field of expertise is completely different to what I described.
52. mbkirova - October 27, 2010 at 08:15 am
It's not politics, it is social class entirely that makes this debate about lib vs con absurd. I'm a no-class adjunct (can't afford a phd)and snobbery in academia is as real as it is petty, since the pickings are so puny. However, I would go back to jkline's comment:
"I'm arguing that humanities should understand enough about the critical thinking, communication, and analytical skills that grads need to succeed. Then teach these skills as part of humanities.."
Well, I aim to do just that, particuarly in those infernal 101 and 102 writing classes. It's rare a university which insists profs NOT teach literary analysis at the 100 level, and for lit-profs and students alike reading a nice book or two and making cliched comment or comparison is easy peasy and utterly pointless. Tg I taught in a dedicated business program before my elevation to the marble halls. I put critical reading and thinking first, and never is there place for my political views since the debates are student led.
For the rest of the world, academic mudlslinging is a tempest in a teapot, and let it remain so.
53. 11126724 - October 27, 2010 at 01:16 pm
This article is so full of stereotypical overgeneralizations that I just can't relate to it at all.
I've spent over 25 years teaching in a public, urban comprehensive university where the students are either not bright enough or not rich enough to go elsewhere. I've published a lot and attended a lot of academic conferences. Yet I have never met any of the people described in this article, which leads me wondering who, exactly, is the author talking about? Are they merely people who disagree with the author's predispositions? If so, that must be a large group of very diverse individuals.
There IS a literature that examines the value bases of the various populist strains (plural) of anti-intellectualism in the U.S., but I don't see any evidence of it in this article. It is a very interesting literature, and I commend it to the author, and to others who seem so lost in this discussion.
54. softshellcrab - October 28, 2010 at 12:25 pm
@ tuxthepenguin #36
I also am quite Catholic and dug ditches for years. And yes, it's true that working class Catholics tend to be anti-professor and conservative. You are talking here about most of the people I know and am related to. And they love the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. A number of people from my parish went to the Glenn Beck rally. And except for the few who have sold their souls to the union movement because of their job, they are virulently anti-Obama and have abandoned the Democrats. If you believe otherwise, I don't believe you continue to have thorough contact with middle class Catholics.
55. gfrasz - October 28, 2010 at 12:48 pm
The debate here seems to miss one important change in academic demographics. MOre and more students are getting a substantial if not total amount of their educational experiences at community colleges. Whatever else one might think about the world views, political orientations and ideologies of liberal arts and sciences faculty in such institutions we clearly are not elites and have a full involvment in the life issues of students. Our work load, usually 3 courses with several sections of each course per semester is hardly a cushy position, and we deal with a large % of students with well formed social and political views (since the average age of a cc student is 25). I suppose what I see as missing from such debates as above is an undertanding of how inaccurate the metaphor of the ivory tower is for so many student's educational experience and perception of faculty.
56. judithryan43 - October 28, 2010 at 05:34 pm
One important point that needs to be made: when you were told in graduate school that there would be a shortage of professors very soon, nobody was telling a lie. At that time, no one could have predicted that the retirement age would change. For a while, a "cap" remained on the age until which one could teach at a college or university, even though the mandatory retirement age had been totally lifted for people in other lines of work. That did give higher education a short breather. But then the interim cap on retirement age was removed, and tenured professors could stay on forever. That was probably the point at which you entered the job market, Thomas Benton/William Pannapacker.
More recently, the financial crisis has added to the scarcity of academic jobs because retiring faculty are often simply not replaced. This has made the problem for new Ph.D.s even more severe.
57. bobbyfisher - October 29, 2010 at 12:02 am
I went to a party with English PhD students a few years ago hoping that I would meet well read individuals who loved literature. Nope. One out of 50 had read any of the classics! Most others were amateur activists who, after dabbling in leftist thoughts, tried to pass themselves off as some kind of intuitive social scientist,ie, lacking statistical and quantitative training. Humanities profs have lost the respect of the general population and of other academics largely because they are fraudsters. They now specialize in cultivating innumerate arrogant (and unemployable) malcontents. All of the people with substantial desire for truth have exited the field.
58. pannapacker - October 31, 2010 at 10:43 am
Here's a recent example of the kind extremism that can be used to shred whetever remains of tenure.
http://www.virtualjerusalem.com/news.php?Itemid=1182
Don't worry, another one will be on Fox News soon. And then our public institutions can look forward to higher tuition and more adjuncts because we're all a bunch of radicals who hate America.
Academe needs a moderation rally of its own.