Anyone who takes a political science or philosophy course at Middlebury College and expects a balanced curriculum, with readings ranging from radicals like Emma Goldman and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to liberals like John Rawls and Peter Singer to conservatives like Edmund Burke and Thomas Hobbes to fascists like Mussolini and Franco, will be sorely disappointed. Instead, you will find readings by theorists ranging from Rawls to Hobbes, staying almost entirely within the mainstream political binary that consists of only two options. If you’re lucky, maybe you will get three options, perhaps in the “suggested readings.” Professors proudly declare that they have shown both sides of the issue, when in reality, there are almost always more than just two sides to any given issue. If you are exposed to a radical viewpoint, it will probably be a cursory read of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, which your professor hastily dismisses as having not worked in reality. Your professor will conclude that you’ve covered all the radical viewpoints now (after all, Marxism is the only radical viewpoint, right?) and move on to the material that should be “taken seriously.” But more likely, you will not even be exposed to any radical viewpoints at all, as was the case in Murray Dry’s American Political Regime. You would never know from that class that radical labor unions had considerable power in the early 20th century United States, the membership of the I.W.W. numbering over 100,000 in 1923, until the government cracked down on radicalism in the First Red Scare.
Some departments, courses, and professors are better than others. You might read about prison abolition in a sociology course, and you might look at some radical views about art in an aesthetics course. But in most courses, especially those that are overtly about political issues, this is unlikely. Indeed, a survey of introductory political science courses reveals Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Capital as the only radical readings on the syllabi, and these in only two of six 100-level courses. Among the three 100-level philosophy courses offered, no readings presenting politically radical ideas appear on the syllabi. Between the two 100-level economics courses, again no readings presenting radical ideas appear on the syllabi…of course, economics courses don’t even pretend to represent radical viewpoints.
This is an appeal for true balance in the curriculum. It is easy to ignore viewpoints outside the mainstream in the bubble that is Middlebury College, where we never have to come in contact with people outside of this insulated community. It is easy, but it is not right. When I chose to spend my undergraduate years at Middlebury, I expected an institution that values pluralism and encourages differing opinions. Instead, I found an institution that lives in a binary.
-BOS
I agree. We need more radical views expressed on this campus. Moreover, we need professors that won't just dismiss radical views as conspiracy theory or inherently utopian and thus not worth looking at.
ReplyDeleteWe must subvert all courses that serve to reinforce the status quo. Challenge your professors at every opportunity.