The article is here; introduction:
America is in a difficult moment. Basic beliefs about democratic institutions have been eroded, constitutional protections have been undermined by the Supreme Court’s radical right-wing majority, and reason is no longer a barrier to the libidinal liberation previously made possible. President Donald Trump. Education in general and universities in particular have been singled out as paranoia, accusations, retaliation and hate speech run rampant on the Internet, spilling over into dangerous and sometimes lethal activism in “real life.”
Attacks on education themselves are not new. Right-wing think tanks and politicians have been attacking it for decades. But as Republican lawmakers and armed activists use their power to send censors directly into classrooms and libraries, promising conservative parents that they will take back control of their children against the specter of “woke” indoctrination. Because of this, this moment somehow seems more dangerous.
One of the twists of meaning cleverly practiced by the right is that censorship is being enacted in the name of freedom of expression and/or academic freedom. The term itself seems to have lost its meaning. Terminology, once a weapon of the weak, has now been seized as a legal tool by the strong. They censor unacceptable criticism of state policies, inequality, and injustice. name of freedom.
And perhaps most hypocritical of all, the censors claim they are eliminating “politics” from universities. Intensifying politicization in the name of ‘political’ purge is a surprising result. The two are not the same. Politics (the term I like to use) means competition for meaning and power where the outcome is not predetermined. Those who politicize, and by extension those who rely on partisanship, know in advance the consequences they wish to impose and the enemies they wish to defeat. In theory, politics is at the center of the free inquiry involved in democratic education, and partisanship is its antithesis. In fact, the relationship between the two is not as simple as the opposite might suggest.
As more than a century of research by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) shows, the boundaries between politics and partisanship have been difficult, if not impossible, to maintain. Any critical scholarship that challenges the interests of businessmen and/or politicians, no matter how rigorous and disciplined, has inevitably met the (partisan) accusation that it is unacceptably “political.” As a result, supporters were often dismissed. Throughout its long history, the AAUP has sought to strengthen the boundaries between politics and partisanship using conceptual and practical tools. disciplinary certification of a scholar’s “competence”; claims to objectivity or neutrality in “scientific” work; possession; faculty governance; “responsibility”; and the designation of “external speech” ensuring the protection of academic freedom.
There is now a wealth of material (statements of principles, best practice guidance, reports) to help codify the meaning of freedom, and these are regularly updated by the Association. red book. Although the need to continually improve and update protocols suggests the ongoing (and seemingly eternal) nature of the struggle, it provides an important weapon in the fight to protect democratic education from censorship.
Despite changes in historical context, the boundaries between politics and partisanship have never been secured. Because this constitutes an inherent tension in knowledge production that cannot be resolved by legislation, executive orders, or academic experts. Academic freedom mediates the tension but does not resolve it. Because when knowledge production is critical of dominant norms (science, social science, humanities, etc.), the integrity of those norms and their truth. The tension between politics and partisanship is the state (or fate) of American democratic higher education, a state of uncertainty (political theorist Claude Lefort associates uncertainty with democracy). This is a kind of sustained critical engagement: interpretive nuance, complexity, philosophical reflection, and openness to change, which should be the goal of all university education.
