Stop disparaging professors — they improve society
Academics serve the public, yet some insist on calling them ideologues
The professors are coming! As conservative polemicist David Horowitz would have it, American college teachers long ago became “dangerous academics” who, according to Turning Point USA’s “Professor Watchlist,” “advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” They have become prima facie enemies to the minds of many Americans, caricatures easily dismissed today as ideological buffoons.
This wasn’t always the case. Even a century ago, people still flocked to Chautauquas where professors spoke and argued, where deep implications of issues of the day were explored under the guidance of people who had dedicated their lives to study and reflection — and to teaching and action in the public sphere. So important were these professional ideals that they were incorporated, at the founding of the American Association of University Professors, into protection of this new concept of professorial engagement, “academic freedom.”
Taking their newly defined responsibilities to heart, professors gladly served in the administrations of many twentieth century American presidents. These academics included Texans like David Houston, who served as Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of agriculture and then of treasury.
Since the 1960s, respect for professors has declined in the United States to the point where, in the minds of many, they are no longer to be considered for public service. Instead they are seen as cut-off ideologues espousing old and discredited points of view. Better ignored than listened to, their comments sometimes seem walled in, the ivory tower becoming not protection but prison. Yet there are still professors involved in the life of the nation, including U.S. Rep. David Brat, R-Va., who went from the economics department at Randolph-Macon College to Congress, and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who taught at Harvard Law School. Thousands of others are directly involved in politics at state and local levels, and even more lend their expertise to public projects, mostly unheralded.
Faculty activism goes far beyond politics.
Most professors are involved off campus but in much less incendiary activities than politics, yet they still take seriously their roles as public intellectuals. Some actively promote the arts, others are involved with local planning, while even more work with adult education, programs for school children and curriculum development on the local level. Some even work to break down the barriers between academia and the commercial world, an unenviable but important task.
It is inherent in their profession that professors, in addition to teaching and conducting research, bring their activities from their ivory-tower “sandboxes” into the broader world. Along with that, faculty need to be making clear to the public what they are involved in, something too many of them are shy about doing.
The 1915 AAUP Declaration states that this last aspect of faculty work “has perhaps more frequently been the occasion of difficulties and controversies” than the other two. This continues to be the case, with many who attack “the professors” demanding they return to teaching and abstract research. That should never happen, not in a vibrant and growing democracy. Fortunately, it never has, not in the United States (though there have been trying times for academic freedom). The contributions of professors are too broad and too important to be so summarily dismissed.
Professors continue to work for the betterment of American society, both inside and, importantly, outside the academy. Most every one of them is willing to discuss what they are doing. They also want to break down the barriers that language has built and to solve the country’s problems. This is just as true of those who work through community colleges as it is for those at prestige institutions such as University of Texas and Rice University. It is time that we, as a nation, stop disparaging the professors and start talking to them and working with them.