[The Montana Professor 21.1, Fall 2010 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Louis Menand
New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010
174 pp., $24.95 hc
Henry Gonshak
English
Montana Tech-UM
Russell Jacoby, in The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (1987), claims that "intellectuals who write with vigor and clarity may be as scarce as low rents in New York or San Francisco. Raised in city streets and cafes before the age of massive universities, 'last' generation intellectuals wrote for the educated reader. They have been supplanted by high-tech intellectuals...professors—anonymous souls, who may be competent...but who do not enrich public life" (ix-x). In other words, the public intellectual, who addressed issues of broad concern for the general reader, has been replaced by the academic—a specialist who writes in a professionalized discourse inaccessible to ordinary people.
In many disciplines, Jacoby's fears are well-founded. But there are a few public intellectuals still around, and Louis Menand is clearly one of them. Menand has a long career working for those general interest intellectual journals which still exist, having served as associate editor at The New Republic, literary editor at The New Yorker, and contributing editor at The New York Review of Books. Since 2001, he has been a staff writer at The New Yorker, contributing articles and reviews on myriad topics. Moreover, his 2002 book, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, won the Pulitzer Prize for History.
But Menand also has a foot in academe. He is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of English at Harvard, all of which should make him eminently qualified to discuss the contemporary university in an informed way accessible to general readers. However, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University is deeply disappointing. The book grew out of a series of lectures Menand delivered in 2008 at the University of Virginia, and it has a hasty, dashed-off quality, sometimes characteristic of collections of published lectures as opposed to monographs. The various chapters are only loosely connected, rather than being unified by a controlling thesis. As well, at only 155 pages of text, the book is much too short to do justice to the large issues the author raises. Additionally, the first three chapters—on general education, the humanities, and interdisciplinarity—are quite dry, uncharacteristically for such an otherwise lively stylist. In contrast, the final chapter, on why professors all tend to think alike, is fascinating, and highly germane to contemporary debates about American higher education. But this chapter, too, remains insufficiently developed, and, besides, it is too little too late.
The first chapter is titled "The Problem of General Education." Again, Menand seems well-qualified to delve into this topic, since he served on the committee which recently revised Harvard's core curriculum. Yet, inexplicably, he never discusses his own experience in any detail. (It is telling, as Menand mentions in a footnote, that, although Harvard began revising its curriculum in 2003, it was not implemented until 2009. At such a glacial pace does change happen in academe.)
Menand may be an English professor, but he thinks like a historian, and this chapter does provide a lucid summary of the history of general education curricula in American universities. Intriguingly, the first Contemporary Civilization course in the United States—offered at Columbia in 1916, on the eve of America's plunge into World War I—was called "War Aims." In the words of the university's historian Robert McCaughey, it was "a course in Allied apologetics, with no pretense of objectivity or balance" (33). Although Menand never mentions it, the nakedly propagandistic aim of this inaugural core course has led some contemporary left-leaning academics to argue that all along Western Civilization courses have tried to brainwash students into obeying the powers-that-be, although the brainwashing got more subtle as time progressed. The fact is, as Menand discusses, that War Aims was substantially revised as it morphed into the Literature Humanities course required at Columbia, and then into core curricula at other schools, such as the "Great Books" course at the University of Chicago—losing its propagandistic bent, and acquiring a more objective and scholarly cast.
But Menand stresses that one quality which remained constant in general education courses was their underlying belief that such courses should convey general knowledge completely unconnected to the more specialized knowledge required by the various professions. Menand regrets this tendency, arguing that "the divorce between liberalism and professionalism as educational missions rests on a superstition: that the practical is the enemy of the true. This is nonsense. Disinterestedness is perfectly consistent with practical ambition, and practical ambitions are perfectly consistent with disinterestedness" (57). (Note that Menand is using "liberalism" here in the apolitical sense of the "liberal arts.") However, since the chapter ends here, the author never explains how, exactly, he would revise general education curricula in order to give it a more pragmatic bent—or at least heal the divorce between such fields of study. In any event, Menand overlooks that students who major in subjects other than the humanities are already taking practical, vocationally-oriented courses. Such vocationalism is not the function of general education, which aims, instead, to produce well-rounded students versed in their own and other cultures.
Continuing his historical overview in the second chapter, "The Humanities Revolution," Menand maintains that starting about twenty years ago the humanities "suffered an institutional legitimacy crisis" (61). For a variety of reasons, humanities professors found themselves unable to defend the value of their courses. Although Menand fails to explain adequately the roots of this crisis, the issue has been explored in a plethora of other sources (primarily from the right, in best-selling books such as Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education) which generally see the conflict as representing one front in the so-called academic "Culture Wars." As noted above, left-leaning academics have charged that the traditional humanistic canon has long been the exclusive province of "dead, white European males" who upheld the status quo. This attack thus questioned the value of studying these alleged "classics" (except to expose their endemic racism, sexism, classism and homophobia). Moreover, the very concept of disinterested, objective scholarly inquiry, on which traditional humanistic study was based, has been challenged, with left-leaning profs insisting that such "objectivity" is really a culturally constructed myth, since academic discourse is always subjective, whether such subjectivity is openly acknowledged or not.
Touching briefly on this issue, Menand notes the "teach-the-conflicts" resolution proposed by Gerald Graff, which entails inscribing these debates into the curriculum itself. But Menand dismisses this solution, arguing that "this teach-the-conflicts approach eventually came to seem otiose because resistance to the new paradigms largely evaporated (or took early retirement)" (86). In other words, there are simply no longer enough old-fashioned profs left to represent the traditional canon and pedagogy. According to Menand, the Culture Wars are over, and the academic left is running the show.
In his third chapter, "Interdisciplinarity and Anxiety," Menand observes that interdisciplinary courses and programs—which meld together teachers and subject matter from a range of disciplines—are now all the rage in the humanities. This trend Menand also attributes to the impact of the academic Culture Wars. As part of their general assault against every aspect of traditional collegiate education, left-leaning humanities academics have questioned the validity of standard disciplines with their rigidly circumscribed fields of knowledge. Deconstructing the disciplines, these academics propose interdisciplinarity as an alternative. But Menand suggests there may be practical problems with instituting a full-blown interdisciplinary curriculum. For one, professors are still being trained in humanities graduate schools in their respective disciplines. Therefore, how many truly possess the breadth of knowledge required to teach an interdisciplinary course? As well, the national associations to which humanities professors belong are still organized along disciplinary lines. If a professor has to choose between an administrator pushing interdisciplinarity, and his or her professional organization still based on a disciplinary foundation, chances are he or she will pick the latter. (It is interesting that while the humanities has a left-leaning orientation, as noted, its disciplinary organization remains traditional. That is an example of how the humanities are both radical and conservative at the same time.)
As I have said, the first three chapters of The Marketplace of Ideas are rather dull. At this late date, the academic Culture Wars are pretty old news, and Menand has little that is fresh to add to the debate. But the last chapter, which asks, "Why Do Professors All Think Alike?", is enthralling and original (and, since the book tends to break into disconnected parts, can be profitably perused on its own by less dedicated readers). Here, Menand explores the results of an extensive national survey conducted by a pair of sociologists, Harvard's Neil Gross, and George Mason's Solon Simmons, which polled 630,000 full-time professors from elite and run-of-the-mill institutions alike in an attempt to gauge the political views of the American professorate. The survey revealed that professors in the United States—particularly though not exclusively in humanities departments—have an overwhelmingly liberal orientation. In the 2004 presidential election, for example, 77.6 % of professors voted for John Kerry, while only 20.4 % voted for George W. Bush. At elite institutions, the numbers skew even more heavily toward the Democrats. Here, more than 95% of humanities professors voted for Kerry, while a whopping 0% cast their ballots for Bush. Moreover, at these elite institutions only 9.5% of professors in the faculty as a whole identify themselves as Republicans, while over 60% call themselves Democrats. (One might argue that party affiliation is not the best way to gauge political orientation in academics, but it remains one of the few short-hands available to pollsters.) Of course, this trend places American professors sharply at odds with the general public. Although there are currently more self-identified Democrats than Republicans in the public at large, polling reveals that a majority of Americans share a center-right political orientation, which has only drifted further in a conservative direction as disillusionment has grown with the Obama administration.
Such findings should come as no great surprise to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the contemporary academic scene. But Menand draws from the data a second conclusion which surprised this reviewer—namely, that while professors tend to be overwhelmingly liberal, they are not, by and large, radical left-wingers. According to the survey, only 9.4% of American professors identify themselves as "extremely liberal," while just 13.5% of faculty describe themselves as "liberal activists." Menand concludes, "If more than 90% of full-time faculty are not 'extremely liberal,' then academia is not dominated by people with radical political views" (135). In short, it seems most professors are not wild-eyed Marxists or anarchists who want to raze the American political system to the ground; instead, they are generally moderate liberals.
Moreover, the data show that the older, "boomer" generation of professors in the faculty as a whole tends to be more leftwing than the younger generation now entering tenure-track positions. Not products of the countercultural '60s, these younger profs generally do not share the far-left politics of their seniors. Although older professors might generally wish to implant their ideology in the next academic generation, apparently they have failed. Thus, as these older academics retire (a process already occurring) extreme political correctness in academe, a phenomenon that has attracted such ire from conservatives, appears to be leveling off, as aging hippies cede the field to their moderately liberal younger colleagues.
If the university today is a haven for moderate liberals, is this really a disaster? Yes, claims Menand, not because the professorate is liberal, but because professors all tend to have such similar political views. In short, contemporary academe is awash in ideological homogeneity, and the generational shift under way is not likely to improve diversity. Considering the passing of the radical academic generation, Menand observes, "This means...that the professorate will become even less ideologically diverse than it is today, since there will be shrinkage on the far left of the political spectrum" (139). Again, the question arises, is this bad? Do not most professions tend to attract similar people? After all, the American Bar Association tends to support the Democrats, while corporate America generally backs Republicans (unless the Democrats are overwhelmingly favored to win, as they were in the 2008 presidential election). Although Menand could have clarified the point, he suggests that the university, more than most other professions, thrives on intellectual diversity—particularly (though not exclusively) in the humanities. If students are consistently hearing only one point-of-view, are they not being cheated of a fully rounded education?
Why are professors overwhelmingly liberal? Menand posits a few possible explanations. For one, for whatever reason, studies tend to correlate liberal political views with a high degree of education. College graduates are usually Democrats, while high school grads tend to opt for the Republicans. Moreover, given the right-leaning slant of our society that has predominated (with some shifts) since the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, there are more options outside academe for conservative intellectuals than there are for liberal ones—in right-wing think tanks and, prior to the last presidential election, in politics. Finally, Menand speculates that the conservative intelligentsia may be more comfortable working in the for-profit sphere omnipresent outside academe's ivory towers, while liberals prefer to dwell in the non-profit realm of the university.
But Menand's main explanation for the liberal leaning of the professorate is that, given the current state of academia, professors today are an extremely self-selected group. Using the English field as an example, he notes, "only about half of the people who enter doctoral programs in English finish them, and only about half of those who finish end up as tenured faculty, the majority of them at institutions that are not research universities. An estimate of the total elapsed time from college graduation to tenure would be somewhere between fifteen and twenty years. It is a lengthy apprenticeship" (149). This, he suggests, serves as a devastatingly effective weeding out process for anyone who does not fit the professorial mold. And, of course, the need to please one's colleagues in order to get tenure only ensures an even greater degree of professorial conformity.
While diagnosing the problem, Menand does not offer any real solutions. Do viable ones exist? One answer, which has been proposed by the conservative firebrand David Horowitz, would be for academic search committees to attempt deliberately to hire more Republican faculty. While it is considered out of bounds for hiring committees to ask directly prospective candidates their political affiliations, this affiliation can be generally determined by scrutinizing résumés and application letters. But how likely is this to happen? It may be a slight over-generalization, but I think people usually prefer to associate with their own kind, and in this respect academics are no different from anyone else. Who wants to transform a department in which everyone engages in comfortable group-think into one riven by ideological disputes? Moreover, what are the odds a left-leaning academic busily engaged in overhauling the traditional curriculum is going to support hiring a faculty member who will dispute the wisdom of this pursuit? (Of course, affirmative action regulations mandate the hiring of more minorities and women, rather than exclusively white men, but such hiring practices usually only push departments in an even more liberal direction.)
Another solution has been proposed by Stanley Fish in a string of op-ed pieces and other writings, now that the mercurial Fish has metamorphosed from a radical to a relatively traditional academic, albeit one who retains his contrarian bent. That is for the university to resurrect the traditional pedagogy which championed academic objectivity and disinterestedness. After all, Fish insists, if a professor teaches a subject in an objective way, fairly presenting all points of view regardless of whether he or she agrees with them or not, then that professor's own political beliefs are irrelevant in class. Even if a given discipline is 100% liberal, left-wing professorial advocacy will not be a problem. (Fish's approach differs from Graff's proposal to "teach the conflicts" in that Graff wants to have courses team-taught by radical and traditionalist professors who would make no attempt to repress their ideological convictions.)
Personally, I agree with Fish's proposal. As an old-fashioned exponent of professorial objectivity, who attempts to follow this approach in my own classroom, I would love to see this practice again become the academic norm. But Fish forgets or ignores the fact that, as noted earlier, the concept of academic objectivity has been vigorously attacked by radical pedagogues who have "demystified" objectivity as a ruse for upholding the status quo. (Ironically enough, in his earlier incarnation as a far-left pedagogue, Fish was rabidly committed to this process of demystification.) Can the genie really be put back into the bottle? Menand concludes The Marketplace of Ideas by lamenting that although "fostering a greater diversity of views within the professorate is a worthy goal...the evidence suggests that American higher education is going in the opposite direction" (155). I apologize for ending on such a bleak note, but perhaps a professorate who all think largely alike is a reality we are just going to have to learn to live with for a long time to come.
[The Montana Professor 21.1, Fall 2010 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]