I am a teaching fellow this year, and for our meeting next week we are
reading an article by Clark Kerr, "Knowledge Ethics and the New Academic
Culture" (_Change_ Jan/Feb, 1994: 9-15). I remember Clark as Chancellor
at UC Berkeley and one of the guys we demonized in the sixties.
Well Clark's still at it. On p. 13 he says:
There are those who totally reject scholarship as being at the center of the
academic enterprise. A Harvard professor, for example, has written that
the "primary function of Marxists in the university" is to "take part
in what is, in fact, a class struggle"; and thus our "chief task must
be to disrupt production"
The quotations are from Richard Lewontin, "Marxists and the University",
_New Political Science_ Vol. 1, Nos. 2-3, Fall-Winter 1979-80: 256-30.
I suspect old Clark takes this quotation out of context, perhaps one that
sees the university as the site of ideological struggle between progressive
and reactionary scholarship. Unfortunately, our library does not have
the article so I can't look it up. Can someone out there help me out?
BTW, Clark is curiously silent on universities that have business schools,
law schools, job placement offices, departments of government, etc.
I guess these are not forms of class struggle for scholars like Clark.
Marsh Feldman
Community Planning Phone: 401/792-2248
204 Rodman Hall FAX: 401/792-4395
University of Rhode Island Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Kingston, RI 02881-0815
