Andrew Delbanco, author of his own book
Delbanco is sympathetic to the notion that identity politics has taken its toll on academic life (as am I). But apparently it’s just not as significant force in the academy as it once was:
When I look around, I see younger colleagues returning to close readings of literary classics. I see an emerging synthesis of the old political history focused on kings and presidents with the newer social history of ordinary people written “from the bottom up.” I see graduate students leading discussions on Plato in coffee houses, and undergraduates flocking to such new fields as environmental science in hope of acquiring the knowledge they need to make a positive difference in the world.
According to Delbanco, the problem that the university faces today is not identity politics but corporatism:
… Bawer overlooks the greatest threat to today’s universities. Today, corporate-minded university presidents spout platitudes about “outcome metric” and “game-changing” technologies, while faculty members struggle to piece together a living with multiple part-time jobs, and students search for marketable skills that, they hope, will help them pay off their education debt.
… Bawer is fighting a rear-guard action against an enemy who has largely ceded the field to a new philistine army that has no interest in the culture wars. The humanities and “soft” social science departments that Bawer mocks are sinking into insignificance — partly, to be sure, because they have purveyed the kind of buffoonery he decries. Meanwhile, a more formidable enemy has arrived in the form of resolute utilitarians who discourage students from seeking what Bawer wants for them: the chance, through arduous reading and reflection under the guidance of dedicated teachers, to discover themselves.
— Wes
to the degree that academics focused (and remain focused) on changing the rhetoric (and personnel) of the academy without focusing in any organized way on the economics/politics that supported such efforts these factors are quite intertwined, the academic left is still by and large possessed by the 60’s idea(l) of “consciousness” raising in ways that lead them to ignore even the ways in which they manage (in committees and such) their own daily work let alone the wider tragedies of our times, so it goes with the chattering classes.
http://www.focusing.org/apm_papers/solomon3.html
For a while there, and to an extent this is still true, the money was in the cutting edge buffoonery. You knew the fashionable tags you had to pepper grant applications with in order to seem up to current critical theory. Of course now the pendulum has swung more to the technocratic-utilitarian side. Caught between the rock and the hard place, I’d say (though I prefer self-indulgent identity politics to coming up with new catchphrases for capitalists). Not that the new university management culture or corporate cronies have much interest in anthropologists:
http://www.livinganthropologically.com/2012/08/21/anthropology-is-the-worst/
or to the degree that they (cronies) have any interest it is in anthropology (medical or such) as a tool for human-resources (a term that should make even non-heideggerians cringe) management.Do you know if anyone one is doing ethnographic studies of university departments?
That’s right, medical anthropology etc. was huge for a while. And you still have the less newfangled way to utilize anthropologists as middlemen between multinationals that want natural resources and local people.
I’m sure someone must be doing ethnography of university departments, but no one comes to mind. Now would certainly be an interesting time to do it.
yes and now as military agents, on the potential self-study of the academy it would perhaps bring home the idea that knowledge-production and socialization/organization are two sides of the same coin and seems like a good test of the claim that the humanities (writ large) can actually provide skills that make for useful/productive participation in a democracy.
Thanks for the post Wes.
On a side note for the comments -I work in academe, and we are starting to see that self-studies and organizations that do collegiate reviews are rewriting their appraisal formats. The scariest I’ve seen eliminates review of libraries and gives an amendment that allows for consultants to review classes in lieu of fellow faculty.
This is on top of the nationwide problems we are seeing with administrations taking curriculum out of faculty hands and streamlining it to ease movement through the system, like a university laxative.
I’ve written more about it and will provide a link:
http://www.davidloncle.com/blog-1/
http://www.davidloncle.com/links/
cheers