The Modern Language Association convention is going on right now. This is the largest conference/meeting/whatever of faculty-types in English departments, though for complicated reasons I’m not going to go into right now, I do not think it is a conference that accurately reflects the interests of many faculty in English departments, and it is a conference I personally loathe.
Most of the convention is too field-specific for the news that comes out of it to really qualify as “news,” though the Chronicle of Higher Education blog has posted a number of MLA stories nonetheless. I thought what might be interesting for the more “general audience with a higher ed emphasis” crowd here was this post, “MLA 2008: David Horowitz Meets His Critics.” The two most common questions I get from my non-academic relatives about life as a professor over the holidays are a) what is this “academic freedom thing,” and b) what do you mean you have tenure and can’t get fired. Those topics are related of course, and both appear to be issues discussed during this panel.
Here’s the opening paragraphs of the CHE article:
David Horowitz is no stranger to the MLA. His campaign for an “academic bill of rights” and his criticism of what he says is classroom indoctrination have earned him the enmity of many scholars — not just in literary studies, a frequent target of his barbs, but other disciplines as well. But to hear him tell it, the extreme attacks on him have blocked any real discussion. In fact, Mr. Horowitz’s appearance at the MLA here today, he said, is the first time that a scholarly group has ever asked him to appear to defend his views.
And that was either cause for dismay, as some here viewed it, or a step forward for the MLA. Mr. Horowitz appeared on a panel called “Academic Freedom?” along with Mark Bauerlein, Norma V. Cantú, and Cary Nelson. It was a tightly formatted event: The speakers were given 12 minutes to make their comments, and audience members 30 seconds afterward to raise questions — limits that were actually enforced, even if it meant audience members shouting out “your time is up!” to Mr. Horowitz when he went over a bit.
Also, here’s a link to Horwitz’s remarks, “Teach the Controversy, Don’t Preach It,” from his blog.
Sitedad – thanks for linking to this. Horowitz is a piece of work; he was a left wing extremist/opportunist in the 1960s and has now for ages been a right-wing extremist/opportunist. He understands what real academic freedom is as well as an average rock understands Shakespeare’s sonnets, but his gift of self promotion unquestioned.
But I hasten to add something, Steve: your intro includes, as a paraphrase from others, “what do you mean you have tenure and can’t get fired”? This is of course incorrect: tenured professors can be and are fired, for two reasons. The first is in case of fiscal emergency – a whole program can be eliminated by a university and all its tenured faculty fired. Rare but not unheard of. The second set of circumstances in which a tenured professor can be fired is in cases of proven and serious failure to fulfill one’s professional duties and/or serious professional misconduct. In other words, it is very difficult to fire a tenured professor, and it is rare, but if you don’t do your job (teach your classes, etc.) or engage in serious misconduct, you can be fired. And it happens. I’ve seen it happen here at EMU. Scholars who fabricate data or findings can be fired; faculty who engage in sexual harassment or other forms of misconduct, or who simply don’t fulfill their basic professional duties, can be fired.
The folk lore is that professors can, unlike other workers, decide not to show up for work and still get paid, forever. That is quite false. This folklore is in my mind detrimental to the well being of higher education. Professors are hardly perfect as a group, but most of us work very hard and work long hours.
And if you’re in a program – say, library science at Columbia University in the mid 1980s – that the university decides to eliminate, then the tenured professors in that program can be terminated.
Oh, I’m well-aware that the idea that at tenured professor can’t be fired is folklore, Mark. But like I said, it’s the kind of folklore that many people outside of academia seem to believe as a fact.
I blogged about this some on my personal blog back in November, but the short version is that a number of my relatives who have jobs are quite a bit more vulnerable than mine in this current economy brought this up over Thanksgiving.
What’s wrong with some outside criticism of higher education? that’s what Horowitz provides.