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 acism
is wrong. That's for certain. The trouble is, in an age of few certainties
beside our determined rejection of prejudice, accusations of racism
have turned into easily abused tools of personal destruction. We've
seen how opponents of Charles Pickering's appointment to the federal
bench have tried to ruin him by pretending to discover in his judicial
conservatism the taint of personal racism. The African Americans
in Pickering's hometown know better, and their willingness to say
so has embarrassed Pickering's accusers. Now a false charge of racism
has brought a call for the dismissal of Candace de Russy, an outspoken
trustee of the State University of New York, who dared to publicly
criticize the SUNY system's African-American-Studies programs for
their political bias and lack of rigor.
De Russy has
been a thorn in the side of the Left-leaning faculty at the SUNY
system for years. It was de Russy who kicked up a controversy some
years ago by criticizing the women's studies conference at SUNY
New Paltz that included the solicitation of students by members
of a sadomasochistic lesbian club and the demonstration and sale
of sex devices (with minors present). Worse still, de Russy was
at the forefront of a board effort that resulted, three years ago,
in the creation of a genuine core curriculum at SUNY, provoking
hostility from programs like black studies, whose courses were not
included in the core. Now, simply because de Russy argues that black-studies
programs tend to neglect the positive achievements of America, while
relentlessly emphasizing our society's historic wrongdoing, she
has been labeled a racist. The United University Professions, the
27,000-member union of faculty and staff at the SUNY system has
passed a resolution calling for de Russy's dismissal from the board.
It's obvious
to anyone with eyes to see that the SUNY faculty has concocted a
false charge of racism out of de Russy's reasoned and reasonable
criticisms of black-studies programs-all as a way of removing the
most effective conservative critic from the SUNY board of trustees.
And de Russy's free speech? We're dealing with the modern American
university here. If you want free speech, try the Internet or cable
TV.
De Russy's
crime was to be quoted in a Newsday article about recent
controversies over black-studies programs. That article featured
critical comments about such programs from NRO's John Derbyshire
and Hoover Institute fellow Shelby Steele. No doubt, the SUNY faculty
would be happy to have the heads of Derbyshire and Steele, if they
thought could get them. But it's de Russy they're out to destroy.
And for what?
In the Newsday
article, de Russy argues that most black studies departments have
become "flabby feel-good programs that carry an anti-American
bias and do little to advance knowledge." Many such programs,
de Russy maintains, have become "therapeutic," more interested
in consciousness raising than scholarship.
Asked to elaborate
on these points, de Russy is measured and reasonable. She happily
concedes that there has been a good deal of distinguished African-American
scholarship in recent years, pointing to the work of William Julius
Wilson, for example. What bothers de Russy is that black-studies
departments have come under the control of professors with a single
point of view. Instead of open-ended exploration, says de Russy,
these departments push students to come to predetermined political
conclusions. The views of conservative black scholars such as Shelby
Steele and Thomas Sowell, for example, are rarely presented.
De Russy doesn't
want to eliminate the study of the African American experience from
the university. What she advocates instead is "mainstreaming"
programs like black studies and women's studies by integrating them
with traditional departments. De Russy thinks it's the separation
of black studies and women's studies from conventional departments
that has encouraged the political bias, therapeutic ethos, and grade
inflation that regularly plague such programs. De Russy's right,
I think. But is it fair for even those who disagree with her to
turn a difference of opinion on this question of departmental structuring
into a charge of racism and a demand for de Russy's dismissal?
It so happens
that de Russy has a thoughtful and important article out in the
current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education on the
tyrannical treatment of traditionally religious faculty members
and students in the contemporary academy. The piece contains some
real horror stories-the student who was accused of sexual harassment
and threatened with expulsion because he prayed for the reform of
homosexuals; the student who caused a crisis at a weekend retreat
for "resident advisors" when he asked to go to church
on Sunday. But beyond the horror stories, de Russy's piece is filled
with thoughtful analysis of the plight of religious believers in
today's university. What an irony that at the very moment she has
published a well-considered defense of religious freedom, de Russy's
own freedom of speech — indeed her position in the university
— has been so viciously assaulted.
De Russy is
even a board member of FIRE
(the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), an organization
that has distinguished itself as the foremost defender of the freedom
of religion and speech in the contemporary academy. In fact, especially
since Sept. 11, FIRE has gone to bat for any number of Left-leaning
faculty members who have been harassed and threatened for opposing
the war on terrorism. Given her distinguished sponsorship of this
beacon of freedom in today's academy, how sad it is that de Russy
herself should be defamed and attacked by a Left-leaning faculty
union who's own freedom of speech is far safer today for the work
her organization has done.
Of course,
the de Russy affair is only the latest in a long line of incidents
in which those few souls courageous enough to venture open criticisms
of black studies programs are tarred with charges of racism and
targeted for retaliation. Readers will recall the dust-up at Harvard
over President Lawrence Summers's criticisms of Cornell West, but
the problem has a much longer history. Last year, of course, there
were the attacks on the offices of student papers that had published
the David Horowitz ad opposing slave reparations. And remember the
attempts to silence Harvey Mansfield's campaign against grade inflation
at Harvard, simply because he argued that affirmative action played
a role in promoting the practice?
A lesser-known
incident was the assault this past November on Professor Barry Shain
of Colgate University. Like de Russy, Shain had expressed some concerns
about black-studies courses at his university that focused more
on politically tinged consciousness raising than on mastery of a
body of knowledge. And like de Russy, Shain was worried that such
courses tempted students with easy grades for de facto group-therapy
sessions instead of challenging them to master the art of writing.
All of this was said in a private e-mail to a student, and never
meant for general dissemination. But Shain quickly found his e-mail
message broadcast to the entire university, and himself the target
of outraged protests and demands that he and faculty sympathizers
undergo mandatory sensitivity training. Seventy students, many of
them black, occupied the Colgate admissions office and put their
demands against Shain. Left-leaning faculty members chimed in by
labeling Shain a bully (for a private e-mail message!). Of course,
the real bullies were Shain's enemies, who effectively criminalized
an intellectual and pedagogical disagreement by concocting a false
charge of racism. And as with the de Russy flap, the real motive
in the Shain affair was to destroy the one professor at Colgate
who regularly shows the courage to criticize the plans and programs
of a Left-leaning faculty.
The list of
such incidents and tactics can be extended indefinitely, going back
to the origins of black-studies programs in the late Sixties. At
SUNY Stony Brook, for example, the black-studies program was instituted
in 1968 after black students shut down the campus for days. The
most famous incident of all was at Cornell in 1969, where black
radicals armed with shotguns took over an administration building
and threatened the lives of faculty who opposed their demands for,
among other things, a program in black studies.
There can be
no doubt that slavery and racism together constitute the most shameful
chapter in American history. The study of that sad past, like the
study of the struggles and positive achievements of black Americans,
was unjustly neglected prior to the late Sixties. It is right and
proper that these subjects be taken up in our institutions of higher
learning, and it is a tribute to the movements of the Sixties that
we do so today.
Yet there is
plenty of room for legitimate disagreement about the best way to
integrate the study of minorities and women into the academic curriculum.
Those who feel that the separation of ethnic and women's studies
programs from traditional departments has been a tragic mistake
are not, for that, sexists or racists, and it is high time that
criticism of such programs was answered with argument and honesty,
instead of defamation and calls for dismissal.
The legacy
of slavery and racism is tragic, real, and important. Yet in the
last 35 years, another disturbing legacy has taken root in the United
States. It is the legacy of intimidation launched against any who
dare to demur at the demands of organized minorities. We shall know
that racism has finally been defeated in the United States when
the "demands" of America's minorities can be subject to
the same sort of rough and tumble criticism as the views of anyone
else. In the meantime, we must do what we can to defend the freedom
and integrity of brave souls like Barry Shain and Candace de Russy.
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