The implications of this symbiosis were drawn by the conference panels, which are listed in the table of contents as follows: “Student Movements” “Student Unions” “Historians for Social Justice” and “Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Activism.” In other words, the symbiosis of activism and scholarship reflected a self-conception in which radical professors would function as the mentors and protectors of student activists, deploying their intellectual skills in behalf of “progressive” political causes. History professor Jesse Lemisch a founding member of “Historians Against The War,” began his presentation with these words: “As historians, teachers and scholars, we oppose the expansion of American empire…” Speaking on the final conference panel, Professor Lemisch spelled out the connection that academic radicals like himself made between their roles as scholars and their political goals: “Being an activist is a necessary prerequisite for historians who want to see through the reigning lies, and I take it as a given that we must be activists. Writing history is about challenging received authority. Activist experience gives the historian experiential understanding of the power of the state, repression, social change, … the depth of commitment of those with power to maintaining the standing order through their journalists, historians, police and law firms…. You can’t begin to understand how history happens unless you have this basic training as a historian/activist. A good dose of tear gas makes us think more clearly as historians.”
Far from being marginal, Lemisch’s endorsement of activist scholarship is shared by leaders of the academic profession. Jacquelyn Hall is a Professor of History at the University of North Carolina and, like Eric Foner, a former president of the Organization of American Historians. Like Foner and Lemisch, she is also a member of Historians Against The War and had this to say about Taking Back the Academy: “In considering the broad social and political responsibilities of intellectuals in society, this book calls for a revitalized definition of what it means to be a scholar-citizen in the Twenty-first Century. For scholars in the humanities, that call could not be more timely. Alternatively maligned as politically irrelevant or dangerously subversive, historians and other stewards of society’s subjective truths increasingly must be prepared to articulate – and defend – their function in today’s marketplace of ideas and corporatized universities.” These are the words of an activist rather than a scholar. But at the Columbia University conference the distinction was no longer recognized.
The Law of Group Polarization
The professors profiled in this volume are drawn from public and private universities, from small institutions and large ones, and from schools that are both secular and religious. Among them are individuals prominent in their institutions and at the forefront of their professions. They are the authors of books widely used as texts in their fields. They have been funded by the prestigious foundations that support academic work and have been awarded the highest professional honors in their fields. They are department chairmen and directors of academic institutes and programs, and the heads of large professional associations. Among them are presdents and former presidents of the American Historical Association, the American Anthropological Association, the National Ethnic Studies Association, the American Philosophical Association, the Modern Language Association, the American Sociological Association and the Middle East Studies Association. As tenured faculty they have a prominent role in the hiring and promotion of future generations of university professors. In a word they are representative figures, widely influential in the academic world.
At the same time and notwithstanding their impressive credentials, these professors (as their profiles demonstrate) are capable of making disturbingly shallow intellectual judgments and expressing alarmingly crude political opinions. Like Ward Churchill, their excesses implicate not only themselves but an academic culture.
My most difficult task in writing this book was living daily with the knowledge it provides of the enormous damage that several generations of tenured radicals have inflicted on our educational system and its students; and of being cognizant of the unrelenting malice that so many of them hold in their hearts for a country that has given them the great privileges and freedoms they enjoy as a birthright.
December 2005
Notes: