Manifesto of a Tenured Radical

Cary Nelson

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9780814758731
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Storia della didattica

In an age when innovative scholarly work is at an all-time high, the academy itself is being rocked by structural change. Funding is plummeting. Tenure increasingly seems a prospect for only the elite few. Ph.D.'s are going begging for even adjunct work. Into this tumult steps Cary Nelson, with a no- holds-barred account of recent developments in higher education.

Eloquent and witty, Manifesto of a Tenured Radical urges academics to apply the theoretical advances of the last twenty years to an analysis of their own practices and standards of behavior. In the process, Nelson offers a devastating critique of current inequities and a detailed proposal for change in the form of A Twelve-Step Program for Academia.

III
LESSONS FROM THE JOB WARS

9
DICHOTOMY IS WHERE THE MONEY IS

ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSITY

As I have argued throughout this book, higher education in America faces a future that is far from uncertain. For if faculty members and administrators continue as they are, we can predict with unwelcome confidence the basic shape of the educational environment of the next millennium—increased class sizes, decreased academic freedom, fewer tenure-track faculty, more part-time teachers, a shakeout and reduction in the number of full-scale research universities, and little time for research anywhere except at a small handful of private institutions. And universities, meanwhile, will be increasingly exploitive employers.

In the fall of 1995, after I made similar gloomy predictions at one of our most distinguished universities, the campus’s dean of liberal arts mounted the stage to say he thought the future fairly bright. There would be ups and downs, but he found strong, mostly unwavering support among his donors and alumni and thus good reason to believe we could proceed with confidence. We needed to make our case more strongly than ever, but, if we did so, results would reward our efforts. At a cocktail party later that day I told him I was surprised that he was so sanguine. “Oh,” he replied, “I was talking about the four or five elite schools. The rest of you,” he allowed, “are finished.” So that is one blunt assessment of higher education’s brutally hierarchical future. Chicago, Harvard, Hopkins, Princeton, Yale on one thin end of the spectrum, everybody else heaped together on the campus of McDonald’s U.

Not, however, that the elite schools will be sites of uncompromised idealization. Yale, to take a surprising example, does roughly one-third of its undergraduate teaching with adjuncts, another third with graduate assistants. Its well-paid tenured faculty are responsible for a decreasing segment of the university’s mission. Meanwhile, with its financial planners more uneasy than its faculty, the university has declared a financial crisis based on the difficulty it has reinvesting as large a portion of its endowment income as it would like. Nice work if you can get it. Yale’s endowment has already grown astonishingly quickly over the last fifteen years. According to my New Haven informants, the local community has come improbably to the rescue, coughing up two or three hundred homeless people each year to do unskilled maintenance on campus. Yes, Yale now hires the homeless, not, you may be sure, out of compassion, but because they accept low wages and, needless to say, require no benefits. After all, they have no home addresses to which to send W-2 forms or medical insurance notices. At the other end of the spectrum, a community college in Florida recently raised its teaching load for full-time faculty to six courses per semester. This is, I would argue, all part of the same story, even though few faculty at either Yale or Dade County Community College have been in the habit of inventing narratives that encompass both sites.

The changes in employment policies being instituted by American educational institutions in response to both real and imagined financial pressures are making them less admirable institutions, less effective educationally, and more compromised ethically. Meanwhile, most faculty are far from articulate or thoughtful when confronting policy issues outside their disciplinary expertise. More than we would like to admit, there are problems—and frequent displays of ignorance—not only outside but also inside the university. As part of this effort to initiate an inquiry into how we got here (and what we can do about it) I would like to offer some observations about the relations between anti-intellectualism inside and outside the university. After demonstrating how academic life supports certain kinds of anti-intellectualism, I will conclude by identifying some areas where academic intellectual leadership is currently much needed. That will lead me from suggestions about the constraints of disciplinarity to an account of current struggles over graduate student unionization and eventually to public discussions of race and financial support for the humanities.

Let me say initially that contemporary academics come to this topic, anti-intellectualism, as products of a history that makes us singularly ill-suited to address it. Two things in particular leave us relatively incapacitated: first, the gradual collapse of the secondary school system over several decades in many places in the country has left Americans without any common foundation of historical knowledge and led many academics to conclude incorrectly that both their students and the general public are intellectually empty, that they know nothing; second, the extreme academic specialization of the second half of the century, combined with the relentless careerism of postwar university culture, has led academics to assume that the question of intellectualism—of what an intellectual actually is—is always already settled, settled permanently and institutionally, settled by someone other than themselves, settled most often by their disciplines, whereas in fact the nature and relevance of the intellectual life is historically variable and a continuing site of struggle and redefinition. Most academics have ignored that struggle and now possess no workable cultural notion of the intellectual life beyond their subdisciplinary research commitment. In other words, I am an intellectual because I study this or study that. No doubt those who haven’t said anything new about what they “study” in a decade, along with those who are consistently wrong in what they say, would all consider themselves intellectuals if they gave it a thought. As for those who publish—whatever and whenever—well, they are self-evidently intellectuals.

The recent spate of media articles commodifying academics as public intellectuals—something the national media apparently believes academics can become by writing one book review for the Nation, the New Republic, or the Village Voice, without taking any ongoing, coherent, and strong stands on public issues—is evidence not of the vitality and relevance of university intellectual life but rather of its state of crisis. With no criteria for what an intellectual is—with no widespread, ongoing academic conversation about the nature of intellectual commitment and impact—we settle for sound bites or a de facto definition for a public intellectual: publishing outside the discipline. As a criterion for establishing significant intellectual impact it is as meaningless as the traditional imprimatur of disciplinarity. We need instead to recognize how difficult it is to specify what it means to be an intellectual—whether on campus, in business or politics, in ethnic or religious communities, or elsewhere. Such specific contexts—each both productive and constraining—suggest the impossibility of any universal model.

Is, for example, Newt Gingrich an intellectual or a demagogue? Assuming he was not aiming for ironic, self-critical synecdoche, I’m willing to say his insufficiently infamous prescription for the poor—let them eat laptops—amounted to demagoguery. Yet it is not easy to classify discourses that mix subtlety and simplification, let alone practices that opt only for the latter. On the other hand, I would argue that organic intellectuals who work in poorly educated communities and help them theorize their daily lives in terms they can understand merit the designation. Was Cesar Chavez an intellectual? Was Martin Luther King? Yes, in both cases, or so I would argue.

These are, of course, partly political judgments that I am making, an admission that does not trouble me, because I consider that inevitable. In any case, it is hardly necessary to declare oneself an intellectual in order to be one. In the wake of recent theory, you might reject the aura of unitary and self-sufficient identity the term suggests. On the other hand, you might be more focused on the aims and effects of your practices—the materiality of your work—than on savoring your own agency. You might also be a little leery of the honor, remembering that past intellectuals—from the Inquisition to Vietnam—have been ready to rationalize madness and murder. To the extent that anti-intellectualism means skepticism about (and wariness toward) intellectuals and others in power it is hardly a wholly unhealthy phenomenon.

But while we are making political judgments let us consider the case of a contemporary who tries to wear the mantle of intelligence, Lynne Cheney. Is Cheney an intellectual? Not by any criteria I can credit. Recently, in Telling the Truth and elsewhere, she has criticized the National History Standards for their avowed leftism. McCarthyism is mentioned over a dozen times, Teddy Roosevelt only a few. Repeatedly it has been pointed out to her that the multiple references to McCarthyism are clustered together in the brief section on McCarthyism, not scattered throughout the text so as to demonstrate an obsessive preoccupation, as her complaint is supposed to prove. She responds, as every right-wing public figure seems trained to do, by changing the subject and attacking from a different angle. If there is an appropriate contemporary ethic for intellectuals, perhaps it includes the traditional criterion of being willing to discuss objections seriously. Cheney, alas, repeats her discredited claim whenever she gets a chance. Unbeknownst to herself, a true postmodernist, she appears to believe there are no truths, that all representation is misrepresentation. I suppose we could ask her if she thinks she’s an intellectual, though I wouldn’t recommend taking her word for it. I’d call her an anti-intellectual ideologue.

Neither being placed inside the academy nor outside it, then, necessarily offers the best test of intellectual status. On the other hand, I take as refreshing evidence of a willingness to open the question of intellectual identity for academics, as recognition of its social and political constitution and contingency, the fine effort among graduate students at various campuses to seek recognition for themselves as employees and to win approval for bargaining agents for graduate teaching assistants. In choosing to think about and challenge preconceptions about professionalism, intellectualism, the nature of labor, the meaning of community, the appeal of alliances that cross class lines, and the ethics of existing campus power relations, such graduate student groups are taking leadership in doing what the academy has needed to do for two and a half decades. I applaud them, offer them my support, and urge all faculty members to do the same. The effort to win fair benefits and working conditions for some of higher education’s lower-paid employees does not undermine higher education’s core values; it enhances them. Part of what is remarkable about such groups, as I suggested in my introduction, is their diversity. At few other sites on contemporary campuses could one find young intellectuals of different gender, race, ethnicity, and economic background working and talking together in productive alliances. Both higher education and the country as a whole need such alliances now and in the future. We should foster them. Instead, most faculty members and administrators reject such efforts with anti-intellectual irrationality.

When I offered my support for the Yale graduate student union, GESO, at a conference held at Yale’s humanities center in 1995, my disciplinary colleagues took it upon themselves to stand collectively against the tides of such unreason. David Bromwich, on stage with me when I made my comments in support of unionization, reacted in such a way as to look for all the world like a vampire bat suddenly exposed to a shaft of sunlight; he lurched forward, flung his arms out, then slumped forward, burying his head in his dark wings in resignation. At the time I thought his reaction extraordinary; as I was later to realize, its visceral, wounded character was emblematic of the deep revulsion Yale faculty would feel as the university’s graduate student employees pressed their case more vigorously over the next year.

Bromwich himself was quite unable to speak at all when I came up to talk with him a few minutes later. His colleagues, however, soon spoke for him. The next day Yale English department faculty member Annabel Patterson rose to express her regret that the local media would no doubt cover my remarks about graduate student unionizing rather than the important issues addressed at the conference. In her own presentation Patterson went on to make the benighted suggestion that, instead of addressing academia’s problems in contemporary contexts, we would be much better off reprinting earlier texts that express sympathetic enlightenment values. She particularly recommended John Adams, and quoted from him at length. Alas, only under pressure from the audience in the question period did she bother to admit that Adams later disavowed his progressive writings and became a reactionary. In fact he is one of Pound’s sources in his overtly fascist phase. Bad choice, Professor Patterson. Finally, English department faculty member Paul Fry took the floor, sure that a bit of wit would slay the union dragon. “Students,” he remarked, finding solace from the evident injustice of their cause in the polish of his rhetoric, “have cleverly decided to call themselves workers, which apparently explains the support they received here.” His voice rose a good octave with the exclamation “workers,” as if to extract every possible echo from such an absurdity.

What perhaps only one faculty member at Yale knew at the time was that the reprisals against GESO had already begun. Moreover, the shape of the administration’s strategy had already been set by one of its senior members: single out GESO’s leaders for individual punishment and seek to destroy their careers. The administrator in question was Richard Brodhead, A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of English and Dean of Yale College. In July of 1995, long before the grade strike, he had written a letter of recommendation for the dossier of one of GESO’s leaders. The last paragraph, one-third of the letter, was devoted to her union activities.

Brodhead opens his letter by praising the seminar papers she wrote for him, then begins his concluding paragraph by observing that both he and the student involved would agree that the union organizing effort has been a major focus of her graduate career. He makes it clear that he rejects GESO’s goals but recognizes the goodwill of those involved. Then the axe falls. He reports that this particular student “is a poor listener on this issue” and “has on at least one occasion . . . shown poor judgment in the choice of means.” He concludes the letter by once again praising her disciplinary work and by putting all readers on notice: she “will bring civic intelligence and concern about communal life to her future job.”¹

The picture created here is unambiguous; she is bright but ruthless, a rigid ideologue who will not listen to reason when her political beliefs and “concern about communal life” are at issue. This paints a rather different portrait from the witty, reflective person I have met, but perhaps Brodhead can no longer see her that way. A genial fellow who has functioned well within Yale’s paternalistic hierarchy, his seminars are popular and he has helped many students with their dissertations over the years. But the combination of his deanship and the union’s affront to Yale’s pecking order have been too much for him. Just before his final sentence, he makes clear that the poor judgment at issue was her decision to write to one of Yale’s major donors. The effect of Brodhead’s letter, I believe, would be to eliminate her from consideration from almost any job for which she applied. I would remove any such letter from one of my student’s dossiers. Did Brodhead have a right to say these things? Well, the AAUP guidelines prohibit mention of a student’s political beliefs or activities, whether the writer is approving or disapproving of them. But equally problematic is the impression about the letter written to Perry Bass, one of Yale’s donors.

The letter, sent from the GESO office, was signed by four people, among them the student at issue. It was part of a 1993–94 GESO campaign to arrange better compensation for and protect the quality of Yale’s highest-level writing course, “Daily Themes,” which reportedly includes Cole Porter and Bill Buckley among its graduates. The student, as it happens, did not even write the letter, though she did sign it. Moreover, GESO’s entire organizing committee was fully involved, including at least one other student for whom Brodhead has written a letter of recommendation but without criticizing the student’s union work. Some of this at least Brodhead knew, since the letter was copied to him; the rest of it he was responsible to find out before setting out to destroy a student’s career. Brodhead refers to his claims as “allegations,” which gives rhetorical indication of the significant weight he gives them. Meanwhile, one of his implicit allegations is that she made a willful, independent decision to contact Yale donors, when exactly the opposite is true.²

By the end of 1995 GESO’s grade strike was under way, and other Yale humanities faculty had joined the attack on graduate students seeking fair treatment.³ One reportedly responded to a teaching assistant’s announcement that she was supporting the strike by standing up and announcing “You are hereby expelled from Yale University.” “But professor,” the student replied, “you do not have the power of summary expulsion.” Instead the student was reported for disciplinary action. Sara Suleri, a brilliant postcolonial critic whose work I have taught in my own courses, urged disciplinary action against one of her teaching assistants who joined GESO’s 1995 decision to withhold undergraduate grades until Yale’s administration agreed to negotiate. Nancy Cott, a widely admired labor historian, spoke out against the union, and David Brion Davis, a distinguished historian of slavery, sought college guards to bar his union-identified teaching assistant from entering the room where undergraduate final exams would be given. Meanwhile, Annabel Patterson weighed in with more explicit anti-union sentiments, urging English department colleagues not to sign any petitions supporting the graduate student union, even petitions merely recommending against reprisals. After all, reprisals would be far more effective if the department faculty were united behind them.

Now what can we say about all of this? Patterson is quite right to argue that recovering and reviving forgotten texts can be an important contribution to contemporary debate. It’s one of the things I do, so I’d hardly debunk it. But she serves no one well by trying to cover up the facts of her author’s career. Nor is she helpful in intimating that it is unseemly for academics to engage directly in contemporary cultural and political struggles. That reluctance is part of what has brought us to the present crisis. Elevating our own preferences, practices, and anxieties to moral imperatives is a typically anti-intellectual move, both for academics and their countrymen, but it does not further the public scrutiny and self-scrutiny we need so badly. Bromwich, Cott, Davis, Patterson, Fry, and Suleri have all, notably, had some connections with Left theory, research, pedagogy, or politics. Bromwich is a contributor to Dissent, Patterson has made use of Marxist theory in her work. Cott, Davis, and Suleri are well-established progressive scholars. Some supported the long-running struggle of Yale’s clerical workers to win bargaining rights. But graduate students were future professors! When it came to a challenge to their sense of professional hierarchies and identities these progressive scholars stood unthinkingly with their more conservative colleagues. Moreover, each seemed to take it as a personal betrayal for his or her teaching assistant to join the strike; so ingrained is the culture of paternalism that it is impossible for these faculty to think of their assistants as independent professionals with a right to define their own ethics and politics.

Davis’s case is actually rather saddening. Yale’s administration had written a letter to the faculty inviting them to turn in strike participants for individual disciplinary action. Davis decided to do so in a December 11, 1995, letter to Graduate School Dean Thomas Appelquist. Ironically, the course at issue was Davis’s “The Origins, Significance, and Abolition of New World Slavery.” If Brodhead’s letter is in some ways the act of a scoundrel, Davis’s letter is the testimony of a principled man who cannot imagine that GESO members have alternative principles of their own. He has two teaching assistants, one of whom—“my loyal Teaching Fellow”—turns in the final grades and one who participates in the strike despite his kindnesses to her. Having turned in his grades on time for forty-one years, he laments, now he is faced with the possibility of being late! Meanwhile, he cannot recognize that turning in a participant in a collective action for individual punishment raises its own ethical questions.

Despite warnings from reactionary journalists, many tenured radicals apparently present little challenge to the academy’s dichotomous hierarchies. Many combine progressive scholarship with an unreflective, unyielding sense of professional identity and self-importance. Many are unable to recognize, let alone analyze, the contradiction between holding a progressive position in one area of their professional life and a repressive one in another. We need to give credit for this where credit is due. The contemporary university, combined with disciplinarity and its attendant professional organizations, is an interlocking late twentieth-century morphing technology: it turns dissenters into careerists, intellectuals into anti-intellectual professionals.

Let me make one final opening point about campus anti-intellectualism, illustrated with a minor local anecdote. Some years...