Kenneth Lasson - Trembling in the Ivory Tower: Excesses in the Pursuit of Truth and Tenure

Baltimore, MD

Copyright 2003 by Kenneth Lasson

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote passages in a review.

Published by Bancroft Press

P.O. Box 65360, Baltimore, MD 21209

800.637.7377

www.bancroftpress.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2001096588

ISBN 1-890862-08-8 cl

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

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Dedicated to open-minded scholars everywhere, some of whom know who they are.

Scholarly publications are almost always heavily annotated. This weighty exercise has two purposes: to lend an air of authenticity to the work, and to allow the author long-winded tangential digressions (some of which may actually be relevant to the main themes).

The traditional justification for footnotes is that they enable skeptical readers to verify for themselves that the writers sources are legitimate. That in itself can be an exceedingly tedious exercise even for editorial cite-checkersand one that is rarely undertaken by other people who have something (anything?) better to do with their time.

Curious readers are sometimes drawn to glance at the notes, a practice they inevitably abandon as soon as their eyes begin to glaze over. Thus the annotations presented herein are designed to be reader-friendly, to lend texture to the text. They have been festooned with academic seals () and set off in shaded boxes. Even so, they can be passed over without ill effect by impatient readers, or by those who must limit their intake of salt. More traditional notessupplied solely to satisfy finicky source-seekersare adorned with the standard tiny-type superscript numbers and appear at the back of the book. (I proposed skipping the latter altogetheror offering to supply them gratis to anyone whod send me a self-addressed stamped envelopebut the publisher insisted on them, probably at the suggestion of his lawyers.)

What are the chances of anyone actually reading this little flagon of well-aged whine?

Veritas vos liberabit, chanted the scholastics of yesteryear.

The truth will set you free, echo their latter-day counterparts in the academyintoning the mantra reverentially, but with increasingly more hope than confidence, more faith than conviction. By and large, universities would like themselves to be perceived as places of culture in a chaotic world, protectors of reasoned discourse, peaceful havens where learned professors roam orderly quadrangles and ponder higher thoughts. Slick brochures and elegant catalogues depict a community of scholars serious- and fair-minded at both work and play, all thirsting for knowledge in sylvan tranquility, all feasting on the fruits of unfettered intellectual curiosity, all nurtured in an atmosphere of invigorating academic freedoman altogether overflowing cornucopia in the ever-bustling marketplace of ideas.

The real world of the academy, of course, is not quite that wonderfulnor nearly as bad as many would suggest.

The ironies become palpable, however, when those same institutions, which almost universally view themselves as bastions of free speech, are seen instead to stifle debate that is politically incorrect or otherwise embarrassing. Academic administrators naturally shy away from conflict and contention. They shun controversy. In fact they abhor negative publicity of any kind, quelling it as heavy-handedly as conservative corporations whose primary concern is to ensure a profitable bottom line.

The general counsels at a number of universities now caution against catalogue language representing their clients devotion to free speech and the rights of students to procedural fairnesslest they might be required by courts to honor such promises.

Because life in the Ivory Tower is largely insular, however, its residents perception of the world outside is likely to be somewhat different than that of non-academics.

We live in interesting timesa fascinating and frustrating age of harmony and contradiction: at once blessed with widespread wealth and plagued by endemic poverty; graced with virtually unfettered liberty and subjected to pernicious deprivations of rights; overwhelmed by an abundance of technological marvels that increasingly seem to invade our privacy while they whir away in an intellectual wasteland. We participate daily in an abandonment of common sense, even as we yearn almost universally for its application. We shun traditional morality as we search for traditional values. We seek simplicity as we indulge in excess.

Often (if not always) on the cutting edge of such conflicting forces is the academic enterprise. Universities are both the birthplaces of monumental achievements and the breeding-grounds for unnecessary if not outrageous indulgences. He who enters a university walks on hallowed ground, said one president of Harvard; its task, said another, is to keep alive in young people the courage to dare to speak the truth, to be free, to establish in them a compelling desire to live greatly and magnanimously. Intoned Robert Maynard

Hutchins also said that a truly world-class university must provide three things: sex for the students, parking for the faculty, and football for the alumni.

But the pitched battles currently taking place in the Ivory Towerwhether in the pursuit of truth and tenure, rights and trifles, or minds and mannersare not always noticed by the people upon whom they have the most impact. The loonier elements of the academy, epitomized over the years by the eccentric professor or the abstruse course title, have long been easy targets for satirists. As the acquisition of a college degree becomes ever more central to the American dream, however, closer attention needs to be paid to what is being taught on the campuses. For what is learned there is certain to reverberate ever more loudly in the broader world in which we live.

At stake as well is the relationship between the university and society at large. The traditional role of the university has long been that of a place for reflection upon culture and society, inherently objective and self-critical in its search for truth. But that view has been largely replaced by one that insists upon a variety of coexisting cultures, and implies a university that is political at its core and to its peakone that discredits what it perceives to be an oppressive dominant culture and empowers whose who are perceived to be marginalized and disadvantaged. The modern university forbids critical scrutiny of the latter; to this end, according to one dismayed observer, it casts the giants of Western thought and art as