Academics are questioned for their patriotism, innocent reputations
are dragged through the mud, politicians are capitalizing on the
fears of the populace—and lists are being maintained of homegrown
“enemies of America.”
Sounds a lot like the heyday of Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, but it
is not; it is the United States of the 21st century, and a new kind
of threat has brought with it a new kind of paranoia—one that
is already claiming its victims. Will one of those victims be academic
freedom?
That was the question on the minds of seven professors and a modest
crowd gathered in Glenn Auditorium the evening of Sept. 24. “Academic
Freedom in Times of War,” a panel discussion sponsored by
the newly renamed Middle Eastern and South Asian studies (MESAS)
department, examined the cultural and political pressures being
applied to a range of academic disciplines, sometimes with chilling
effect. Devin Stewart, associate professor and chair of MESAS, gave
a brief introduction and moderated the event.
The parallel to McCarthyism was made by Shalom Goldman, MESAS associate
professor, who closed the evening with an ominous blotter of early
1950s cases in which American professors were blacklisted for supposedly
“communist,” “anti-American” or “subversive”
viewpoints. More than 800 faculty members across the country were
blacklisted, Goldman said, most of whom never worked again in higher
education.
“Our current situation is much more frightening than McCarthyism,”
Goldman said. “The World Wide Web enables people to be defamed
instantly—one can immediately read about the professor who
has ‘violated’ the [societal] norms.”
Goldman’s remarks immediately followed fellow MESAS Associate
Professor Kristen Brustad, who recounted three current assaults
on academic freedom, one involving a FAME-type program for freshmen
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; another involving
a professor of Middle Eastern origin at the University of South
Florida; and the third a new website (www.campuswatch.org)
devoted ostensibly to monitoring “anti-American” and
“anti-Israel” sentiment and scholarship at Middle Eastern
studies departments around the country.
“This bias,” the website explains, “results from
two main causes. First, academics seem generally to dislike their
own country and think even less of American allies abroad ... Second,
Middle East studies in the United States has become the preserve
of Middle Eastern Arabs, who have brought their views with them.”
The site maintains “dossiers” both on individual professors
and institutions as a whole. Brusted did not bother to dispute the
website’s claims and took no sides regarding her first two
examples; her purpose, she said, was merely to report.
“I’m not here to tell you we’re perfect,”
Brustad said. “I’m just asking if you see any patterns.”
Some of the threats to academic freedom described in the forum are
taking place in Emory’s backyard. Benjamin Freed, adjunct
assistant professor of anthropology, spoke on the debate in Cobb
County over science education in public schools, and whether teachers
who mention the word “evolution” should be forced to
teach “alternate theories” on the origin of life.
Freed, who consulted with the Cobb Board of Education (BOE) and
who interacts frequently with some of the county’s science
teachers, said instructors even shy away from talking about dinosaurs
“since dinosaurs mean fossils, and fossils can lead to talk
about evolution.”
“Science has been absent from the Cobb BOE’s public
statements,” Freed said. “The board is forming its science
curriculum based on public opinion, religion and politics.”
Freed, Brustad and Goldman constituted the second half of the forum;
in the first half, Gordon Newby, professor of MESAS and director
of the Institute for Comparative and International Studies; Laurie
Patton, associate professor and chair of religion; and Oded Borowski,
associate professor of MESAS, discussed threats to academic freedom
arising within their own disciplines.
Newby talked about the swing within the academy from the “great
man theory” of old—when Western-oriented academics focused
on “great men,” who invariably were rich, dead and white—to
the more current enamoration with the “authentic voice,”
whose views are somewhat immune to criticism so long as they emerge
from within their respective cultures and/or ethnic groups.
Patton, a scholar of Hinduism, said some foundations have emerged
both in India and the United States that seek to promote study of
the religion. Their goals are worthy, Patton said, since there is
“less and less money” in the field, but many scholars
feel some foundations have taken an ethnocentric stance that sometimes
is too aggressive in seeking to discredit non-native, Western scholars.
Borowski, a Biblical anthropologist, gave a brief overview of the
field and disputed the notion that Biblical anthropology exists
merely to locate physical evidence proving the veracity of Biblical
events. This viewpoint must be pervasive, Borowski said, because
some individuals even within the field react negatively to new discoveries—often
made possible by new technology—that do not support their
personal beliefs.
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