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"What is important in the present context is the contribution of the harshest critics (within the mainstream) to reinforcing the system of indoctrination, of which they themselves are victims—as is the norm for the educated classes, who are typically the most profoundly indoctrinated and in a deep sense the most ignorant group, the victims as well as the purveyors of the doctrines of faith. The great achievement of the critics is to prevent the realization that what is happening today is not some departure from our historical ideals and practice, to be attributed to the personal failings of this or that individual. Rather, it is the systematic expression of the way our institutions function and will continue to function unless impeded by an aroused public that comes to understand their nature and their true history—exactly what our educational institutions must prevent if they are to fulfill their function, namely, to serve power and privilege." (original emphasis)
"One who pays some attention to history will not be surprised if those who cry most loudly that we must smash and destroy are later found among the administrators of some new system of repression."
"A lot of the people who call themselves Left I would regard as proto-fascists."
Noam Chomsky
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| "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." Paulo Freire
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UCLA "Campus Radicals"
Within
UCLA's Graduate School of Education there exist more than a few
faculty members who continually invoke the name and words of radical
educator Paulo Freire as they get along with the business of securing
their careers at UCLA. Within other departments, faculty members publicly proclaiming their "radical" credentials (by invoking Karl Marx, for example) are also getting along fine with the university in building their careers at UCLA. But since the University of California is
indeed a powerful institution (in fact, a powerful corporation), we need to carefully consider what UCLA's
(or any university's) "campus radicals" do in cases of conflict between
the university and its students. When these so-called faculty radicals stand
to the side in these conflicts—playing 'neutral,' but in actuality
washing their hands of these conflicts—we may gain a better
understanding of what it means to be a "radical" within the
ranks of the university's faculty. Or we can consider cases of conflicts between UCLA and its students when these "campus radicals" do not stand to the side but instead veritably wash themselves in such conflicts by publicly gathering to vigorously defend the university's academic and ethical principles, and in doing so they properly characterize these conflicts as issues involving academic freedom within the university.
To gain a still better understanding of what it means to be one of these so-called campus radicals, we would want to consider a situation where both types of university/student conflicts are going on at the same time; that is, one such conflict in which these "campus radicals" are vigorously and quite publicly involved, and another in which these same "campus radicals" remain silent and wholly out of public view.
(page in progress...)
After
a
brief email exchange with UCLA professor Saree Makdisi regarding his
Los Angeles Times op-ed piece on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
(1/7/06), I sent him another email regarding his Los Angeles Times op-ed piece (1/22/06) on the
so-called witch-hunts for "campus radicals" then loudly disturbing the UCLA campus and its
faculty and administrators. I wrote:
[January 22, 2006]
Dear Professor Makdisi,
After just recently sending you a few words of appreciation regarding your Op-Ed piece on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, I didn't think I'd be able to send you a few more words of appreciation again so soon; today's prominent placement of your "Witch hunt at UCLA" in the LATimes's Current section is well deserved in my view. So, thank you once again for your work.
Please permit me now to use your commentary on this topic to bring a related issue to your attention.
Regarding the Bruin Alumni Association's shenanigans, it seems clear enough that the university always enjoys a certain amount of credibility from what is only the latest episode of this type of witch hunting, insofar as the legitimacy of the university's enterprise derives in no small part from these kinds of ('ideology-charged') debates on the campus itself. Thus, in a very real sense, the university at least tacitly encourages this particular brand of divisiveness, as it gives to many (those inside and outside the university) the appearance of intellectual minds at heavy work. Voilà, the university and its mission substantially defined.
By the same token, it seems clear enough that the university would not encourage student and/or faculty work that calls into question the university's academic credibility and legitimacy as an institution founded on ethical principles. Of course, to find out whether this is in fact the case, we'd first look for instances where students and/or faculty are attempting to show the university that it is violating its own academic and ethical codes; then we'd look at how the university responds to these particular members of its population and their work.
It just so happens that three UCLA faculty have concluded from the facts in my termination file that I was wrongly dismissed from a Ph.D program in UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (GSE&IS). Their conclusions would appear to merit student/faculty work, especially so given that following my termination, a UCLA Graduate Division Assistant Dean told me that the university "cannot be expected to [verify]" the information on which it bases its termination decisions. (We can imagine the academic trajectory of students/faculty who state that they cannot be expected to verify the information presented in their scholarship.)
It seems to me that the authentic so-called witch hunts are those that are only rarely exposed by university faculty, for reasons too obvious to state (and we need go back only 50 years to find how few university faculty—on a nation-wide scale—were attempting to show the university that it was violating its own academic and ethical codes in firing—and otherwise blacklisting—once tenured professors). Faculty fear has long been real in authentic challenges to the university's decisions, and it remains so today.
The crucial problem in the case of my termination from UCLA is not that UCLA has wrongly put me out of my academic career (this is a big problem only for me); rather, it is that UCLA's own faculty members have concluded from the facts in my termination file that I was wrongly dismissed by the university and that I nonetheless remain dismissed from my program.
Your recent Op-Ed pieces in the LATimes encourage me to ask whether you'd be interested in meeting with me and/or the other three UCLA faculty members so as to carefully examine the facts in my termination from UCLA and perhaps then take steps that you deem appropriate, based on your own conclusions from these facts. Of course, absent or prior to any such meeting, I'd certainly appreciate the opportunity to send you pertinent facts and the contact information for the three UCLA faculty members who've closely examined these facts.
My guess is that you'd find this matter at least a bit more interesting than that of Mr. Jones and his Bruin Alumni Association, in that this matter actually involves substantive academic principles and the work that must follow out of them.
Once you've recovered from the onslaught that's sure to come to you following today's Op-Ed piece, I'll look forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
Tom Wilde
I did not receive a reply from Professor Makdisi.
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