U of Chicago slip-sliding away.
Stanley Kurtz posting at NRO's The Corner
WHITHER CHICAGO?
Last year, I went to the University of Chicago and debated HR 3077, the bill that would reform federalfunding for area studies. Several of the students I met after that panel were in despair about the absence of professors of Middle Eastern studies at Chicago who could balance the overwhelming number of faculty critics of America and Israel.
It is shameful that students at the University of Chicago need to import professors like Berkowitz to defend Israel, while critics of American and Israeli policies can easily be found on the Chicago faculty. The Berkowitz-Sassen episode can’t help but raise the question: What has happened to the University of Chicago?
Two years ago, I wrote about the gutting of Chicago’s famous Western Civilization program. Things seem to have gone down hill from there. Chicago used to be the only truly great American university where conservative students could get a fair shake. Those days seem a long way off. Slowly but surely, the University of Chicago is transforming into just another leftist dominated university. Perhaps the intellectual monopoly is not quite as total as elsewhere. But the signs are frightening.
Of course, any fine faculty will have its share of leftist professors–and rightly so. But why must the other side be shut out? Perhaps if we had more intellectual diversity–the only sort of diversitythat should count on a college campus–professors would not confuse mere disagreement with inadmissable bias.The real victims here are the students, deprived ofexposure to intelligent representatives of different perspectives, and intimidated into withholding their own views for fear of losing faculty recommendations. Conservative students and parents take note: The University of Chicago is not what it used to be–not by a longshot. And let the University of Chicago administration take note as well. Is there no room for a thoughtful and intelligent supporter of America’s Middle Eastern policies, or of Israel, on your MiddleEast studies faculty? Is academic merit so unevenly distributed throughout the population that it falls to leftists alone?
...
A powerful letter of protest by Peter Berkowitz tells the tale of a remarkable incident at theUniversity of Chicago. (Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.) Apparently, University of Chicago sociology professor Saskia Sassen stormed out of a panel discussion on the Middle East after discovering that Berkowitz and another invited speaker disagreed with her views. Two of the panelists at the event were critical of Israel, while two defended it. This arrangement appears to have struck Sassen as impermissibly biased.
“We need to recognize that the Israeli state has operated with excess power in a situation of extreme asymmetry,”said Sassen, justifying her walkout.
In other words, acknowledge Israel’s guilt or forfeit your right to participate in scholarly debate. Although she makes a show of caring about freedom, Sassen has no trouble decrying the “scandalous” differences between American democracy and Cuban communism. Sassen’s behavior at the panel shows just how little regard the academic left has for the free exchange of ideas. Her more conservative opponent, Berkowitz, on the other hand, has just edited two marvelous volumes on American conservatism and liberalism.
WHITHER CHICAGO?
Last year, I went to the University of Chicago and debated HR 3077, the bill that would reform federalfunding for area studies. Several of the students I met after that panel were in despair about the absence of professors of Middle Eastern studies at Chicago who could balance the overwhelming number of faculty critics of America and Israel.
It is shameful that students at the University of Chicago need to import professors like Berkowitz to defend Israel, while critics of American and Israeli policies can easily be found on the Chicago faculty. The Berkowitz-Sassen episode can’t help but raise the question: What has happened to the University of Chicago?
Two years ago, I wrote about the gutting of Chicago’s famous Western Civilization program. Things seem to have gone down hill from there. Chicago used to be the only truly great American university where conservative students could get a fair shake. Those days seem a long way off. Slowly but surely, the University of Chicago is transforming into just another leftist dominated university. Perhaps the intellectual monopoly is not quite as total as elsewhere. But the signs are frightening.
Of course, any fine faculty will have its share of leftist professors–and rightly so. But why must the other side be shut out? Perhaps if we had more intellectual diversity–the only sort of diversitythat should count on a college campus–professors would not confuse mere disagreement with inadmissable bias.The real victims here are the students, deprived ofexposure to intelligent representatives of different perspectives, and intimidated into withholding their own views for fear of losing faculty recommendations. Conservative students and parents take note: The University of Chicago is not what it used to be–not by a longshot. And let the University of Chicago administration take note as well. Is there no room for a thoughtful and intelligent supporter of America’s Middle Eastern policies, or of Israel, on your MiddleEast studies faculty? Is academic merit so unevenly distributed throughout the population that it falls to leftists alone?
...
A powerful letter of protest by Peter Berkowitz tells the tale of a remarkable incident at theUniversity of Chicago. (Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.) Apparently, University of Chicago sociology professor Saskia Sassen stormed out of a panel discussion on the Middle East after discovering that Berkowitz and another invited speaker disagreed with her views. Two of the panelists at the event were critical of Israel, while two defended it. This arrangement appears to have struck Sassen as impermissibly biased.
“We need to recognize that the Israeli state has operated with excess power in a situation of extreme asymmetry,”said Sassen, justifying her walkout.
In other words, acknowledge Israel’s guilt or forfeit your right to participate in scholarly debate. Although she makes a show of caring about freedom, Sassen has no trouble decrying the “scandalous” differences between American democracy and Cuban communism. Sassen’s behavior at the panel shows just how little regard the academic left has for the free exchange of ideas. Her more conservative opponent, Berkowitz, on the other hand, has just edited two marvelous volumes on American conservatism and liberalism.
It just baffles me how academic lefties justify some of their wholly and utterly contradictory behavior. Now you might see this as just Kurtz's opinion, and that is true, but I have friends at UC Div that see it as the most anti-religion (and often anti-semitic) place and faculty ideology they have ever witnessed. The Divinity School sees its primary job to be debunking if not religion itself, then certainly religiosity. Not exactly what Rockefeller had in mind, I'd imagine.
posted by JCH | 9:41 AM
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