Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic-Industrial Complex
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Academic Repression: Reflections from the Academic-Industrial Complex Edited by: Steven Best, Anthony J. Nocella II, and Peter McLaren Table of Contents Foreword Michael Bérubé, “The Company We Keep” Preface Rik Scarce, “Scholars under Siege” Acknowledgements and Dedication Introduction, Steven Best, Anthony J. Nocella, II, and Peter McLaren, “The Rise of the Academic-Industrial Complex and the Crisis in Free Speech” I Contextualizing Academic Repression 1. Henry Giroux, “Higher Education after September 11th: The Crisis of Academic Freedom and Democracy” 2. Michael Parenti, “Academic Repression: Past and Present” 3. Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, “The War Against the `Academic Left’: From Gross and Levitt to Gitlin" 4. Takis Fotopolous, “Systemic Aspects of Academic Repression in the New World Order” II Academic Slapdown: Case Studies in Repression 5. Robert Jensen, “Academic Freedom on the Rock(s): The Failures of Faculty in Tough Times” 6. Ward Churchill, “The Myth of Academic Freedom; Experiencing the Application of Liberal Principles in a Neoconservative Era” 7. Richard Kahn, “Neo-McCarthyism and Repressive Tolerance in Higher Education” 8. Bill Martin, “Postmodern Fascism and the Long Arm of Israel: Reflections on the Finkelstein Case” 9. Amory Starr, “Radical is as Radical Does: Practical Engagement and the Politics of Campus Organizing” 10. Christian Davenport, “Scholarship under the Gun: Understanding Academic Repression” 11. A. Peter Castro, “Academic Freedom and Responsibility” III Repression at Home and Abroad: Middle East and African Perspectives 12. Stephen Sheehi, “Teaching in a State of Fear: Middle East Studies in the `Teeth of Power’” 13. Victoria Fontan, “Everyman for Himself!” 14. Mark LeVine, “Shooting the Messenger: Attacks on Middle Eastern Studies Amidst the Twilight of Empire” 15. Micere M. Githae Mugo, “The Role of African Intellectuals and their Relevance to the US: Critical Reflections of a Female Scholar” 16. Adam Habib, “Banned! Why a South African is Going to Court in the US” IV Dispatches from the Margins: Gender, Race, Sex, and Abilities 17. Maria E. Cotera, “The University of Michigan and Women of Color” 18. Joy James, “Teaching Theory, Talking Community” 19. Dana Cloud, “You Have Overstepped Your Bounds: The Personal Politics of Neo- McCarthyism” 20. Emma Perez, “Colonialism, Decolonial Criticism, and Academic Freedom” 21. Liat Ben-Moshe and Sumi E. Colligan, “Regimes of Normalcy in the Academy: The Experiences of Disabled Faculty” V Fast Times at Corporate Higher Ed. 22. Ali Zaidi, “Adelphi Recovers `The Lengthening View’" 23. Caroline Kaltefleiter and Mechthild Nagel, “The Carceral Society: From the Prison Tower to the Ivory Tower” 24. Deric Shannon and William Armaline, “A Working Class Student is Something to Be: Anarchist Reflections on the Academy” 25. Mark Rupert, “Academia and the Culture of Militarism” 26. Ali Zaidi, “Powerful Compassion: The Strike at Syracuse” VI Twilight of Academia: Critical Pedagogy, Engaged Intellectuals, and Political Resistance 27. Carl Boggs, “Intellectuals and Empire” 28. Howard Zinn, “The Citizens Among Us: Science, the Public, and Social Change” 29. Cary Nelson, “The Three-Legged Stool: Shared Governance, Academic Freedom, and Tenure” 30. Gregory Tropea, “Contingent Faculty and the Problem of Structural Repression” 31. Bill Ayers, “THE RIGHT TO THINK” 32. Peter McLaren, “Educating For Social Justice and Liberation” 33. John Asimakopoulos, “The Role of Free Universities in Creating Free Societies” Afterword: Marc Bousquet, “Management's Kulturkampf ” Authors’ Biographies Index Introduction: The Rise of the Academic-Industrial Complex and the Crisis in Free Speech Steven Best Given that the academy is a microcosm of social life in the US, and this nation – as a hierarchical, exploitative capitalist society -- has never been free or democratic in any meaningful way, we should not be surprised to find higher education to be a place of hierarchical domination, bureaucratic control, hostility to radical research and teaching, and anathema to free and open speech. Since Socrates and the earliest inceptions of the university system in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, from the medieval formalization of the medieval system to contemporary times, Western states and universities have attacked critical minds and kicked controversial and subversive figures out of the hallowed halls of learning, betraying the very mission of education and critical thinking which demands freedom of speech. Perhaps the largest myths to expose in our culture today still are those of freedom and democracy --- institutional and personal conditions which are not only in steep decline in the current post-9/11 era, but in fact never existed in US history in any significant form of such that realities reflected ideals. The revolutionary experiment in democracy and equality launched in 1776 never had a chance, taking place as it did amidst the backdrop of the slavery of African people, the repression and impending genocide of the Native American peoples, the disenfranchisement of women, and the exploitation of working classes. The Founding Fathers never intended “democracy,” “freedom,” and “equality” to benefit anything but their own elite propertied interests and history stayed faithful to their design. Despite the subversion of monarchy and aristocracy with the brash and impertinent notion of equality, the concept mainly functioned as an ideological smokescreen to mask a new form of hierarchy based on class domination, coupled with patriarchy, racism, and every other repulsive form of discrimination and subjugation humans have invented to torment, murder, and control. Concepts such as “freedom” and “equality” hid the fact that the inherently hierarchical and exploitative corporate- state complex of capitalism was a system run by and for capitalists, corporations, and wealthy property owners. Big business and monopoly corporations commandeered the state – the oxymoronic institution of “representative democracy” -- to advance and protect their own minority interests, to suppress the majoritarian opposition, and to quell dissent by any means necessary. Political Repression in the US "The state is the most flagrant negation, the most cynical and complete negation of humanity." Michael Bakunin From the signing of the Constitution in 1787 (whereby propertied white elites legitimated a new class system) to Bush’s anti-Constitutional “signing statements” (which granted him unauthorized power) in the post-9/11 era, the US has a long and dark history of suppressing rights and liberties.1 The alleged quintessential American right to freedom of speech was not mandated with conformism and banality in mind but rather to protect controversial words, dissenting opinions, and subversive ideas. While for the US legal system the right to free speech often has been interpreted as ending not at the point of defending and advocating violence against others, but rather speaking in a way that potentially precipitates it, citizens nonetheless enjoy (theoretically) a wide range of expression and behavior under the Constitution.2 Yet any US citizen who has attempted to exercise their right to free speech in a way that expresses dissent, challenges the government or some other system of institutional power, or somehow threatens the profits and power of the ruling elites knows that the corporate-state system responds malevolently to any provocation, disturbance, or menace with surveillance, intimidation, arrest, imprisonment, and even murder. Whether the affront be workers on strike, anarchists protesting state power, Black Panthers organizing their communities, peace activists denouncing war, environmentalists protecting forests, or animal liberationists exposing barbarities inflicted on animals, the corporate-state system responds to dissent and agitation as a body’s internal defense mechanisms mobilize to neutralize a viral invader. The system does not just routinely shut down free speech and dissent through political repression; it nullifies the conditions of citizenship through economic exploitation that enforces taxes, poverty, low-paying wages or chronic unemployment, debt slavery, while capitalizing even on the millions of people shuttled into the cages of the US prison-industrial complex, which has the highest rate of incarceration of any industrialized nation, locking up 1 out of every 100 citizens.3 Key moments in the history of US state repression include: the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 (ostensibly to protect the US from enemy citizens but used to suppress criticism of the government and to detain foreign nationals indefinitely); the Espionage Act of 1917 (which made acts helping enemies of the US a crime); the 1918 Sedition Act (that forbade "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" toward the government, flag, Constitution, or armed forces during times of war, as it also criminalized advocacy of the violent overthrow of the state, desertion from the armed forces, resistance to the draft, or membership in anarchist and Leftist organizations); the 1918 Anarchist Exclusion Act (used to deport hordes of “radical immigrants” opposed to the government or involved in violent actions); the “First Red Scare” of 1917-1920 (enacted in response to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the violent resistance it inspired against the US government); the 1919-1920 Palmer Raids (a series of mass arrests of thousands of suspected radicals that led to deporting over five hundred foreign nationals);