Sometimes little and seemingly isolated events manage to illuminate enormous problems in our society. Two recent events involving college professors have done exactly that.
First, there is Robert “KC” Johnson, who teaches history at Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York system.
Johnson is, without any doubt, one of the most talented and promising young historians on the academic scene. He earned his doctorate at Harvard University nine years ago. Since then, he has written three books, two published by Harvard University Press. Currently, he has two more books under contract. His first teaching position was at highly regarded Williams College in Massachusetts, but wanting to be in New York, he accepted an offer from Brooklyn College in 1999.
Unfortunately for Johnson, he didn’t fit in with the Brooklyn history department, which is steeped in radical, anti-American politics. The department had infamously voted against giving an honorary degree to a distinguished alumnus, historian Eugene Genovese, on the ground that his membership in the National Association of Scholars made him unworthy of any accolade.
Johnson didn’t go along with those people. For example, when Brooklyn College held a panel discussion after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he criticized the school for including only speakers sympathetic to the “America had it coming” point of view. He also caused resentment when he opposed hiring people who had weak scholarly credentials, but were favored because they would make the faculty “more diverse.” Johnson, in short, is a man of intellectual integrity, unwilling to quietly bow to the ideological fashions in the academic world.
Last year, Johnson came up for tenure and the history department wanted to make sure that instead of receiving it, he would be terminated. But what would the grounds for that be? His scholarly record was exceptionally strong. Students praised his teaching. Scraping the bottom of the barrel for some justification for canning Johnson, the department chairman came up with this marvel of vagueness: He was “uncollegial.”
Now, if Johnson had constantly bickered with others in the school and ridiculed their teaching and writing, that charge would make some sense. But he had done nothing of the sort. The amiable Johnson had not always agreed with other professors, but disagreements are common among academics. The truth is that the chairman wanted a department where everyone was in conformity with the radicalized vision of history teaching that has largely taken over in the profession.
Much to the annoyance of the Brooklyn administration, supporters of Johnson fought back. A group calling itself Students Against Academic Terrorism collected more than 400 signatures supporting Johnson. The student government unanimously passed a resolution saying that for the school to fire him would be a violation of students’ right to an excellent education. The chairman of Harvard’s history department wrote a letter, calling him “one of the most accomplished young historians in the country,” and saying that the “collegiality” test was a threat to academic freedom.
The counterattack made a difference. The chancellor of the CUNY system intervened in the case and overturned the college’s decision to terminate Johnson. He named a panel to review the matter, and it recently recommended that Johnson be promoted to full professor, with tenure.
The other professor in the story is Nicholas De Genova, an assistant professor at Columbia University who teaches anthropology and “Latina/o Studies.” De Genova recently made himself quite famous. It was not due to any great scholarly work or brilliance in the classroom. His shining moment came at a “teach-in” regarding the war in Iraq sponsored by Columbia. Naturally, this event had nothing to do with teaching, but was just a platform for opponents of the war to speak their minds. De Genova sure did.
He told the assembled students and faculty members that it would be a good thing if the United States were defeated in Iraq and that he wished for “a million Mogadishus.” Mogadishu was the scene of a military blunder committed by the Clinton administration, where U.S. Army rangers were put into a dangerous situation without adequate support. Eighteen were killed and many more wounded. De Genova exults in that, and would like a million more such defeats. He also enlightened the listeners with his insight that patriotism is just a disguise for white supremacy.
De Genova is not yet tenured at Columbia, but his appalling comments are unlikely to do him any harm when he applies for it. His anti-American philosophy isn’t going to upset his superiors. Even if some might think that he went overboard at the “teach-in.”
So why does a fine, serious-minded scholar like Johnson find himself fighting to keep his job? And why is it that universities hire so many odious creeps like De Genova? The answer is that the culture of American higher education has been transformed by the student radicals of the 1960s and ‘70s, many of whom went on to get their doctorates in politicized disciplines and then entered the teaching ranks. Those people see nothing wrong in using their classrooms as platforms for advocacy and activism. They have taken over many departments and will not consider hiring or promoting candidates who don’t completely share their beliefs.
If you offered someone a glass of fresh orange juice and he said, “Naw—I only drink sewer water,” you’d think him crazy, but that’s like the situation we now have with regard to the faculty at many colleges and universities.