From: bfrg9732@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Brian F. Redman)
Subject: Imposters in the Temple -- Part 5
Summary: Intellectuals are destroying our universities
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1992 01:45:05 GMT
Keywords: treachery trickery deceit deception


Imposters in the Temple:
American Intellectuals are Destroying our Universities
and Cheating our Students of their Future
 
by Martin Anderson

Part 5  --  Hubris

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Hubris - n. overweening pride or self-confidence: Arrogance

"[Hubris] refers generally to a haughty pride, an arrogant disdain for 
the thoughts and feelings of others. It had a richer meaning in 
classical Greek ethical thought thousands of years ago. Hubris was 
considered an 'overweening presumption suggesting impious disregard of 
the limits governing men's actions in an orderly universe... the sin 
to which the great and gifted are most susceptible and in Greek 
tragedy it is usually the basic flaw of the tragic hero.'"

Anderson believes that "The driving sin of our academic intellectuals 
is hubris -- unchecked intellectual arrogance." The form which this 
hubris takes in the universities and colleges is intellectual elitism. 
Compared to normal elitism, which is more of the social variety, 
"Intellectual elitism is a smaller, more virulent phenomena, shared by 
a group of people who feel superior to others by virtue of their 
higher intelligence and learning." This snobbery, according to 
Anderson, infuses everything done by academic intellectuals. "Some of 
their actions, which may seem unprofessional, unethical, and sometimes 
even bizarre, will take on a certain rationality when viewed through 
the lens of dogmatic intellectual elitism."

This hubris is rooted in a feeling of intellectual superiority which 
"gives one a sense of power and rightness that can easily lead to... 
the arrogance of contempt for the judgements of other people." This in 
turn can lead to a conviction that one is above the rules. As the 
director of the University of Virginia's Olsson Center for Applied 
Ethics noted in 1991, "Academics believe that their pursuit of truth 
and knowledge is so important that they can bend the rules."

In May 1990 Nicholas Lemann, contributing editor of The Washington 
Monthly and a national correspondent of The Atlantic wrote an article 
which analyzed the popularity of H.L. Mencken among intellectuals. 
Lemann argued that Mencken's popularity stemmed from the fact that he 
was an elitist. Mencken, wrote Lemann, "considered the great mass of 
people to be inherently inferior... belonged to a tradition of 
complete uninterest in common people... the real common ground between 
him and the intellectuals was an antidemocratic spirit. It is no 
secret that Mencken disliked democracy... [and] antidemocracy has 
always been the secret vice of the intellectuals." Lemann concluded 
that he found it "amazing that at this late date intellectuals are 
willing to renounce racism but not snobbery."

Anderson sees this academic hubris as leading to four basic types of 
corruption which he says "pervade the academic intellectual world 
today. The first three -- professional, political, and personal 
corruption -- afflict the faculty. The fourth, institutional 
corruption, afflicts the administrators and trustees." What is 
especially important, according to the author, is how the academic 
intellectual community has reacted to these transgressions -- in most 
cases either ignoring the transgression or only meting out nominal 
punishment.

		-- Professional Corruption --

Anderson divides the areas of professional corruption into two basic 
areas, plagiarism and research fraud. He considers plagiarism to be 
the more widespread of the two, but considers it at the same time to 
be less serious than research fraud. He considers the rising incidence 
of research fraud as "a telling commentary on the state of integrity" 
in academe. Then he adds, "But what is even more telling is the ho-hum 
reaction of the academic community to these blatant intellectual 
crimes. Alarm bells should be going off all over the place... But they 
aren't. And that tells us more about the current state of integrity in 
academe than anything."

		-- Political Corruption --

Anderson points to the "politically lopsided faculties" in the 
universities. According to a highly regarded study by political 
scientists Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., and Seymour Martin Lipset, "only 
12 percent of all professors think of themselves as Republicans." He 
evokes a chilling image of a one-party system at our universities, 
"similar to the universities in the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy or 
Nazi Germany." Writing in the Spring 1991 issue of The Public 
Interest, David Bryden, a professor of law at the University of 
Minnesota would seem to agree with Anderson when he says that "most of 
our universities are essentially one-party institutions" and that they 
resemble a "seminary for party ideologues."

This atmosphere in which a single party ideology is overwhelmingly 
dominant leads to an atmosphere that becomes "intimidating, diffuse, 
and stifling like a poison gas, and the accepted boundaries of 
intellectual discourse are made crystal clear." Anderson reminds us 
that "Prejudice is prejudice, whether it is racist, sexist, or 
political. The evidence of political discrimination in the academic 
world is clear and stark, a prima facie case... Powerful codes of 
politically correct thinking have become so entrenched that to violate 
them can be a gaffe of serious proportions." Some of the examples 
which the author gives of this chilling atmosphere of political 
correctness are:

o -- In the fall of 1987, Stephan Thernstrom, a professor at Harvard 
University for twenty-five years, was denounced as a racist. The 
reasons for this charge were 1) he "had used the word 'Indians' 
instead of 'Native Americans'", 2) he had used the "word 'Oriental', 
with its imperialist overtones," in referring to an Oriental religion, 
3) he had assigned a book to the class "that mentioned that some 
people regarded affirmative action as preferential treatment, and 4) 
he had "endorsed, in class, Patrick Moynihan's emphasis on the breakup 
of the black family as a cause of persistent black poverty." 
Thernstrom retorted that "It's like being called a Commie in the 
fifties... Whatever explanation you offer, once accused, you're always 
suspect." The Harvard Intellectual community did not defend him but 
rather either fell silent or issued statements denouncing racism. In 
the end, Thernstrom gave up and the course is no longer taught.

o -- At Smith College in 1990, the administrators issued a handout to 
all students explaining that many people were oppressed but just 
didn't know it. Among the categories of oppression listed in the 
handout were "ableism," defined as "oppression of the differently 
abled by the temporarily abled." Another was "lookism," defined as 
"the construction of a standard for beauty/attractiveness; and 
oppression through stereotypes and generalizations of both those who 
do not fit that standard and those who do."

o -- The current debate on the teaching of the so-called Great Books 
of literature and history. In 1988, for example, Stanford's courses in 
Western civilization were rearranged so that the following 
replacements occurred:
1) Dante's "Inferno" was replaced by "I... Rigoberta Menchu"
2) Aquinas and Thomas More were replaced by "Their Eyes Were Watching 
   God" by feminist Zora Neale Hurston
3) Locke replaced by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights
4) John Stuart Mill replaced by Rastafarian poetry
5) Virgil, Cicero and Tacitus replaced by Frantz Fanon
6) Martin Luther replaced by Juan Rulfo
7) Galileo replaced by Sandra Cisneros

o -- Beginning students at the University of Texas "no longer will 
read the classics in their introductory writing class. Replacing the 
classics will be court decisions on affirmative action and civil 
rights cases."

o -- At the University of Pennsylvania a student wrote a memo in which 
she referred to her regard for the individual. "The memo landed in the 
lap of an indignant administrator, who returned the memo with the word 
'individual' circled. The University of Pennsylvania official warned 
the student that the word 'individual' was 'a red flag phrase today 
which is considered by many to be racist.'"

o -- During the Persian Gulf War a few students at the University of 
Maryland chose to display an American flag from their window on 
campus. The university ordered them to take the flag down, "lest they 
offend someone in the 'diverse' campus community." The students 
resisted the order and the university backed down.


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Synopsis/Review by Brian Redman
"Ah yes, Armageddon. I remember it well."
End Part 5



Xref: sparky alt.activism:13370 talk.politics.misc:35644 alt.individualism:4505