I had my share of political critics when I taught in Texas, back in what today seems like the quaint era of professor watchlists, but I never felt my job was in jeopardy. Things have changed. The firing of two professors at Texas universities, one for what was said in class and one for speech outside the university, is bad news for academic freedom and the independence of universities.
The first professor watchlist that included my name was produced in 2003 by the Young Conservatives of Texas chapter on the University of Texas at Austin campus. In 2006, I was one of the “101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,” the subtitle of conservative activist David Horowitz’s book. The last time I was branded an impermissibly leftist professor was Turning Point USA’s 2016 watchlist, two years before I retired. The political climate of the time seems tame in comparison to today, and showing up on these lists didn’t change my teaching, which I was happy to defend.
Today, I wonder what my fate would be if I were in the classroom in the era of Trump’s targeting of higher education.
My political views certainly shaped my ideas about teaching, which is true about everyone in the humanities and social sciences. Faculty members’ political and moral philosophies can’t help but influence what questions they think are worth asking and which answers are worth investigating. But in part because I was involved in very public activity outside the university, I thought a lot about how to justify my decisions in the classroom when I was challenged. My appearances on those conservative lists of bad professors were mostly about what I wrote for the public, which I also was happy to defend.
The current right-wing criticism of universities includes an attack on diversity initiatives and a demand that professors put American greatness at the center of the curriculum. That got me wondering what the current critics would say about the last class I developed at UT, a course on the concept of freedom for the university’s Signature Course program, special classes designed for first-year students. Below is the syllabus for that course, which might have left conservatives unsure of whether to praise or condemn me.
I began the class with John Stuart Mill’s classic defense of freedom of speech, On Liberty. I suppose I would get a point from conservatives for assigning a dead white male, albeit a classical liberal. Then the class read Eric Foner’s book on freedom in U.S. history, which examines slavery and racism in detail. Subtract a point for bringing up subjects that make MAGA folks feel bad. Students finished by reading about the feminist critique of pornography, which would win me points for raising concerns about the sexually explicit media that most conservatives condemn but lose me points for doing it from a feminist perspective.
My point is simple: Independent of ideology, the worst teaching is simplistic teaching. Trying to understand a complex topic in philosophy can’t be done through platitudes. Grappling with the complex history of the United States takes more than political slogans. And our most vexing cultural problems won’t be solved by dogma. There is simplistic teaching on the left, the right, and in the center. In my experience, no political or moral inquiry is immune from being presented simplistically.
I don’t want to pretend that my time at UT was without serious struggles, most notably when politicians, pundits, and a lot of the public called for me to be fired after 9-11 for my antiwar writing. But I always felt that I had the freedom to teach about freedom in ways I thought were appropriate. I can’t help but wonder if I would feel that on campus today.
I can’t know what every student thought about how I designed the course, but I like to think it was a good introduction to critical thinking for students new to campus. Take a look at what I presented to them and make your own decision.
Freedom: Philosophy, History, Law
UGS 303 / Fall 2017
Professor: Robert Jensen
Course Description:
Freedom is a simple idea that is difficult to define. Freedom is essential to our political system but impossible to achieve. Do we even have the free will that is necessary to make political freedom a relevant concept? You think you are free, but look at yourself: You are reading a stupid syllabus from a stupid professor in a course you are taking to fulfill a stupid requirement that will leave you stuck in a lecture hall twice a week with 349 other students. You call that freedom? You’re a sucker.
Are you free to stand up on the first day of class and tell the stupid professor that you’re already bored by his stupid class? If you were really free, you could do that. Go on, I dare you. But you aren’t going to do it because you don’t want to be free. You’re a coward.
OK, let’s not get so worked up about all this. If “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” and you’re registered for the course, and you have to take a Signature Course, why not spend the next 15 weeks trying to figure all this out? You have nothing to lose but your freedom. Or your chains. Or both.
In this course we are going to explore the complexity of freedom and liberty (we’ll use the terms interchangeably, as do most philosophers). The first segment of the course will be philosophical, using Mill’s On Liberty to help us ask basic questions about what we mean by the term. The second and third segments examine how the idea of freedom has been understood and used throughout the history of the United States, with Foner’s The Story of American Freedom as our guide. The fourth segment tackles difficult questions about freedom in a hierarchical, mass-mediated world by examining the pornography industry.
Readings:
Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty (1859). Any edition of this book is acceptable. The text is also online at http://www.bartleby.com/
Foner, Eric, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998). (at University Co-op and elsewhere)
Frye, Marilyn, “Oppression,” in The Politics of Reality (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1983), pp. 1-16. (on Canvas)
Paul, Pamela, “Introduction,” in Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families (New York: Times Books, 2005), p. 1-11. (on Canvas)
Ezzell, Matthew B., “Current Controversies: Pornography and Violence Against Women,” in Claire M. Renzetti, Jeffrey L. Edleson, and Raquel Kennedy Bergen, eds., Sourcebook on Violence Against Women, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2017), pp. 219-224. (on Canvas)
Dworkin, Andrea, “I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape,” in Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1987 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1988), pp. 162-171. (on Canvas)
Jensen, Robert, “Choices, His and Hers,” in Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (Boston: South End Press, 2007), pp. 79-95. (on Canvas and online at https://robertwjensen.org/
Supplemental Videos: (blunt descriptions but no pornographic images)
“The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality & Relationships” (Media Education Foundation: 2008). https://utexas.
“The Truth about Pornography.” https://vimeo.
Dines, Gail, “Media’s Impact on Youth Sexuality,” 2016 American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference.
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