The (Academic) Right’s Not Done Yet

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Virginia Tech has been receiving some unwelcome but necessary scrutiny of late over the emphasis its college of arts and humanities has been giving to a divisive issue: diversity. The Virginia Association of Scholars, the National Association of Scholars, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni all have voiced concerns about an apparent attempt to mau-mau professors into toeing an ideological line.

Last year a memo from Tech’s provost stressed the need for candidates seeking promotion or tenure to “do a better job of participating in and documenting their involvement in diversity initiatives” — an effort, it said, that was “especially important for candidates seeking promotion to full professor.” Draft guidelines for the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences stipulate that “the university and college committees require special attention to be given to documenting involvement in diversity initiatives.”

Richmond Times Dispatch, Staff Reports, Published: April 12, 2009

I like to watch the American Council of Trustees and Alumni blog because they seem to have an eye for reactionary politics, which they support enthusiastically. The other day I noticed this story about the ‘p.c.. police’ at Virginia Technical Institute, which of course sends up a red flag.

I think the tenure process is creepy; it often has a pyscho-sadist edge. If standards do anything, they set the tone on campus for what teachers do. In this case, the proposal made a fairly innocuous suggestion that professors who are promoted to full professor should demonstrate some involvement in diversity.

The Times Dispatch and the ACTA find this comparable to demanding evidence of patriotism. (As if that were not already the case to some extent; and as if they would really be upset by that sort of requirement.) I have a hard time figuring out why this is so upsetting to the right-wing.

Large corporations and the military, not to mention the law, have long recognized the need to counter our long history of racism and sexism in all sorts of ways, from affirmative action programs to diversity seminars. Most are still very reactionary about gays and lesbians, but even that is changing.

I don’t think you can argue that the military and most large corporations are run by bleeding hearts, so there must be some other reason why they support civil rights for women and minorities. My guess is that they know it makes their organizations run better. It’s good public relations, too.

Too much of this, of course, is just lip service, and I am sure lots of minorities and women could tell horror stories about their treatment. But it still a generally accepted value, a small but important commitment to democratic culture. You would think that this commitment would be less rather than more controversial in academia.

Posted in: Writing

Labor Rights Are Civil Rights

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“Those of us in the civil rights community know that the Employee Free Choice Act is more than a labor bill,” Henderson told colleagues. “Labor rights are civil rights.”

If the bill is painted as just a management-vs-unions issue, it loses, he warned.

“This is a simple fix to a loophole in labor law,” added Arlene Holt-Baker, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President and the highest-ranking African-American in the union federation. “It would let workers express their choice in an environment without intimidation” by bosses and their anti-union campaigns, she added.

“For African-Americans, we must make this a priority,” added Bill Lucy, AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer and head of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. A weakened union movement, which has been a key player in civil rights causes, diminishes the chance that African-Americans can achieve their other political goals, he pointed out.

UNIONS STEP UP MASS MOBILIZATION FOR EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE, ENLIST AFRICAN-AMERICAN LEADERS AS ALLIES, Friday, April 10, 2009

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the real progressive measure of the Obama administration’s fist stage is their commitment to the Employee Free Choice Act. There’s lots to be said about the first sixty or seventy days, good and bad, but the EFCA is the first attempt to change the game from the ground up.

I was listening to Cornell West yesterday on the Tavis Smiley show and he made a relevant comparison to Lincoln. Lincoln, like Obama, was a skilled but pragmatic politician. He became the Great Emancipator partly due to constant pressure from the left wing, that is, the abolitionists.

Obama is pragmatic and equally in need of lefty pressure. The public has to demand change– a single payer health care system, for example– or it’s not going to happen. That won’t happen unless we have the tools. Or, what amounts to the same thing, to take away impediments to their power.

The EFCA does both. In effect, it’s a kind of gamble. If employers are no longer able to punish union organizers, and if organizing is simpler, will people take the opportunity? The opinion polls as well as the unions all strongly suggest they will. That would mean a real shift in the way power works in the United States.

Posted in: Economics, Union, Writing

Ours and Mine

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I use roads that I don’t own. I have immediate access to 99% of the roads and highways of the world (with a few exceptions) because they are a public commons. We are all granted this street access via our payment of local taxes. For almost any purpose I can think of, the roads of the world serve me as if I owned them. Even better than if I owned them since I am not in charge of maintaining them. The bulk of public infrastructure offers the same “better than owning” benefits.

The web is also a social common good. The web is not the same as public roads, which are “owned” by the public, but in terms of public access and use, the web is a type of community good. The good of the web serves me as if I owned it. I can summon it in full, anytime, with the snap of a finger. Libraries share some of these qualities. The content of the books are not public domain, but their displays (the books) grant public access to their knowledge and information, which is in some ways better than owning them.

Kevin Kelly, The Technium, Better than Owning

I continue to be fascinated by the ways in which the economic impasse is eating away at older property forms and creating the possibility for new forms. The textbook industry is a good example. Suddenly, materially privileged professors and administrators are ‘discovering’ that textbooks are expensive.

“We can fix it,” they say, as if they were not, in part, responsible for this inaccessibility. Still, whatever the origins, online textbooks are going to kill off the textbook industry– of course, something equally awful might arise in its place. In any case, this might be one of those silver linings in the dark recession clouds.

These musings and potentials are complicated and unpredictable. The CD may disappear but the LP seems to be back, complete with free digital download of the music so you can play it on your MP3 player as well as your turntable. Some of the musing, however, doesn’t make much sense.

I like the way Kevin Kelly mulls over the things he, personally, does not own but uses daily. These are our collective wealth: the highways, much of the internet, and so on. He’s less persuasive when he linke these forms of ownership and rent-to-own schemes or leasing. These are mostly confidence games.

The root problem, I think, lies in the lack of a critical economics in popular culture. Economics as commonly discussed, is business economics, that is, discussions of how to make capitalism work better. You have to venture fairly far out to the periphery to find anti-capitalist economics.

Posted in: Autobiographical, Economics, Online Places, War