[csaa-forum] FW: A couple of thoughts about the attack on the university

[Danny Butt]

It's happening everywhere, of course. I found Jodi Dean's excellent blog
recently and she makes a couple of points I hadn't come across quite so
concisely before. fyi

---------------

http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2005/03/a_couple_of_tho.html

A couple of thoughts about the attack on the university

No one expects an ideological formation to be consistent. So, what are some
of the inconsistencies in the brownshirts' current incursion into the
academy? Some are pathetically obvious: they claim to be in favor of free
speech (and opposed to regulation of hate speech, say), yet they want to
eliminate tenured radicals like Ward Churchill, those who speak out against
the war or offer explanations for the 9/11 attacks, women's and ethnic
studies departments, and the teaching of Marxism and postmodernism.
Similarly, they claim that liberals, particularly liberal academics, are
relativists bereft of ethical conviction, yet in the same breadth they
attack the academy for what they perceive as unrelenting Political
Correctness. So, really, the problem that these brownshirts have with the
left isn't that we are weak-kneed relativists at all. The problem they have
is with efforts to secure equality and with a terrain of discussion and
argumentation in which their faith-based opinions carry no weight.

Another thought on a related topic: in yet another account of the eminent
demise of liberalism (by which the author doesn't mean classic liberalism
but rather an alternative to the neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism of US
conservatives) the unbearable John Leo mindlessly fires off current
brownshirt salvos about moral relativism in the academy (even as he combines
this with its opposite, the claim that academics are not relativist but
actually indoctrinating students with a particular position). What makes
this worth noting is that he links the 'crisis of the university' motif to
the 'no new ideas on the left' motif. So now, the problem of left ideas
(which we could also call the fact that the Democrats have lost the last two
elections or the fact that global capital is leaving ever more people
vulnerable and insecure) is now the same as the 'problem' of political
correctness. This is the first time I've seen this articulation, although it
isn't surprising. I expect that we will continue to see it.


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