One need not read Anne Coulter's inky fireballs, visit the Campus Watch website or follow the teachings of Burke, Christ and Dubya to encounter the caricature of the P.C. humanities professor whose heart often doth bleed during class. Whether it's a lecture on Mao or Milton, we are not exactly shocked when contemporary politics seep in. But to many, the color of politics in humanities classrooms is annoying, even angering. Bill O'Reilly expressed that anger in his misleading rhetorical question, \Would you pay $30,000 a year to hear a professor applaud Mogadishu?"" Though we might be annoyed (the professorate is paid to annoy), we should never be as angry as O'Reilly.
This should not anger us for a couple reasons. First, we do not get that much lefty flak since discussions of contemporary politics related to the course are usually discouraged as ""wasteful of time.""
Moreover, English professors are not, by definition, less likely than engineering professors to be silent, uninterested or fans of Donald Rumsfeld. Though public intellectual David Horowitz asserts ""Conservative professors ... are notably hard to find,"" there are plenty of them-visit your local economics department. Still, lefty humanities professors often bring politics to class.
Rather than be angry, we might find something useful in this for a simple reason. Senators Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Rick Santorum, R-Penn., pundits O'Reilly and William Safire, wits Maureen Dowd and George Will, and all the others who form our dominant political culture are never going to tell you about William Appleman Williams' Cold War analysis and its relation to the war on terror.
Or how the FBI's surveillance of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement is linked to today's USA Patriot Act. Or about our past occupation of the Philippines and how it relates to our present occupation of Iraq.
It's a good thing that some of our humanities professors present us with points of view that are not part of the dominant political culture. President Bush beams his messages to you by means of the New York Times, CNN.com, radio-bull Rush Limbaugh and Fox anchorbot Brit Hume. People opposing Bush have MoveOn.org and Al Franken. So if a history prof steals five minutes of your lecture to highlight parallels between Roger Taney and William Rehnquist, you could thank them. Information from a variety of sources likely leads to better informed decisions on the basics-e.g., what to think, do, believe.
Yet many people, especially in today's political climate, simply won't listen to those they disagree with. Whether good or bad, the fact the party in power tends to brush away the considerations of all opposition sets an example of conduct that the citizenry are tempted to follow. If a student talks about the need for more God in American family and in school during discussion, many tune him out. If a student mentions the words ""capitalism"" and ""imperialism"" in the same breath, her words go unconsidered by those who have different opinions.
Just like the White House, we have our answers to all the political questions, our ""talking points."" In other words, in an age dominated by ideologues, each of us are something of ideologues unto ourselves. That is why the liberal professor, wherever this species appears, can be good. These people, to put it lightly, know gobs more about their fields than we do and can therefore challenge our personal little ideologies. As long as they ""elucidate but don't espouse"" political viewpoints, UW-Madison history professor Jeremi Suri says, ""They're doing their job.""
Whether liberal or conservative, we need to be challenged. If we are not, we will end up as smaller people for it-and though it sounds clich??d, we did not come to UW-Madison to be narrow-minded. So don't go ballistic if your English professor mentions that hunch-backed maniac, Richard III, and our lovable military vicar, Bush II, in passing. Laugh, shake your head or, best of all, pause to consider. And then argue, but with facts and reason, not talking points.
opinion@dailycardinal.com.
