Intellectual Freedom in Higher Education
MSU-Northern
Havre, Montana
April 13-16, 1996
Possible Topics:
Curricular Debate
New Epistemologies
Faculty/Student Conduct Codes
Freedom of Information
Censorship
Suppression of Texts
Rights of Women/Minority Rights
Please send proposals (a one-page abstract, and a brief note for program announcements) to:
Will Rawn, Conference Director
Humanities and Social Sciences
Montana State University-Northern
Havre, MT 59501
Deadline: January 1, 1995
We are pleased that Andrea Stierle has agreed to become a member of our editorial board. Andrea is a research scientist at MSU-Bozeman and at Montana Tech-UM. She is one of three researchers in the nation, all of whom work as a team in Montana, to have discovered and developed a fungus which produces taxol. Her baccalaureate degree in Premedical Biology/Chemistry is from California Western University (1975) and her Ph.D. in Chemistry is from Montana State University (1988). She has an impressive list of publications and patents in her field. Andrea has written a commentary titled, "A Question of Trust" which appears in this issue.
If you are interested in reviewing one or more of the following titles, or could suggest someone who might be, please contact Paul Trout, English, Montana State University-Bozeman, 59717; (406) 994-5197/587-8406.
Changing Classroom Practices: Resources for Literary and Cultural Studies. ed. David Downing. NCTE 1994.
Two-Year College English: Essays for a New Century. ed. Mark Reynolds. NCTE 1994.
The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief. Marsden. Oxford 1994.
Black Holes & Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy. Norton 1994.
Public Money and the Muse. Benedict. Norton 1994.
The End of Evolution: On Mass Extinction and the Preservation of Biodiversity. Bantam 1994.
Our Dreaming Mind. Van de Castle. Ballantine 1994.
The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World. Cohen. Viking 1994.
Complexification: Exploring a Paradoxical World through the Science of Surprise. Casti. Harper Collins 1994.
Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy. ed. Bishop. NCTE 1994.
The Impact of College on Students. Feldman and Newcomb. Transaction 1994.
The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Crick. Scribners 1994.
Out of Control: The Rise of a New Biocivilization. Addison-Wesley 1994.
The Chosen Primate: Human Nature and Cultural Diversity. Kuper. Harvard 1994.
Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media. Douglas. Times Books 1994.
Savages and Civilization: Who Will Survive? Weatherford. Crown 1994.
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time. Weiner. Knopf 1994.
Signs of Life: The Language and Meaning of DNA. Pollock. Houghton-Mifflin 1994.
Wrinkles in Time. Smoot. Morrow 1994.
Gender and Discourse. Tannen. Oxford 1994.
The Culture of Cynicism. Stiners. Blackwell 1994.
In Defense of Elitism. William A. Henry III. Doubleday 1994.
Note: See inside back cover for guidelines for preparing reviews.
Here are some issues or topics the editors would like to see addressed in future issues.
Assessment of faculty performance, especially student assessment.
Faculty work load/productivity.
Teacher education.
Montana Students: What are they like? Why do so many take so long to finish a four-year program? Is this as bad as some have made it seem?
Assessing restructuring, did it help or hurt?
Anything any reader can do to help produce or locate publishable materials on any of these topics will be appreciated.
If you can help or just want to discuss this, please contact the editor or any member of the board.
(The following is excerpted from the 1991 TDC statement of purpose.)
Colleges and universities in the United States have lately begun to serve the majority of Americans better than ever before. Whereas a few short years ago, institutions of higher education were exclusive citadels often closed to women, minorities, and the disadvantaged, today efforts are being made to give a far richer diversity of Americans access to a college education. Reforms in the content of the curriculum have also begun to make our classrooms more representative of our nation's diverse peoples and beliefs and to provide a more truthful account of our history and cultural heritage. Much remains to be done, but we can be proud of the progress of democratization in higher education.
A vociferous band of critics has arisen, however, who decry these changes and seek to reverse them. These critics have painted an alarming picture of the state of contemporary education as a catastrophic collapse. This picture rests on a number of false claims: that the classics of Western civilization are being eliminated from the curriculum in order to make race, gender, or political affiliation the sole measure of a text's or subject's worthiness to be taught; that teachers across the land are being silenced and politically intimidated; that the very concepts of reason, truth, and artistic standards are being subverted in favor of a crude ideological agenda.
It is our view that recent curricular reforms influenced by multiculturalism and feminism have greatly enriched education rather than corrupted it. It is our view as well that the controversies that have been provoked over admissions and hiring practices, the social functions of teaching and scholarship, and the status of such concepts as objectivity and ideology, are signs of educational health, not decline.
Contrary to media reports, it is the National Association of Scholars, their corporate foundation supporters, and like-minded writers in the press who are endangering education with a campaign of harassment and misrepresentation. Largely ignorant of the academic work they attack (often not even claiming to have read it), these critics make no distinction between extremists among their opposition and those who are raising legitimate questions about the relations of culture and society. And though these critics loudly invoke the values of rational debate and open discussion, they present the current debate over education not as a legitimate conflict in which reasonable disagreement is possible but as a simple choice between civilization and barbarism.
Yet because the mainstream media have reported misinformed opinions as if they were established facts, the picture the public has received of recent academic developments has come almost entirely from the most strident detractors of these developments....
It is time for those who believe in the values of democratic education and reasoned dialogue to join together in an organization that can fight such powerful forms of intolerance and answer mischievous misrepresentations. We support the right of scholars and teachers to raise questions about the relations of culture, scholarship, and education to politics--not in order to shut down debate on such issues but to open it. It is such a debate that is prevented by discussion-stopping slogans like "political correctness."
What does the notion of a "democratic culture" mean and how does it relate to education? In our view, a democratic culture is one in which criteria of value in art are not permanently fixed by tradition and authority but are subject to constant revision. It is a culture in which terms such as "canon," "Iiterature," "tradition," artistic value," "Common culture," and even "truth" are seen as disputed rather than given. This means not that standards for judging art and scholarship must be discarded but that such standards should evolve out of democratic processes in which they can be thoughtfully challenged.
We understand the problems in any organization claiming to speak for a very diverse, heterogeneous group of teachers who may sharply disagree on many issues, including that of the politics of culture. What we envision is a coalition of very different individuals and groups, bound together by the belief that recent attacks on new forms of scholarship and teaching must be answered in a spirit of principled discussion. We think the very formation of such a group will be an important step in gaining influence over the public representations of us and our work.
It will also be a way to take responsibility for the task of clarifying our ideas and practices to the wider public--something, it must be admitted, that we have not done as well as we should. We need an organization that can not only refute malicious distortions but also educate the interested public about matters that still too often remain shrouded in mystery--new literary theories and movements such as deconstructionism, feminism, multiculturalism, and the new historicism, and their actual effects on classroom practice.
We therefore propose the formation of Teachers for a Democratic Culture.
MEMBERSHIP REGISTRATION
JOIN TEACHERS FOR A DEMOCRATIC CULTURE WITH THIS FORM
The continuing growth and success of TDC depends on your involvement and your contributions. We ask all current TDC members to renew their memberships by returning this form to cover calendar year 1995. We also encourage non-members who have received this newsletter to join us. Please [print and] mail this membership form to:
Teachers for a Democratic Culture
P.O. Box 6405
Evanston IL 60204.
Yes, I want to become a member of TDC:
Yes, I want to renew my membership in TDC:
Enclosed is my 1995 contribution of: $50 $25 $5 (students)
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The National Association of Scholars unites professors, academic administrators, and graduate students who are convinced of the need for reform in American higher education. Though our colleges and universities still embody much that is exemplary, the last twenty years have witnessed the steady erosion--and sometimes the abandonment--of academic standards. Worse yet, the very concept of standards has begun to come under attack.
The specific trends are dismaying to everyone who cares about the future of liberal education. Academic freedom and open discourse are under assault from ideological and bureaucratic bullies. Ancestry and group membership are given precedence over intellectual merit. The rigor of the curriculum is diluted as politicized or frivolous subject matter invades and displaces serious study.
We believe that these trends must be reversed if America is to continue to produce the type of leaders and citizens a free society requires. And we believe they will be reversed once those academics who cherish the principles of liberal education finally raise their voices and concert their actions.
Since 1987 the NAS has been working, virtually alone among academic associations, to bring this about. In the process we have built a membership of over three thousand, including some of the country's most distinguished scholars and educators. We have attained significant national visibility, with our statements about academic policies regularly carried by the press. We have inaugurated a research center, a search service, and a speakers bureau, and helped create a number of other reformist organizations, including thirty-three state affiliates. We've also been publishing Academic Questions, a quarterly filled with lively and well-informed commentary on contemporary academic life that is reaching a growing audience.
While we are happy to have helped put the academic establishment on the public relations defensive, changing current policies is the ultimate justification for our existence. Needless to say, this is a task of immense proportion for which we'll need all the support we can muster. Can we count on yours?
Upon joining the NAS, you'll receive a subscription to Academic Questions, our newsletter NAS Update, reduced-rate invitations to our national conferences, and notices of local events where you'll have the opportunity to meet other scholars of courage and intellectual independence (no small pleasure). You can also choose to participate actively in the efforts of our state affiliates and campus chapters to enhance the quality of local debate on academic policy. But most of all, NAS membership will provide you with the very real satisfaction of being part of a movement dedicated to restoring the integrity of American academic life.
An effort is now underway to form an affiliate of the National Association of Scholars in Montana. Those interested in participating should contact Prof. William H. McBroom, Department of Sociology, University of Montana-Missoula, Missoula, Montana 59812 (406-243-2843).
If you would like to join NAS, please print and return this coupon to:
National Association of Scholars
575 Ewing Street
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
609-683-7878 (phone)
609-683-0316 (fax)
Please enclose a check made payable to the NAS, which covers annual dues and a subscription to Academic Questions ($36.00 for faculty members and administrators, $18.00 for graduate students).
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