Impassioned Teaching

Don't be afraid of classroom advocacy; it's not the same thing as indoctrination.

By Pamela L. Caughie

The strategy [of those defending intelligent design] involves making it look as if the scientific convictions of biologists are political in nature. And politically, of course, folks have a right to believe what they want.…Horowitz comes to the rescue by offering the [Academic Bill of Rights, which]. . . . argues that because no one's political viewpoint should be kept out of the classroom, laws need to be in place to keep biologists from ruling out intelligent design.

Yet the Law and Order episode also shows that the impassioned teaching of evolution (indeed, of any subject) can, and often does, shape values. Once one comes to see the world differently through the study of a particular subject matter or the acceptance of a particular theory, one becomes a different kind of person, and a different kind of citizen—precisely the point, one would think, of higher education. That is, it is not so much what is said in the classroom that's at issue, but the feared consequences of the passions and commitments that our teaching may inspire.

False Opposition

The ongoing debate over academic freedom in venues such as Academe,
the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the New York Times frames the issue in terms of a clash between values and politics on the one hand, and scholarship on the other. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" was developed in response to the belief that the academy is dominated by leftists and biased against conservative scholars and students. The intent of the bill is "to remove partisan politics from the classroom" ("In Defense of Intellectual Diversity," February 13, 2004). On this point, it would seem Horowitz is in agreement with his critics. Literary and legal scholar Stanley Fish, for example, has argued in the New York Times("Advocacy and Teaching,"March 24, 2007) that one should separate one's scholarly self from one's partisan self when teaching. Yet as literature professor Michael Bérubé pointed out in his plenary address to the AAUP's annual meeting, published in Academe's November–December 2006 issue, the logic of Horowitz's position brings accusations of liberal bias together with a defense of freedom of speech, so that academic freedom now means freedom from liberal professors and liberal convictions, as if what professors taught were merely viewpoints, not knowledge. "Just as it is a mistake to think that there are two sides to every question," Bérubé says, "it is also a mistake—and a pernicious one, encouraged by Horowitz . . . and company—to think that there are only two sides to every question."

I agree. But I also worry that that's precisely the position we fall into in defending the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure against changes proposed by Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights." We seem to be caught up in defending, even if not always defining, the difference between scholarship and politics, as does Fish, and the difference between the classroom and the public square, as does Smith. As a result, the response to attacks on liberals is either to argue that professors teach, or should teach, scholarship and not politics, and thus should be free from any government intrusion such as the "Academic Bill of Rights" represents; or to argue that everyone's scholarship is political and thus that we need the bill to ensure "intellectual diversity" in the classroom, so that different political views are represented.

In one of his many opinion pieces in the New York Times on this topic, Stanley Fish presents a cogent argument against the logic that equates academic freedom with intellectual diversity ( July 23, 2006). Fish argues that academic freedom is not about protecting what we say but rather about protecting what we study. "Whether something is an appropriate object of academic study is a matter not of its content but of its availability to serious analysis," he writes. We academics are free to teach any subject and present any perspective as long as both are "offered as objects of analysis rather than as candidates for allegiance." Drawing a clear-cut distinction between teaching and proselytizing, Fish offers a simple prescription: "All you have to do is remember that academic freedom is just that: the freedom to do an academic job without external interference. It is not the freedom to do other jobs, jobs you are neither trained for nor paid to perform." Where does such a position leave the feminist scholar and teacher?

Feminist Pedagogy

I am trained as a feminist literary scholar and paid to teach feminist criticism and theory to university students. I agree with Fish that in teaching feminism, my job is "to inquire into its structure, history, influence and so forth," not simply to preach its virtues. But when Fish goes on to insist that the job of a university teacher is decidedly not "to recruit your students for the political agenda [your subject] may be thought to imply," I'm not so sure that I can, or even should, draw that line. Indeed, the idea that pedagogical responsibility requires toeing a line misrepresents the delicate dynamics of intellectual inquiry. As in most arguments structured by binary oppositions, such as debates over condoning torture versus coddling terrorists, sometimes responsibility, whether pedagogical or political, requires more than making a choice between two alternatives.

Feminism is a mode of analysis, a set of values, and a political movement. In teaching students its history, its forms, and its impact, I am teaching them to think and write as feminists. I want to convince my students of the value of feminist analysis and the importance of feminist praxis. But then, Fish or the teacher of evolution—indeed, any scholar worth his or her salt as a teacher—also wants to convince students of the value of his or her intellectual commitments. And intellectual commitments have political implications, although that does not make them merely political opinions. In twenty years of teaching I have never gone into the classroom hoping to make converts that day. Still, I feel I am doing my job well when students become practitioners of feminist analysis and committed to feminist politics. That is, the more passionately we teach our critical and theoretical positions as "objects of analysis," the more likely our students are to see them as "candidates for allegiance." And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

What saves us from preaching partisan politics is precisely the fact that no one political position follows from our intellectual commitments, even feminism. To convince a student of the rightness of a feminist perspective is no guarantee that the student will vote the way I do. This is an insight Fish presents in his 1995 book Professional Correctness, where he argues that the work academics do can never have the political impact we may want to claim for it.

Drawing the line between teaching and indoctrination, genuine inquiry and partisan politics, is never a simple or transparent act. To set it up as such a clear-cut choice, as if we all should know when that line has been crossed, is not just misleading but potentially dangerous. History shows that much of what passes for scholarship is a form of indoctrination. One consequence of including feminism in the curriculum has been to show how partial supposedly objective inquiry can be. Failing to teach the perspective, history, and writing of women—particularly in an approach labeled as "objective"—may not be a violation of academic freedom, but it certainly does function to indoctrinate students with a particular perspective, to present them with a set of values "in the guise of showing them the true way" as Fish puts it. Students are sometimes "indoctrinated" not because research protocols are abandoned, as Fish suggests, but because those protocols are biased.

Part of the problem of trying to draw a line between scholarship and politics is that teaching is not just about content and methodology; it is also about people. Students and colleagues alike often believe that whatever appears on the syllabus is being implicitly endorsed, an assumption that often follows from who is doing the teaching. If a syllabus contains more than half women writers and the teacher is a man, women's writing is often perceived simply as a subject area to be explored. But if a syllabus contains more than half women writers and the teacher is a woman, then she risks being seen as promoting a feminist agenda. One person's scholarship is another's politics.

Teaching Is Advocacy

I agree with Fish that it is possible to teach a viewpoint without embracing it. However, I part company with Fish on his main point: "The moment a professor does embrace and urge [a particular viewpoint], academic study has ceased and been replaced by partisan advocacy." On the contrary, the moment a professor embraces and urges a particular viewpoint is the moment intellectual
passion animates the classroom and students become engaged in academic study. Much good teaching is a form of values advocacy, if not the kind of advocacy that tells students how to vote, whom to hate, or where to draw the line. I can hardly teach feminism as if it were simply an object of analysis and not a vital force in my life, and I believe my teaching would be greatly impoverished were I to do so. Teaching doesn't end with the passion of our convictions, but such passion can inspire learning.

In his March 24 editorial cited earlier, Fish says, "A student assigned to study an issue must be equipped with the appropriate analytical skills. Acquiring and applying those skills in no way depend on political or ideological affiliations." Certainly not, but neither does acquiring and applying those skills depend on the exclusion of any kind of values advocacy. In her 2003 book Literature after Feminism, feminist scholar Rita Felski challenges Fish on his claim that one cannot pay "double attention" to both politics and professional work. The  problem with this kind of thinking, Felski suggests, is that it risks seeing feminist criticism or teaching as a mere tool of political interests. Yet to look solely at analytical skills (as if these weren't already "interested") is also to drain criticism and teaching of any passion—both alternatives seem impoverished, Felski says. Such an either-or position leads Fish to absurd conclusions: "Academic performance and individual beliefs are independent variables. They have nothing to do with each other."

For a feminist, they have everything to do with one another. I cannot separate myself as a scholar of feminism from myself as a feminist scholar. For me, a far more dangerous threat than passionate university professors bringing their values and opinions into the classroom is the tendency of students to treat any
kind of inquiry as simply opinion. This, I believe, is what Bérubé is getting at when criticizing those who think "that there are only two sides to every question." "Some of our students now enter the classroom with this idea," he writes; "it comes from mass-media simulacra of 'debate.' There is one side, and then there is the other side. That constitutes balance, and anything else is bias." Classrooms today seem to be more like talk shows, with the professor as host, than forums for intellectual inquiry. Students who don't read the assignment and never set foot in a library feel every bit as entitled to express their opinions on an assigned reading as those who have read carefully and researched extensively. And because administrators pay more attention to ten point scales on student evaluation forms, and even chili peppers on RateYourProfessor.com, than to the kind of intellectual work that goes on in the classroom, too many teachers feel their job is to acknowledge any and all opinions offered on the topic being studied. Not to do so is to risk being exposed as someone intent on indoctrinating students rather than teaching them. That is the danger we must respond to, not the threat of politics in the classroom.

Thus, I agree with Fish when he challenges the very absurdity of the "intellectual diversity act" itself: "'Intellectual diversity'—a term of art introduced by the conservative activist David Horowitz—mandates the proportional representation, on the faculty and in the curriculum, of conservatives and liberals. Its watchword is 'balance,' but balance is a political measure, not an educational measure, for it could be achieved only by monitoring the political affiliations of professors and the political content of the materials they assign." The term "term of art" is telling. According to feminist scholar Marjorie Garber in her 2001 book Academic Instincts, terms of art have long been regarded, especially within the legal profession, with suspicion as, well, artsy and thereby crafty. Terms of art have an agenda. Fish's use of that phrase suggests that what is at issue in the "Academic Bill of Rights" is not intellectual diversity or even partisan advocacy; rather, what is at issue is the very legitimacy of academic inquiry itself, especially insofar as we can never guarantee such inquiry is free of political commitments or will not have political consequences.

Advocating balance is an implicit recognition of, and a panicked response to, the power of impassioned teaching. While the idea of balancing viewpoints is a threat to academic freedom, so is any effort to draw a line between advocacy and teaching.

Pamela L. Caughie is author of Passing and Pedagogy: The Dynamics of Responsibility. She is professor of English and women's studies and president of the AAUP chapter at Loyola University Chicago.

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