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KC Johnson vs. the commonplace campus radical–Mr. Obama’s neighborhood

Until a couple of weeks ago we were supposed to be stocking up on information for “Decision 2008” (a lot of the best stuff seemed to be on “Indecision 2008”, though). According to columnist William Kristol, Sarah Palin was doing her part, “helping the American people understand ‘who the real Barack Obama is’” by raising questions about Bill Ayers, former Weatherman and current Distinguished Professor of Education. A week before the election, she and John McCain were working hard to secure the release of a video held hostage by the LA Times—stuff the American people needed to know about Ayers and “yet another radical professor from the neighborhood,” Rashid Khalidi. It was a great service to voters who needed to figure out who to be more afraid of before they could make up their mind.

If you google obama ayers khalidi, what comes up is mostly the ranting of people already certain about who to be more afraid of. It was in the interest of the Republican side to make the most of the two professors’ radicalism and their ties to Obama, and anyway, radical professors are a favorite specter of the Right. The academic world’s reflex to circle the wagons and shout “McCarthyism” is represented by the fulsome petition at supportbillayers.org, and the list of over 4000 names under it. But not all Obama supporters were sympathetic to Ayers and Khalidi, and the first line of defense from his camp was to downplay the connection.

I noticed one person conspicuously trying to play on both sides of the fence, to make the most of the radicalism but downplay the connection—KC Johnson. Inside Higher Ed tags him as someone who’s “frequently criticized academe for a lack of political diversity” when he’s dragged in for balance in an otherwise soft-headed article “In Defense of Ayers”. In fact he approached the controversy about Obama’s radical pals the same way he’s approached the Duke lacrosse case, not as a critic but as a crusader rooting out the extremists of the academic Left. As I’ve pointed out ad nauseum about his lacrosse-case stuff, his crusading mentality reduces people and issues to cartoonish black-and-white, and his reasoning, evidence, and rhetoric are all compromised. His defense of Obama shows how in the grip of it he is, because it’s not really a defense, it’s an attempt to capitalize on the controversy in order to promote the academic culture war as a Democratic party agenda.

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2008 11 20 Academia
Duke Lacrosse Case
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I’ve looked at change from both sides now

The first time I voted was 1980, when Reagan knocked Carter out of a second term. I don’t even remember how I got my news back then, but I do remember that everyone was very grim around Reed College, where the hard-core set walked around with bare feet all winter and ate what they could scrounge off the bussed trays in the cafeteria, and the unofficial motto was “Communism - Atheism - Free Love”. When I started at Reed a substantial part of my financial aid was in the form of federal need-based grants. I think those were pretty much gone by the time I graduated.

I was in Seattle for Reagan’s re-election, and had moved to Chicago a few months before the 1988 race that gave us our first four Bush years. For most of the time in between I was studying music at CalArts, the avant-guarde school that Disney built at the northern edge of LA’s sprawl, where it was slowly surrounded by the clean-cut and conservative cul-de-sacs of Valencia. The land of fruits and nuts, as a friend of mine used to say. It was a Reagan-era kind of place.

Chicago—Hyde Park, in fact—was a huge change. Continue reading ›

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2008 11 05 Politics Comments (2) Permalink

Postmodern conservative triumphalism rulz!

Kevin Mattson says that his new book, Rebels All! A Short History of the Conservative Mind in Postwar America, ends with a look at

…the rise of what I call “postmodern conservatism”—how an almost poststructuralist embrace of diversity and criticism of universal values informs the wars against “objectivity” and the mainstream media, the dominance of evolution and the call to teach intelligent design (ID) in public schools, and David Horowitz’s struggle for a student bill of rights in higher education.

The idea of “intellectual diversity” is a classic of postmodern conservatism (for those who don’t like their conservatism quite so postmodernized, it’s “intellectual pluralism”). It’s a slippery concept that’s inspired plenty of heated and arcane debates—to get a feel for them, go Fish. Based on what I’ve seen—a fairly haphazard sample—“intellectual diversity” is mostly used as a pretentious euphemism for “political diversity,” something that’s a lot like cultural diversity. If smart, educated, and decent people can come from a wide range of races and cultures, then it seems reasonable to say they can come from the different political persuasions as well. I’m not sure how many people really believe that, in their heart of hearts, and the relativism is sure ironic coming from the conservative side. But there’s some merit in the idea, I think. Cloistered orthodoxy and petty intolerance are endemic to academia, and the tendencies are only encouraged by too much homogeneity. A while back I pointed out a couple of professors whose contributions are tied to the way they stand out as conservatives against a background that’s largely liberal.

Positive examples are especially illuminating because intellectual diversity is usually promoted by highlighting the negatives its supposed to fix—the outrages of liberal bias and political correctness. In fact, it seems to me that one of the better arguments against intellectual diversity as a reform agenda is the poor quality of the polemics launched by some of its promoters and fans. Continue reading ›

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2008 10 31 Academia
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The joy of not knowing very much

A few posts ago, a reader suggested that I’d “squeezed all the available juice out of DIW” (KC Johnson’s blog Durham-in-Wonderland, that is) and I might find some fresh material on David Thompson’s blog. The first thing I read over there was on an old familiar theme—liberal academics and their uncontrollable urge to indoctrinate. Not only does it pull two lefty-professor quotes from an editorial Johnson wrote in 2005, it uses them in the same mindless way. It’s KC lite—tastes a little better, but still unfulfilling.

Thompson writes as if he knows about higher education and he’s building a case against its liberal elements. Like anyone who’s been to school and can read a paper, he knows something about it. The problem is that his case depends as much on not knowing things as it does on knowing them. It’s a problem for me, I should say—I may be coming at it with the wrong standard. If the blog is meant as nothing more than entertainment with a political slant, then I guess he has a pretty good formula. The post I’m looking at probably wrote itself once he had the quotes, and like-minded readers get a nice little buzz off the righteous indignation. To have that impact there has to be an appearance of reasoning. A lot of actual reasoning with real-life complexities and ambiguities would be counterproductive, though—more effort for less effect. Thompson’s not an academic decision-maker, so I suppose he might as well write whatever he wants. Still, his criticism is supposed to sound smart but it makes a virtue of ignorance, and that really bugs me.

The theme of the post is “classroom political advocacy.” Thompson starts by invoking a scene from the documentary Indoctrinate U. about a professor who faced “a campaign of harassment by left-leaning colleagues.” That sounds like a matter of professional intolerance, not classroom advocacy, but it makes the point that bad things are happening to good people in the halls of learning. Cut to “[a] recent post on classroom advocacy at Crooked Timber, a site popular among left-leaning academics….” Thompson picks out three passages from the comments, arranged from ridiculous to reasonable. The first is from a person who thinks the world as we know it will end if McCain is elected, and since the other side doesn’t play fair why should his side? The comment starts with a disclaimer: “I’m not an academic nor a purist.” But never mind that—the site is still popular with left-leaning academics. And that’s the basic strategy: Pick up statements from here and there, brush off the reservations and qualifications and clarifications, then post them under a banner that says “leftist academic.”

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2008 10 30 Academia
Politics
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Run-of-the-mill stupidity

A few months ago I posted about the reactions when a Duke philosophy professor, interviewed in the campus paper, invoked a John Stuart Mill quote about stupidity and conservatives in order to explain the relative lack of conservative academics. More and more surfers have been finding that post with searches like this:

  • js mill conservatives stupid critique
  • john stuart mill quote conservative stupid
  • john stuart mill i didn’t mean to say that conservatives are stupid people
  • i did not intend to suggest that all conservative people are stupid but i did intend to suggest that all stupid people are conservative.

There’s another cluster that doesn’t seem to be as historically informed:

  • stupid conservatives
  • why are conservatives stupid?
  • conservatives are stupid jokes
  • stupid things conservatives say
  • every stupid person i know is a conservative

Like Obama said to Letterman, it’s silly season in American politics—it seems like we’re really outdoing ourselves this time. I’m guessing that’s the spirit behind most of those searches (I’m not sure what the spirit behind the search on “lawn guys are stupid” was, though). Nothing spreads election-season cheer like a discussion of the innate stupidity of the other side, especially when the theory is endorsed by a certified Great Thinker.

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2008 10 14 Duke Lacrosse Case
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Some bad satire, some good sense

About a week ago, Google dug up an odd little bit of satire in an Onion knock-off called Carbolic Smoke Ball. [The text is gone now—all that’s left is a picture of a goofy quarter.]


North Carolina’s Commemorative Quarter to Honor Duke Lacrosse False Rape Case

DURHAM - North Carolina officials proudly unveiled the state’s new commemorative quarter, which will pay homage to the Duke Lacrosse false rape case that wrongly charged three innocent college men with raping a stripper.

Duke University President Richard Brodhead, who heads the state’s commemorative quarter committee, told reporters that “although the facts said that the three accused young men were innocent, the larger truth said they should have been imprisoned. After all, they are privileged white males. But one can’t have everything, can one?”

The next couple of paragraphs have the fictional Brodhead rejecting other designs because—here’s a surprise—they’re not politically correct. Mayberry’s out because of Andy Griffith’s “‘appalling record in fighting for women’s rights’ on the show.” And no Wright Brothers—they’re “not sufficiently diverse to warrant this honor.”

Snore.

It works for some guy at the Misandry Review: “Wow! Incredibly biting satire, skewering gender political correctness and feminist sensibilities.” Biting, sure, but funny? Maybe so—there’s no accounting for taste.

My theory at the moment, though, is that satire has to be in the realm of plausible to be funny—believable except for the twist, or something like that. This one is not in the realm. Continue reading ›

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2008 09 27 Duke Lacrosse Case
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The crusade announcer

I know I’m supposed to be putting up some kind of “wrap-up” post, but somehow it’s just not happening. In the mean time, stuff like this comes up, so why hold back?

Duke’s African and African American Studies Department is getting a new chairman from Harvard—the devil incarnate, er, I mean, J. Lorand Matory. According to KC Johnson, who should know, since it’s his alma mater, “Matory’s damage to Harvard was incalculable.” The “was” is premature, though—he’s got about half a year to put the finishing touches on his project up there, and then he’ll transfer the effort to our lil’ ol’ backwater down south. Matory is clearly a controversial figure, and I don’t mean to suggest that Johnson’s complaints and concerns are groundless. But he’s been crying wolf for two and a half years now—it’s not very motivating.

Matory is the main subject of the latest post on Durham-in-Wonderland (DIW), but after railing about him for a while Johnson turns to an old favorite, a past chair of AAAS, in fact—Karla Holloway. Her latest transgression is “propos[ing] a ‘diversity’ crusade targeting units of the university whose ‘diversity’ performance the 88'er deems insufficient.” It’s in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education, and since the article isn’t freely available I’ve appended the section about Duke to the end of my post. [A reader pointed out that in fact it is freely available.]

In the comments on DIW, someone has taken Johnson to task for framing Holloway’s remarks as a “crusade.” The two had a funny little exchange, totally at cross-purposes. It’s so much like the ones I’ve been part of that someone else speculates that the annoying questioner is actually “the reharmonizer man parsing words again in order to try to cover for his 88 friends.” Now I don’t know about the 88 friends. I’m here at the computer all day and half the night, typing away, and do they ever find the time to call, or even email a line or two? Of course not. But it is true that I get all fussy about words, and it’s nice to see that there’s at least one other person with the same problem. (Maybe what Ralph, my most diligent commenter, has been trying to do all this time is teach me how to read DIW. If so, the secret is to just accept that Johnson is absolutely right about the important issues and then go with your gut instincts. All the words have to do is move you in the right general direction.)

Anyone who’s paying attention should be able to see that the anonymous questioner in this case is briefer than I’ve ever managed to be, and also a bit more guarded. In fact, the back-and-forth makes more sense if one side is expanded and the other is compressed, with some artistic license taken to bring out the essence. Then it goes something like this: Continue reading ›

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2008 09 25 Duke Lacrosse Case
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The devils in the details

It’s time for me to stop the endless picking apart of KC Johnson’s blog, Durham-in-Wonderland (DIW). In fact it was probably time a few months ago. I’ll never reach the level of the poor sap who’s spent years defaming Brian Leiter, but I might end up on par with the one who got a bad review from Richard Brodhead years ago and is now relishing an endless scholarly vendetta. I’ve got a wrap-up post mostly written, but first there are a few loose ends to deal with. In addition to the case-by-case fudging that I sampled in the last post, there are two fairly constant factors that help to make the Wonderland narrative such an uninformative but judgmental thing. One is the regular rhetorical nudges Johnson uses to get his readers to see things his way. The other is his uncritical reliance on secondhand information.

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2008 09 07 Duke Lacrosse Case
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One pile after another: building a bullshit Wonderland

In the middle of my last post I promised a list of some of the bullshit I’ve come across in Durham-in-Wonderland (DIW). It’s only, what? three weeks later? not quite a month? Anyway, here it is, a collection that lends credence to Harry G. Frankfurt’s comment that the “normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost” because of “excessive indulgence in [bullshitting], which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say.” What it suits KC Johnson to say is whatever feeds his Wonderland narrative—the cast, action, and bitter irony that it keeps it churning along. That’s how it seems to work in his coverage of academic issues and of Duke, anyway, and that’s the focus in all my posts about DIW.

This entry is all about problems with DIW. Look at the previous one for a broader and at least somewhat more balanced look at bullshit and the lacrosse case. A lot of what’s on the list below is covered in earlier posts—you can get more detail by following the links.

The most glaring misrepresentation I’ve found is a quote from Mark Anthony Neal that’s presented as his description of a recurring experience at Duke—it comes from an article he wrote a year before he joined the Duke faculty. A blatantly out-of-context quote from Donna Lisker shows Johnson reading like a drug-sniffing dog, hypersensitive to passages that can be made to sound extremist or intolerant or, in this case, biased against the lacrosse players. Then there are samples of the more sustained reduction to type that’s inflicted on Karla Holloway and Wahneema Lubiano. Johnson’s treatment of two events involving President Brodhead shows him using the limitations of his evidence as an opportunity to make stuff up. His story of an angry backlash against Steven Baldwin shows how little evidence it takes to convince him that the PC crowd at Duke is just as predictable as he thought. And when it looks like a Duke-run website is trying to expunge the memory of the three indicted lacrosse players, he mines the historically-charged metaphor of airbrushing for all it’s worth, and then some. First off, though, is something that’s not the usual typecasting but instead a bullshit insinuation that makes the “Group” look as loathsome as possible.

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2008 08 28 Duke Lacrosse Case
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Duke’s perfect storm–too much bullshit, too few bullshit detectors

I wonder how many people at Duke read KC Johnson’s editorial about campus reactions to the allegations against the lacrosse team, posted on Inside Higher Ed on May 1, 2006 (probably at least one—in the comments there’s a brief clarification signed “Mark Anthony Neal”). It’s an editorial that deserved more attention than I suspect it got. It voiced a perspective that needed to be heard and held an unflattering mirror up to the contingent of Duke faculty who approached the lacrosse case as a platform for big institutional and ideological issues, ignoring or perhaps even supporting the shoddy investigation and the thoughtless, shrill protests. The editorial is clear and to the point, and it’s relatively free of the tiresome, judgmental rhetoric that clutters Johnson’s blog, Durham-in-Wonderland (DIW). The sympathetic observations about athletics and athletes are especially good. All in all it does exactly what a good editorial should do—it articulates a firm opinion in a way that encourages reconsideration and debate. This one, it seems to me, presented an opportunity for the people that Johnson targeted to think about what they really wanted to stand for.

Focussing on that editorial makes a great deal of Johnson’s subsequent blogging seem redundant. Probably that has more to do with 20-20 hindsight and my poor opinion of DIW than anything else. The blog went on and on, though, accumulating a lot of detail but very little depth. I might feel differently if the editorial had been about the criminal investigation. In the three posts Johnson wrote for Cliopatria in April 2006—the start of what would become Durham-in-Wonderland—he touched on Reade Seligmann’s convincing alibi, the flawed line-ups, and Nifong’s political opportunism and the pandering that went with it. Those turned out to be good indicators of how the prosecution would go (how it would crash and burn, that is), and Johnson read them more accurately than many of us. The stakes were high, and there was every reason to keep a close eye on what Nifong was doing. But as the title says, the editorial is about “Duke’s Poisoned Campus Culture,” and the problems with the investigation are only mentioned to show how clouded and agenda-driven the judgment of many professors at Duke had been. Based on DIW, Johnson seems to have been as prescient about those professors as he was about Nifong. But within the frame of such a sprawling narrative, prescience and tunnel vision can be hard to tell apart, and when it comes to Duke’s campus culture, it’s tunnel vision that dominates in DIW.

Johnson was already blogging and editorializing about academic culture issues when the charges against the lacrosse team hit the news. The ideological skew of Duke’s faculty figured in a piece he wrote for Inside Higher Ed the previous summer. From it he recycles a bad joke about stupid conservatives told by the chairman of Duke’s philosophy department, giving it vastly overblown significance as stage-setting for the lacrosse case. His glaring evidence of poison, though—the foundation of his ongoing critique of Duke faculty—is the “listening” statement, which he’d written about for the first time about a week before “Duke’s Poisoned Campus Culture.” Along with the statement came the so-called “Group of 88” (his term, I believe) who endorsed it, professors he found so transparent that he casually extrapolates their collective thinking to its “logical, if absurd, extreme”—some lacrosse players should be convicted for rape just because of who they are, no matter what they did or didn’t do.

After the editorial, the only significant change I see in Johnson’s picture of Duke’s campus culture is his assessment of Brodhead and of the lacrosse players, which quickly becomes morally simplistic. In fact a key passage is different in the version of the editorial posted on DIW (overstruck words are on Inside Higher Ed and the italicized word is in the blog):

Few would deny that several players on Duke’s lacrosse team have behaved repulsively badlly [sic]. Two team captains hired exotic dancers, supplied alcohol to underage team members, and concluded a public argument with one of the dancers with racial epithets. Brodhead appropriately cancelled the team’s season and demanded the coach’s resignation.

As far as his trumped-up “Group” goes, things remain the same without even changing much.
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2008 08 04 Duke Lacrosse Case
Duke University
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