Sat 8 Apr 2006
The Guardian, U.K. Tuesday April 4, 2006
University professors denounced for anti-Americanism; schoolteachers suspended for their politics; students encouraged to report on their tutors. Are US campuses in the grip of a witch-hunt of progressives, or is academic life just too liberal? By Gary Younge
After the screenwriter Walter Bernstein was placed on the blacklist during the McCarthyite era he said his life “seemed to move in ever-decreasing circles”. “Few of my friends dropped away but the list of acquaintances diminished,” he wrote in Inside Out, a memoir of the blacklist. “I appeared contaminated and they did not want to risk infection. They avoided me, not calling as they had in the past, not responding to my calls, being nervously distant if we met in public places.”
As chair of African American studies in Yale, Paul Gilroy had a similar experience recently after he spoke at a university-sponsored teach-in on the Iraq war. “I think the morality of cluster bombs, of uranium-tipped bombs, [of] daisy cutters are shaped by an imperial double standard that values American lives more,” he said. “[The war seems motivated by] a desire to enact revenge for the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon … [It’s important] to speculate about the relation between this war and the geopolitical interests of Israel.”
“I thought I was being extremely mealy-mouthed, but I was accused of advocating conspiracy theories,” says Gilroy, who is now the Anthony Giddens professor of Social Theory at the London School of Economics.
Scot Silverstein, who was once on the faculty at Yale, saw a piece in the student paper about Gilroy’s contribution. He wrote to the Wall Street Journal comparing Gilroy to Hitler and claiming his words illustrated the “moral psychosis and perhaps psychological sadism that appears to have infected leftist academia”. The Journal published the letter. Gilroy found himself posted on Discoverthenetworks.org, a website dedicated to exposing radical professors. The principle accusation was that he “believes the US fabricated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein”.
Then the emails started coming to him and his colleagues, denouncing him. “Only one person said anything,” says Gilroy. “Otherwise, nobody looked me in the eye. There was something about the way it never came up that made me realise how nervous and apprehensive they were.”
Few would argue there are direct parallels between the current assaults on liberals in academe and McCarthyism. Unlike the McCarthy era, most threats to academic freedom – real or perceived – do not, yet, involve the state. Nor are they buttressed by widespread popular support, as anticommunism was during the 50s. But in other ways, argues Ellen Schrecker, author of Many Are the Crimes – McCarthyism in America, comparisons are apt.
“In some respects it’s more dangerous,” she says. “McCarthyism dealt mainly with off-campus political activities. Now they focus on what is going on in the classroom. It’s very dangerous because it’s reaching into the core academic functions of the university, particularly in Middle-Eastern studies.”
Either way, a growing number of apparently isolated incidents suggests a mood which is, if nothing else, determined, relentless and aimed openly at progressives in academe.
Earlier this year, Fox news commentator Sean Hannity urged students to record “leftwing propaganda” by professors so he could broadcast it on his show. On the web there is Campus Watch, “monitoring Middle East studies on campus”; Edwatch, “Education for a free nation”; and Parents Against Bad Books in School.
In mid January, the Bruin Alumni association offered students $100 to tape leftwing professors at the University of California Los Angeles. The association effectively had one dedicated member, 24-year-old Republican Andrew Jones. It also had one dedicated aim: “Exposing UCLA’s most radical professors” who “[proselytise] their extreme views in the classroom”.
Shortly after the $100 offer was made, Jones mounted a website, uclaprofs.com, which compiled the Dirty 30 – a hit list of those he considered the most egregious, leftwing offenders. Top of the list was Peter McLaren, a professor at the UCLA’s graduate school of education. Jones branded McLaren a “monster”. “Everything that flows from Peter McLaren’s mouth and pen is deeply, inextricably radical,” wrote Jones. “In keeping with the left’s identity politics he has been a friend to the gay community.”
McLaren was shocked. “I was away when the story broke and when I came back there were 87 messages waiting for me. I was surprised a list like that could be created in these times. I thought, ‘Wow, somebody’s out there reading my work fairly carefully.'” The main impact, he says, was to try to insulate those close to him from the fallout. “I had to take down lots of things from my website – family pictures and contacts with other people. I didn’t want other people to pay the price.”
Full article:Guardian U.K.