Postmodernism is neither left nor right
Postmodernism is neither left nor right.
To the left, Postmodernism is the understandable fruit of liberal thinking. To the right, it’s the antichrist. Neither is correct, but both are correct.
As I’ve previously written, Postmodernism inevitably produces a leftward tilt in the culture, because it guts the heart of conservativism’s demand for order and authority. And it’s true that those of the left are more willing to go with the Postmodern flow. Nevertheless, the lordship of chaos — as academic Postmodernism teaches — must be awash in conflicting views. Otherwise, where’s the chaos? In the marketplace of thought, Postmodernism recognizes no authority as absolute, and that includes the hierarchical self-establishment of allegedly open minds. I say “allegedly,” because my experience is that a mind that thinks of itself as open is usually quite closed — just like the phrase, “There’s no question about it,” usually means it’s time to start asking questions.
I say all this, because one of the more intriguing arguments underway in the land of academia these days is David Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights. A version has been introduced in the U.S. House, and it will likely find its way to the Senate as well sometime this year. It’s heavy stuff, and liberal educators are all over themselves with accusations of a right wing plot to bring conservative thought into college campuses under the weight of law. In an interesting piece called “In Defense of Intellectual Diversity” in FrontPage magazine.com, Horowitz argues that the left is caught in a web of its own creation.
The Academic Bill of Rights is based squarely on the almost 100-year-old tradition of academic freedom that the American Association of University Professors has established. The bill’s purposes are to codify that tradition; to emphasize the value of “intellectual diversity,” already implicit in the concept of academic freedom; and, most important, to enumerate the rights of students to not be indoctrinated or otherwise assaulted by political propagandists in the classroom or any educational setting.
Since the Academic Bill of Rights is designed to clarify and extend existing principles of academic freedom, its opponents have generally been unable to identify specific provisions that they find objectionable. Instead, they have tried to distort the plain meaning of the text. The AAUP itself has been part of that effort, suggesting in a formal statement that the bill’s intent is to introduce political criteria for judging intellectual diversity and, thus, to subvert scholarly standards. It contends that the bill of rights “proclaims that all opinions are equally valid,” which “negates an essential function of university education.” The AAUP singles out for attack a phrase that refers to “the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge” as the rationale for respecting diverse viewpoints in curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social sciences. The AAUP claims that “this premise … is anti-thetical to the basic scholarly enterprise of the university, which is to establish and transmit knowledge.”The association’s statements are incomprehensible. After all, major schools of thought in the contemporary academy — pragmatism, postmodernism, and deconstructionism, to name three — operate on the premise that knowledge is uncertain and, at times, relative. Even the hard sciences, which do not share such relativistic assumptions, are inspired to continue their research efforts by the incomplete state of received knowledge. The university’s mission is not only to transmit knowledge but to pursue it — and from all vantage points. What could be controversial about acknowledging that? Further, the AAUP’s contention that the Academic Bill of Rights threatens true academic standards by suggesting that all opinions are equally valid is a red herring, as the bill’s statement on intellectual diversity makes clear: “Exposing students to the spectrum of significant scholarly viewpoints on the subjects examined in their courses is a major responsibility of faculty.”
And I think that the very idea of this discussion is healthy. Everybody needs their assumptions challenged every once in awhile — everybody except me, that is. There’s no question about it.
