In an "urgent" email last week, right-wing activist David Horowitz
hyped his latest book about threats to America's youth from leftist professors.
The ad for "The Professors -- The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in
America" describes me as: "Texas Journalism Professor Robert Jensen,
who rabidly hates the United States, and recently told his students,
'The United States has lost the war in Iraq and that's a good thing.'"
I'm glad Horowitz got my name right (people often misspell it
"Jenson"). But everything else is distortion, and that one sentence
teaches much about the reactionary right's disingenuous rhetorical strategy.
First, I'm not rabid, in personal or political style. I'm a sedate,
non-descript middle-aged academic who tries to approach political and
moral questions rationally. I articulate principles, provide evidence
about how those principles are often undermined by powerful
institutions, and offer logical conclusions about how citizens should
respond. I encourage people to disagree with my principles, contest
my evidence, and question my logic -- all appropriate activities in a
university where students are being trained to think for themselves,
and in a nominally democratic society where citizens should to do the same.
Second, I offer such critiques without hate. Sometimes my assessments
are harsh, such as in evaluating George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq
and concluding the attack was unlawful and, therefore, our president
is guilty of crimes against peace and should be prosecuted. Similarly
harsh was the judgment that Bill Clinton's insistence on maintaining
the harsh economic embargo on Iraq in the 1990s resulted in the
deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents and, therefore, Clinton
was a moral monster who was unfit to govern. None of this has to do
with hating either man, but instead with assessments and judgments we
should be making.
Third, these critiques are not of the United States, but of specific
policies and policymakers. No nation is a monolith with a single set
of interests or political positions, and it's nonsensical to claim
that harsh critique constitutes rejection of an entire nation.
Why would anyone suggest that I rabidly hate the United States? It's
easier to defame opponents using emotionally charged language than
engage on real issues. Accuse them of being irrational and hateful.
Ignore the substance of the claims and just sling mud. By even
minimal standards of intellectual or political discourse it's not
terribly honorable, but it often works.
Beyond these junkyard dog tactics, Horowitz's email also makes one
crucial factual error. I did write that the U.S. losing the Iraq war
was a good thing -- not in celebration of death and destruction, of
course, but because the defeat temporarily restrains policymakers in
their dangerous attempts to extend the U.S. empire. But that was the
first sentence of an opinion piece I published in various newspapers
in 2004, not a statement to students. The distinction is important.
Horowitz and similar critics argue that professors like me
inappropriately politicize the classroom, forcing captive student
audiences to listen to radical rants. No doubt there are professors
who rant -- from the left, right and center; there's a lot of bad
teaching in universities.
But I'm constantly attacked by people who have no knowledge of -- and
as far as I can tell, no interest in learning about -- how I teach.
Because they hear me express strong opinions at political rallies or
read my newspaper opinion pieces, they assume I treat my classroom
like a pulpit and students as targets for conversion.
I teach journalism, and in the course of that teaching I regularly
discuss how journalists cover controversial topics; it's hard to
imagine teaching responsibly without doing that. When appropriate, I
have talked in class about how journalists cover war -- explaining
that many people around the world believe the U.S. invasion of Iraq
violated international law, observing that U.S. journalists in the
corporate commercial media rarely write about that, and suggesting
reasons for the omission.
There's always a politics to teaching; the choices professors make
about what readings to assign and how to approach a subject are
influenced by their politics -- left, right, or center. But that does
not meaning teaching is nothing but politics.
No one knows that better than professors who hold views challenging
the conventional wisdom, those of us who don't rabidly hate the
United States but do passionately love learning and the promise of an
open, independent university.
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