In “Taking Brown off the Blacklist” (November, 2002), Alex Schulman presents a wandering attack on the current state of academics at Brown. Shulman builds his critique primarily from a list of courses published late last year by the Young American’s Foundation, with the intent of deriding the included courses as “ridiculous” and “ideological”. Recognizing the flaws in YAF’s list (drawn purely from the titles of courses in the Course Announcement Bulletin) Shulman is careful to declare the difference between his theories and YAF’s, stating that “when they attack ‘ideology’ despite frequent invocations of nice things like ‘free speech’ and ‘fair play’ they simply attack one specific ideology, and behind the veil of objective criticism, maneuver to replace it with their own.” Up to this point, Shulman and I agree. Here’s the problem—despite
such nice phrases, the solutions proposed by Shulman face the same difficulty: rather than addressing “ideology” Shulman attacks only one specific ideology, and seeks to replace it with his own, the very idea he critiques. Shulman proposes a series of reforms, including the destruction of specialization, the rise of a core curriculum, and the end of affirmative action, an issue so far off topic that I shall not address it at this point.
Although I do not deny that the political views of our campus are overwhelmingly oriented towards the left, I do believe that the vision of our campus as a socialist haven has been mythologized to an extent that greatly exaggerates the political opinions and involvement of average students. I do, however, dispute Shulman’s claim that, “simply making room for conservative viewpoints, although it would be an improvement upon the status quo, provides a thin band-aid for a gaping wound, indeed. The problem is ideology itself under any guise.” As a solution, Schulman proposes a critique from “outside ideology.” However, Shulman quickly makes his own ideological position clear, declaring of “feminism and poststructuralism” that he “would not wish the reading list….upon Mohammed Atta.” This ideological bias continually resurfaces in Shulman’s analysis. For example he describes the French post-structuralist movement as “intellect divorced from any sense of spirituality or emotion, mind divorced from body, matter divorced from soul. Its currency is the linguistic parlor game, ephemeral and vacuous.”
The truth is that there is no place outside of ideology. I do not intend to declare that there is no right or wrong, up or down. Certainly there are truths, and truths should be taught in our courses. On earth, the law of gravity generally applies. The current President of the United States is George W. Bush, however much we might wish otherwise. These are facts. The rest is interpretation. How these facts affect our world, what gender means, what good means, the questions that attract much of our attention in our collegiate years, fall into the latter category. In matters of interpretation, there always will be ideology. It cannot be prevented. Justice Brennan once declared that he interpreted the Constitution the only way he could- as a man living in the 20th century. Similarly, our professors teach in the only way they can, as men and women of the 21st century. Nothing Shulman does or proposes can ever change that.
Our goal should be to hire the brightest individuals we can in every field and then to leave them free to hold whatever ideological views they develop. Only then can we have a true dialogue across ideals and disciplines. Shulman says that “any ideology- that is any program with as clear political as intellectual ends–is anathema to what must be the values of the university.” I believe the opposite- in the course of our education, our studies, and our lives, each of us will always develop an ideology. What a University ought to be is simply a place where these ideologies compete for our attention.
Shulman’s ultimate solution is to reinstate the core curriculum. He appears to think that the lack of a core curriculum prevents us from “producing grand theories rather than studying mediocre ones.” According to his views, we fail to train students in “the Longview, the big thoughts, the grand narratives.” I will admit I do not necessarily see the connection. All a core curriculum, such as that at Columbia or University of Chicago ensures is that you learn certain things, say, Aristotle, or (in the case of my poor brother struggling through Columbia’s core) judo, conversational French, and basic psychology. I do not think you can guarantee that exposure to such materials will ensure that students gain a sense of the long view that Shulman seems to desire, though perhaps they may achieve some sense of the “broad view.”
I have never understood the fascination of most conservatives with core curriculums. Classical liberals and conservatives, it seems to me, have always relied on the assumption that we can remove the strictures of government because individuals are competent to make choices about their own lives. “Leftists,” with their love of bureaucratic institutions and distrust of the average citizen seem more suited to the rigors of a core curriculum. If conservatives believe that I am competent to control my own tax money and social security investments, then why not to direct the course of my own education? I believe that education is a choice we each make. We learn because we at Brown love to learn. That is the beauty and majesty of our system. The growth of too much “ideology” in our system is prevented by the free-market ideals that a conservative like Shulman ought to love. If Shulman does not like the ideas propagated by the courses on the YAF list, he does not have to take them.
In the end, I do not have to disprove Shulman’s argument. He and those who share his ideology disprove it on their own. If the YAF listed “liberal courses” as the “Tragedy and the Comedy,” then the true humor and sorrow lies in the fact that they believe that in supporting their own viewpoint, they are truly destroying “the reign of ideology.” If that is what it means to be “taken off the blacklist,” I think I would rather deal with the shame.
