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December 6, 2001
Sam and
Leila Bahour
The
Psychology of a Suicide Attacker
December 5, 2001
Edward Hammond
The Only
Real Way to
Prevent Biowarfare
Harvey
Wasserman
Atomic
Treason in the House
Carl Estabrook
America's
Israel
Don Williams
Questions
Barbara Walters Didn't Ask George Bush
Cockburn/St. Clair
Liberals
Hail War as
Return of Big Government
Robert
Fisk
The
Last Colonial War?
Bahour/Dahan
It's About
the Occupation
December 4, 2001
Dave Marsh
A
Plea for Byron Parker
Rep. Ron Paul
Keep Your
Eye on the Target
Susan
Herman
Ashcroft
and the Patriot Act
Tariq Ali
The Afghan
King and the Nazis
November 30, 2001
Jordan
Green
Disappeared
in the Southland
Willliam Blum
Rebuilding
Afghanistan?
November 29, 2001
Phillip
Cryan
Defining
Terrorism
Robert Fisk
We Are the
War Criminals Now
November 28, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
A
Continuum of Terror
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
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December
6, 2001
September 11 and the Politics
of University Teaching
By Robert Jensen
At various time in my teaching career -- more
than ever since Sept. 11 -- I have been advised by faculty colleagues
that I should avoid being "too political" in the classroom.
To the degree that the advice is simply pragmatic -- avoid being
political to avoid being criticized -- I can understand it. But
I find the suggestion hard to reconcile with my conception of
what higher education should be in a pluralist democracy. Embedded
in that advice are several key reasons for this culture's intellectual
and political crisis, and in the particular the failure of the
contemporary university.
Teaching is
political
I teach in a journalism department, where
I have a role in training people who allegedly will provide the
information citizens need to participate in a democratic system
of governance that is based on the idea that those citizens are
the sovereign power. Most journalists practice that trade in
large corporate institutions that are themselves at the heart
of the system of power in the society. Is there a way to imagine
teaching journalism in a manner that isn't intensely political?
I use the term "political"
not to mean partisan -- for or against any particular politician,
policy, or party -- but instead to refer to the play of power
in a society. Everyone lines up in some relationship to power,
either in defense of, or resistance to. Claims of taking a neutral
stance -- especially when made by privileged professionals --
are illusory; neutrality is simply another way of supporting
the existing distribution of power. (Just imagine how we would
examine a claim by Soviet academics that they were neutral as
to the system of power in their nation and were teaching so as
not to take political positions. What would we say about them?)
To challenge power is political. To support power is political.
To avoid the question is political.
Take the question of the forces that
shape the news. One approach to that issue is Edward Herman's
propaganda model, which highlights the role of ownership and
ideology in the formation of mainstream news. I teach that model
in my introductory journalism class because I believe it is the
most compelling way to help explain how commercial journalism
works. My decision is informed by my intellectual evaluation
of the work, but no doubt my politics play a role as well. If
someone consciously rejects the model and refuses to teach it,
that decision is political in the same sense. And if one claims
to be neutral and avoids the issue, that too is political.
So, it is not the case of some professors
being political and some not. We all are political, which affects
both what we take to be relevant intellectual questions and how
we frame the presentation of those questions. In a healthy system,
there would be ongoing engagement about such intellectual and
political matters among faculty members, who are bound to have
differing views. One or another of these views might emerge as
more compelling than others. One or another might emerge as dominant
based on the interests of power. But all the positions are equally
political.
How does one
come to hold political opinions?
A deeper problem with the advice to avoid
being political is the notion that intellectual work somehow
separate from politics. But we should ask: How does one come
to hold a political position? Is it arrived at randomly? Is it
based on wholly arbitrary assertions? Or, does one have a clear
argument with credible evidence to support those opinions? If
so, is there not always intellectual work behind a political
position?
This culture too often treats political
opinions as if they were merely subjective judgments. Certainly
some component of our political decision-making includes statements
that are subjective in some sense -- they are about principles
that cannot be proved by reason and evidence, such as the answer
to the question "what does it mean to be a human being?"
But statements of such first principles are the beginning of
a coherent political argument, not the end. The formation and
articulation of political viewpoints requires intellectual work
if those viewpoints are to be of value in public dialogue.
So, if most of what we talk about in
a journalism class is inextricably political, and if it is important
to provide a coherent argument for one's political judgments,
professors should make clear their own political positions that
are relevant to the class and explain to students how they came
to hold those positions. That is not the same thing as proselytizing.
It need not be coercive but can be a healthy process in which
professors model an intellectual method that can counter the
shallow, superficial political discourse that dominates in news
coverage, television talk shows, advertising, and political campaigns.
This should be one of the central goals of a university.
That task can, of course, be done badly.
Professors can lose sight of the need to create the most open
atmosphere possible for that intellectual work and political
thinking. We can lose track of the central goal of helping students
develop their own critical thinking skills. We can forget that
our job is not simply to tell students what opinions they should
hold but to challenge them to think deeper about their own positions,
or in some cases to think enough to form opinions for the first
time. I assume every professor, myself included, at some point
has made such mistakes. At that point, the crucial question is
whether students feel free enough to challenge the professor.
Has the professor created a truly open and engaged classroom
so that the class can help the professor correct herself or himself?
The bargain
professors make
I take most of these points to be not
terribly controversial. I have made these claims often and have
yet to hear a colleague offer a serious rebuttal. If that is
so, then why do people keep telling me to avoid being political
in the classroom?
It may be that the advice is shorthand
for "you do a bad job of teaching material that has controversial
political content" or "I don't like your left/radical
political positions and I wish you would stop teaching material
related to those positions." If the former, then I would
ask that my critics tell me what they think I am doing wrong
so that I can have the chance to evaluate the criticism and make
necessary changes. If they mean the latter, then I would ask
them to critique my political positions (and defend their own)
so that we could have an intellectual and political discussion
that might be valuable for all concerned.
After a dozen years of teaching, I have
come to believe the reason for that advice is much more troubling,
and is rooted in the bargain with power that allows us our privilege.
We should start by being clear that professors
are an incredibly privileged lot -- at least those of us who
have steady jobs at reasonable salaries with reasonable benefits.
(More and more teaching work is performed by large numbers of
adjuncts and part-time instructors who do not have those protections,
but even they, by comparison with most of the rest of the population,
have considerable privilege.) Professors are relatively autonomous
and do work that is generally invigorating and enjoyable. I feel
privileged, and I'm grateful for the privilege.
As is almost always the case in hierarchical
systems with unequal distributions of power, such as the contemporary
United States, people are given privilege with the expectation
that they will serve that system. It is my experience that values
such as a sincere belief in the value of free thought and liberal
education motivate people to join the university enterprise.
But it is equally clear that the system has its own demands.
Because it is a liberal pluralist institution, not a totalitarian
monolith, there is some variation in how successfully individuals
can resist the demands of the system. But in general, to the
degree that professors accept the existing configuration of power
they will be accorded the privileges with minimal interference.
To the degree they challenge that power, rewards will be less
forthcoming and the potential for interference enhanced.
Rather than confront this, it is much
easier for professors to imagine that they are outside that system
of power and can evaluate the world from some more-or-less neutral
position. It's easier to say things such as, "I try just
to teach the facts, not my political opinions" and ignore
the way in which every decision in teaching -- from the choices
of subject matter and texts to the way the course is organized
and the way power is distributed within the classroom -- is deeply
political.
Teaching is about our opinions. The relevant
questions are: How well can we defend our opinions? How well
can we articulate the unstated assumptions that frame our questions
as well as our answers? How willing are we to subject our teaching
to scrutiny? How well do we listen to feedback from colleagues
and students?
September 11
All of these questions have been very
much on my mind since September 11, but they also were very much
on my mind on September 10. In that sense, nothing changed for
me in my teaching. But because of my antiwar writing and speaking,
and the heightened level of public visibility that has come with
those activities, the questions are also quite clearly on the
mind of my critics and, I assume, my students. Because of the
intensity of the emotions around the events of September 11,
it has been more important than ever for me to foreground these
questions in my classroom.
Based on reactions in and out of class,
I know that many students are angry about things I have said
or written outside of class, and about some discussions we have
had in class. I am well aware that I have made many students
uncomfortable. I do not consider that to be a problem, for I
can't imagine a meaningful higher education experience that does
not make students uncomfortable at some point. One shouldn't
attend university simply to have existing beliefs reinforced.
Students should confront alternative explanations, including
those that conflict with their own deeply held beliefs. Inevitably,
if one is dealing with topics that are important, that will mean
students will be uncomfortable.
More than ever, this semester I have
tried to monitor whether I present material in a way that makes
it difficult for students with contrary opinions to speak. I
have not always been sure I did all that I could to create the
ideal classroom. I have on some days left the classroom wondering
whether I talked too much and shut off student discussion too
early; on other days, I fear that, in the interests of airing
the maximal number of views, I let some students ramble on too
long in a manner that bored others. I thought about those questions
regularly before September 11. I hope I will continue to ask
myself those questions as long as I am teaching.
I cannot speak for my students; I do
not know for sure that I have taught in a way that makes the
discomfort they might feel intellectually and politically productive.
But I do know that at many moments I have felt uncomfortable.
I assume that if I am in territory that challenges my own beliefs
and forces me to think more deeply about what I am saying in
class, then at some level I have succeeded.
Robert Jensen
is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin,
a member of the Nowar
Collective, and author of the book Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.
He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
His writing is available online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/freelance/freelance.htm.
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