The Death of the American University
October 19, 2015
I once had a professor who said that F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” He stood there in front of us, believing that he was the living embodiment of Fitzgerald’s claim, while I rolled my eyes somewhere in the back of the classroom.
Through discussion and engagement with exclusively leftist literature, we were forced to conclude that despite the Obama presidency, America was still an inherently racist country. Opposing ideas were never presented in the classroom. My desire to include Thomas Sowell, an African-American economist and prolific writer on race from Stanford University, in the course’s open-ended final project on personal identity, was met with quick rejection from the professor.
We are engaged in an intellectual war. Many of our professors are merely ideologues who live comfortably with the knowledge that their life’s purpose is to create mirrors of themselves that will go out into the world and change it in their image. When Ben Carson gave the commencement address at the University in 2010, several faculty members turned their backs to the speaker. Why do those who are tasked with molding us into critical thinkers so willingly reject intellectual diversity and opposing ideas? Ironically, when the resulting world descends into chaos and corruption, instead of blaming themselves, the same professors will believe that it’s because they haven’t yet done enough.
“Maybe you can start to get how your privilege oppresses people and why you need to be aware of your privilege so you don’t continue to sound like the classist and racist bigot you have presented yourself as,” one of the University’s most prominent left-wing student leaders said to me in a debate over tuition-free college. This might have been an attempt to get me to shut up and go away, but in reality it just added fuel to my fire.
The sole tactic of progressives on this campus in debate is to dismiss the speaker by attacking his or her credibility, rather than considering the merits of the argument. This ends now. This is why “opposing ideas” presented in the classroom are rarely two truly conflicting ideas. To me, this points to the weakness of their positions. Bias in many ways is inevitable and appropriate, but the silencing of opposing ideas through aggression, personal attacks, and control of curriculum and discussion only speaks to the fear that progressive ideas will be challenged and defeated. No idea is unworthy of discussion on the University campus.
A recent campus study revealed that there is a significant conservative student population on campus. So where are you? Let’s band together and demand our campus progressives in the faculty and student body to actually act on their self-proclaimed virtues of tolerance and diversity.
“The Marxians pretend that what their inner voice proclaims is history’s self-revelation. If other people do not hear this voice, it is only a proof that they are not chosen. It is insolence that those groping in darkness dare to contradict the inspired ones. Decency should impel them to creep into a corner and keep silent,” Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises said.
Silence isn’t an option. They will hear us soon.
Mohammed Elnaiem • Oct 23, 2015 at 5:13 pm
oh and don’t think I am conflating your intellectual heroes with you. I too have inspirations that harbored the worst views on a black dude like me, but they were from the 19th century. The point of my argument is this: it is true that we need to see different views on campus. But are all views worth validating? I don’t think they should be. but i think they should be stated and heard no matter how much I disagree with them.
I think our campus needs to have different organizations, with different views. It’s the only way we can grow. I do nevertheless still want to insist, that the aristocrats had their defenders, and the monarchies had theirs, so do the ruling classes of our time. I do want to push back on the narrative of victim-hood that is far too popular among conservative students, even if I make this point satirically. I also want to push back on the notion that conversations on “free speech” — which your ideology (I’m assuming right-wing libertarian? I’m left-libertarian myself) itself says can be nullified under private property — should be separated from power. As the old saying goes, I’m so down to see someone extend their arm, but that right ends when her fist touches my face.
Tom Ciccotta • Oct 23, 2015 at 9:00 pm
Mohammad,
That was an incredibly well articulated and well-thought out response. It’s quite evident how bright of a guy you are, which makes me proud to be a Bucknellian.
It actually seems that we share some common ground on the issue of political diversity. It would have been to my benefit to speak about McCarthyism in this piece, because it’s important to point out that the university should be the lab to experiment with all kinds of popular ideas. But is it extreme to say that what exists today on the campus is reverse McCarthyism? I really don’t think so.
In 1915, the “Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure” was a document incorporated by most universities to prevent professors from “taking unfair advantage of student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher’s own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matter in question, and before he has the sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgement to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own.”
Bucknell Economics Professor Geoff Schneider told the New York Times in 2003 this regarding the conservative student population here, “‘As the conservatives have become more prominent, other students are more prone to believe that they are being indoctrinated, so the openness of a number of students to new ideas and new ways of looking at things has actually moved in a disturbing direction.” Real insightful, professor. Adding perspectives makes students less open-minded? It seems to me that in Geoff’s utopia, Bucknell students accept everything taught to them without an ounce of skepticism. It’s quite clear that for Professor Schneider, Bucknell is far better off when the conservative students know their place, and stay quiet. For a university professor, this attitude is quite disgusting.
In my experience, the Declaration on Academic Freedom is violated every day on this campus. I would love to talk to you about whether Mises was right or wrong on whatever issue, but that’s not the conservation that needs to be had today. This university sits by as our professors use their classroom as a platform to push political statements without acknowledging their own biases. It’s deceitful to the apolitical, it doesn’t challenge those that agree, and it creates distrust with students like myself. I have to open my mind to political ideas from those who couldn’t open their own minds and treat Dr. Carson with respect? (And I don’t like him myself.)
In my life, I’ve learned more from those who I disagree than from those with who I’ve agreed. In the most recent meeting of Bucknell’s College Republicans organization, I told those in attendance that we will NOT be the “affirmative action bake sale” college republicans, and instead be a new kind that thrives on discussion with those with who we disagree. There is a standing invitation to everyone from the Bucknell Left to join us at one or all of our meetings, and I sincerely hope you take us up on this offer.
Mohammed Elnaiem • Oct 23, 2015 at 4:51 pm
Hi Tom,
My previous comment was obviously a joke, and I appreciate the fact that you want to expand the bounds of the intellectual community. I do not agree that there is an intellectual war against the right in this country, quite frankly, there is barely a “left” to speak of here. Definitely not one declaring any war. As South African students are fighting against austerity, and Spanish students are electing the left on their city councils, the american left has barely a labor movement, and has suffered immense amounts of state repression. One of the few places of retreat for a left that has been destroyed by the right, consistently through the very outright destruction of the very liberties that the right purports to cherish, has been a few universities. To speak of an intellectual war, while history shows the effects of mccarthyism, the red scare, Cointelpro, and the house of “unamerican” activities — not to mention the wholesale dismantlement of unions, collective bargaining rights, and campaigns targeting academics, is dishonest.
The intellectual war ended along time ago, and the right won.
Why else do you think “socialism” is a dirty word, almost solely in the united states? You are the heir of this legacy, and where the USSR doesn’t even exist anymore, you point your obsession towards a phantom socialist conspiracy.
It is interesting you decide to quote Von-Mises, who’s ideas went to influence the Chicago school and the US sponsored coup of the elected leftist, Salvador Allende. It exemplifies perfectly the paradox of “liberties” under the bayonet. I will, wholeheartedly condemn the legacy of the USSR, and all totalitarian leftists who have slandered the name of the labor movement. Will you do the same for Milton Friedman and co.?
I also have more reservations, based solely on the history of this campus. You are not reinventing the wheel. There have been conservative movements on campus, and they’ve left a legacy not worthy of any pride. Affirmative action bake sales that harass minority students, an already vulnerable population given the events of last year, and discrete recordings of lectures released to the internet to validate claims of “socialist conspiracy”.
The truth of the matter is, that you misunderstood Ludwig Von Mises’s quote, he wasn’t saying that conservatives and libertarians are the ones who should stay quite, the “them” he was speaking of were leftists. We should be decent and creep into a corner and keep silent, and the extent to which the right will push for this has already been recorded in history.
You also might be interested in some other statements he made in those very passages, literally on the same page:
“It is a known fact that mankind is divided into various races.”
“the races differ in bodily features.”
sure they are not “inferior” but he still believes that the non-cacusian races “have sought to get rid of beasts of pray and disease, to prevent famines and to raise the productivity of labor.” there can be no doubt that in the pursuit of these aims “they have been less succesful than the whites.”
This is what von Mises, in 1969 — in the midst of civil rights mobilization spearheaded by liberals, and radical leftist racial liberation movements — argues is the problem of the Marxists. You’ve chosen your legacy, and I’ve chosen mine.
The reality of the matter is that, I would love to see honest debates between the left and the right on this campus, I would be thrilled to see a platform where we can all honestly debate the limitations of white-privilege theory for example, but I am not interested in “Intellectual war”.
I would be very interested in hearing more about Ayn Rand’s virtue of “selfishness”, the Austrian school, and the racial hierarchies that determine “judgments of value and the choice of ends”. I would even love to see a resurgence of Von Mises, even though my intellectual heroes fought fascism and didn’t write in the midst of the fascist wave that it was “full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization.”
Don’t get me wrong, I am not being sarcastic here. I am not calling you a fascist nor a racist, but I do think that those you choose to invoke for the upcoming conservative resurgence can give a valuable prognosis of racism in contemporary society. Perhaps it has absolutely nothing to do with privilege. Perhaps we are not in a post-racial society because people want all ideas on the table, because people want to see more Mises, more Rand. What happened to the the good old american university? The good old days when the exclusive american university used to entertain “diversity of thought.” behind segregated walls.
But in all honesty! I am excited for the day when “No idea is unworthy of discussion on the University campus.” I too am bored with this echo-chamber, I’d like to see more of the ideas that I hate, challenge myself, even if this means that I will have to read Von Mises’s defense of fascism.
What a day it would be to be able to debate these ideas, I welcome the introduction of libertarian ideals and ideas, i’d love to debate someone about how more industry, and more exploitation is supposedly going to be the solution to the environmental crisis that we will all regret. Maybe one day we all will say “we shouldn’t have never regulated oil companies” when we are paying for the crisis, and perhaps it will be that day when everyone knows your little secret, that too many of the problems of the world have been generated by leftist professors.
I really am interested in engaging in all these debates! But on one condition, that this stays on the realm of ideas and not a defense of harassment. If i am not made to feel that I deserve to be elsewhere, and if I don’t have to witness those who look different, talk different, and act different being driven out. If i don’t have to walk to class and have people insist on selling me a baked good for $1 and scream “whites get $2, because blacks get affirmative action.” I genuinely look forward to this
and you’re absolutely right about echo-chambers, they pose serious limitations to thought. We need to be around ideas that are different than ours.
Mohammed Elnaiem
Bucknell Left
Mohammed Elnaiem • Oct 23, 2015 at 1:32 pm
conservative students of the world unite! you have nothing to lose but your trustfunds!