E Wayne Ross

Inside Higher Ed: ‘Teach Them to Challenge Authority’
‘Teach Them to Challenge Authority’

Stanley Fish may be telling academics to keep their opinions to themselves, but Gregory S. Prince Jr. thinks it is time for colleges to stop trying to make their classrooms neutral. Prince, the former president of Hampshire College, argues for professors to take all kinds of positions — as a tool for challenging their students. His new book, Teach Them to Challenge Authority: Educating for Healthy Societies (Continuum) outlines this view, and Prince responded via e-mail to questions about the work.

Q: What’s wrong with a neutral stance in the classroom?

A: A neutral stance in the classroom is appropriate as one of many pedagogical approaches. When it becomes the only pedagogical approach, it deprives students of the chance to learn how to challenge those who have power over them — a skill that is essential in any career, that is essential for the health of any institution and that is critical in a democratic society. Higher education should have been very concerned that at a place like Enron, where almost all of its senior departmental and corporate leadership were college educated, only two at most challenged what was taking place.

Q: You note the criticism that conservatives hurl on liberal academics. Do you think academics have adequately defended themselves?

A: Academics have not adequately defended themselves. Too often they have ignored the critics or taken the position that there is no problem. As the first step in mounting an adequate defense, they should acknowledge that the conservatives are right about the principle that students should not be ridiculed for disagreeing with their professors. They should acknowledge that students should be encouraged to disagree with the politics of their professors. They should acknowledge their responsibility to listen respectfully to opposing points of view and to guide students to sources that support such views.

What happens all too often is that they deny there is a problem rather than challenging the proposed solution to the problem. The problem always will exist because there always will be individuals who cannot or will not master the difficult art of effective teaching. In contrast, I accept that the there are undoubtedly many cases where the critics are right but that to whatever extent the problem exists, the solution that the conservatives propose — having the faculty always maintain a position of neutrality — is the wrong one. Faculty need to take positions so that students can learn how to challenge those in authority. How a faculty member takes a positions is what is critical. It is an art both to take positions and to create an atmosphere in which students will learn how to challenge those positions

Q: What advice would you give to professors who agree with your book, but who teach at institutions where students are more conservative than those at Hampshire?

A: I would give them the same advice that I would give to Hampshire faculty and to faculty in any university. Acknowledge the differences where they exist, listen well to the students, create an atmosphere where they can challenge your positions, respect the students enough to take their positions seriously and be willing to state your own positions and to engage the students in discussion and debate about those positions.

Q: How can you tell if a university is “engaged” in the way you advocate?

A: Universities that test themselves by asking constantly whether they are doing enough and then push themselves to do more are engaged in the way I advocate. What made Hampshire such an exciting place for me was its culture that made asking whether we were doing enough in the classroom, with individual students and with the community outside the college a perpetual part of the educational conversation. Often what we were doing was good, but measured against what was needed, it was rarely good enough. Students are an important part of that conversation because they so often are impatient and feel that so much more can be done. They helped fight complacency that all too often is the greatest danger to delivering a quality educational experience. As a completely different kind of example, land grant institutions, with their explicit service missions that have served this country so well, generally are and have to be, in constant conversations with their legislatures and the public whom they serve about whether “they are doing enough.” Those conversations, difficult as they are sometimes, benefit the academy and the public.

Q: How can presidents protect the freedom of their professors to teach as you suggest — and encourage it?

A: The most effective way is to model in their own behavior what they expect of the faculty, to articulate and practice the principles of discourse that make it possible simultaneously to take positions and to encourage students to challenge those positions and pursue a review and reward system that supports the principles. Confront constructively and fairly and do not ignore those situations where the practices of faculty do not support the core value of the principles of discourse — that what matters is the strength and integrity of one’s argument and rhetoric, not the political hue of the opinion being defended.

— Scott Jaschik
The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/04/prince.

Here’s a short piece from David Zirin, author of Welcome to the Terrordome, on Hurricane Gustav and the response of officials in New Orleans:

Gustav and the Dome
By Dave Zirin

Witness the massive padlock, tightly hugging its doors. That will tell you all you need to know about Hurricane Gustav and the federal government s carefully orchestrated response. The padlock, roughly the size of a Frisbee, is set firmly around the doors of the Louisiana Superdome. The padlock articulates a message that would be clear to even a Bush or a Brownie: this storm will not be Katrina. By that I don t mean, We ve learned a lot in the last three years or whatever talking points the White House is putting out.

The padlock makes clear that the public relations hurricane battle has been well engaged. There will be no photo ops of 30,000 people herded into a luxury stadium that magically morphs into a homeless shelter from hell. There will be no opening up the stadium to the poor and unwashed, not after spending 185 million bucks.to rebuild the dome and not with the NFL season right around the corner. There will be no one left behind, even if it means putting people on buses, taking them hundreds of miles away, and not even telling them the destination for them and their families. And, more than anything else, the padlock in all of its glistening, metallic glory, is a self-incriminating indictment. It is an admission that despite what we were told three years ago, a stadium isn t really shelter; that the act of forcing people at gunpoint into the dome was a criminal act; and that believing any stadium could have redeeming social value as an emergency evacuation center, is a lie.

The padlock on the Superdome prevents any more ugly backdrops for When the Levees Broke II , and preserves the pristine field for Drew Brees, Reggie Bush, and the rest of the Saints. But it also raises more questions than answers: if people aren t in the dome, then where are they?

Where are New Orleans 12,000 homeless residents, double the pre-Katrina numbers?

Where are the 17,000 residents of greater New Orleans still living in FEMA trailers?

Where will people live when they return? Why won t the city call for the suspension of the planned bulldozing of the city s four largest housing projects? How will the people being bussed out, be able to move back if their homes have been flattened? If people can t make it home, will they find their residence somewhere even more frightening than the dome?

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said over the weekend, “Anybody who’s caught looting in the city of New Orleans will go directly to Angola [Louisiana State Penitentiary]. You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You go directly to the big house, in general population.

Considering that many of the so called looters after Katrina, were fighting for their lives, and considering that the media had color-coded looters, with white residents classified as heroes, the implications of Nagin s dictate is chilling. It s horrifying to think that they could be laying their head in the former slave plantation known as Angola.

And what will the fate be of the hero as of now, the wetlands? The wetlands absorbed the worst of Gustav, before the hurricane slammed into the great city. As New Orleans resident and comedian Harry Shearer said, We re losing Wetlands at a rate of a football field every 45 minutes.
The padlock is also a reminder of all the people, 25% of the pre-Katrina population, who haven t been able to return to the city. How can they have the hope of return when rents have gone up 46% in the last two years? When will this ever be addressed?

The future of New Orleans will depend on our ability to answer these questions. And no amount of shameless political posturing can avoid this.

[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming A People s History of Sports in the United States (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]

From the Gothamist:

Did Police Eject a Man from Yankee Stadium for Trying to Use the Bathroom During “God Bless America”?

Baseball fan Brad Campeau-Laurion says a uniformed police officer (perhaps off-duty but working security for overtime) forcibly ejected him from the stadium last night during the Yankees-Red Sox game.

Why? He says all he did was try to go to the bathroom while “God Bless America” was played during the 7th inning stretch.

Last year, the NY Times looked at this confining policy.