I live in an incomparably beautiful, seemingly peaceful, and very rural region of Northeast Central Pennsylvania. It's the sort of place that makes it easy to imagine neighborliness at its best. Indeed, on the surface of the Summer Township carnivals, baseball games, AYSO soccer, community dinners, swimming holes, and fire hall Bingo nights, it's hard to imagine anything but a kind of pastoral scene from Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. But what I have gradually come to learn over the fifteen years I have lived and worked here is that just beneath this idyllic surface breathes a monstrous bigotry whose poisonous tentacles are distinguished only by the targets of its hatred, particularly gays, ethnic minorities, and anyone who sports an education.
How do I know this? Because the establishment of a hate group is made possible only by a soil conducive to its growth. The hate group in this case is the Patriot's Voice (The Patriot-s Voice.com) who, thinly disguised as a tax advocacy group, espouses a number of positions which are (a) wholly consistent with the bigoted rhetoric of the far right's Christian Identity Movement, (b) directly and explicitly connected to Stop the ACLU--a group recently censored for their harassment of a Jewish family who had secured ACLU representation to combat the violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in a public school, (c) directly and explicitly connected to the Minutemen--whose own roots trace back to the Klu Klux Klan, and (d) consistent with and celebratory of Joseph McCarthy--including his witch-hunt tactics, penchant for fabrication, name-calling, ridicule, and rhetoric of personal assault.
Little of this would really matter--other, of course, than any sensible person's moral revulsion--were the group’s members, including its founders Evy Lysk and Robert Runyon, just yammering to each other. But, sadly, such is not the case. With the stealth which has come to characterize the Christian identity Movement in places like Kansas and, more recently, Missouri, the Patriot's Voice seeks to infiltrate school boards. Masquerading as tax advocates--heroes of the working poor and the elderly--they have sought and won school board seats in at least two of the region's districts, Benton and Berwick. It's hard, moreover, to overemphasize the significance of winning school board seats in rural communities. Let's put it this way: the only other meaningful loci of power are the town counsels. That's it. Evy Lysk's tenure on the Benton School Board has included not only a sincere (if however failed) attempt to ban books from the high school library, but the exploitation of high school students attending Model United Nations at Bloomsburg University to advance her staggeringly ignorant assault on the U.N. as an organization for a globalized communist dictatorship. No less paranoid, Robert Runyon, the Patriot's Voice "CEO," claims that he will not allow personal attack on the laughably misnamed "open forum" page of the Patriot's Voice website--but in fact allows the most vicious battering I have read anywhere--so long as it's targets are the critics of Patriot's Voice positions.
As recently as yesterday evening, however, the citizens of this beautiful region took a gigantic step back from the abyss of ignorance and bigotry the Patriot's Voice epitomizes, and when I saw the local newspaper (the Press Enterprise) headline this morning I could have wept for hope. All five of the Patriot's Voice candidates for the Berwick School Board were soundly defeated--not by wide margins, mind you, but wide enough. All five, including Robert Runyon. A victory for education made all the sweeter by the sheer work and time many of us, including myself, put into exposing their real motives, and making public the viciousness of their rhetoric. It's doubly ironic, then, that as the school board election approached the most significant obstacle to a Patriot's Voice defeat was not the Patriot's Voice members, but their long-standing support by the editor of the local paper, Jim Sachetti. While Sachetti's bias against teachers is as well-established as the orbits of the Earth around the Sun, and while the disproportionately liberal newspaper space he routinely gives to Patriot's Voice members is well-known, that he would try to manipulate the elections themselves through the selective, strategically located, late, and censored printing of comments critical of Patriot's Voice positions in the Press Enterprise's call-in comment page, "Thirty Seconds," surprised even the most cynical among us. And yet this is precisely what he's done. At first I thought Mr. Sachetti might simply be inept with a computer (most of the "calls" are now posted by email). But this seems quite doubtful in that it is not consistent with his handling of "Thirty Seconds" in the past. Please consider the posts below. Each is listed in order of submission to "Thirty Seconds," and each includes the date of submission. Allowing a five day lapse time between submission and printing (Sachetti claims to refuse to print only direct threats), it doesn't take the proverbial rocket scientist to see what Sachetti has in fact done; all it takes is a cursory sifting through “Thirty Seconds”--paying perhaps special attention to the location of the comments when they do finally get printed, say directly above or below Evy Lysk's:
30 Seconds, Response to Hooter Girl, 4.21.07
In what can only be described as the perfect response to my letter of 4.20.07, PV-Hooter Girl writes with all the maturity of a five year old “I don't like lesbians and I don't like atheists. That's my final answer and I'm sticking to it!” (PV Forum). Could I have asked for a better affirmation of my letter’s point that these aren’t the people we want making decisions on our school boards? I don’t see how. Hooter Girl provides an excellent snapshot of the complete PV-reasoning process: “I don’t like “x,” so “x” is bad.” Pretty sophisticated stuff, that PV-thinking. With critical thinking skills like these, no wonder Lysk and Heller insist they don’t need college educations to make decisions for YOUR kids!
30 Seconds, Response to PV candidates, 4.25.07
Funny thing about Robert Ridall and Kathleen Wells; both are running along with Evy Lysk for Benton School Director. Both are Patriot’s Voice members. But they’re either too embarrassed by their PV affiliation to tell you OR they don’t want you to know until after the election—when it’s too late to prevent them from trying to enact the PV agenda I laid out in my 4.13 letter (Well’s mention of the PV does not clarify her membership). How completely dishonest—and right out of the playbook of the Christian Identity Movement for taking over school boards. They must think we’re stupid! Vote for your kids. Vote for your elderly parents. Vote against the potential for cosly lawsuits. Reject the dishonest stealth tactics of the Patriot’s Voice.
30 Seconds, Response Lysk Letter, 4.27.07
Isn’t it just too coincidental that—just as we approach school board elections—PV-Evy Lysk alleges a scandal with respect to teacher’s children who are not entitled to attend Benton schools? Why is she making these allegations now when she claims she’s known for some time? To curry favor? Votes? Why does she think she’s above normal avenues of reporting where there has not yet been offered proof of these allegations? Why is this a story for the PE when no investigation has been completed? When did hurling accusations come to count as providing evidence? As mercenary as her childish name-calling rhetoric of her recent letter, our real question should be “What positive contribution to education has been promised by any PV-candidate?” Answer: none.
30 Seconds, Response to Hooter Girl, 4.30.07
Patriot’s Voice members respond to criticism by resorting to direct threats. Here’s PV-Rose Pursel (un-edited): “patriots prevail---- wendy fails!!!
Extra, Extra---read all about it.
Wendy's flipped out and we're gonna shout it!
Losing her marbles day by day,
Wendy Lee is well on her way.
Where is she going? No one knows.
As long as we don't have to listen
to any more of her prose!
Face up to your fears and rejection.
If pills don't help, we'll try an injection.”
What is THIS if not the words of a hate group, Mr. Editor? What does “If pills don’t help, we’ll try an injection” mean to you? Yet these are the people you think qualified to be on the school boards? Open your EYES.
30 Seconds, Response to Robert Runyon, 5.1.07
Although Patriot’s Voice conspiracy entrepreneur Robert Runyon claims—sans evidence—that there’s a “nest of far left ideologues” at BU busily indoctrinating students (myself especially, “From the Desk” PV-website), he fails to acknowledge that his explicit promotion of education dominated by religious dogma is just that. What worries Runyon isn’t indoctrination; it’s that it won’t be HIS. He seems to believe that education that’s anti-science (evolution’s false) and anti-literacy (book banning) will prepare students for the world. Sure—IF education’s nothing more than the programming of soldiers to fight in some holy war of good against evil; but it’s not, and we know better. Your kids are no more soldiers than there are UFOs in the Nevada Desert—and we all know better than THIS.
30 Seconds, Response to Evy Lysk, 5.2.07
In her most recent diatribe—the usual fear-mongering paranoia about homosexual indoctrination, adolescent name-calling (I’m “silly-looking,”), and malicious (not to mention false) accusation (I “hate” Christians)—PV-Evy Lysk makes a stunning admission, apparently not realizing what this reveals about her: She uses SPIES. Her words, not mine (PV-Forum,” Hypocrisy”). She SPIES on people—especially teachers (no surprise there!)—to get dirt that she can use against them. NO KIDDING. What a superb lesson for our young adults. Why do the hard work of researching evidence when you can just SPY? Make up what you want to see? Then call it truth? Who wouldn’t want this sterling example of moral fortitude on their school board? For Pete’s sake, how on Earth can THIS be good enough for your kids?
30 Seconds, Response to Robert Runyon, 5.4.07
Among the disturbing aspects of PV-Robert Runyon’s tirade—other than his failure to distinguish high school from college, and his paranoid ramblings about “Leftists”—(PV-website, “From the Desk”) is his claim that “the views of a simple housewife are just as viable as that of a…professor.” So does that mean UFO-ology is the equivalent of physics? Astrology of Astronomy? Alchemy of chemistry? Would Runyon be as willing to consult a palm-reader as an oncologist if he thought he had cancer? I doubt it; and there’s the rub—or rather the hypocrisy. If every opinion is “viable,” why bother with education at all? OH! I forgot, opposing education in favor of Christian Identity indoctrination IS the PV goal! Unconvinced? See Evy Lysk’s promotion of Christian-only teachers (PV-website).
30 Seconds, Response to Becky Heller, 5.5.07 (censored by Mr. Sachetti)
Applause to PV-Becky Heller for her support of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s findings that the Michigan State Chapter of Young Americans for Freedom is a hate group. Applause to her for recognizing that sporting famous names (Tom Tancredo—no surprise there!) is irrelevant to whether a group sponsors hatred and bigotry. One question: Will Heller now resign from the Patriot’s Voice? Contrary to the PE-editor’s naïve claim that there are no hate groups in PA—citing the Law Center for support even though this organization only tracks large, well-known groups like the Klan, the Minutemen (among Runyon’s favs), and the Young Americans—the PV is a hate group. Thanks to Heller for clarifying this, and let me be the first to welcome her to humanity!
30 Seconds, Robert Runyon and the Minutemen, 5.6.07 (not printed as of 5.16)
Speaking of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate group list, check out Robert Runyon’s advertising for the Patriot’s Voice on the Minutemen Message Board, “Yea, check out our web site, we've got a lot of documentation on the subject (the “communist” U.N.)” (Dec. 20, 2006). The SPLC regards the Minutemen as more dangerous than the Klan because they are perceived as less overtly bigoted. But, SPLC makes clear, their anti-Hispanic rhetoric is just as vile as the Klan’s. Along with anti-Semitic Stop the ACLU (PV-Lysk, regional representative) and vicious far-right “commentator” Debra Smith (PV website), the Minutemen are directly affiliated with the fascist Renew America Forum—whose symbol is the Cross OVER the American flag. Your kids deserve so much better. Vote against the Un-American Voice.
30 Seconds, Response to Hooter Girl, 5.8.07 (not printed as of 5.16)
Could it be made ANY clearer that PV-members are required to walk in ideological lockstep to the PV-tune than pretend pole-dancer Hooter Girl’s response to a PV member who dared to criticize Evy Lysk: “he needs to be read the riot act for publically defaming a fellow member” (note spelling) (PV-Forum, PV Hallowed Messenger). Disagree with the PV, and get “read the riot act”—even if you’re a member! So much for their claims to respect diversity of opinion. Can you imagine how this will translate into school board meetings—when they BLOCK VOTE? Fortunately, many in this venue are beginning to see what the PV really represent—it’s not education. Vote for your kids—and against the Un-American Voice.
30 Seconds, Response to Becky Heller, 5.9.07 (printed 5.16)
Responding to Maryann Kovalewski (PV-Forum), PV-Becky Heller demonstrates how little she knows about education. She claims that in the use of computers for instruction future teachers will allow students to write in “text-message,” a failure to “teach the basics.” She’s right, it would be. NO teacher, however, would allow this, and Heller knows it. Perhaps she’s afraid of what kids might learn on-line about the world outside Berwick. Learning to use a computer IS teaching the basics; there are no meaningful career opportunities that don’t demand these skills. But just like art and music, that’s not part of the PV-educational vision: “Teach them just enough to get them working, and they’ll never make enough money to leave.” Vote against the Anti-education Voice.
The good news, of course, is that the Patriot's Voice lost this primary election; the bad news is that we have even more convincing evidence that, in the hands of its current editor, the local newspaper has all but dissolved into a mongrel cross between an opportunistic tabloid and a quasi-libertarian propaganda machine. I don't think that Sachetti actually shares any of the Christian Identity Movement's facist ideology with the Patriot's Voice, but no matter. His objectivity is spent, and the proof is publicly available.
Wendy Lynne Lee
wlee@bloomu.edu
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Some Reflections on Gun Control
The moment news began to trickle in about the tragic and senseless massacre at Virginia Tech my thoughts, like those of many, turned to my own children—also in college. I cannot imagine the despair and anger the parents of the murdered V-Tech students must be experiencing. Perhaps the magnificent novelist Alice Walker (The Color Purple) puts it best when, describing the equally senseless police and FBI sponsored bombing of the MOVE house in Philadelphia in 1985, she writes that grief is that “unasuaugeable sadness and rage that makes the heart feel naked to the elements clawed by talons of ice.” Beautiful and sobering words—though perhaps none can fully capture the sadness and rage we all feel at this utterly senseless loss of life.
How, then, can we avoid the questions the V-Tech massacre so obviously raises? How did someone so apparently deranged and desperate gain access to guns? A young man who’d been voluntarily committed in 2005? Who sent a rambling cry for help to NBC in the two hours between shootings? Here, of course, the answers are easier to come by. Hamstrung by the powerful, well-financed, influence-packing anti-gun control arm of the National Rifle Association, meaningful gun control in the United States is all but nonexistent. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any good coming of this tragedy, but if such is possible, let us all hope it comes in the form of stronger and more enforceable gun control laws. A renewed effort to legislate and pass such laws like the recent legislation in Pennsylvania could benefit us all by making access to guns more difficult. Let me be very clear: Perhaps nothing could have prevented this tragedy. I don’t know; no one does or ever will. But what’s inescapable is the fact that it could have been made very much harder to carry out—just maybe enough to be dissuasive—had more stringent gun control laws been in place.
Part of what’s so frustrating about securing enforceable gun control in the U.S. is that, although the arguments against it are just plain indefensible, the NRA manages yet to wield influence against gun-control legislation. Here are four examples:
1. While groups like the NRA and the Minutemen would have us believe that the Second Amendment applies to private gun ownership, nothing in that amendment explicit or implied suggests any such thing. The amendment clearly refers to the rights of militias, and unless we’re comfortable with the illogic of the fallacy of division it bears no relevance to private citizens. To insist that the amendment applies to private citizens is like claiming that because a whole art exhibit is a beautiful art exhibit, every work in it is a beautiful work; but of course this is obviously faulty logic—just like insisting that because an entire militia has a right to “bear arms,” every private citizen member of it does.
2. Though hard to believe, some folks persist in the argument that since we can use a car as a weapon that—if we regulate guns—we should similarly regulate cars. This “argument” omits the crucial fact that the purposes of these two things are quite different. Cars are for driving. Guns are for killing. Like the proverbial comparison of apples and oranges, this analogy only holds up if you deliberately ignore all of the dissimilarities in the comparison.
3. One commentator discussing the V-Tech tragedy on FOX news today suggested that the appropriate response was to arm professors. Resisting the temptation to simply dismiss this—given the discreditable source—I think we need merely note that the very idea of the presence of a gun in a classroom would have so chilling effect upon the project of learning that, well, what more is there to say here?
4. Some are persuaded by an argument that depends on a classic appeal to fear, namely, that if the good guys don’t have guns, only the bad ones will. But this argument fails on the evidence that clearly shows that in the course, for example, of a home burglary you are even more likely to be a victim of a shooting if there are weapons in the house. Given how generally unprepared most folks are to actually shoot a gun, they are as likely to be used against the burglary victims as are the victims likely to be in a position to defend themselves. Moreover, the remedy for this is not to be found in, say, mandatory shooting instruction since it’s simply false that those most vulnerable to home invasion—the elderly—are the same people in a position to access and use a gun with the haste necessitated by the situation. To say nothing of the potential for accidents. Far safer to have a good home alarm system and a big barky dog.
So why do such bad arguments, or arguments completely decimated by counter-evidence, manage to have such powerful influence? NRA fear-mongering (and not-so-tacitly racist) propaganda? Partly. Our John Wayne-style gun-ho (pun intended) romance with side arms? Maybe. Our irrational fear that our neighbors might be “different” from us? No doubt. Without bigotry, the NRA wouldn’t have…uh hmmmm…a shot. (Check out their use this week of anti-Semitic imagery to advertise themseves on a magazine cover).
We can be better than our history; reflection on this horrendous tragedy is an opportunity for critical reflection on the conditions that, while perhaps nothing could have prevented it, we surely have a responsibility to change. Our very creation of a democracy demonstrates that we can act in concert to make the next massacre much harder to execute. We must simply muster the collective will to “just say no” to the proliferation of more guns. A tall order, but one that our children will thank us for.
Wendy Lynne Lee
wlee@bloomu.edu
How, then, can we avoid the questions the V-Tech massacre so obviously raises? How did someone so apparently deranged and desperate gain access to guns? A young man who’d been voluntarily committed in 2005? Who sent a rambling cry for help to NBC in the two hours between shootings? Here, of course, the answers are easier to come by. Hamstrung by the powerful, well-financed, influence-packing anti-gun control arm of the National Rifle Association, meaningful gun control in the United States is all but nonexistent. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any good coming of this tragedy, but if such is possible, let us all hope it comes in the form of stronger and more enforceable gun control laws. A renewed effort to legislate and pass such laws like the recent legislation in Pennsylvania could benefit us all by making access to guns more difficult. Let me be very clear: Perhaps nothing could have prevented this tragedy. I don’t know; no one does or ever will. But what’s inescapable is the fact that it could have been made very much harder to carry out—just maybe enough to be dissuasive—had more stringent gun control laws been in place.
Part of what’s so frustrating about securing enforceable gun control in the U.S. is that, although the arguments against it are just plain indefensible, the NRA manages yet to wield influence against gun-control legislation. Here are four examples:
1. While groups like the NRA and the Minutemen would have us believe that the Second Amendment applies to private gun ownership, nothing in that amendment explicit or implied suggests any such thing. The amendment clearly refers to the rights of militias, and unless we’re comfortable with the illogic of the fallacy of division it bears no relevance to private citizens. To insist that the amendment applies to private citizens is like claiming that because a whole art exhibit is a beautiful art exhibit, every work in it is a beautiful work; but of course this is obviously faulty logic—just like insisting that because an entire militia has a right to “bear arms,” every private citizen member of it does.
2. Though hard to believe, some folks persist in the argument that since we can use a car as a weapon that—if we regulate guns—we should similarly regulate cars. This “argument” omits the crucial fact that the purposes of these two things are quite different. Cars are for driving. Guns are for killing. Like the proverbial comparison of apples and oranges, this analogy only holds up if you deliberately ignore all of the dissimilarities in the comparison.
3. One commentator discussing the V-Tech tragedy on FOX news today suggested that the appropriate response was to arm professors. Resisting the temptation to simply dismiss this—given the discreditable source—I think we need merely note that the very idea of the presence of a gun in a classroom would have so chilling effect upon the project of learning that, well, what more is there to say here?
4. Some are persuaded by an argument that depends on a classic appeal to fear, namely, that if the good guys don’t have guns, only the bad ones will. But this argument fails on the evidence that clearly shows that in the course, for example, of a home burglary you are even more likely to be a victim of a shooting if there are weapons in the house. Given how generally unprepared most folks are to actually shoot a gun, they are as likely to be used against the burglary victims as are the victims likely to be in a position to defend themselves. Moreover, the remedy for this is not to be found in, say, mandatory shooting instruction since it’s simply false that those most vulnerable to home invasion—the elderly—are the same people in a position to access and use a gun with the haste necessitated by the situation. To say nothing of the potential for accidents. Far safer to have a good home alarm system and a big barky dog.
So why do such bad arguments, or arguments completely decimated by counter-evidence, manage to have such powerful influence? NRA fear-mongering (and not-so-tacitly racist) propaganda? Partly. Our John Wayne-style gun-ho (pun intended) romance with side arms? Maybe. Our irrational fear that our neighbors might be “different” from us? No doubt. Without bigotry, the NRA wouldn’t have…uh hmmmm…a shot. (Check out their use this week of anti-Semitic imagery to advertise themseves on a magazine cover).
We can be better than our history; reflection on this horrendous tragedy is an opportunity for critical reflection on the conditions that, while perhaps nothing could have prevented it, we surely have a responsibility to change. Our very creation of a democracy demonstrates that we can act in concert to make the next massacre much harder to execute. We must simply muster the collective will to “just say no” to the proliferation of more guns. A tall order, but one that our children will thank us for.
Wendy Lynne Lee
wlee@bloomu.edu
Saturday, April 7, 2007
The Meaning of a Philosophical LIfe
Open Letter to David Horowitz, February 24th 2007
David Horowitz’s assault on academic freedom is, among other things, about as well documented as anyone could hope. Spanning websites like The Network, FrontPageMag, and the ridiculously misleading Students for Academic Freedom, Horowitz continues his all-but-honorable pursuit of names to add to his list of “Dangerous Professors.” Indeed, perhaps this essay will be my ticket; I could only be so lucky. I can even make it easy for him: Google me, David. I published a book entitled On Marx, and I’m a feminist environmentalist vegetarian who fiercely opposes the war. Oh, and I’m queer. Think you’ve got something? It gets even better: I have never had a single student complaint about anything—including indoctrination—in nearly fifteen years, tenure, and two promotions. I’ll bet I represent practically everything you’ve rejected from your Rampart days, but the truth is that what I really represent is a crucial distinction you need to learn to make: An academic’s political life outside her or his classroom, no matter what commitments inform it, has nothing necessarily to do with in-class pedagogy. Indeed, scrounging about for desiderata like party affiliation shows even less. What your “logic” assumes is that we in the professoriate can’t tell the difference between our lives outside the classroom and inside it. How insulting. I assure you that the number of years it takes to earn a Ph.D. makes the meaning of excellent pedagogy quite clear to us. This is not to say, of course, that the academy doesn’t include some errant ideologues—much like the ones I feel sure you’d substitute for good professors. Thank goodness, then, that virtually every university, college, and junior college has policies to effectively deal with such folks, policies that don’t require self-appointed crusaders to point them out.
A case of “Horowitz-think” might be in order here: A successful graduate of the Karl Rove school of spin, Horowitz offers a supremely distorted view of the Pennsylvania Hearings on Academic Freedom topped with stories about indoctrination and student abuse at Bloomsburg University—my institution—that, if they contained a shred of truth would horrify every decent academic I know. The trouble is that he’s lying—and not just your average run-of-the-mill stretching-the-truth lying. Nope. Horowitz is more than willing to resort to total fabrication in order to advance his claim that the academy is writhing with “leftists” whose sole aim is to convert naïve students into minions of the revolution. Such is the upshot of his allegation against a Bloomsburg professor concerning an exam question about the Iraq War—except that there was no such exam question; there wasn’t even one a little bit like it. Perhaps it’s beside the point that there is no well-organized Left in the United States (again, I could only be so lucky), but isn’t it just obvious that Horowitz is making all this up in order to convince us (a) that “leftists” form a well-organized danger to democracy, and (b) that their aim is to dominate the academy, our crucibles of the future? Note that I’m not suggesting that professors don’t tend to the “left,” but let’s get real here: what good professors exemplify is that ennobling inherently liberal idea of open and progressive inquiry to whatever ends a sincere desire for the truth leads. This aspiration characterizes my entire career. In this sense, every academic whose first concern is with truth—and not just the preservation of any particular view of the world—is at least a “liberal.” And thank goodness again, for without this commitment, there’s no such thing as scholarship, inquiry, or education.
One wonders in reading his rants whether Horowitz has any real grasp of what academia is about. He talks as if education is simply the communication of static information—as if good internet skills could replace the lot of us. But what he misses—or deliberately ignores—is that university education is so much more. His motto, “teach students how to think, not what to think,” is precisely what we in fact do—without self-anointed zealots to remind us. And of course we teach our students what to think. Why? Because not only do we know more than they do, but because classrooms are not chat rooms. It is no conceit on my part to expect my students to regard me as a legitimate authority on my subject—philosophy. In fact, to doubt this without good grounds serves nothing but to disrupt their opportunity to learn. I am also not interested in making my students comfortable; indeed, discomfort with our assumptions and convictions is the very stuff of critical thinking. In fully Socratic fashion, I routinely challenge my students to examine what they believe. There are no claims that are worth our allegiance that don’t hold up under scrutiny. I don’t, moreover, waste my precious in-class time having my students cut their critical thinking teeth on claims that stand no chance of being true. Indeed, in my particular fields of expertise—philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of ecology, and feminist theory—I know what counts as a poorly structured argument and what counts as a good one; I know what credible evidence looks like. What additional assurances do you need, David? I publish in my fields, prepare students successfully for graduate school, and am respected by my peers. You bet I’m dangerous—just as are all genuine invitations to think. This, however, deserves to be applauded, not vilified.
The truth, however, is that critical thinking isn’t what Horowitz’s crusade is about at all. As his demand for the hire of “conservative” professors makes abundantly clear, his goal is to teach students a “what to think” which includes precisely the content that adorns his websites, for example, that global climate change is a myth, that women’s and gender studies programs are nothing but feminist recruitment centers, that the war in Iraq is about the spread of democracy—talk about indoctrination! The point, of course, is that maybe all of these claims are true, but at Horowitz University students wouldn’t have anything like the opportunity to critically consider whether they were true. The only critical thinking skills likely to be taught at HU are the political combat skills Horowitz himself employs, neoconservative ideological spin, propaganda, ad hominem, slippery slope, and fear-mongering. The Horowitz vision for higher education does make for an okay game of “hunt for the fallacy.” Anything else, say, the HU vision becoming a reality, should make our skin crawl.
Only one thing actually frightens me more than Horowitz’s war on higher education, and that’s faculty apathy. Horowitz has made it abundantly clear that he’s not going away. In fact, he’s counting on us to just keep taking the polite path of the intellectual who doesn’t want to get dirty trying to defend something that shouldn’t need defending. Ironic, isn’t it? Horowitz has fabricated a problem—“leftist indoctrination”—in search of a solution, and thinks that if he repeats this mantra, “the lefties are out to get you!” that after a while even we stalwart and taciturn academics will start to believe it. Surely we have better things to do than take on such idiocy. I know I do. Be that as it may, nothing less is at stake here in this made up “culture war” than the future of genuinely free and open inquiry uncompromised by the threat of McCarthy-style repression. Let’s not mince words: Horowitz is on a witch-hunt, and what’s going on is chilling. We may have won in Montana—but the vote was way too close. We certainly won in Pennsylvania, but not until after thousands of tax dollars were wasted on hearings that should never have seen the light of day. The very idea that any one of us could stand in “need” of monitoring, or that our syllabi should be subject to inspection, or that our party affiliations should make us suspicious, or that Boards of Trustees should have a say in what courses we teach or which professors deserve tenure, or that a student looking to execute a vendetta for a wholly earned failing grade is a credible witness to indoctrination, is enough to make us start surveiling ourselves. And that’s all Horowitz really needs—just enough intimidation to get us to second guess ourselves about whether to assign that text, watch that film, discuss that topic, consider that argument. At the end of this road is the death of education. Hence it’s high time we take a stand for the principle that we have earned the right to represent, academic freedom, without which there are no professors, no students, and no universities.
Wendy Lynne Lee, Professor
Department of Philosophy
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Bloomsburg, PA, USA 17815
wlee@bloomu.edu
1,140 words.
David Horowitz’s assault on academic freedom is, among other things, about as well documented as anyone could hope. Spanning websites like The Network, FrontPageMag, and the ridiculously misleading Students for Academic Freedom, Horowitz continues his all-but-honorable pursuit of names to add to his list of “Dangerous Professors.” Indeed, perhaps this essay will be my ticket; I could only be so lucky. I can even make it easy for him: Google me, David. I published a book entitled On Marx, and I’m a feminist environmentalist vegetarian who fiercely opposes the war. Oh, and I’m queer. Think you’ve got something? It gets even better: I have never had a single student complaint about anything—including indoctrination—in nearly fifteen years, tenure, and two promotions. I’ll bet I represent practically everything you’ve rejected from your Rampart days, but the truth is that what I really represent is a crucial distinction you need to learn to make: An academic’s political life outside her or his classroom, no matter what commitments inform it, has nothing necessarily to do with in-class pedagogy. Indeed, scrounging about for desiderata like party affiliation shows even less. What your “logic” assumes is that we in the professoriate can’t tell the difference between our lives outside the classroom and inside it. How insulting. I assure you that the number of years it takes to earn a Ph.D. makes the meaning of excellent pedagogy quite clear to us. This is not to say, of course, that the academy doesn’t include some errant ideologues—much like the ones I feel sure you’d substitute for good professors. Thank goodness, then, that virtually every university, college, and junior college has policies to effectively deal with such folks, policies that don’t require self-appointed crusaders to point them out.
A case of “Horowitz-think” might be in order here: A successful graduate of the Karl Rove school of spin, Horowitz offers a supremely distorted view of the Pennsylvania Hearings on Academic Freedom topped with stories about indoctrination and student abuse at Bloomsburg University—my institution—that, if they contained a shred of truth would horrify every decent academic I know. The trouble is that he’s lying—and not just your average run-of-the-mill stretching-the-truth lying. Nope. Horowitz is more than willing to resort to total fabrication in order to advance his claim that the academy is writhing with “leftists” whose sole aim is to convert naïve students into minions of the revolution. Such is the upshot of his allegation against a Bloomsburg professor concerning an exam question about the Iraq War—except that there was no such exam question; there wasn’t even one a little bit like it. Perhaps it’s beside the point that there is no well-organized Left in the United States (again, I could only be so lucky), but isn’t it just obvious that Horowitz is making all this up in order to convince us (a) that “leftists” form a well-organized danger to democracy, and (b) that their aim is to dominate the academy, our crucibles of the future? Note that I’m not suggesting that professors don’t tend to the “left,” but let’s get real here: what good professors exemplify is that ennobling inherently liberal idea of open and progressive inquiry to whatever ends a sincere desire for the truth leads. This aspiration characterizes my entire career. In this sense, every academic whose first concern is with truth—and not just the preservation of any particular view of the world—is at least a “liberal.” And thank goodness again, for without this commitment, there’s no such thing as scholarship, inquiry, or education.
One wonders in reading his rants whether Horowitz has any real grasp of what academia is about. He talks as if education is simply the communication of static information—as if good internet skills could replace the lot of us. But what he misses—or deliberately ignores—is that university education is so much more. His motto, “teach students how to think, not what to think,” is precisely what we in fact do—without self-anointed zealots to remind us. And of course we teach our students what to think. Why? Because not only do we know more than they do, but because classrooms are not chat rooms. It is no conceit on my part to expect my students to regard me as a legitimate authority on my subject—philosophy. In fact, to doubt this without good grounds serves nothing but to disrupt their opportunity to learn. I am also not interested in making my students comfortable; indeed, discomfort with our assumptions and convictions is the very stuff of critical thinking. In fully Socratic fashion, I routinely challenge my students to examine what they believe. There are no claims that are worth our allegiance that don’t hold up under scrutiny. I don’t, moreover, waste my precious in-class time having my students cut their critical thinking teeth on claims that stand no chance of being true. Indeed, in my particular fields of expertise—philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of ecology, and feminist theory—I know what counts as a poorly structured argument and what counts as a good one; I know what credible evidence looks like. What additional assurances do you need, David? I publish in my fields, prepare students successfully for graduate school, and am respected by my peers. You bet I’m dangerous—just as are all genuine invitations to think. This, however, deserves to be applauded, not vilified.
The truth, however, is that critical thinking isn’t what Horowitz’s crusade is about at all. As his demand for the hire of “conservative” professors makes abundantly clear, his goal is to teach students a “what to think” which includes precisely the content that adorns his websites, for example, that global climate change is a myth, that women’s and gender studies programs are nothing but feminist recruitment centers, that the war in Iraq is about the spread of democracy—talk about indoctrination! The point, of course, is that maybe all of these claims are true, but at Horowitz University students wouldn’t have anything like the opportunity to critically consider whether they were true. The only critical thinking skills likely to be taught at HU are the political combat skills Horowitz himself employs, neoconservative ideological spin, propaganda, ad hominem, slippery slope, and fear-mongering. The Horowitz vision for higher education does make for an okay game of “hunt for the fallacy.” Anything else, say, the HU vision becoming a reality, should make our skin crawl.
Only one thing actually frightens me more than Horowitz’s war on higher education, and that’s faculty apathy. Horowitz has made it abundantly clear that he’s not going away. In fact, he’s counting on us to just keep taking the polite path of the intellectual who doesn’t want to get dirty trying to defend something that shouldn’t need defending. Ironic, isn’t it? Horowitz has fabricated a problem—“leftist indoctrination”—in search of a solution, and thinks that if he repeats this mantra, “the lefties are out to get you!” that after a while even we stalwart and taciturn academics will start to believe it. Surely we have better things to do than take on such idiocy. I know I do. Be that as it may, nothing less is at stake here in this made up “culture war” than the future of genuinely free and open inquiry uncompromised by the threat of McCarthy-style repression. Let’s not mince words: Horowitz is on a witch-hunt, and what’s going on is chilling. We may have won in Montana—but the vote was way too close. We certainly won in Pennsylvania, but not until after thousands of tax dollars were wasted on hearings that should never have seen the light of day. The very idea that any one of us could stand in “need” of monitoring, or that our syllabi should be subject to inspection, or that our party affiliations should make us suspicious, or that Boards of Trustees should have a say in what courses we teach or which professors deserve tenure, or that a student looking to execute a vendetta for a wholly earned failing grade is a credible witness to indoctrination, is enough to make us start surveiling ourselves. And that’s all Horowitz really needs—just enough intimidation to get us to second guess ourselves about whether to assign that text, watch that film, discuss that topic, consider that argument. At the end of this road is the death of education. Hence it’s high time we take a stand for the principle that we have earned the right to represent, academic freedom, without which there are no professors, no students, and no universities.
Wendy Lynne Lee, Professor
Department of Philosophy
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania
Bloomsburg, PA, USA 17815
wlee@bloomu.edu
1,140 words.
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