"Great Books, Great Men, Great Events, Great Discoveries"

Back to the conservative-critique-of-academia discussion. I suppose if I could sum up where I think things get/got derailed, it's that conservatives imagine those within academia who critique the conservative critics of academia (CCOAs) do so in defense of Silliness Studies, of in-class dildo demonstrations, etc. When the reality is that we-the-people-in-academia-and-not-riled-at-it agree with plenty of the individual criticisms, but object to the CCOAs' tendency a) to find ridiculousness by taking things out of context, b) to project the rare instances of genuine ridiculousness that are indeed out there on the whole of academia, and, c) above all else, to criticize academia not with the goal of reforming or even revolutionizing it, but as a way to fan the flames of the culture wars (librul elites!) or to be generally curmudgeonly (college hippies, get off my lawn!). Again, we are responding to the CCOAs not to say that they're wrong on all counts and everything is fine and dandy. We are doing so because their critiques are not substantive or, if you prefer, constructive. I say "we," but in reality, CCOAs are not really attempting a dialogue with academics in the first place, which helps explain why most academics, I suspect, give CCOAs little thought.

Withywindle's response - which is either his own critique of academia, as a conservative academic, or his summary of what he thinks the critiques out there consist of, so if you are Withywindle, please clarify - provides a bit more material to work with. This in particular: "We should not waste time on pop culture, peasant studies, black studies, womens' studies, gay studies, postmodern physics, etc."

The "etc." suggests that the list of areas of study are all of a piece, and that they are all equally ridiculous. These are two pretty big assumptions. Googling "postmodern physics," one finds conservative critiques of it far more easily than anything from this (alleged?) field. Pop culture, meanwhile, is its own thing, and there's a good chance even the leftiest of lefty profs would rather teach Shakespeare than "Two and a Half Men."

As for the rest, it's usually fuzzy whether what conservatives oppose is academic research into literature or history involving subjects with blood lines less illustrious than Louis XIV or who are of interest because we want to know about daily life in another time and place (Withywindle, this would include those chaste male Greek nomads), or the disciplinary nebulousness that "studies" can sometimes (but, ahem, does not necessarily) entail. In Withywindle's case, or in the case of Withywindle's theoretical CCOA, it seems more the latter ("We should teach Great Books, Great Men, Great Events, Great Discoveries [...]"), which I don't think is a supportable position. I mean, yes, these things should be there, but how is one college student face-to-face with Mill an education? I'm not even sure what it means to teach great men, events, or discoveries without getting into any fluff. Wouldn't we soon run out of dates of battles and such to commemorate? I mean, we can learn random things about Napoleon's childhood because the man ended up being kind of a big deal, or move on to somewhat less great men...

The latter has a bit more to it, but again, one is left with the question of how avoiding questions of race, class, or gender furthers our knowledge even of high culture. I mean, fine, let's study Proust only for representations of Art and Time, giving him the Great Man applause he so deserves, and ignore anything to do with homosexuality and Jewishness not merely in his life, but also in his oeuvre. It's surely of no academic interest whatsoever how "Jewish" was defined in salons during the Dreyfus Affair, because this would not go on to have any impact on anything of interest historically.

Or, in less roundabout terms, race, gender, and class are valid avenues of inquiry. Studying them tells us about human existence. Are students ever instructed to find a race, class, or gender angle where there is none? Sure, but then the student points this out, and problem solved. That not every topic has a strong race, class, and gender angle does not invalidate these topics for all. Nor is the correct answer on a student's part to decompensate about how PC academia is - a better (and dare I say, more conservative, in that it assumed the older person higher up on the totem pole is right) approach would be to see if perhaps there is a race, gender, or class angle, and if not, to have the intellectual get-up-and-go to explain why not. To equate all courses that deal with these issues with ones on "pop culture"... gets us at what PG commented, about how, if conservatives won't teach about the civil rights movement, someone who isn't a conservative will have to teach that class.

The broader problem, if Withywindle has summed up conservative opinion and not merely his own, is that the conservative critique ends up being less about nonsense-elimination, and more about advocating that we understand less about the world, for fear of letting the forces of PC win even a small victory. Meanwhile, whatever political sentiments may have been the impetus for the expansion of "history" to include things beyond Great Strapping Men, broadening a focus beyond Great Wars and Lightbulb Invention has been productive. Why can't conservatives just have their own approach to studying race, gender, and class? They seem happy enough to comment on these matters outside of academia. There's obviously the factor of, they don't want to feel excluded at cocktail parties. There is also the not insignificant matter of CCOAs having drilled it into the heads of young conservative college students that the academy is worthless and best avoided.

Conservatism, of course, houses a mishmash of anti-elitist suspicion of book-learning and stodgiest Great Books elitism. Conservatives are furious at the university both because it's fancy-schmancy and more challenging than Fox News and because it isn't the refined sherry-and-cigar club where Mayflower descendants can read Locke and Hobbes that it once was. Granted, not every conservative purports to speak from both seemingly contradictory vantage points simultaneously. However, the two inform each other insofar as the Great-Books critique is typically infused with a heavy dose of 'but who cares about whatever nonsense goes on in academia anyway because it's a bunch of worthlessness for women who should be making babies and men who should be working with their hands.' Add to that the general discomfort of social conservatives over the fact that college women are having The Premarital Intercourse. Basically, hating the university is a great unifier for at least three of the major kinds of conservatives. It's much more productive, I guess, for conservatives to hate on academia than for them to make academia hospitable to conservatives.