I gave my students a history that was structured around the oldest issue in political philosophy but which professional historians often neglect - the conflict between the individual and community, or what Freud called the eternal struggle between civilization and its discontents. College students are normally taught a history that is the story of struggles between capitalists and workers, whites and blacks, men and women. But history is also driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires -- the "respectable" versus the "degenerate," the moral versus the immoral, "good citizens" versus the "bad." I wanted to show that the more that "bad" people existed, resisted, and won, the greater was what I called "the margin of freedom" for all of us.
My students were most troubled by the evidence that the "good" enemies of "bad" freedoms were not just traditional icons like presidents and business leaders, but that many of the most revered abolitionists, progressives, and leaders of the feminist, labor, civil rights, and gay rights movements worked to suppress the cultures of working-class women, immigrants, African Americans, and the flamboyant gays who brought homosexuality out of the closet.
I had developed these ideas largely on my own, in my study and in classrooms, knowing all the while that I was engaged in an Oedipal struggle to overthrow the generation of historians who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s, controlled academic history, and had trained me. They were so eager to make the masses into heroes that they did not see that it was precisely the non-heroic and unseemly characteristics of ordinary folks that changed American culture for the better.
Aaaaaand of course the history professor who taught this got fired from his job. He has since found another teaching position. We need more heterodoxy in academia, not less. THIS is the actual meaning of "academic freedom." Note that he was squashed by other censorious, doctrinaire nerds who should have defended his right to bring his own thoughts into the marketplace of ideas. Note that his students defended him. Oh, but how silly of me, talking about the free exchange and debate of actual ideas on a college campus! And students should be confronted with ideas and evidence that challenge their preconceptions and force them to think and look at evidence (especially because far too many of those pre-programmed ideas and notions are FLAT WRONG and implanted there by people with agendas ... You should have seen the astounded, appalled looks on some undergrads' faces when I told them -- with distressingly clear evidence -- that pre-European native tribes of the Americas were not indeed "noble savages" living in utopian Kumbaya-singing peace and harmony with nature and each other ... What are these people "learning" in the high schools? Watching Disney's "Pocahontas"? But I digress).
2 comments:
I took Prof Russell's class "American Civilization after the Civil War" in Spring 2005 at Barnard College. His class was popular, he was a dynamic and invested instructor, and his perspective was refreshing. I didn't think his course was radical, just different. As students, we were disappointed when he was denied tenure.
You actually had Russell? Cool! I wish I could!
The tenure denial seems pretty good evidence that tenure is all too often a politically charged thing. Goodness knows academia needs more dynamic and invested instructors with refreshingly different perspectives!
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