Howard Zinn on History by Howard Zinn

Author:Howard Zinn [Zinn, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60980-234-9
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2011-06-14T04:00:00+00:00

That makes for a neat fit with the philosophy of Samuel Huntington and the Trilateral Commission as they react to the “excess of democracy” that sprang from the movements of the 1960s. The Establishment’s need to reassert control over the universities expresses itself most blatantly in the authoritarianism of John Silber at Boston University, but there is some evidence of a national trend in higher education toward the punishment of dissent and toward more direct intervention by big business in the workings of the universities. Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that schools of business around the country—at Dartmouth, Duke, and Cornell, among others—now have “executives-in-residence,” to match the more customary university practice of maintaining “artists-in-residence” and “writers-in-residence.” And the American Council on Education has been urging colleges to recruit more aggressively and to increase their ties to business. Management and marketing consultants are now common presences on campuses, as are union-busting consultants and “security” advisers.

As the economic situation of the universities becomes more precarious and faculties shrink, it becomes easier to get rid of undesirables, whether political dissidents or just troublesome campus critics. If they are untenured, dismissal is a simple process. If they are tenured, some ingenuity is required. The files of the American Association of University Professors show, according to one member of the AAUP’s committee on academic freedom, “a disturbing number of mean little cases this year.” He said, “There seem to be many tenth-rate John Silbers around.”

The AAUP refers to an increasing number of “indecencies.” At Central Washington State University, a tenured professor of political science, Charles Stasny, was recently fired by the trustees for “insubordination” after he missed several classes because he attended a scholarly meeting in Israel. The administration had first approved his departure, then opposed it. At Nichols College, outside Worcester, Massachusetts, a nontenured professor who questioned the leadership of the college president was summarily dismissed. At Philander Smith College in Little Rock, two tenured professors and one nontenured faculty member were fired last June and told to leave the campus the same day; they had complained to student newspapers and the trustees about the lack of academic freedom on campus.

Whether at universities or an other workplaces, whether in the United States or in other countries, we seem to face the same challenge: The corporations and the military, shaken and frightened by the rebellious movements of recent decades, are trying to reassert their undisputed power. We have a responsibility not only to resist, but to build on the heritage of those movements, and to move toward the ideals of egalitarianism, community, and self-determination—whether at work, in the family, or in the schools—which have been the historic unfulfilled promise of the word democracy.

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