AAUP Smear: The ever embarrassing Joan Wallach Scott
Sunday, January 22, 2006 9:15 PM
Joan Wallach Scott is a Sixties radical who never grew up. Fortunately for her there are many Sixties radicals who never grew up, but who through assiduous effort have subverted the traditional university and gained control of the levers of hegemonic power and influence in the academic world. As a result, this self-proclaimed ideologue occupies a prestigious position at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, an ivory tower where Einstein hung out in better intellectual times. I am sure that many genuine scholars at Princeton realize the scam that has elevated Joan Wallach to such dizzyingly undeserved heights. But here she is doubly fortunate in that she is not only a Sixties ideologue but also a woman and therefore a member of the reigning feminocracy, which is unassailable in today's politically correct university no matter how anti-intellectual and empty-headed its academic oeuvre (Lawrence Summers take note). Only African American bloviators like her Princeton colleague Cornel West come even close in their ability to spout Marxoid nonsense on an hourly basis without a brave soul around willing to call them to account.
In today's Los Angeles Times, Scott unloads a stream of baseless claims and brazen untruths about academic freedom in the academy. On this subject she is a credentialed "expert" having been the chairperson of the Academic Freedom Committee of the AAUP for the last five years (her term ended in June). During this time she failed to defend Christian and Jewish victims of Muslim and secular persecution in the academic world, but did rally to the support of terrorist professor, Sami al-Arian, and wannabe Notre Dame professor Tariq Ramidan, who was denied a visa by the State Department because of his ties to al-Qaeda. Given her allegiances it is hardly surprising that Scott refers to supporters of the Academic Bill of Rights, like myself, as the "pro-Sharon lobby." And here I thought everyone, even the New York Times, was a Sharon fan now.
I also have a column in today's Times which is devoted to the academic freedom issue. A third is by Edward Said nephew Saree Makdisi another member of the anti-Sharon, pro-Abbas (or is it Hamas?) lobby. Apparently, the Times can't print a symposium on an issue where conservatives are not outnumbered at least two to one. No matter. I can handle (and am used to) much greater odds than that.
I have already dealt with Scott's inability stay in any stable let alone reasonable relationship to the facts in regard to the academic freedom issue, and will not repeat myself. Fortunately, Emory professor Mark Bauerlein has written his own letter to the Times about Scott's slippery intellectual modes, and I am happy to post them here.
Editor, Los Angeles Times:
Joan Wallach Scott's op-ed is entitled "Professors as liberators." But liberators from what? One wouldn't know reading the article. In fact, it contains not a speck of factual evidence. Instead, we have Professor Scott pronouncing a series of grand assertions about the noble ideals of academic inquiry, and their realization on campus. She intones, "In short, at most universities and colleges you'll find no prevailing ideology across departments." Regarding free speech, she says that "inquiry after inquiry has shown that there is no problem." She claims that universities have procedures to handle cases of indoctrination and unfair grading, and "for the most part, they work." And, she says that proponents of the Academic Bill of Rights are out to "stifle critical thinking of any kind by insisting that all ideas are of equal merit."
This is either rank dishonesty, or the vision of someone ensconced in her own fact-challenged reality. Liberal ideology is, indeed, the prevailing view across campus, a point even most liberal
professors concede. What they argue now is over the causes of their dominance. And cases of faculty bias against students or in the curriculum happen all the time without university controls intervening. Just examine the hundred of cases that the Foundation for Individual Rights for Education handles each year (about 15 percent of which are on the part of liberal students). And on the free speech issue, Scott doesn't cite a single inquiry to show that there is no problem, but we have many court cases in which speech codes have been overturned. Finally, the mischaracterization of the Academic Bill of Rights should never have passed the editors' desks, as a cursory reading of the document would show. The ABOR doesn't assert the equality of all ideas. Ideas must pass scholary muster before they should be admitted to the classroom. Indeed, it is on these grounds that one objects to the conversion of classrooms into Bush-bashing sessions.
By all means, let's have a debate over government inquiries into the academy. But let's do so on the basis of the facts, not on cheap allegations.
Mark Bauerlein
Department of EnglishEmory
UniversityAtlanta, GA 30322
Joan Wallach Scott is a Sixties radical who never grew up. Fortunately for her there are many Sixties radicals who never grew up, but who through assiduous effort have subverted the traditional university and gained control of the levers of hegemonic power and influence in the academic world. As a result, this self-proclaimed ideologue occupies a prestigious position at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, an ivory tower where Einstein hung out in better intellectual times. I am sure that many genuine scholars at Princeton realize the scam that has elevated Joan Wallach to such dizzyingly undeserved heights. But here she is doubly fortunate in that she is not only a Sixties ideologue but also a woman and therefore a member of the reigning feminocracy, which is unassailable in today's politically correct university no matter how anti-intellectual and empty-headed its academic oeuvre (Lawrence Summers take note). Only African American bloviators like her Princeton colleague Cornel West come even close in their ability to spout Marxoid nonsense on an hourly basis without a brave soul around willing to call them to account.
In today's Los Angeles Times, Scott unloads a stream of baseless claims and brazen untruths about academic freedom in the academy. On this subject she is a credentialed "expert" having been the chairperson of the Academic Freedom Committee of the AAUP for the last five years (her term ended in June). During this time she failed to defend Christian and Jewish victims of Muslim and secular persecution in the academic world, but did rally to the support of terrorist professor, Sami al-Arian, and wannabe Notre Dame professor Tariq Ramidan, who was denied a visa by the State Department because of his ties to al-Qaeda. Given her allegiances it is hardly surprising that Scott refers to supporters of the Academic Bill of Rights, like myself, as the "pro-Sharon lobby." And here I thought everyone, even the New York Times, was a Sharon fan now.
I also have a column in today's Times which is devoted to the academic freedom issue. A third is by Edward Said nephew Saree Makdisi another member of the anti-Sharon, pro-Abbas (or is it Hamas?) lobby. Apparently, the Times can't print a symposium on an issue where conservatives are not outnumbered at least two to one. No matter. I can handle (and am used to) much greater odds than that.
I have already dealt with Scott's inability stay in any stable let alone reasonable relationship to the facts in regard to the academic freedom issue, and will not repeat myself. Fortunately, Emory professor Mark Bauerlein has written his own letter to the Times about Scott's slippery intellectual modes, and I am happy to post them here.
Editor, Los Angeles Times:
Joan Wallach Scott's op-ed is entitled "Professors as liberators." But liberators from what? One wouldn't know reading the article. In fact, it contains not a speck of factual evidence. Instead, we have Professor Scott pronouncing a series of grand assertions about the noble ideals of academic inquiry, and their realization on campus. She intones, "In short, at most universities and colleges you'll find no prevailing ideology across departments." Regarding free speech, she says that "inquiry after inquiry has shown that there is no problem." She claims that universities have procedures to handle cases of indoctrination and unfair grading, and "for the most part, they work." And, she says that proponents of the Academic Bill of Rights are out to "stifle critical thinking of any kind by insisting that all ideas are of equal merit."
This is either rank dishonesty, or the vision of someone ensconced in her own fact-challenged reality. Liberal ideology is, indeed, the prevailing view across campus, a point even most liberal
professors concede. What they argue now is over the causes of their dominance. And cases of faculty bias against students or in the curriculum happen all the time without university controls intervening. Just examine the hundred of cases that the Foundation for Individual Rights for Education handles each year (about 15 percent of which are on the part of liberal students). And on the free speech issue, Scott doesn't cite a single inquiry to show that there is no problem, but we have many court cases in which speech codes have been overturned. Finally, the mischaracterization of the Academic Bill of Rights should never have passed the editors' desks, as a cursory reading of the document would show. The ABOR doesn't assert the equality of all ideas. Ideas must pass scholary muster before they should be admitted to the classroom. Indeed, it is on these grounds that one objects to the conversion of classrooms into Bush-bashing sessions.
By all means, let's have a debate over government inquiries into the academy. But let's do so on the basis of the facts, not on cheap allegations.
Mark Bauerlein
Department of EnglishEmory
UniversityAtlanta, GA 30322
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