Wednesday, November 30, 2005
(8:55 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Truth Will Set You Free
Scott McLemee has written a bullshitological analysis of the Bush administration, responding to Josh Marshall's invocation of Harry Frankfurt's celebrated analysis of the concept. To the explanatory trinity of "incompetence, dishonesty, and bullshit," Scott adds the possibility of being a True Believer, for whom the truth moves at a higher level than mere empirical facts. His final example of this is David Horowitz, who claimed to have been invited to speak at a particular university by the conservative kids rather than being an official guest of the university, when in point of fact that was not the case. Horowitz explains:When I was asked if it wasn’t to Hamilton’s credit to have invited me, I had two seconds to decide whether I wanted to say, “Well, yes, in a sense, but actually I shamed them into it.” Isserman [the professor who invited him to speak in his class] had treated me decently. It seemed unkind to take that away from him. On the other hand, I thought that if I just say, yes, Hamilton should be praised, that would be a really big lie about the reality of my experience at Hamilton and on university campuses. So I said I was invited by conservative students, which was true of my most recent visit to Hamilton, but obviously not the whole truth.That university faculties are Marxist totalitarian regimes is a timeless ontological truth -- and although the accidental fact that a particular university might show occasional signs of not being a Marxist totalitarian regime participates in truthfulness to some degree (as Horowitz indicates by conceding that his falsification meant he missed the mark of saying "the whole truth"), the essence remains constant and truer.
Isserman has now decided to weigh in with an entire article about this trivia in order to discredit the academic freedom movement with which I am associated. This movement is about introducing a little intellectual diversity into the academy. Professors like Maurice Isserman ought to be concerned about the one-party culture they have created in institutions that once honored intellectual pluralism and fairness. Considering this, my only conclusion can be that Isserman must regret bringing David Horowitz to Hamilton. That’s the truth I was driving at. (emphasis added)
What is needed here, clearly, is a transubstantiation -- just as the bread and wine of the Eucharist become Christ in substance while maintaining the accidents of bread and wine, so also we need to change the substance of the university to render it an institution of free inquiry, while maintaining the accidents of professorship, coursework, libraries, etc. The emphasis here is on the idea of "freedom," which is of course best achieved and enjoyed when the market is allowed to do its work -- that is, when the university is run like a business, where debate is oriented toward a fundamental ground of being (bottom line) and thus prevented from veering into the dogmatism of mindless relativism. To that end, we need:
- accountability, produced by adherence to certain bureaucratic safeguards and consumer (student) expectations;
- competition for teaching positions, whereby holders of advanced degrees will not be lulled into the complacency of thinking that they are owed a career in the area in which they've trained, or indeed a basic level of subsistence;
- connections with the broader business community, to ensure that students are being equipped to engage in appropriate levels of free inquiry in the intellectual marketplace in which they will find themselves upon graduation.
When the day comes to implement regime change in the university, we will hear the same old liberal voices saying that the totalitarian monsters are severely weakened and basically contained, that the so-called "facts" indicate that radical English professors are not a threat to our way of life -- the same old tired lies dressed up in truth's clothing that hamper every quest for truth and freedom. Horowitz's "lie" about his invitation to speak shows that, at the most basic level, he "gets it" -- still, I can't see him as anything other than a John the Baptist figure in this particular spiritual revolution.
