Lie to Me

The College Republicans on my campus are very concerned about the effect the liberal professors are having on students. On a recent Facebook discussion board, a young woman advised everyone to take everything they read in textbooks with a grain of salt, because most textbooks are written by people "on the left." (Like you shouldn't take everything you read with a grain of salt.) And recently, my favorite professor (who is very liberal) had a complaint filed against him by a student who was offended by something he said in class.

What is the source of this distrust of academia? And how many college students walk into a classroom and brace their mind against the threatening "liberal" professor?

This article came to my inbox via the CampusProgress.org newsletter. Ezra Kelin of American Prospect reviews What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts by Michael Berube of Penn State. Berube attempts to disprove the basic assumption behind the academic liberation movement, that campuses are a liberal breeding ground and professors attempt to "one-side" the academic discourse. I won't go into the details of the debate here. However, this brings me back to a notion I had when I first found out about the complaint filed against my teacher: Some people want to be lied to. I realized recently that many young people do not attend college to obtain knowledge; they come for an education. An education is a stepping stone into the work force. It can be more than that, but for many it's enough. In a recent discussion in my philosophy class, most of those who participated in the conversation expressed negativity towards the core classes that didn't relate to their intended course of study. Several seemed suspicious of the faculty, administration, and the state board and wondered aloud if college was even worth their time. One told her parents' story of working hard and making good money with so much as a diploma or GED. She was proud of them, and found college unnecessary. She was one of several students who viewed the university as a political arena, infected by professors who didn't realize that nobody came there to learn.

This was an Honors class, so this blew my mind. I had realized in my freshman year that Honors did not mean academically enthusiastic, when a fellow Honors student announced that evolution wasn't true and then refused to have a conversation about it, shaking his head and waving his hands. Since then, I have seen people brush away questions, debates, and lectures as they would pesky flies, living in their stable world and seemingly afraid to let anything potentially challenge it. This was the core of the disclaimer my professor made in all his classes: he would continue to challenge us, make us think, because he saw thinking, wondering, and yes, having your preconceptions torn up, as good. Whether it is or not, people will still want to be lied to. They will chase away or run away from new ideas, from questions, and from the people from whom these challenges come, the people who right-wing activists tell us are evil — professors.

In an article I read recently for a class, a cultural scholar explained American anti-intellectualism as such: intellectuals were the learned, wealthy elites who had oppressed American settlers. In an effort to empower Americans, language and popular culture divided intelligence into the distant, cruel intellectuals and the rustic, capable, "American" intelligent men. Today, the intellectuals are professors, scientists, and doctors — three of the most suspect groups in America. Consider numerous books and films in which a mad scientist, a mean professor, or an unethical doctor is the villain. With such a long-established cultural mythology about professors, then, and a growing need to stay "American," in a time of outsourcing and foreign conflict, students will not likely warm up to professors soon.

Revised from original post dated 10/20/2006 on my blog (no longer online).