[Surely of some pertinence and lest the biggest threat to academic freedom becomes one's fellow academics and, of course, real world irrelevance...I cut some of "the fat" from the essay, but provided the link for those interested] http://csf.colorado.edu/bcas/sympos/sylie.htm Moral Ambiguity, Disciplinary Power, and Academic Freedom by John Lie* ... Intellectual work is always fraught with moral questions of integrity because so few people are financially independent. Scholars have always appealed for support, whether from princes or presidents, churches or corporations. And it seems undeniable that the modern university has been intimately intertwined with the modern nation-state.1 Yet support for any particular intellectual enterprise -- such as the study of foreign countries -- is hard to come by. Robert McCaughey writes in his history of international studies in the United States: "In America, at least, although the pursuit of learning may well be its own reward, it cannot for long among the otherwise occupied citizens be its own justification."2 This generalization can be safely extended to other fields. Scholars' rationales for pursuing their research interests are therefore often couched in pragmatic terms -- be they national security or corporate profit -- but that does not necessarily condemn suppliants or their work. In fact, even some notorious servants to horrible tyrants, such as Machiavelli and Heidegger, produced intellectual works that inspired later critical scholars. It is the universal predicament of scholars to solicit patronage of the powerful and the wealthy while pursuing intellectual independence from them. Because the powerful and the wealthy have been predominantly butchers and crooks, scholars confront moral choices and compromises as they choose their "masters" for the sake of their "work."... * * * Cumings is right to warn of the potential peril to academic freedom. As Alan Ryan notes: To any non-American observer, the fragility of academic freedom in the United States has always been a surprising and alarming feature of a generally liberal country; commitment to the university as a place of contending unorthodoxies has always been weak, whether on the part of the trustees of private institutions or the legislatures that supervised public ones.In his 1951 book, White Collar, C. Wright Mills memorably wrote that "in a bureaucratic world of organized irresponsibility, the difficulty of speaking one's mind in dissent has increased."... This is no less true for academics in contemporary universities than for their counterparts in large corporations. According to Mills, the principal curb on free expression is not so much external restraint as internalized norm: [The] deepest problem of freedom for teachers is not the occasional ousting of a professor, but a vague general fear -- sometimes called "discretion" and "good judgment" -- which leads to self-intimidation and finally becomes so habitual that the scholar is unaware of it. The real restraints are not so much external prohibitions as manipulative control of the insurgent by the agreements of academic gentlemen. The constraint, however shaped by economic and political power, is just as profoundly social in character. Cumings's focus on sovereign or despotic power therefore seems misplaced. Following Foucault, I would argue that the capillary operation of power is disciplinary in nature. What sustains the status quo in the university is not so much the iron grip of the CIA but the velvet touch of the ineffable -- the desire for "respectability" and the tyranny of "opinion." In addition, the academic freedom of many scholars in the contemporary United States is imperiled not so much by the CIA or disciplinary power as by the sheer economic constraints of the academic job market. Given the financial straits that face most universities, the most potent threat to academic freedom and intellectual efflorescence is not so much the overt effort to control the university, but the proletarianization of professors and the pauperization of universities. The growth of part-time instructors and unemployed Ph.D.s imply that these would-be academics operate in a world without the privilege and protection of academic freedom. Like all forms of freedom, academic freedom is a privilege and one that may be restricted to the ever narrowing band of the few fortunate tenured professors, while the vast majority will be merely free to teach six courses a term. * * * I find Cumings's proposals appealing ...Consider his proposal to abolish the traditional social science departments. Although I agree with the impulse and deplore the disciplinary status quo, I also think we need to think through what will replace what we have. As problematic as the traditional disciplines are, it remains the case that they have positive functions. Discipline-based departments and professional associations remain, for good and ill, the institutional bases of academic freedom as we know it. In this regard, Louis Menand writes: The structure of disciplinarity that has arisen with the modern research university is expensive; it is philosophically weak; and it encourages intellectual predictability, professional insularity, and social irrelevance. It deserves to be replaced. But if it is replaced, it is in the interests of everyone who values the continued integrity of teaching and inquiry to devise a new institutional structure that will perform the same function. Otherwise academic freedom will be killed by the thing that, in America, kills most swiftly and surely: not bad ideas, but lack of money. Even if one superdiscipline of political economy will sustain academic freedom, it may result in an unfortunate and unintended consequence. Consider in this regard that Cumings's main academic bęte noire of the 1990s beside the NSEA is rational choice theory in the social sciences. Rational choice theory is but warmed-over neoclassical economics and should be mercilessly criticized. As Cumings acknowledges, however, area studies scholars, who are steeped in language, history, and culture, constitute a powerful intellectual bulwark against the universalistic pretensions of rational choice theory. The crucial countervailing academic force against rational choice theory is, in other words, the very product of the Cold War-inspired area studies, albeit one purged of the most pernicious ties to the national security state. Here again, Cumings's critique of area studies obscures its positive contribution. Fairbank, for example, was instrumental in severing Chinese history from antiquated Orientalism and invigorating it by incorporating, and simultaneously challenging, social science theories. Fairbank wrote in 1957 against the "remarkable parochialism on the part of Western political science," which "has resulted from a mistaken doctrine of scientific universalism which forbids `regional' specialization."8 As much as he himself embraced modernization theory, the intellectual influence of area studies scholarship, including Fairbank's work, challenged modernization theory and other facile universalistic social-science theories. Pathbreaking works of Barrington Moore Jr. or Immanuel Wallerstein depended in no small measure on area studies scholarship.9 What will take the place of area studies or pose countervailing intellectual influence against the potential hegemony of rational choice theory in the new superdiscipline of political economy? After all, academic disciplines do have a strong inner impulse toward intellectual and social irrelevance. As Thorstein Veblen or C. Wright Mills might have pointed out, the pursuit of scholarly status distinction fuels the drive toward irrelevance -- the academic equivalent of conspicuous consumption -- and barren scholasticism. In the 1990s rational choice theory and postmodernism are two sides, albeit one "scientific" and the other "humanistic," of the same academic coin. The heir apparent of classical political economy -- the intellectual lineage charted by Adam Smith and Karl Marx -- was, after all, economics. Contemporary economics is, however, by and large a barren intellectual field and one most inimical to the scholarly claims of area studies -- and politically conservative to boot. What will assure that the same sad fate will not befall the new political economy department from being taken over by rational choice theory? Disciplinary turf battles, as intellectually counterproductive as they may often be, can also forge a protective crucible for alternative perspectives and critical approaches. Furthermore, the call for social relevance comes largely from outside the Ivory Tower, whether from the CIA, corporate headquarters, or the streets. Just as much as the anti-Vietnam War movement kept the CIA in check, it nurtured critical scholarship. The intellectual conversion of so many former critical scholars to contemporary forms of barren scholasticism, whether the hard variant of rational choice theory or the soft variant of postmodern social theory, is in part due to the decline of the American and international left. But it is unclear why one form of external influence should be banned but not another. If Cumings wants the CIA out of the university, then what will stop other academics from keeping out anti-war protesters in the name of academic freedom? Academic freedom may very well squelch the desire for social relevance. Academic freedom is not an unblemished good in and of itself. It remains, at bottom, a privilege for a small circle of academics who may abuse it merely to promote their professional status and to produce barren scholasticism. As academics repel the influence of the CIA and national security concerns, they may equally refuse the democratic call for social relevance. We find ourselves, then, in a fairly foggy field with intersecting claims and concerns. Just as academics must choose their "masters" in the American university, they find themselves embroiled in cross-cutting vectors of political claims and counterclaims. Nonetheless, the protection of academic freedom is a worthy endeavor and one that stands to ultimately promote serious and critical scholarship. It seems obvious enough to suggest that academics should themselves organize to protect their freedom. Most of them alas remain lamentably content to accept the status quo. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), for all its problems, remains one of the few loci for protecting academic freedom. Yet because it smacks of trade unionism and therefore of an unwanted association with the working class, many academics have been reluctant to participate in AAUP. Leftists in turn seem to find AAUP to be merely reformist in character and therefore politically irrelevant. What is symptomatic of the U.S. university in the 1990s is the political involution of radical academics. Marching down the hallways of the English Department, or engaging in vitriolic debates in the pages of staid academic journals, seems to have replaced demonstrating in the streets or engaging with the mass media. But who but an alliance of academics should be at the forefront of protecting academic freedom? Academic institution-building -- whether the forging of area studies and critical scholarship, or the protection of academic freedom and alternative perspectives -- is a slow process. To insist on pure principles in academic affairs seems no more responsible or effective than to brandish the empty universal of academic neutrality and freedom. Given that I mainly agree with Cumings's analysis and politics, it is odd that I have dwelt at length on our disagreements. This may well be a flaw of self-styled critical intellectuals. In closing, I can only hope that, to paraphrase Santayana's cliché, the past that Cumings has so brilliantly illuminated will help us not to repeat its mistakes.
