Another week, and another set of articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education from professors at elite, Ivy-League institutions ruminating on the problems afflicting American colleges and universities. It’s an old song, and I am getting a little tired of hearing it. Yet the beat goes on.
Jonathan Zimmerman argued that professors have exacerbated the significant problems caused by Donald Trump. “We know that growing numbers of Americans have lost faith in us,” he writes, “and so we tell ourselves that they are racist, or anti-intellectual, or so blinded by the Trump cult that they cannot see how good we really are.” The big problem in higher education, Zimmerman says, is that colleges have abandoned the “academic social contract,” and the idea that “propelled us to build up universities in the first place—the cultivation of citizens.”
Zimmerman argues that “despite our rhetorical commitment to ‘critical thinking,’ we typically present only one side of an issue—the left-wing side, almost always—and call it a day. Such a practice is not simply a reflection of political bias, although it is surely that,” Zimmerman writes. “It is also a mark of bad teaching.”
These are serious concerns. A student in New York state, for instance, can graduate from their K-12 and college programs without ever having read the United States constitution. Constitutional, historical or civic illiteracy reached dangerous levels long ago. But at my college we have a new Mellon-funded program in civics and higher education that is innovative and exciting. (At the same time, we had to walk away from another grant that would have funded a civics program melding scholarship, creativity and action because the college lacked the resources to support it and, unfortunately, faculty in some departments were unwilling to teach in the program). Zimmerman feels that these programs, separate from the broader curriculum, like teaching awards and teaching and learning centers, suggest an insincerity about the pursuit where it takes place.
Certainly we offer courses in some departments that would undoubtedly cause Zimmerman to point his finger and say, “you see?” We have more classes on gender identity, race, and inequality than we offered in the past. By far. Our history department offerings are not a celebration of the past, but neither should they be. And history doesn’t always break along lines of “left” and “right.” We spend a lot of time, for instance, teaching students to avoid the cardinal sin of “presentism.” And the critics who assert that historians too often present only the “left-wing side” of a question fail to show two important things: first, that the charge is true and, second, that a particular interpretation of the past that may be considered “left-wing” is factually incorrect or interpretively unsound. In my courses in Native American history, for example, I often teach material that might be considered “left-wing.” It is certainly critical of the well-documented hypocrisy and cruelty of the United States towards Indigenous peoples. I get little criticism along partisan lines, however, and when I do, I ask two sets of questions: First, “How is this interpretation wrong? What about it makes it left or right?” And, second, “how would the right-wing substitute, if there is such a thing, be a more convincing, compelling, and persuasive alternative?” Don’t judge a course by its title, I would tell Zimmerman. Don’t judge the academy based on a relatively small number of faculty members who do take fringe positions that they fail to support adequately with evidence. And, most of all, do not judge small public colleges like mine by standards set in the Ivy League. Zimmerman’s world is not like mine at all. We do more than he will ever know to uphold the academic social contract.
Meanwhile, Professor Samuel Moyn at Yale says that as a group “Professors are too old.” We apparently set ourselves up for Trump’s attacks by being openly partisan, and we are too old to get out of the way of the resulting blast.
Between 2000 and 2010, Moyn argues, the number of faculty over the age of 65 has doubled. In those same years, he found, Harvard had more tenured faculty over the age of 60 than under 50. This has played a role in two of the crises he sees on college campuses. It is hard to achieve intellectual diversity when you have a phalanx of greybeards guarding the ivory tower. But more than that, he argues, “as older professors stayed around, and enjoyed the benefits of guaranteed employment, younger academics were subjected to the casualization of faculty positions and the shrinking of major fields, especially in the humanities.” And we all know how badly this sucks.
Moyn’s essay comes across as the work as someone who feels compelled to say something whether or not that contribution is of any value. He largely ignores the macroeconomic forces at work in American life that make retirement seem like an elusive dream to most of us. Many faculty work beyond thirty years at my college for two reasons: first, they genuinely love teaching, but also, because they simply cannot afford to retire. It is tough out there, and that might be hard to see from Moyn’s perch in New Haven.
Meanwhile, significant cuts to funding in higher education leave many of us well aware that the positions we hold will not be filled when we depart. Moyn and Zimmerman might have made a stronger argument by suggesting that some colleges have become more liberal in granting tenure and promotion out of fear that if they deny these advances to a colleague, they will not get a replacement faculty line. Better to give tenure to an unproductive junior faculty member than risk doing without. In some ways, a colleague who cannot produce may be better than no colleague at all because they can still advise students, serve on committees and teach a few courses.
These problems are not directly caused by faculty. Indeed, these are the products of a world where state legislators do too little to fund their systems of public higher education, which often in the past were far more accessible and affordable than they are now. I could attend college and pay my way on part-time jobs. (And even then, I was fortunate to have a family that helped me). Now, it is nearly impossible for a student to work their way through school. It costs too much. The system is at a breaking point. It is a remarkably stupid self-own by our political leaders, the largest and loudest of whom has proudly proclaimed how he loves the poorly-educated.
But neither Moyn nor Zimmerman have much to say about these problems. Yale, Penn, Harvard and Columbia: they do not stand for American higher education. They serve a tiny portion of the nation’s most elite students. Their faculty teach less and have far more resources than their peers at colleges like mine. Meanwhile, if they visited my school they might see that the age of the faculty is hardly a problem at all. Many of those teaching are adjuncts fresh out of grad school. If I had a dollar for every time someone lamented the leftward leaning of higher education, well, I still wouldn’t be able to retire, but I would be substantially better off than I am now. If they visited, and followed me around for the day, they would not be able to show me how my own biases aid the Trump regime and leave the families of the students I teach disenchanted. But, perhaps, they would see that funding cuts to American higher education, by administrations both Democratic and Republican, are doing enormous damage to colleges and universities. Majors at some public schools are eliminated. Departments are collapsed into one another. Growing numbers of courses are taught by contingent faculty, without benefits, with poor pay, and without the resources to commit much more to their college community than showing up to teach. Institutionally, we are starving, and that affects creativity, productivity, innovation and morale. And it could all be so easily reversed.
I remember once a colleague who taught at an elite private university complaining that her faculty travel budget had not been replenished quickly enough. I posted a reply: “What is a travel budget?” Though all of my teaching career has been spent at public colleges, I suspect that the problems affecting higher education are very different depending on your perspective, and that they obviously look very different from the Ivy League than they do from the sort of college where I teach, and where the majority of American students study. We need to stop blaming the faculty for the problems afflicting higher education, just as we need to stop blaming K-12 teachers for the problems in their schools. Imagine a bunch of professors, drowning in high seas needlessly churned up by short-sighted and malicious politicians who either fail to see the value of higher education or fear it. The last thing we need to hear, as we struggle to hold our heads above water, is “maybe you shouldn’t have made them angry by telling the truth” or “it would be nicer if you were not so old.” Thanks, guys, and thank you Chronicle of Higher Education. I appreciate all your help.
