A Dangerous Professor Speaks

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Fri, 10 Feb 2006 05:07:14 -0500 (EST)

" AlterNet Headlines " <alternet

A Dangerous Professor Speaks

 

 

http://www.alternet.org/rights/31986/

 

A Dangerous Professor Speaks

 

By Robert Jensen, AlterNet. Posted February 9, 2006.

 

 

In an " urgent " email last week, right-wing activist David Horowitz

hyped his latest book about threats to America's youth from leftist

professors.

 

The ad for " The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in

America " describes me as: " Texas Journalism Professor Robert Jensen,

who rabidly hates the United States and recently told his students,

'The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good thing.' "

 

I'm glad Horowitz got my name right (people often misspell it

" Jenson " ). But everything else is distortion, and that one sentence

teaches much about the reactionary right's disingenuous rhetorical

strategy.

 

First, I'm not rabid, in personal or political style. I'm a sedate,

nondescript middle-aged academic who tries to approach political and

moral questions rationally. I articulate principles, provide evidence

about how those principles are often undermined by powerful

institutions, and offer logical conclusions about how citizens should

respond. I encourage people to disagree with my principles, contest my

evidence and question my logic -- all appropriate activities in a

university where students are being trained to think for themselves

and in a nominally democratic society where citizens should to do the

same.

 

Second, I offer such critiques without hate. Sometimes my assessments

are harsh, such as in evaluating George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and

concluding the attack was unlawful and, therefore, our president is

guilty of crimes against peace and should be prosecuted. Similarly

harsh was the judgment that Bill Clinton's insistence on maintaining

the harsh economic embargo on Iraq in the 1990s resulted in the deaths

of hundreds of thousands of innocents and, therefore, Clinton was a

moral monster who was unfit to govern. None of this has to do with

hating either man, but instead with assessments and judgments we

should be making.

 

Third, these critiques are not of the United States, but of specific

policies and policymakers. No nation is a monolith with a single set

of interests or political positions, and it's nonsensical to claim

that harsh critique constitutes rejection of an entire nation.

 

Why would anyone suggest that I rabidly hate the United States? It's

easier to defame opponents using emotionally charged language than

engage on real issues. Accuse them of being irrational and hateful.

Ignore the substance of the claims and just sling mud. By even minimal

standards of intellectual or political discourse, it's not terribly

honorable, but it often works.

 

Beyond these junkyard dog tactics, Horowitz's email also makes one

crucial factual error. I did write that the United States losing the

Iraq war was a good thing -- not in celebration of death and

destruction, of course, but because the defeat temporarily restrains

policymakers in their dangerous attempts to extend the U.S. empire.

But that was the first sentence of an opinion piece I published in

various newspapers in 2004, not a statement to students. The

distinction is important.

 

Horowitz and similar critics argue that professors like me

inappropriately politicize the classroom, forcing captive student

audiences to listen to radical rants. No doubt there are professors

who rant -- from the left, right and center; there's a lot of bad

teaching in universities.

 

But I'm constantly attacked by people who have no knowledge of -- and

as far as I can tell, no interest in learning about -- how I teach.

Because they hear me express strong opinions at political rallies or

read my newspaper opinion pieces, they assume I treat my classroom

like a pulpit and students as targets for conversion.

 

I teach journalism, and in the course of that teaching, I regularly

discuss how journalists cover controversial topics; it's hard to

imagine teaching responsibly without doing that. When appropriate, I

have talked in class about how journalists cover war -- explaining

that many people around the world believe the U.S. invasion of Iraq

violated international law, observing that U.S. journalists in the

corporate commercial media rarely write about that and suggesting

reasons for the omission.

 

There's always a politics to teaching; the choices professors make

about what readings to assign and how to approach a subject are

influenced by their politics -- left, right, or center. But that does

not meaning teaching is nothing but politics.

 

No one knows that better than professors who hold views challenging

the conventional wisdom, those of us who don't rabidly hate the United

States but do passionately love learning and the promise of an open,

independent university.

 

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at

Austin, and the author of, most recently, " The Heart of Whiteness:

Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege " (City Lights Books).

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31986/