Higher Education & Critique of the "University"
how to think about the issues of the university, from the left, without falling into anti-intellectualism
For today’s brief essay, I will focus on an opinion piece written by Nick Burns at America’s Quarterly, which funnily enough is a magazine supported by the School of Americas (an important aside: the School of Americas has been renamed but has been the premier source of training, intellectual and militarily for right wing groups that align themselves with U.S. interests, especially during the Cold War).
Anyway, Burns essay, “Elite Universities are Out of Touch”, discusses the real issue of universities being out of step with what the surrounding communities they’re supposed to be located in desire and/or want.
“The elite American university today is a paradox: Even as concerns about social justice continue to preoccupy students and administrations, these universities often seem to be out of touch with the society they claim to care so much about. Many on the right and in the center believe universities have become ideological echo chambers. Some on the left see them as “sepulchers for radical thought.”
There is truth to the fact that universities, whether public or private (but more so private) can sometimes function as their own little worlds, reinforcing divisions between various groups of people. Certainly I’ve also seen versions of this in my time now as a grad worker in a PhD program. There have been weeks when I would not interact with as many people beyond the campus than one should. Sometimes, I’d grab a coffee somewhere, or maybe some groceries but all in all, it was back to the office, to study and prepare for class discussions.
I can see some of this with the students I teach too, where many also go into some parts of New Brunswick to buy some food and items they need to live. But right now, Rutgers University has undergone a massive retooling and redevelopment phase, whereby there are now plenty of new restaurants and stores nearer to campus that undergrads, grads, and professors alike can go to before heading back to work.
Again, Burns.
“Letting the university take care of all of students’ needs — food, housing, health care, policing, punishing misbehavior — can be infantilizing for young adults. Worse, it warps students’ political thinking to eat food that simply materializes in front of them and live in residence halls that others keep clean.”
All this can be true. When students and professors do not engage with people outside their routine, they can certainly develop attitudes and a point of view that is very unmoored or distant from the reality of what people are faced with daily.
This is also been a critique by some on the left. I’ve made this similar critique too. The academy can be a bubble at times, even for someone like me. When you spend exclusively time on campus, you have a higher likelihood of talking a certain way, of believing in certain things about the world, and about people that outpaces reality such as the idea that everybody knows certain terms that you’ll hear at conferences, etc. To be clear, I am speaking from being in a social science and humanist field, which I believe Burns is also alluding to.
Most importantly, change in society does not truly begin with the university. If you are a leftist or even liberal (hopefully turning into a leftist), you must learn to organize beyond the campus setting. You must organize working people in the town or city around you. That’s where the power comes from that ordinary people need. It’s still as simple as that, although the process of doing so can be tricky and frustrating.
That said, there is also a type of critique of the university that can also be extremely odious and misleading as well. The reason why I focus on Burns is for this reason, as he dressed up his critiques in ways that seemingly make sense, when in fact, what he is arguing can become rather questionable.
For instance, one of the ways that Burns critiques the university is that it produces people who are more liberal than the average person, which is debatable. First of all, based on my own experiences working at a university, those who still run the major programs are very often, liberal minded on some issues (such as inclusivity broadly, which is a positive), but overall, are very much center-right or perhaps, at best, center-left. In fact, social science programs and the humanities are constantly under attack when it comes to funding and some of those who operate in such fields, especially in social science, do not engage on issues and items that you would think are objective truth, such as discussions of U.S. empire, the history of colonialism, capitalism and its critiques. Marx is sometimes taught but then again, such critiques about capitalist and imperialist society are barely there.
To cast the university as some hotbed of leftist or liberal ideology, which Burns ironically hints at despite suggesting otherwise early on in the essay, is a subjective point. Yes, to a conservative student or professor who doesn’t want to learn about Jim Crow, it can feel like you’re in a communist cell. But learning about Jim Crow and resistance to it is objective history and is a bare minimum, and also, isn’t as core to many classes as one would think.
Furthermore, students and educators are not “infantilized.” In fact, many undergrads themselves work through college. Many do indeed help with producing the food that other students and themselves eat. As for educators, the bulk of teaching that is being done on campuses is done with adjunct labor and so-called part time lecturers (who are full-time except for loopholes in their contracts). I myself get paid less than 30K for teaching and studying, which is higher than in other places (I have a union, other places don’t, do the math), but is nowhere near what I need to live.
There is an odd presumption among some, by those who themselves have gone through academia, that somehow, the university is this universe onto itself, when it has elements that are, while overall, people are struggling nonetheless.
At the same time, the university itself has played a significant role in left activism and intellectual life. Take for example, figures like Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin, W.E.B. Du Bois, Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, and Grace Lee Boggs among others. These are all radicals who credit what they learned at universities for molding them into better thinkers and leftist believers.
Literally, as cited by Donna Murch’s work Living in the City, the Black Panther Party first started on a college campus.
Then again, Burns’ himself, for all intents and purposes, is not a radical. As mentioned, his magazine is supported by an odious institutions that has had ties to right wing despots in Latin America (now called the Council of the Americas).
Also, when you look closely as to whom Burns wants students and educators to engage with, whom he portrays as the “ordinary” man, it becomes very clear that he doesn’t want students and educators to be better at organizing people for progressive or socialist change. He wants them to align themselves with local capitalists even.
Take this paragraph for example:
“It also takes away the chance to encounter people with different roles in society, from retail workers to landlords — interactions that would remind them they won’t be students forever and open questions about the social relevance of the ideas they encounter in the university.”
Burns does offer some interesting solutions, such as the university taking on the responsibility of providing more affordable housing, but none of this alters the fact that his critique is a Trojan Horse for making the university even more conservative, and to reinforce stereotypes about the university that ironically, reinforces a divide.
I bring this up because I do think some of us can fall for this sleight-of-hand when we do need a more materialist outlook on the subject of academia, one that doesn’t also spread toxic ideas that somehow the university is purely elitist, and can’t offer anything valuable to anyone.
The university can certainly be a space to make one lose one’s connection to radical politics but reasons for this are for more complex as well.