Tag Archives: politics

How Critical Race Theory Operates And How To Defeat It

Leave a reply

Today we continue our conversation with James Lindsay, Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory. In the three previous essays we defined CRT, discussed its twelve central beliefs, and documented its immediate sources. My intention at the beginning of this series was to devote an essay to each chapter of the book and end the series with a Christian assessment of CRT. However, as I grappled with the fourth chapter [“The Deep Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory” (pp. 159-220)], I realized that I could not summarize this chapter in a way that would benefit my target audience. It deals with the thought of Karl Marx (1818-83), G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), and J.J. Rousseau (1712-78)—some of the most obscure thinkers and difficult concepts in the history of thought. Compounding the chapter’s difficulty, Lindsay leaves many of these difficult concepts underdeveloped.

Also, Lindsay’s goal and mine differ. He wishes to demonstrate that CRT is Marxist to its core. This goal is important to him because advocates of CRT are subversive and slippery; they will deny that they are really Marxists. He wants to make their denials completely implausible. My goals for the series are (1) to get clear on what CRT is, what it believes, how it operates, and how to respond to it, and (2) subject it to a theological critique. I think my first three essays go a long way toward accomplishing the first goal. I believe I can skip reference to chapter four without detriment to the series. In this essay we will examine CRT’s agenda for taking over institutions and develop strategies for defeating it.

How Critical Race Theory Operates

What does CRT do? According to Lindsay, it does only one thing: it cranks out more Critical Race Theorists (p. 224). In classrooms, government agencies, boardrooms, media, and in churches, it carries on its own form of evangelism. It prefers soft persuasion but is not above using coercion and extortion. It assumes that once enough Critical Race Theorists hold positions of power, a new era of “racial justice” will dawn.

Lindsay describes several CRT strategies:

(1) “Divide, Scoop Up and Conquer.” An entity—a university, academic department, or government agency—will in good faith or in hopes of warding off charges of racism, invite a CRT activist to join the team. Some supposedly “racist” event will occur. The CRT activist will generalize the event as a sign of “systemic racism.” Those who do not immediately jump on the CRT bandwagon will be labeled racists and silenced. The organization has been effectively commandeered by CRT. Its original purpose—education, profit, witness to the gospel—will be replaced by its new purpose: creating more Critical Race Theorists.

(2) CRT focuses almost entirely on “systems” of power. When they cannot point to a specific incident of injustice or abuse attributable to racism, they point to group disparities and cry systemic racism. Such systems are vague and diffuse. It is impossible to understand how they work to produce a particular incident of injustice. If ordinary people don’t get it, Critical Race Theorists “accuse them of not understanding systemic thought, or, more simply of being stupid and intellectually unsophisticated” (p. 233). Lindsay replies that “when a Critical Race Theory calls something “systemic,” what it really means is that it has an all-encompassing Marxian conspiracy theory about that thing” (p. 233).

(3) “The Critical Inversion of Language.” Critical Race Theories adopt “highly specialized and contextual definitions of otherwise familiar words. In fact, it inverts the meaning of everyday words” (pp. 240-41). Such words as racism, justice, antiracism, democracy, belonging, diversity, inclusion, and many others are used to mean the opposite of what they mean in ordinary usage. Once these words have been enshrined in policy by naive policy makers, CRT activists begin to exploit their specialized meanings to “gain institutional and personal power” (p. 245). Anyone who objects is accused of racism.

(4) Theory trumps fact. One of CRT’s twelve beliefs declares that “Racism is the ordinary and permanent state of society.” Whatever word, state of affairs, characteristic, or practice that Critical Race Theorists think hinders their quest for power arises from and embodies racism. Defending yourself against a charge of racism is racist. Asking for evidence of racism to support CRT’s assertions is racist. CRT wisdom in a nutshell: “Of course you would claim to be innocent. That is what guilty people do.” Or, as Ibram X Kendi observes, “Denial is the heartbeat of racism” (How to Be an Antiracist, p. 9; quoted in Lindsay, p. 247). In interactions with CRT, it’s always a “lose-lose” proposition (p. 250).

How to Defeat CRT

In his last chapter Lindsay lays out a strategy for defeating the cynical and manipulative Critical Race Theorists (“What Can We Do About Critical Race Theory,” pp.253-86).

(1) Stop assuming that CRT has good intentions. It does not. “It has only one intention: seize as much institutional authority as possible to raise enough “racial consciousness” to establish a Dictatorship of the Antiracists that will enforce Critical Race Theory on everybody” (p. 254). Lindsay advises, “Do not attempt to compromise with Critical Race Theorists. Just tell them no” (p. 254). If you try to meet their demands halfway or admit any truth to their Theory, you will “lose every single time” (p. 255).

(2) Do not play CRT’s language games. Make them define their terms. And don’t get into a fine-grained debate about the meaning of words. Instead, call their definitions “absurd,” “Orwellian,” or “conspiratorial,” because that is what they are. Don’t set foot in their linguistic world where nothing is as it seems. It’s a word game only insiders can play. Each distortion supports and is supported by all the other distortions. Your only options are to submit to the “superior” gnosis of the CRT specialist or to exit the game into the real world. Let them know you are not playing their game.

(3) “Stop being afraid of the consequences of speaking up and pushing back” (p. 255). There are only two alternatives: total surrender or total resistance. Until they gain total control, their power rests in their threat to label you a racist, which makes sense only in their made-up world.

(4) At an institutional level, Critical Race Theorists must not be promoted to positions of power and influence and must be fired from those positions if they occupy them. Lindsay makes this point clearly:

“They must be fired, forced to resign, voted out of office, sued, defunded, and limited in their ability to abuse power for Critical means by both law and institutional policy…The thing about people who abuse their power is they abuse their power and don’t tend to care too much what anyone thinks of that so long as it doesn’t impact their ability to keep abusing their power” (pp. 258-59).

(5) At the cultural level, we must energetically assert common sense, beauty, objective truth, unambiguous facts, and our common humanity against group-based, identity politics. Most people will reject divisive and race conscious identity politics as soon as they understand what it is. For most Americans, the liberal order of individual freedom, work, individual competence, individual rights, and equality under law, still seems superior to socialist theories of utopia. Assert these truths without compromise.

Next time: Is CRT compatible with Christian faith?

The Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory

Leave a reply

Today we continue our review and dialogue with James Lindsay, Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory. In the two previous essays we defined and set forth CRT’s twelve central beliefs. In this essay, we will turn to the story of its origins. In Chapter Three, Lindsay uncovers “The Proximate Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory” (pp. 87-158). The sheer number of authors, books, papers, and different movements covered in this long chapter is overwhelming. I will do my best to summarize it concisely, accurately and fairly. But I cannot help but oversimplify. There is another complicating factor I must mention. Attempting to discover and describe the origins of any historical phenomenon is fraught with many dangers. Among the most obvious are (1) the past is too complicated to describe completely and (2) historians, despite their best efforts, harbor their own prejudices.

The Two Main Sources

According to Lindsay, “Critical Social Justice Theories, including Critical Race Theory, arise from a deliberate fusion of Critical Theory (neo-Marxism) with postmodern Theory” (p. 89; emphasis original). This fusion was accomplished in the 1980s and 1990s, mostly in academia. At a minimum we need to understand the essential features of three things: Critical Theory, postmodernism, and the process of their fusion.

Critical Theory, Or Neo-Marxism

Karl Marx (1818-83) claimed to have discovered the true science of history. History began with the communism of tribal society and passed through two other forms of society until it arrived at capitalism. The capitalist system will inevitably reach a crisis point wherein the exploited workers will revolt and take over the means of production to institute socialism. Socialism will naturally transform itself into communism similar in form to tribal communism but now worldwide. That was the theory.

But by the 1910s and 1920s it had become apparent that something was wrong with Marx’s theory. Capitalism had raised the standard of living in Europe to the point that workers no longer felt themselves miserable and exploited. The workers had adopted what Hungarian Marxist György Lukács (1885-1971) called a “false consciousness,” that is, they thought they were free and happy when in truth they were enslaved and miserable. The neo-Marxists realized that the socialist revolution was not inevitable. They held on to the Marxist belief that capitalism was unstable, but experience had taught them its advance toward socialism was but one possibility. It could also slide into fascism. Hence, the neo-Marxists developed an agenda of “consciousness raising;” that is, a program to convinced people who are relatively satisfied with their condition that they were oppressed in ways of which they were not conscious.  Marxist theorist Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) named this new approach to revolution “Critical Theory” in his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory.”

For the process of consciousness raising to succeed, the “cultural hegemony” of capitalist society must be challenged. Marxists must pay attention to the places in culture where identity, consciousness, and values are formed. Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) named five cultural institutions that Marxists need to infiltrate to cultivate a “counter-hegemony,” that is, an alternative narrative favorable to Marxist revolution: religion, family, education, media, and law. Critical theorist Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), in the 1950s and 1960s, despaired of awakening the satisfied American middle class to revolutionary consciousness. He looked instead to urban blacks, the unemployed, and university students to form the vanguard of a revolutionary coalition. In his books, A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Counterrevolution and Revolt, An Essay on Liberation, and One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse outlines an ideological strategy for completing the Gramscian project of creating a Marxian consciousness as a challenge to the dominant culture. Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire (1921-97), in his highly influential book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, packages Critical Theory in a form designed to liberate students from their “false consciousness” and create in them a revolutionary consciousness.

Critical Social Justice theories, including CRT, incorporated neo-Marxism’s critique of capitalism and liberalism, its theory of false consciousness, its strategies of institutional infiltration and consciousness raising, and its ideal of communism—all while re-centering its social critique on race.

Postmodern Theory

Whereas Marxism and neo-Marxism critique the values and knowledge claims of liberal capitalist society in view of their own truth-claims about a truly just society (Communism), postmodernism debunks all truth claims and grand narratives—including Marxist—as expressions of power. They are in effect post-Marxist as well as postmodern. The most famous postmodern thinker Michel Foucault (1926-84) underlined the ideological nature of all knowledge claims by using the term “knowledge-power” whenever speaking about assertions of truth (p. 127).

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) considered language a prison from which we cannot escape into truth. Words refer only to other words and can never take us to real things. For postmodern thought, linguistic expressions, culture, social order, and law are “constructions” created consciously or unconsciously to acquire or retain power. To the unknowing, these constructions have the appearance of truth, fact, and reality. Hence the task of postmodern criticism is to unmask, to “deconstruct,” these deceptive structures. All of them! Those trained to think in postmodern terms see a power play, a conspiracy, in every assertion of truth, value, or fact. In Lindsay’s words, “It isn’t clear that postmodernists had much interest in doing anything further than taking things apart and playing in the wreckage, however” (p. 132).

At this point we are left asking how CRT can benefit by incorporating postmodernism. For in postmodernism, CRT’s central concepts—“race,” “systemic racism,” “Blackness,” “Whiteness,” “justice,” “equity” “diversity,” “inclusion,” etc.—are just as much power constructions as are rights, free markets, merit, and other liberal values, facts, and truth claims. They too must be deconstructed to reveal cynical masks for power, which would empty CRT’s rhetoric of its moral force.

Fusing Neo-Marxism and Postmodernism

Lindsay takes Kemberlé Crenshaw’s 1991 paper “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” to be a pivotal text in the creation of CRT. As Crenshaw sees it, postmodernism’s assertion that all group identities, values, and cultures are socially constructed—a view called antiessentialism or constructivism—can be useful to critical social justice movements such as CRT. Incorporating postmodernism into CRT enables it to expose and deconstruct hidden systemic racism. But Crenshaw also sees the need for marginalized groups to maintain a strong sense of group identity. She says, “At this point in history, a strong case can be made that the most critical resistance strategy for disempowered groups is to occupy and defend a politics of social location rather than to vacate and destroy it” (“Mapping the Margins,” quoted in Lindsay, p. 139).

The dominant group (white people) intends the categories “black,” “woman,” “queer,” etc. to be negative and disempowering. Crenshaw welcomes the postmodern insight that these labels are pure power constructs with no basis in the essence of the people to whom they are attached. Nevertheless, these categories possess a sort of reality that must be acknowledged. Crenshaw observes, “But to say that a category such as race or gender is socially constructed is not to say that that category has no significance in the world” (“Mapping the Margins,” quoted in Lindsay, p. 137). Identity categories “are imposed, thus made meaningful and real, by systemic power and those who hold and wield it” (“Mapping the Margins,” quoted in Lindsay, pp. 139-40; emphasis original).

In this way, Crenshaw can embrace postmodern constructivism as useful in critiquing the dominant group’s justifications for maintaining its privileges without giving up the reality of marginalized group identities useful in the quest for liberation. There is a huge difference, says Crenshaw, between saying “I am a person who happens to be black” and saying “I am Black.” To say “I am Black” accepts the imposed identity but transforms it into “an anchor of subjectivity…a positive discourse of self-identification’ (“Mapping the Margins,” quoted in Lindsay, p. 138). Think of the way certain gay people have embraced the insult “queer” and turned it into “Queer,” a proud assertion of identity. For Critical Race Theory, Black identity is a “matter of lived experience no one has standing to challenge” (“Mapping the Margins,” quoted in Lindsay, p. 137).

According to Lindsay, Crenshaw’s contribution to CRT was to figure out a way to incorporate the advantages of postmodern constructivism while making the category of race-identity immune from deconstruction. The assertion “I am Black” is irrefutable. Thanks to Crenshaw and others, CRT is Critical and Constructivist, that is, neo-Marxist and postmodern. It can exempt itself from the critique it makes of others. Liberal accusations of racism in CRT or postmodern attempts to deconstruct it will be interpreted as manifestations of systemic racism and white supremacy.

What Do Critical Race Theorists Believe?

2 Replies

Today we continue our review and dialogue with James Lindsay, Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory. In Chapter Two, Lindsay lays out CRT’s core beliefs under twelve headings. The precise wording is not as important as the picture they paint of the CRT worldview and agenda.

The Twelve-Part CRT Creed

Racism is the ordinary and permanent state of society. The whole system of society has been constructed to benefit white people and disadvantage people of color. In examining any situation “The question [under CRT] is not ‘did racism take place”? but ‘how did racism manifest in that situation” (Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, p. 7; quoted on p. 32). Racism is so woven into the system that it cannot be rooted out apart from a complete transformation of society.

White people do not act to benefit people of color unless it is in their interest. This thesis was popularized by Dereck Bell in 1970 and is known as the “Interest-Convergence Thesis.” Under this thesis, school desegregation (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) and other civil rights “advances” were enacted primarily to serve the purposes of whites. The system cannot act otherwise than to benefit those in charge of the system. The effect of this thesis is to cast a pall of suspicion over every interaction between whites and non-whites no matter how innocent it appears to those not sensitized.

Material conditions determine one’s character, values, and choices. The problems that beset minoritized communities today—crime, poverty, illiteracy, etc.— are the legacy of past racism. They are not the result of character flaws.

Race is socially constructed—not biologically given—and imposed by white people to maintain white dominance. Though CRT denies “race essentialism,” it nevertheless affirms that imposed race categories create a “structurally real” racial identity in a way that determines the lived reality and identity of minoritized groups.

Social structures—law, customs, policies, values—determine the positions of different groups within the power dynamics of a society. Lindsay explains, “While there is nothing [biologically] essential to being black or white, there is something structurally essential to being black or white in a white-dominant system” (p. 47; emphasis added). That is to say, “Whiteness” and “Blackness,” though features of an artificially constructed social order, determine the feelings, place, and identity of every black or white individual within this order as unavoidably as if they were written into the biology of each. As Lindsay points out, this belief grounds the logic of identity politics.

People of color—the oppressed, the minoritized—possess privileged access to knowledge white people do not have. One’s oppressed position within the power structure of society “brings with it a presumed competence to speak about race and racism” not possessed by whites (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 9; quoted in Lindsay, p. 49). This positionality within the system gives minorities a “unique voice of color” that “is deemed to be authoritative and beyond contradiction” (p. 49). It is impossible for a white person to disagree with CRT, because CRT claims to be the authoritative source for the authentic “voice of color.”

CRT privileges storytelling, narrative-weaving, and counterstorytelling above rational argument and fact-based reasoning. CRT uses fictional stories, allegories, and parables to create narrative realities that “challenge prevailing narratives, stereotypes, and expectations…about race” (p. 52). Though such a storytelling approach can be persuasive to a receptive audience, it can be abused. Lindsay observes, “As a result of leaning upon storytelling…Critical Race Theory often presents claims of racism in situations where the evidence doesn’t support it and then considers requests for evidence to be evidence of further racism” (p. 56).

Standard narratives of American history are written from the perspective of the dominant group and must be subverted and revised to favor minority perspectives. Quoting Critical Race Theory: An Introduction: “Revisionist history examines America’s historical record, replacing comforting majoritarian interpretations of events with ones that square more accurately with minorities’ experiences. It also offers evidence, sometimes suppressed, in that very record, to support those interpretations” (Delgado and Stefancic, p. 20; Lindsay, p. 57). This belief is clearly a subcategory of the one above. CRT constructs revised historical narratives that subvert the legitimating narratives of the dominant (white) order whether they are plausible by the standard methods developed by professional historians or not.

Such liberal principles as color blindness, individual rights, equality under law, economic freedom, freedom of speech, reinforce and perpetuate the status quo of white supremacy. In their critique of liberalism, Sensoy and DiAngelo assert that “The logic of individual autonomy that underlies liberal humanism…[keeps] the marginalized in their place by obscuring the larger structural systems of inequality. In other words, it fooled people into believing that they had more freedom and choice than societal structures actually allow” (Is Every one Really Free? p 5; quoted in Lindsay, p. 60). Liberalism provides excuses for white people to benefit from the racist system with a clear conscience and constructs convenient explanations for why inequality among racial groups persists. As long as the liberal order remains, white people will never freely give up their privileges to create racial equity. Hence CRT favors socialism above liberalism.

In CRT, whiteness is a kind of property—equivalent to “private property” in Marxism—which must be abolished if true equality is to be achieved. Whiteness—a rather diffuse concept—is the sum total of the exclusive privileges white people give to themselves along with their justifications and the mechanisms for their preservation. Whiteness is held as a kind of property justified in law by a right of exclusive use. Whiteness must be abolished. According to Lindsay,

“Critical Race Theory regards ‘whiteness as a property’ because it enables them to transition the Communist Revolution out of the economic sphere and into the racial-cultural sphere—with race made the central construct for understanding inequality. To become ‘less white’ and to ‘disrupt whiteness’ is to attempt to fulfill Marx’s Communist vision of the abolition of bourgeois private property in a new domain to which the American culture is more sensitive” (p. 67).

Intersectionality: people within oppressed groups must not be identified primarily as unique individuals but as members of intersecting groups. A person may be black and female or black, male, and gay, etc. and be oppressed from more than one angle. The point of intersectionality is to open the eyes of all oppressed groups—so different in many respects—to their common identity as oppressed and generate a common front against systemic oppression.

Antiracism is the practical strategy for implementing CRT. The first thing to get clear is that “antiracism” does not mean color blindness or race neutrality. It means replacing policies that promote inequality with policies that institute equity among groups. Ibram X Kendi proposes enacting a constitutional amendment establishing a Department of Antiracism. He describes its work as being:

…preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure that they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas (Interview with Politico Magazine, 2019).

The Department of Antiracism would be independent of Executive, Judicial, and Legislative oversight and would be staffed by “formally trained experts on racism” (Interview with Politico Magazine, 2019).

Kendi says elsewhere,

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination (How to Be an Antiracist, p. 19; quoted in Lindsay, p. 75).

Two-Sentence Summary

CRT’s belief system can be summarized in three words:

White America stinks!

Summarizing its agenda takes thirteen words:

Burn it to the ground and build a Socialist order ruled by Antiracists.

What Is “Critical Race Theory”?

Leave a reply

Today I will begin a series of essays in review and dialogue with James Lindsay’s book Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis (Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2022). This book addresses matters of great importance to the church, Christian higher education, and American society. As readers of this blog know, I try to stay away from partisan political issues. My central aim has always been to help Christian believers, individually and corporately, to think clearly about their faith and remain true to the original, biblical faith in confusing times. In so far as I touch on politically controversial issues, I do so only in service to this central aim.

My Political Philosophy

You would not believe me if I claimed to have no political philosophy. So, let me tell you where I am coming from. I believe that the American constitutional order, along with the original Bill of Rights (and most of the later Amendments) set up in 1787/90, has been a great blessing to the church and the world. I believe the liberal order thus instituted—limited government, separation of powers, the rule of law, representative democracy, individual rights, personal, religious and economic freedom, equality before the law, etc.—is the best system of government ever devised. I am instinctively suspicious of any movement toward state control of private spaces in the name of public good. I reject all dreams of humanly constructed utopias—anarchist, communist or theocratic.

Overview

As is obvious from his book’s title, Lindsay argues that Critical Race Theory (CRT) should be understood as “race Marxism;” that is, CRT is a Marxist program that makes race instead of economic class “the central construct for understanding inequality” (p. 5) in society. We cannot grasp CRT’s convoluted vocabulary, methods and aims, asserts Lindsay, unless we first understand it as a Marxist program. Lindsay supports this charge with quotes from the original writings of the movement and a thorough examination of its historical antecedents. The book contains six chapters and 297 pages:

  • 1. Defining Critical Race Theory
  • 2. What Critical Race Theory Believes
  • 3. The Proximate Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory
  • 4. The Deep Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory
  • 5. Critical Race Praxis—How Critical Race Theory Operates
  • 6. What Can We Do About Critical Race Theory

Defining Critical Race Theory

CRT is a belief system and an activist program, originally centered in the nation’s elite law schools (in the 1970s and 1980s) but now present in almost every college and university in America. It asserts the belief that American society is, and always has been, constructed on a foundation of white supremacy. America is racist to the core. CRT insists that the system of government that I praised above—the American constitutional order, limited government, separation of powers, the rule of law, representative democracy, individual rights, personal, religious and economic freedom, equality before the law—puts people of color at a disadvantage and was designed from the beginning with this end in mind. It cannot be fixed from within but must be replaced with a new socialist order empowered to commandeer and reallocate economic and social goods to create equity among racial groups.

Lindsay quotes CRT insiders Richard Delgado and Jean Stefrancic (p. 26):

What is Critical Race Theory? The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power…Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law” (From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, NYU Press, 2001).

Lindsay provides his outsider definition of CRT:

Critical Race Theory is a revolutionary and broadly neo-Marxist mode of activism based upon the belief that the fundamental organizing principle of society is “systemic racism,” which it asserts was created and is maintained by white people in order to preserve a social structure that provides a multitude of unjust advantages over people of color, especially blacks (p. 16, bold and italics original).

Academic Interest Only?

I hope you will stick with me as I take you through Lindsay’s argument. He argues that CRT is not just another kooky academic theory. It is of a piece with the Marxist utopian visions that can be implemented only by totalitarian regimes, which have murdered hundreds of millions only to fail time and again. CRT must not be mistaken for liberalism or progressivism. It is intolerant and regressive. It is not compatible with Christianity or belief in God. It is a replacement for God and Christ. It is not truly antiracist but racist. Indeed, Lindsay finds the “Iron Law of Woke Projection” to be true every time: Of whatever crime or sin CRT accuses its opponents, you can be sure that it is guilty of the same.

Some Questions for the American System of Education: Part Two—My Answers

Leave a reply

Today, I want to propose some answers to the questions I asked in my previous post. But I want to make it clear up front that it is not my purpose to propose simple (or complex) solutions to complicated and likely intractable social problems. My goal is to shed light on these social problems so that we as individuals, families, and churches can make the best decisions in areas over which we have some immediate control.

What’s the Purpose of Children’s Education?

1. Why are there more illiterate people today than before the government took over most children’s education?

I am recalling this from my reading in the history of education in America, but I remember that the literacy rate in Massachusetts in 1780, when all schooling was private, was about 90% . Clearly the Massachusetts Puritans valued universal literacy. I can only speculate about the deterioration.

I think the decline probably reflects an underlying social, moral, and spiritual breakdown in culture: (1) the breakdown of the traditional family—divorce, fatherlessness, and decline of church going; (2) the decline of the buying power of the average income and the accompanying increase of two-income middle class family; (3) the increase of an entitlement mentality and the decrease of the notion of sacrifice; the rise of “I-deserve-a-little-happiness” thinking; (4) the transformation from thinking of education as a privilege to be treasured to a right that can be taken for granted; (5) the rise of the permissive society, especially permissive parenting. Very few children are self-motivated. They need guidance and discipline; (6) The fatalism and lost of hope in some subcultures that getting an education is the way toward economic and cultural advancement.

2. Why does it take 12 years to educate a child?

I am certain that I could have learned everything I learned in 12 years in half the time. I wonder why such a waste of time? This 12-year calendar must be more about modern theories of child psychology and development than intellectual progress. Nowadays, kids don’t grow up until 30 years of age, at least the ones that go to college. What’s the problem?

If the entire 12 years were spent efficiently on academics, high school graduates would be prepared for professional and graduate schools right out of high school. They would not need to take remedial English and math courses or learn basic history in colleges. However instead of academics, schools seem to take on the general task of parenting children through the developmental stages of their lives. Not only so, schools take on the quasi-political role of socializing children into their vision of a diverse and pluralistic society viewed through the lens of the oppressor/oppressed and privilege/prejudice analysis. In obvious ways, those who benefit from expanding the scope of the public school system, promote such a whole of life philosophy.

3. Why is high school called “high” school?

High school was called “high” because it taught advanced subjects and skills beyond those learned in grammar school. The term, though not the modern institution, originated in the Middle Ages. In colonial times most college students were minors from 13 to 16 years of age. Their main preparation for college was learning math and language skills in schools or via private tutoring. Colonial and early American colleges prepared students to study for the professions in medicine, the ministry, and law. High schools in America were not originally designed for college preparation but to prepare students to transition to professions that required literacy and mathematical skills but not classical professional training.

Needless to say, modern high schools are no longer “advanced” and many students graduate with a high school diploma but not a “high” school education. Moreover, high schools differ dramatically in the quality of education they provide. Clearly, grade and degree inflation have eroded the value of high school and four-year college degrees.

Why has this happened? I think it has to do with the six problems I dealt with in question #1. When education becomes a right, it will be taken for granted. Schooling will replace education and diplomas will replace knowledge and skills.

4. Why do public schools teach to the average student when this practice results in intelligent and interested students not learning up to their potential and the less than average students getting overwhelmed?

Let’s face it. We are not all born equal in every respect. Each person has their own gifts, and there are different kinds of intelligence. But calculus, chemistry and logic are not for everyone. Some children can be amazing mechanics and plumbers. We need them and should celebrate their skills. But not everyone will make a good Wall Street analyst. So, let’s help each child find their gifts and make their particular contribution to the common good.

Perhaps we should rethink our naive view of the meaning of equality, democracy, and equal opportunity. We could begin to direct and track children at an early age—always leaving open each track to all in case we misjudge a child’s abilities and interests. Every child is precious, but it does not honor their value to press them all into the same shape.

5. Why do the sociopolitical aims of the public education system rank so high among its priorities?

Why are schools so political these days? And why does their politics lean so heavily to the left? I have lots of opinions on why this is the case. But first, we need to remember that the political public school classroom is not a recent development. The public school system has always been political, but explicitly so at least since around 1830 when Horace Mann succeeded in getting the State of Massachusetts to set up its public school system modeled on the German state system. Public schools were designed from the beginning to serve the purposes of the state. It may not seem like it, but measured by the culture of their day, the first public schools were progressive, and they are still that way today. Only what counts as progressive has changed.

Public schools were never primarily tailored for students’ and parents’ aspirations as individuals and families. Their function has always been to serve the socio-economic interests of the governmental and business classes. “Public” means publicly funded and administered and designed to serve the “common good” as defined by those in power. Again: nothing “public” is designed specifically for you, your kids, and your family. Once set up, however, the public system, like all institutions, takes on a life of its own and puts its survival and comfort above all things. Public school teachers, whatever noble motives many of them have as individuals, are trained in teacher education colleges, which are some of the most liberal/progressive places in left-leaning American academia.

5. Why don’t parents demand a better education for their children?

The lives today’s parents want to live is built around having their kids from years 5-18 occupied for 8 hours per day five days a week by schools. They seem to think they have no alternative. Parental abdication gives schools too much power over your flesh and blood. Schools become the defacto (and while they are on school grounds the legal) guardians and protectors of your children. But who guards the guardians? Who teaches them what is good and bad, right and wrong, normal and perverse while you are not in the room? Again, why don’t parents demand a better education for their children? Some do, but those who don’t avoid it because it’s easier not to do so.

Next Time: Who Needs A College Education and Why?

Is Liberation Theology Christian?

Leave a reply

I am taking a break from my essays on higher education to ask, “Is Liberation Theology Christian?” A few years ago, I would have answered this question, “It depends.” Perhaps that was because I knew it only from books. But now my first impulse is to say “No!” because I find myself surrounded by “liberation” theologians, and I know firsthand where they are coming from. It does not matter what they focused on in graduate school—biblical studies, church history, systematic theology or practical theology—everything is about liberating the oppressed. They’ve multiplied like rabbits. It seems that within the past 10 years, every theology graduate program in America decided that the only subject worth studying is oppression and liberation. Everybody is a social ethicist and a political activist. And you advance your academic career by discovering new classes of oppressed people and ever more subtle ways oppressors oppress their victims.

Before I go further into my complaint, I should probably define liberation theology. Liberation theology is a general term for any system of theological thought that privileges “liberation” as the lens through which it views all the topics usually studied in Christian theology. It evaluates every theological utterance by its tendency to oppress or liberate some group of people. There are no neutral theological statements! Everything is political, and everyone has an agenda. The purpose of liberation theology is to critique theologies that justify oppression and construct theologies that justify the efforts of designated oppressed groups to liberate themselves. It is not to listen to the word of God, repeat it to the church, and obey it.

What kind of oppression does liberation theology have in mind? Not sin, death, and the Devil! These three are the classic oppressors of humankind from which traditional Christianity sought liberation through the gracious saving action of the Father, Son, and Spirit. In liberation theology, the oppressors are human beings and the social structures they create. Liberation theologians work to expose and critique the capitalism, patriarchy, white racism, homophobia, colonialism, transphobia, etc., that they see permeating American society. Liberation theology focuses on political liberation. And it draws on the socio-political analysis of Karl Marx and his contemporary followers often called neo-Marxists. They divide the world into the oppressor classes and the oppressed classes. It’s a very simple analysis of a very complicated world. And from this simple analysis liberation theologians derive a simple theology that divides people into good and bad, guilty and innocent based on group identity. The oppressors can make no defense and the oppressed can give no offense.

What gives these liberation theologies the appearance of being Christian? The simple answer to this question is that they argue that the God of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus Christ always took the side of the oppressed. Liberation theologians select such prooftexts as the Exodus story, some of Jesus’s statements, some of his interactions with the poor and rich, and a few other isolated statements in the Old and New Testaments. They sprinkle these quotes within an already complete system of social and political thought derived from Karl Marx and lead the reader to leap to the conclusion that the whole system springs from the essence of Christianity. But Christianity is completely superfluous to the doctrine. It is added to tickle Christian ears and, frankly, to deceive them.

Why do I say that liberation theology is not Christian? (1) Read any liberation theology you please—feminist, Black, womanist, gay, queer, and Latin American—and you will always find that the subjective experience of these groups is considered a divine revelation as authoritative, if not more so, than Scripture. No reading of Scripture, no matter how obvious to the ordinary reader, will be allow to subvert the “truth” of the subjective experience of oppression. But in any theology worthy of the designation “Christian,” Scripture must be acknowledged as the norm of all theological doctrine and ethics, and to reject this norm is to cease to be Christian. To continue posing as Christian is to lie and deceive. (2) Liberation theology selects one theme within Scripture—liberation—and subordinates everything else to it. Liberation theology does not therefore present the fulness of the gospel or the apostolic teaching; and this distortion through omission is a textbook definition of heresy.

Institutional Autonomy and Academic Freedom: The Cases of Dartmouth, AAUP Declaration, and Rabban, Academic Freedom

Leave a reply

In this post, I will follow up on my previous essay of January 13, 2025, “Can Christian Colleges Survive.” In that essay, I reviewed and responded to a new book by David Rabban: Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Harvard, 2024). I want now to explore a connection I noticed when reading Rabban’s book, that is, the connection among the State of New Hampshire’s rationale for rewriting the Dartmouth College charter, the American Association of University Professors’ rationale for asserting its theory of academic freedom, and David Rabban’s argument for making academic freedom a First Amendment right.

As with the earlier post, I hope you will read it and pass it on to other interested parties, especially to trustees, administrators, and faculty in Christian colleges.

Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819)*

Legally, there were two issues in this case: (1) Is Dartmouth’s charter (1769) a “contract” under the “impairment of contracts” clause of the US Constitution (Art. I. 10. 1); and if so, (2) did the NH legislature “impair” said contract in its 1816 legislation changing the charter of the college?

In its legal defense of the legislation, New Hampshire denied that Dartmouth’s charter is a contract subject to constitutional protection or that the legislature impaired the “contract” through its action. The Trustees argued in the affirmative in both cases. In this essay, however, I want to focus not on the legal but on the moral/social utilitarian arguments made by the NH legislature to justify the legislation.

The NH legislature argued that the Dartmouth charter was granted for the public good, therefore Dartmouth is a public institution and falls under the authority of the state of NH to regulate matters involving public welfare. The first paragraph of the New Hampshire law in question reads as follows:

WHEREAS knowledge and learning generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government, and extending the opportunities and advantages of education is highly conducive to promote this end, and by the constitution it is made the duty of the legislators and magistrates, to cherish the interests of literature, and the sciences, and all seminaries established for their advancement—and as the college of the State may, in the opinion of the legislature be rendered more extensively useful ; Therefore…(p. 539).

Then follows a series of changes that amount to confiscation of the college by the State of New Hampshire.

Daniel Webster presented the case for the Trustees against the State of New Hampshire. Webster refutes the idea that a contract among private parties to carry out education and other works advantageous to the general public makes an institution a public institution in the legal sense. Webster emphasizes this point over and over in different contexts:

The granting of the corporation is but making the trust perpetual, and does not alter the nature of the charity. The very object sought in obtaining such charter, and in giving property to such a corporation, is to make and keep it private property, and to clothe it with all the security and inviolability of private property. The intent is; that there shall be a legal private ownership, and that the legal owners shall maintain and protect the property, for the benefit of those for whose use it was designed. Whoever endowed the public? Whoever appointed a legislature to administer his charity? Or who ever heard, before, that a gift to a College, or Hospital, or an Asylum, was, in reality, nothing but a gift to the State? (p. 574).

…

The case before the Court is not of ordinary importance, nor of everyday occurrence. It affects not this college only, but every college, and all the literary institutions of the country. They have flourished, hitherto, and have become in a high degree respectable and useful to the Community. They have all a common principle of existence, the inviolability of their charters. It will be a dangerous, a most dangerous experiment, to hold these institutions subject to the rise and fall of popular parties, and the fluctuations of political opinions. If the franchise may be at any time taken away, or impaired, the property also may be taken away, or its use perverted. Benefactors will have no certainty of effecting the object of their bounty; and learned men will be deterred from devoting themselves to the service of such institutions, from the precarious title of their offices. Colleges and halls will be deserted by all better spirits, and become a theatre for the contention of politics. Party and faction will be cherished in the places consecrated to piety and learning. These consequences are neither remote nor possible only. They are certain and immediate (pp. 598-99).

In sum, Webster’s point is this: charitable institutions (a college in this case) aim to benefit the public. The state has an interest in promoting the public good. But this overlapping interest does not give the state a legal right to assert control and manage the institution.

Mr. Joseph Hopkinson, Webster’s co-counsel, drives the same point home quite vigorously:

It is true, that a college, in a popular sense, is a public institution, because its uses are public, and its benefits may be enjoyed by all who choose to enjoy them. But in a legal and technical sense, they are not public institutions, but private charities. Corporations may, therefore, be very well said to be for public use, of which the property and privileges are yet private. Indeed, there may be supposed to be an ultimate reference to the public good, in granting all charters of incorporation; but this does not change the property from private to public. If the property of this corporation be public property, that is, property belonging to the State, when did it become so? It was once private property; when was it surrendered to the public? The object in obtaining the charter, was not surely to transfer the property to the public, but to secure it forever in the hands of those with whom the original owners saw fit to entrust it (pp. 616-617).

Chief Justice Marshall writes for the Supreme Court in its decision favoring the Trustees of Dartmouth College against Woodward. In his carefully reasoned opinion, Justice Marshall argues that the New Hampshire legislature violated the US constitution’s stricture against the impairment of contracts. Dartmouth is a private charitable institution and not a public institution subject to state control:

That education is an object of national concern, and a proper subject of legislation, all admit. That there may be an institution founded by government, and placed entirely under its immediate control, the officers of which would be public officers, amenable exclusively to government, none will deny. But is Dartmouth College such an institution? Is education altogether in the hands of government? Does every teacher of youth become a public officer, and do donations for the purpose of education necessarily become public property, so far that the will of the legislature, not the will of the donor, becomes the law of the donation? These questions are of serious ‘moment to society, and deserve to be well considered. (p. 634).

Marshall concludes:

But the Court has deemed it unnecessary to investigate this particular point, being of opinion, on general principles, that in these private eleemosynary institutions, the body corporate, as possessing the whole legal and equitable interest, and completely representing the donors, for the purpose of executing the trust, has rights which are protected by the constitution.

It results from this opinion, that the acts of the legislature of New-Hampshire, which are stated in the special verdict found in this cause, are repugnant to the constitution of the United States; and that the judgment on this special verdict ought to have been for the plaintiffs. The judgment of the State Court must, therefore, be reversed (p. 654).

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward for the freedom of private institutions to conduct their business free from state interference. And as we shall see, the principle established in this case is still of great importance today. The insidious logic of the NH legislature is still being employed—under different guises to be sure—to reduce the autonomy of private non-sectarian and Christian colleges. And Daniel Webster’s argument and Justice Marshall’s decision are still the most potent responses to a government’s assertion of a right to control higher education in private colleges.

AAUP 1915 Declaration

In the American Association of University Professors’ 1915 “Declaration on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure” we meet again, I shall argue, the NH equivocation between the word “public” used to mean “people in general” and to mean “publicly owned and governmentally controlled.” The Declaration argues that institutions that call themselves colleges and claim to promote the public good are “public trusts” and must therefore accept a definition of academic freedom and tenure commensurate with their self-incurred obligation to serve the good of the public as a whole. That is to say, a college’s claim to promote the good of society obligates it to adopt a non-sectarian stance. Like the State of New Hampshire of 1816, the Declaration imposes its own definition of the “public good” on all institutions that lay claim to the title of college or university. All other ways of serving the public are “proprietary” (“private trusts”), not true universities. The Declaration does not argue that a college’s claim to promote the common good places it within the sphere of direct state control (as in the Dartmouth case). It asserts, rather, that “proprietary” colleges are not truly academic institutions and that their claims to benefit the public, and therefore to be worthy of public support, are misleading or false:

Trustees of such universities or colleges have no moral right to bind the reason or the conscience of any professor. All claim to such right is waived by the appeal to the general public for contributions and for moral support in the maintenance, not of a propaganda, but of a non-partisan institution of learning.

Colleges that do not acknowledge “unfettered” academic freedom are not truly academic, not truly a benefit to the public; they are second rate at best.

The Declaration argues that any college that claims to benefit society at large and appeals to members of the public for support is a “public trust” and therefore must become truly “non-partisan” and free from all religious, political, or commercial interests. Hence it must allow unfettered academic freedom to its professors. This is the same argument made by the New Hampshire legislature for its right to confiscate Dartmouth college and rejected by the Marshall Supreme Court. However, in this instance the argument is used not by a state to justify confiscating private colleges, but by an elite professorial class to discredit, intimidate, and shame colleges founded to serve the church or other private causes.

Rabban and the First Amendment right of academic freedom

David Rabban in Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right,** intensifies the AAUP’s argument outlined above and transforms academic freedom from a professional norm into a First Amendment right, thus justifying (like NH in the Dartmouth Case) the intrusion of the government into the heart of the university–private as well as state owned .

As I documented in the previous essay,** Rabban argues (1) that the public benefit generated by professors justifies protecting their academic speech as a special First Amendment right; and (2) that since 1957 the Supreme Court has steadily moved toward asserting a First Amendment right of academic freedom.

Without explicitly saying so, Rabban in effect argues that the claim by a college to be an institution of higher learning that provides a good to the public and employs “professors” to function in this role should come under the jurisdiction of the First Amendment. Clearly, Rabban resurrects the utilitarian/quasi-legal reasoning used in the New Hampshire legislature’s legislation in the 1816 takeover of Dartmouth college. Professors, precisely as members of the professorate, Rabban argues, should have the constitutionally protected right of academic freedom against state or institutional abridgment.

The academic speech of individual professors, no matter where they teach, has become legally protected speech as long as it is truly “academic,” which determination must be made solely by the professorial community. Whether or not a professor’s speech is academic cannot be decided by trustees, judges or administrators. Therefore, the authority to regulate professorial expression has been transferred from the trustees of the college to the government, specifically the US government. States may also decide independently to give academic freedom special state constitutional protection.

This theory aims to achieve what the New Hampshire legislature attempted to achieve in Trustees v. Woodward. However, instead of taking a top-down approach, using the sovereign power of the state, opponents of private institutional autonomy start from the bottom, pitting individual professorial constitutional rights against state legislatures and college trustees. By freeing professors from responsibility to the trustees in the use of their “academic” speech, the profession, backed up by the federal courts, takes control of the core activity of the college. It’s a kind of nationalization of a college’s faculty backed up by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Academically, it levels or homogenizes all colleges and universities in the US.

In other words, treating academic freedom as a special First Amendment right accomplishes what the NH legislature attempted to do to Dartmouth in 1816 and failed to accomplish. But instead of handing control to state legislatures, it places it in the hands of the federal courts. It gives constitutional backing to the AAUP Declaration’s utilitarian and moral arguments.

*This hyperlink takes you to the complete, 199-page record of the case, including the original 1767 charter, the full texts of the 1816 New Hampshire law taking over Dartmouth college, the arguments of the plaintiff  (Trustees of Dartmouth College) and the defendant (Woodward, New Hampshire’s recently appointed treasure of Dartmouth University), and Chief Justice Marshall’s decision.

**See my previous post “Can Christian Colleges Survive” (January 13, 2025).

Can Christian Colleges Survive if “Academic Freedom” becomes a First Amendment Right?

Leave a reply

This post consists of a review and response to David M. Rabban, Academic Freedom: From Professional Norm to First Amendment Right (Harvard University Press, 2024). PP. 369.

Introduction

From the founding of Harvard College in 1636 to today, higher education has been of huge concern to American society. And until a hundred and twenty-five years ago, most colleges were connected to the church and in one way or another promoted Christianity. Over the course of the past century, however, colleges and universities have disengaged first from orthodox Christianity to adopt liberal Christianity, then on to promoting rationalistic secularity. Now the postmodern university as an institution no longer pursues truth, quests for knowledge, believes in humanity, or possesses a vision of the good. It’s about the quest for power through ideology and social activism. As I said in a previous post, a university that no longer believes in truth no longer believes in itself. It is lost. Students leave knowing less than when they arrived.

In my view, now more than ever, from a social point of view as well as a religious point of view, we need Christian colleges and universities. These institutions may be, along with the church, among the last refuges of belief in the objective reality of the good, true, and beautiful. Now is not the time for Christian colleges to give up their faith and assimilate to the already lost cause of the secular/postmodern university. And this is the reason I have written so much about academic freedom and other higher education topics on this blog.

This “review and response” is longer than my usual posts, and not everyone will wish to work through it in one sitting. But if you are interested in the future of the Christian college, I hope you will read it and pass it on to other interested parties…especially trustees, administrators, and faculty in Christian colleges.

Review

Summary of the Book’s Argument

Rabban traces the transformation of academic freedom from a generally accepted professional norm without a special legal grounding to a First Amendment right. In its 1819 decision in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, the Supreme Court adjudicated the case through the “impairments of contracts” clause of the US Constitution (Art. I. 10. 1). In the late nineteenth century, the Court used the “due process” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as a doctrinal basis in some cases, but from 1957 onward it has increasingly used the First Amendment (Sweezy v. New Hampshire). Though in the 1960s, the Supreme Court identified academic freedom as “a special concern of the First Amendment” (Justice Brennen in Keyishian v. Board of Regents), Rabban notes that the Supreme Court has yet to clarify and elaborate its meaning. Because of its unsettled status, “judges sometimes refer to the First Amendment right of academic freedom, sometimes to the First Amendment generally, sometimes to employee-speech jurisprudence, and sometimes to all three simultaneously without differentiating them” (p. 301). Rabban writes this book to clarify this confusion and establish academic freedom as a special First Amendment right.

Chapter-by-Chapter Summary

Chapter 1 Defining Academic Freedom in the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration

The AAUP’s 1915 “Declaration of Principles of Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure” set forth a definition of “academic freedom” that is still used today. Academic freedom concerns the professional necessity for professors to research, write, and teach within their academic expertise (and only that expertise) without hindrance from within or without the university. This special freedom given to professors is justified, the Declaration contended, because it serves the advancement of knowledge and the common good of society. The question of what qualifies as “academic speech” must be settled by one’s peers, not administrators, board members, or judges.

Chapter 2 Initial Applications of the Constitution to the University

The most famous case dealing with higher education is that of Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819). This case established the distinction between public and private corporations, limiting state actions in relation to the latter. In Berea College v. Kentucky (1908), the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Kentucky state supreme court’s decision affirming the state’s right to forbid Berea College from conducting classes with blacks and whites together. Though the Court dealt with the case under the “impairments of contract” clause of the US Constitution, it denied that Kentucky had in fact violated that clause. Justice Harlan’s dissent, in contrast, relied on the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause.

Chapter 3 The Emergence of Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right

Rabban introduces the chapter with these words, noting a decisive shift in the jurisprudence of academic freedom from conflicts between state and the trustees to the relationship between the state and professors.

Whereas the 1915 Declaration focused on the relationship of professors to trustees, and the earlier application of the Constitution to the university under the impairment of contracts clause focused on the relationship of the state to the trustees, these cases focused on the relationship of the state to professors (p. 52).

Many of the cases of the 1950s and 1960s dealt with the perceived threat of communist infiltration of American universities.

The first mention of “academic freedom” in a Supreme Court case was a dissent by Justice Douglas in Adler v. Board of Education (1952). The first Supreme Court decision in which the majority opinion included academic freedom within First Amendment rights was Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 1957. Chief Justice Warren wrote for the majority. Justice Frankfurter wrote a concurring opinion that speaks of “the dependence of a free society on free universities” (p. 69). Frankfurter (quoting a document written by a South African group of scholars in protest of apartheid) lists four freedoms essential to a university: “to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study” (p. 69). This list of freedoms was quoted many times in the subsequent history of Supreme Court and lower court academic freedom cases. In Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), Justice Brennan “identified academic freedom as a First Amendment right more clearly than had any previous opinion” (p. 76). “Sweezy and Keyishian soon became the starting point for judicial analysis of academic freedom as a First Amendment right” (p. 80).

Chapter 4 The Development of Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right

Rabban puts his finger on the most serious difficulty that arises with giving academic freedom First Amendment status:

Differentiation [between academic freedom as a special and others as general First Amendment rights] would require confronting the argument that a distinctive First Amendment right of academic freedom protects professors more than general First Amendment rights protect everybody else and more than employee-speech jurisprudence protects other public employees (p. 99).

Indeed, this argument was raised as an objection to a special right of academic freedom in a fourth circuit court case, Urofsky v. Gilmore (2000).

In every area of professorial expression (teaching research, publication, intramural speech, etc.), the decisive question about the applicability of academic freedom is whether or not such expression is “academic” and falls within the professional expertise of the professor. Of course, as Rabban discusses later, universities have the institutional academic freedom to determine the curriculum, areas of study, majors offered, budgets, and many other academic aspects of the university. Disputes about extramural speech do not usually fall under academic freedom; they are usually dealt with under general First Amendment jurisprudence.

In his conclusion to this chapter Rabban summarizes the status of the First Amendment right to academic freedom:

As in the cases through Keyishian, the Supreme Court continued to base its decisions on other doctrines even when it recognized and extolled the First Amendment right of academic freedom. But many lower-court decisions relied on this right as the doctrinal vehicle for analyzing and resolving concrete disputes…they generally agreed that the First Amendment right of academic freedom protects the academic content of scholarship and teaching (p. 111).

Chapter 5 The Limited Application of Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right

As we noted in the above quote, even though the courts recognize a First Amendment right of academic freedom, they have not used this doctrine as the basis of their decisions. Instead, they use general First Amendment principles or employee-speech jurisprudence as the doctrinal basis for deciding cases that could have been treated under the First Amendment right of academic freedom.

In cases applying employee-speech jurisprudence, which protects speech by public employees only if it is about a matter of public concern and is not made pursuant to official duties, judges have evaluated whether speech fits within these categories (p. 113).

Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) differentiated for the first time the distinction between the government’s regulation of speech as an employer over employees from its regulation of the speech of citizens in general. It differentiates between “a citizen in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees” (p. 120). Connick v. Meyers (1983) “narrowed the concept of public concern” to avoid a proliferation of constitutional cases. In Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006), the Supreme Court limited protections for government-employee speech by excluding speech that pertains to their “official duties” (p. 121).

Highfield Observation: clearly employee-speech jurisprudence does not conform to the professional norm of academic freedom, because academic freedom must cover speech delivered in the course of carrying out the professor’s official duty.

Chapter 6 A Theory of Academic Freedom as a Distinctive First Amendment Right of Professors

In this chapter, Rabban attempts to show that the only way to do justice to academic freedom is to differentiate it from the general First Amendment right to citizen free speech and employee-speech jurisprudence. The general First Amendment right of free speech is too broad to do justice to the special circumstances of the professorate; it is “egalitarian and individualistic” whereas academic speech is “meritocratic and communitarian” (p. 139). Employee-speech rights are limited at the very place where academic freedom is needed most. Rabban draws on the 1915 AAUP Declaration in crafting his justification for giving professorial academic speech a special status: (1) Professors cannot perform their socially important function, at the heart of their duties, without freedom to teach and write their academic discoveries and theories without hindrance. 2. Academic peers and co-experts alone should determine whether a disputed instance of professor speech is indeed “academic.”

Rabban summarizes crisply:

The distinctive First Amendment theory of academic freedom I propose is justified by the societal value of protecting the expert academic speech of professors whose boundaries are determined through peer review (p. 168).

Highfield Observation: Here we encounter the decisive issues in dealing with academic freedom questions. What counts as “academic” and who decides? Answer: “Academic” is whatever peer professors decide it is. Question: who are these peers? And what academic community are we speaking of and who selects them? These issues become decisive when dealing with academic freedom in Christian higher education. And combined with the institutional side of the equation (institutional academic freedom, the established distinction between private and public, the First Amendment rights of association and religion, institutional autonomy, etc.), it is central to defining academic freedom in a Christian school.

Chapter 7 The Development of Institutional Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right of Universities

In the 1970s, the Supreme Court extended First Amendment protection of academic freedom to universities as institutions. This extension was anticipated by Justice Frankfurter’s enumeration in Sweeezy (1957) of the right of the university “to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study” (p. 171). This list of institutional academic freedom rights forms the basis of the Court’s recent thinking on institutional academic freedom.

In this chapter, Rabban reviews cases in which universities “have asserted their institutional academic freedom to evaluate students and faculty, to regulate scholarship and teaching, and to resist interference from the state” (p. 172). In the famous University of California v. Bakke case (1978), the Court invalidated (by a 5 to 4 margin) the university’s affirmative action program at its medical school. Justice Powell provided the 5th vote for the majority but disagreed with the reasoning of both parties (14th Amendment versus statutory law). Powell recognized [drawing on Frankfurter in Sweezy: “who may be admitted to study”] that a “First Amendment right of institutional academic freedom was the only legal basis for his support of affirmative action for universities” (p. 174).

In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), Justice O’Connor drew on Powell’s brief in Bakke to justify the use of race as a factor in college admissions at the University of Michigan. However, O’Conner used the term “educational autonomy” instead of institutional academic freedom. In his dissent, Justice Thomas argued that the First Amendment does not “authorize a university to do what would otherwise violate the Equal Protection Clause.” (p. 178). In Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023), the Supreme Court invalidated Harvard’s use of race as a factor in student admissions on Fourteenth Amendment grounds, a belated victory for Justice Thomas.

As the cases within the last half century demonstrate, institutional academic freedom (or educational autonomy) and professor academic freedom can conflict; and those conflicts are not easily resolved. In truly academic matters universities may assert many rights against state encroachment and in the broad academic policies (qualities required for appointment and tenure, courses of study, etc.), individual professors do not have an unlimited academic right to do whatever they like, even if it could be construed as an academic judgment.

Chapter 8 A Theory of Academic Freedom as a Distinctive First Amendment Right of Universities

After examining cases wherein institutional academic freedom came under scrutiny, Rabban concludes,

Through numerous decisions about educational issues as well as by protecting the academic freedom of their faculties, universities foster the production and dissemination of knowledge and the education in democratic citizenship that justify First Amendment protection for academic freedom. To qualify for the protection of institutional academic freedom, universities must demonstrate that they have based a decision on educational considerations related to these First Amendment interests. This demonstration depends on convincing evidence that the person or group assessing educational considerations on behalf of the university has sufficient expertise to do so. Assessment of academic quality is the primary responsibility of the faculty, whereas the administration and governing board have a major role in the development of general educational policies…the state may have more legitimate interests in regulating public universities than private ones. To this extent, public universities have less institutional academic freedom (p. 230).

Highfield Observation: Rabban focuses almost totally on public universities. He admits that private universities have more institutional academic freedom (or institutional autonomy) than public ones. He does not attempt to delineate how that greater freedom may be exercised in contrast to state-established universities. Also, he focuses on “academic” institutional freedom and the procedural limits this focus places on universities. But “institutional autonomy,” which includes, but is a broader concept than, institutional academic freedom, may be a better category to protect private, and especially religious colleges, from state encroachment and assertions of professorial academic freedom against the general aims and philosophy of the institution. The reason for this preference is simple. According to Rabban, all things “academic” must be judged so by the faculty. Within this theory, universities possess “institutional academic freedom” only insofar as it facilitates and protects faculty academic freedom. There are no theoretical grounds for the university administration, board, or the state legislature to challenge the faculty’s “academic” judgments.

Chapter 9 Can Institutional Academic Freedom Limit Free Speech?

This chapter focuses on recent controversies over offensive speech on college campuses. May universities create and enforce speech codes censuring hate speech and other forms of offensive expression? Generally, the courts have not upheld university speech codes unless they track with general First Amendment free speech jurisprudence, that is, they limit only speech that fails the “imminent lawless action” test: threats of violence, “fighting words,” etc. And yet, the context of a university as an educational institution places additional restraints on speech. Some speech that would be lawful to utter in the public square would not be appropriate in the classroom. According to Rabban, however, even “offensive” speech should be allowed if it serves a bona fides educational purpose. As an example, a classroom reading from The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn might include the word “nigger.” Rabban argues that teachers should not be compelled to substitute “N-word” for nigger. Institutional academic freedom allows universities more regulation of speech than the government can impose in the public sphere, but it must serve an academic and educational purpose. As one can imagine, there is much danger of subjectivity in defining what speech serves an educational purpose and what speech serves no educational purpose.

Chapter 10 Judicial Review of Conflicting Academic Freedom Claims Between Professors and Universities

The academic freedom claims of individual professors may conflict with academic freedom (or institutional autonomy) claims of universities. These cases often turn on the academic merit of a professor’s research or teaching. The institution’s educational policies outweigh a professor’s academic freedom claims. Abusive, disruptive or “vitriolic attacks” of professors against the administration, for example, are not covered by academic freedom (See Johnson v. Lincoln University 1985). Rabban continues,

Several [cases] concluded that a university cannot balance the loss of funding or other support from a state legislature, alumni, or the public against a professor’s controversial expression on matters of public concern (p. 253; for a list of cases, see fn. 16, p. 353).

Most judges are rightly hesitant to weigh in on the academic or educational merit of an academic freedom claim. But they are free to examine whether or not the parties adhered to the proper procedures or acted in good faith. Judges should rely on peer review for judging academic merit.

Chapter 11 Student Academic Freedom

With reference to the justification of student academic freedom, Rabban argues,

The societal value of the student interest in learning provides a plausible justification for a distinctive theory of student academic freedom. The student interest in learning, while different from the general rights of free speech, promotes the broadly recognized First Amendment values of disseminating knowledge and promoting democratic citizenship (p. 282).

Student academic freedom differs from professorial academic freedom:

Whereas the protection of expert speech that justified academic freedom for faculty does not extend to political expression beyond this expertise, the exercise of political speech by students in extracurricular activities contributes to the learning process that justifies their academic freedom (p. 283).

Student academic freedom covers “student interests in access to knowledge, in disagreeing with the views of their professors, and in fair evaluation” (p. 297).

Response

Thoughts on the Theory of Academic Freedom as a First Amendment Right

What is the distinction between a theory of academic freedom as a First Amendment right and academic freedom as a professional norm? As a professional norm, the academic freedom of professors, colleges, and students is justified the same way other professional norms are justified, that is, the norm inheres in the definition and practice of the profession. The essence of the profession of professor is to think, research, teach, and disseminate knowledge. Subservience to alien authorities within or without the university would redefine the nature of the professorate as a mere mouthpiece of these other parties.

But why define the professorate in a way that includes this type of academic freedom within its definition? According to Rabban, in reliance on the AAUP’s 1915 Declaration, the professorate performs an important service to democratic and progressive society. It serves to advance scientific knowledge and create an informed and critical citizenry. That is to say, its function is to challenge the status quo with a view to progress in all areas of life. To do this effectively, the professorate and the university must be protected from reactionary and conservative forces invested in maintaining the status quo.

However, as a professional norm, an assertion of academic freedom possesses no legal force. It depends on persuasion and soft coercion for its enforcement. It persuades by appealing to the nature of the profession and its service to society. It coerces through mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and rewards and punishments that operate under the control of the profession as represented by the most prestigious universities and the most celebrated professors. This professional elite institutionalizes itself in learned societies, journals, publishers, accrediting bodies, and such advocacy groups as the AAUP and the American Association of Colleges and Universities.  Still, academic freedom as a professional norm possesses no legal force, and as we saw in Rabban, most court cases involving censorship or punishment of professorial expression were adjudicated on other grounds, the “impairment of contracts” clause, the “equal protection” clause, or general First Amendment rights.

Rabban, the AAUP, and other legal scholars want the Supreme Court to recognize and clarify a special First Amendment right of academic freedom. This change would add constitutional force to the profession’s methods of enforcement, which at present are limited to persuasion and soft-coercion. It would give the professorate and individual professors the constitutional right to speak freely in the course of performing their professional duties, without censorship, threats or punishments on all academic matters within their expertise. Clearly, making academic freedom a constitutional right would provide more protection for the professorate than other legal doctrines. Within the narrow sphere of their role as professor and within their expertise, it would allow the courts to treat the activities of professors not merely as those of citizens or employees but as those of professors. Within this sphere, the work of professors would be constitutionally protected from censorship, punishment, or threats of the same from within or without the university.

As the above analysis demonstrates treating academic freedom as a special First Amendment right would give professors more protection than would other legal doctrines. But unlike other legal doctrines that have been applied to disputes about academic freedom, this doctrine focuses only on actions that qualify as “academic” and fall within the expertise of the professor. Who decides what speech qualifies as “academic” and falls within the expertise of a professor? Judges cannot make this determination. According to Rabban, this question must be decided by the professor’s peers. In effect, “academic” means whatever a group of peer professors say it means. That is to say, Rabban provides no substantive definition of “academic” speech. To complicate matters even more, we must also ask who qualifies as a peer and who selects this group of peers?

One has to ask why our society would tolerate a profession that demands freedom to exercise its “academic” expertise as it pleases and to be recognized as the sole arbiter of what counts as academic? Isn’t that rather circular? Must society simply trust that the profession as a whole will disregard its narrow self-interests and do the right thing? Moreover, the profession now wishes to have its demands declared special constitutional rights designed just for it. Why would citizens, state legislators, alumni, and donors continue to support such a profession and the institutions within which they work? Will they not demand some say about what counts as worthy of the designation “academic”? Who, then, will guard the guardians?

The demand that academic freedom be treated as a First Amendment right becomes exponentially troubling from the perspective of the Christian college. In fact, it spells the end of Christian colleges. For, if professors who teach in Christian colleges possess the constitutionally guaranteed freedom to teach and write whatever their disciplinary peers judge to be “academic” and within the expertise of the professors in question, the college’s freedom to carry out its Christian educational mission will be trumped by the consensus of the profession and the courts. Professors in Christian colleges would be free to deny and refute cardinal Christian doctrines and basic Christian moral teaching. Indeed, no one could hinder them from teaching atheism, agnosticism, moral relativism or any other view that peers in their discipline considered of “academic” merit. The Christian college’s legitimacy is denied not only by imposition of elite professional norms but also as a matter of constitutional law!

Hence, I reject Rabban’s conclusion on both social/political and Christian grounds.

Disputed Concepts

The plausibility of the theory of academic freedom articulated in the AAUP Declaration, defended and expanded by Rabban depends on accepting its interpretation of three foundational concepts. And these interpretations, I shall argue, are tendentious and disputable.

1. The Profession. The definition of the profession of professor in the AAUP Declaration omits the socially important task of explaining and defending the wisdom of the past in favor of criticism and discovery of new knowledge. The “professional” college teacher must teach students to be critical of the status quo and become more progressive in their thinking. Apparently, there is no place in the profession for conservatives and traditionalists. This is a narrow and elitest view of the profession borrowed in the late nineteenth century from German universities, which focused almost totally on graduate education and research. But there is no rational ground to exclude from the profession college teachers whose main goal is explaining and defending the wisdom of the past to undergraduates. The job of traditioning its young is a necessary educational task of any society, certainly equal in importance and prior in developmental order to developing researchers and critical thinkers. Critical thinking by those who have no foundations and accepted verities and values leads to nihilism in philosophy and radicalism in politics. No society can long exist without shared values, stories, and traditions.

2. The Academic. As we saw above, Rabban argues that “academic” means whatever the profession says it means. And yet, a profession defined as the AAUP Declaration defines it will always view itself as the only authority that understands the true art and science of the profession. If what you say is not progressive and critical of conservative culture and if you don’t adhere to the dominant methods and conclusions of the “academic” disciplines, your work will not be judged as academic. We need a substantive definition of what counts as academic. I propose that teaching and research that occurs in a school, begins with clear axioms, intuitions, or facts and argues logically for its conclusions should count as academic. In this way, what counts as academic does not depend on inbred group thinking.

3. Peer Review. Peer review is central to the modern theory of academic freedom. If the nature of the profession and the concept of the academic are defined as Rabban defines them, then peer review is essential to proper adjudication of any academic freedom claim. However, if in the review process only members of the profession as it is defined by the AAUP Declaration and Rabban qualify as peers, then the outcome is predetermined: the academic nature of a professor’s work will be judged by the elite standards or prejudices or ideologies that constitute the ethos of the peer group. Professors are not saints or thinking machines! They are just as self-interested and tribal as any other group with common interests. In my view, review committees in academic freedom disputes should include members from outside the profession as a check on inbred group thinking and a surround-the-wagons mentality. No group unchecked by a balance of power and interest can be trusted to be fair to everyone concerned. Nimo iudex in causa sua (No one is judge in their own case!).

Academic Freedom Reconsidered

If the concepts of “the profession,” “the academic” and “peer review” must be broadened beyond the confines of research institutions and scholars engaged in discovery of new knowledge and mentoring the next generation of critical scholars, it follows that the concept of academic freedom must be broadened as well. An undergraduate college that emphasizes the great books or traditional or religious wisdom must embrace a view of academic freedom with a different scope and limits than an elite research university. Professors who desire to transmit, explain and defend traditional wisdom need the academic freedom to do that, and they need institutions that employ such teachers and rewards this kind of teaching. And why shouldn’t students have the academic freedom to study at such a college and to learn from such professors? It would be institutional suicide for a college that exists to provide this kind of education to grant professors academic freedom to criticize, reject, and replace traditional wisdom or religious faith with progressive or radical thought. Nor does it make sense for them to recruit and employ or retain professors with these aspirations. Academic freedom must be broadly conceived so as to be applicable to a wide variety of colleges and universities and a variety of professors. Academic freedom, then, is the freedom to carry out your academic vocation within the scope and limits of the educational philosophy and mission of the college where you teach, be that a research/critical university or a traditional, religious, or classical college. What counts as academic freedom depends on your location within the higher education spectrum. In education as in foot ware, one size does not fit all.

Next time: “Institutional Autonomy and Academic Freedom: The Cases of Dartmouth, AAUP Declaration, and Rabban, Academic Freedom”

Counter-Cultural Christianity for an Upside Down, Inside Out World (Part One)

3 Replies

Today I will begin a series in which I interact with a new book by Christopher F. Rufo: America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything (Broadside Books, 2023). The book documents the growth in influence of the radical left, that is neo-Marxism or Critical Theory, from the 1960s to 2023 in American higher education, government, and corporations. Rufo uncovers the origins of the now familiar leftist theories and programs: Critical Race Theory, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Critical Pedagogy, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Identity Politics, and many others. He introduces us to the most influential theorists and activists of the radical left: Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, Paulo Freire, Derrick Bell, and their students and allies.

In America’s Cultural Revolution, Rufo describes, analyzes and criticizes the radical left from a traditional and conservative position. I will evaluate the radical left from a Christian perspective. Like Rufo, I am skeptical of socialism and don’t want to live under the rule of neo-Marxist politicians and I lament the destructive impact of the radical left on American education. I am grateful to Rufo for his efforts to inform the American people about the dangers coming from the Left.  In this series, however, sticking to what I know best, I want to warn individual believers, the church as a corporate body and Christian educators about the radical left’s pervasive influence on the cultural air they breathe.

The book is divided into four parts with four or five chapters within each part. The parts cover roughly the same span of time (1968-2023) but from different angles. Each part centers on a theme and a person: 1. Revolution and Herbert Marcuse; 2. Race and Angela Davis; 3. Education and Paulo Freire; 4. Power and Derrick Bell. I will review one part in each post and follow these essays with some applications to the church and Christian education.

Part I: Revolution

1. Herbert Marcuse: Father of the Revolution

Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) was born in Germany of Jewish parents. During World War I, Marcuse joined the Social Democrat Party, but soon became disillusioned because of the party’s accommodation to the old establishment. He pursued a doctorate at the University of Freiberg, studying under Martin Heidegger and writing a dissertation on the philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel. With the rise of Adolf Hitler, he fled first to Switzerland, France, and then to the United States. He taught at Brandeis University and then at the University of California, San Diego. Marcuse never wavered from his commitment to socialism as the most democratic form of political society and the most fitted to human nature. His main intellectual project for the rest of his life was creating a form of Marxism responsive to the new conditions of the post WW II situation in the Western world. Classical Marxism theorized that the working class, oppressed as they were by the capitalists, was the natural place for the socialist revolution to begin. By the 1950s, however, labor laws, unions, and increases in productivity, had transformed the Western working class into the comfortable and conservative middle class. Bitterly disappointed, Marcuse had to look elsewhere for potential revolutionaries. His “new left” had to be an alliance between the class of (mostly) white “intellectuals” and the black urban population. Race rather than class would be the new dividing line between oppressor and oppressed.

Marcuse articulated his “New Left” theory in a series of books: One-Dimensional Man (1964), Critique of Pure Tolerance (1965), Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (1968), An Essay on Liberation (1969), and Counter Revolution and Revolt (1972). In these writings he argued that the masses of people can be awakened to their oppressed status only by destabilizing the social order. Revolutionaries have every right to use violence to disrupt and protest the systemically unjust order. Generations of revolutionaries from the Black Liberation Army (1970s) to Black Lives Matter (2020) and from the Weather Underground (1970s) to the contemporary Pro-Palestine student protests look to Marcuse and his theories to justify burning, looting and murder in the name of liberation. Marcuse, then, is the intellectual father of today’s radical left.

2. The New Left: “We Will Burn and Loot and Destroy”

This chapter tells the story of the Weather Underground organization and its founder Bernadine Dohrn. Acknowledging Marcuse as her inspiration, Dohrn led the Weather Underground to join with other militants a four-year terror campaign designed to provoke the long-anticipated revolution. The Weather Underground’s part in the campaign began on June 9, 1970 with the detonation of 15 sticks of dynamite in a New York Police Department headquarters. Between January 1969 and December 1970, the Weather Underground and like-minded organizations carried out 4,330 bombings. Forty-three people were killed. Dohrn and her friends gleefully celebrated the murder of police officers (a.k.a. “pigs”). But by 1972, the public had had enough and the FBI and President Nixon had decimated the ranks of the Weather Underground. Their reign of terror was a complete failure.

3. The Long March Through the Institutions

After the failure of the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army and other violent groups, Marcuse was forced to rethink his approach to revolution. His German admirer and student activist friend Rudi Dutschke suggested that the New Left movement return to the universities to regroup. Dutschke used the metaphor “the long march” to describe this strategy of retreat and consolidation, borrowing an expression originally used to describe Mao Zedong’s year-long, 5,000-mile retreat to the mountains after his 1934-defeat by the Nationalist Chinese Army. Marcuse agreed with Dutschke and advised his students to join university faculties with the aim of training new recruits and eventually taking over education from within and from there other social institutions. From positions in literature, journalism, and education, these radical professors railed against capitalism, sexism, colonialism, and racism. They invented new theoretical concepts such as “white supremacy,” “white privilege,” “systemic racism,” “neocolonialism,” “patriarchy,” “anti-racism,” and a thousand other terms. Marcuse labeled this process “linguistic therapy.” Leftist theorists generate these ideas out of their Marxist ideology, which explains every less than utopian state of affairs through the lens of the oppressor/oppressed dialectic.* The process of “linguistic therapy” works like this: invent a term useful to the cause of revolution and use it over and over with confidence and people will begin to believe it refers to a real state of affairs. To draw out the social implications of their oppressor/oppressed ideology, the New Left academics lobbied for the creation of a host of new “studies” programs: Black Studies, Feminist Studies, Gender Studies, Whiteness Studies, Critical Race Studies, and the list grows every year. In these “studies” programs, theory held dogmatically and applied with methodological rigor determines the meaning of every fact. As a sign of the pervasive priority of theory over fact, consider how frequently you hear the adverbial phrase, “As a (an)…feminist, gay man, black woman, trans man, etc.” used to condition a person’s expression of an opinion in academic and popular speech.

Contemporary diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training can be traced back to the work of Marcuse’s third wife, Erica Sherover-Marcuse. Theory needed to be operationalized in practice. How do you get white people to recognize and confess their racism and privilege and black people to become conscious of their internalized oppression? In the 1980s, Sherover-Marcuse developed workshops designed to facilitate this new consciousness. The most well-known exercise in these workshops is the “privilege walk.” Participants divide into groups based on where they stand in the hierarchy of privilege and oppression. The privileged, then, must acknowledge and apologize for their racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. This exercise has been incorporated into many institutional programs designed to promote DEI. These programs are administered by armies of bureaucrats, adding millions of dollars to institutional payrolls. They act as modern-day inquisitors to sniff out hidden biases, intimidate dissenters, and punish offenders.

4. The New ideological Regime

This chapter documents the culmination of the “long march” through the institutions. The legacy media, government agencies, and most large corporations have adopted the critical theory and DEI programs, hiring thousands of DEI administrators and paying millions to outside anti-racist and DEI consultants.

Preliminary Reflections

I will save my comprehensive critique until I finish reviewing the entire book. But I will make some preliminary remarks. (1) I don’t see how a Marxist or Neo-Marxist theory of social relations can be separated from Marx’s atheism and anti-religious stance. For Marx, and apparently Marcuse, the possibility of thorough revolution depends on completely limiting one’s hope to this life and relying on human power alone to bring about the ideal society. Marxism encourages envy and discontent and justifies violence against the “oppressor” class to bring about its vision of justice. (2) It views evil as residing in systems and thinks human nature can be redeemed through social reordering; that is to say, it is utopian. It can dream and destroy, but it cannot build. (3) It has never worked anywhere it has been tried. (4) Hence Christians, churches, Christian non-profit organizations, and Christian educational institutions should be highly skeptical and very cautious of adopting any theory or program that finds its origin in the New Left: DEI, CRT, SEED, Critical Pedagogy, and the whole series of “Studies” academic tracts. Nor should we adopt the subversive vocabulary of New Left academics: “white supremacy,” “white privilege,” “systemic racism,” “neocolonialism,” “patriarchy,” “anti-racism,” “homophobia,” “transphobia,” and the rest. As I argued above, the truth of these terms depends on the truth of the (neo)Marxist theory out of which the terms are spun. Accepting the terms implies accepting the theory.

*“Dialectic” refers here not to logical contradiction or friendly debate but an intractable social conflict that can be resolved only by establishing socialism as the political order.

To be continued…

Understanding the Culture Wars…Why it Matters (Part One)

Leave a reply

In every age Christians must consider carefully how to live in their unique circumstances. In one way this task is very simple: keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and hold on to the gospel and the apostles’ teaching. Remaining faithful does not require understanding all the ways people can be unfaithful. Knowing truth does not require studying all forms of falsehood. While this is a very important insight we would do well to keep in mind, not every Christian possesses thorough knowledge of the scriptures or deep understanding of the faith. Not all have become stable in discipleship to Jesus. They are vulnerable to deception by half-truths and clever lies. Hence some within the Christian community need to devote themselves to understanding the cultural context within which God’s people live and sharing their findings with the church. I find myself compelled to engage in this work.

This summer I’ve felt an urgent need for additional insight into the principles that animate the drastically different moral/political/religious visions that do battle contemporary culture. Don’t mistake my concern for despair. I am confident that God’s deity and existence are not at stake, much less in jeopardy, in these controversies. Jesus Christ is and will be Lord no matter what the outcome of the cultural war is. My worry is that some Christians could be swept up in the emotions of the day, take their eyes off Jesus, lose faith in the providence of God, and abandon themselves to hatred, division, and fanaticism.

The Raging Battle

Sometimes I feel like a man standing on a hill gazing silently at a battle raging in the valley below. Who are the participants? What’s at stake in the battle? How did this war begin and when will it end? I understand that I am a part of this world and a participant in this culture. As long as I live I cannot escape the conflict completely. But do not believe I should rush into the battle before I do all I can to understand why the war is being fought and how it relates to the spiritual battle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12).

Right and Left

The standard classification of right, left, and center seems inadequate to describe the present cultural landscape. Right, left, and center parties combine greatly disparate ideologies and interest groups to form their coalitions. At first inspection, the whole culture seems to be a chaotic, eclectic patchwork of temporary alliances of convenience.

The right and left are relative terms, and to convey any information they must relate to a fixed point. Historically, these terms derive from the era of the French Revolution (1789). The French National Assembly divided into supporters of the King who sat on the King’s right and supporters of the revolution who sat on the King’s left. Applied to the contemporary social order this mapping makes sense only in relation to an image of the traditional religious/moral/social order taken as a fixed point. The Right maintains a conservative stance toward this order and the Left calls for revolution.

I think the designations “Right” and “Left” are still useful in marking out two general attitudes toward tradition, but they do not help us understand the nuances of difference within each wing. Apart from understanding the Right’s reasons and principles justifying conservation of the past and the Left’s reasons and principles grounding its call for revolution, we can neither understand nor evaluate their programs.

I find it confusing that each party calls to its defense the same set of reasons and principles but apply them in different ways, with different levels of consistency, and in different combinations at different times. Even more confusing, the parties themselves do not seem to be aware, much less possess a theoretical grasp, of how they are using those reasons and principles. To understand the current situation we need greater clarity about the function of principles in the arguments of the parties.

The Rhetoric of Freedom

In the cultural struggle between “Left and Right,” all parties appeal to the same noble and commonly accepted principles. No one says, “I don’t care about other people. I want what I want no matter what others think.” No one lets it slip that they are power hungry or greedy or obsessed with perverted lusts. They talk about legal rights, constitutional rights, and human rights*. They complain of unfairness, injustice, discrimination, and inequality. Sometimes they invoke human dignity, the inherent right to happiness, or autonomy. Let’s explore the meaning of these principles and try to ascertain how they are used by Right and Left to support their positions.

*Note: A “right” is a broader concept than a “freedom” though it includes it. A negative right is identical to a freedom, but a positive right corresponds to what was traditionally known as a “privilege.”

The Many Faces of Freedom

In the history of philosophy and politics “freedom” has been used to designate three basic types of openness for human action. Two of the three have been adapted to develop theories of political freedom. In popular rhetoric, however, they are mixed together, and this conceptual confusion leads to misunderstandings. In view of this confusion let’s first get clear on the differences among the views of freedom being used in contemporary rhetoric.

1. Freedom to Act as One Pleases

According to John Locke, Jonathan Edwards, and John S. Mill, freedom is leeway to act as you please. Freedom understood in this way is openness to pursue your happiness in whatever way you find promising. You are free insofar as nothing outside of yourself obstructs your external action in pursuit of good things. Maximum liberty, then, is a circumstance wherein nothing external to you inhibits acting on your desires. But everyone knows that we will never enjoy maximum freedom in this world. The laws of nature, our finite powers, limited knowledge, and resistance from other people will not allow it. Pursuing maximum freedom despite its impossibility will work only destruction. Like it or not, we are forced to come to terms with our less than maximum freedom. But however realistic we may be about the limits the world places on our freedom, we may not be able to shake the feeling that we are being deprived of happiness. Different people cope with these limits differently. Some find contentment in resignation to their limits. Others nurse perpetual resentment and defiance. Still others are driven to think in alternative ways about freedom and happiness.

2. Freedom in Classic Liberal Politics

At its best, politics is deliberation about the optimum way to order life in society to facilitate the realization and preservation of the cherished values of the people. Adopting Locke’s, Edwards’s, and Mill’s understanding of freedom, classic liberal political theory holds individual liberty as its most cherished value. It aims to advance and protect each person’s freedom to pursue happiness in whatever way the individual finds promising insofar as such action can be harmonized with every other individual’s pursuit of their happiness. Liberty is so precious that it may be limited only by liberty itself.

A government administered as a classic liberal order refrains from telling individuals in what their happiness consists. In other words, it’s not a “nanny state” that assumes it knows better than you what is good for you. Nor does it take as its responsibility making sure everyone attains happiness; it’s not a “welfare state” whose task is to accompany you from cradle to grave to make sure you have everything you need every step of the way. It assumes that each individual knows best what makes them happy and that they possess the drive to pursue it. The art of politics in the classic liberal state is balancing the liberty of each with all and of all with each. The government assumes the role of a referee that makes sure the game is played according to the rules. There will always be disagreements, conflicting claims, and “bad calls.” The devil is in the details.

As we all know, however, a society ordered purely in accord with the classic liberal political theory has never existed. It’s probably impossible. Other such values as national security, religious and moral belief, human dignity, general welfare, aesthetic tastes, and prejudices often serve as the bases for laws that restrict freedom.

Next Time: Other views of freedom and political order.