While Kansas state senator Susan Wagle seeks to punish University of Kansas social welfare professor Dennis Dailey for his pedagogical style, the University itself is rewarding him for it. The much-decorated Dailey accepted the Del Shankel Teaching Excellence Award on Monday.

KU is investigating Wagle's allegations that Dailey behaves in a lewd, harassing, and altogether inappropriate way in his classroom, and Wagle is continuing her attempts to amend the state budget so as to prevent professors from introducing sexually explicit material into their classrooms. Meanwhile, Dailey's colleagues at the School of Social Welfare have released the following letter:

An Open Letter to the University Community

During the past two months, a very important process has been unfolding as State Sen. Susan Wagle began her public attack on the school's human sexuality class and Dr. Dennis Dailey. Our school's mission has a "special commitment to helping vulnerable groups and individuals ... social workers celebrate differences among people and believe that respecting those differences -- whether race, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation or age -- enriches the quality of life for all." Further, we see knowledge as empowering our students to reach their full potential.

The current assault by Sen. Wagle has been both personal and, in essence, an attempt to redefine the fundamental principle of academic freedom. If she succeeds, she has established the principle that the Legislature has the power to determine content in every curriculum in the regents system.

Given our school's commitment to marginalized groups, we are a logical first target. However, we will not be the last. Those programs that offer course work that does not fit the personal beliefs of legislators become fair game for these tactics. As faculty we want to take a public stance that clearly asserts our right and society's need for a university environment that supports open dialogue about ideas that shape our future and decry personal intimidation or institutional extortion as a legitimate strategy to silence those positions differing from our own.

We continue to support faculty efforts to provide students with information that fits with our school's mission and empowers students to make informed decisions about their lives.

Signed:

Sandy Beverly, assistant professor
Ed Canda, professor
Rosemary Chapin, professor
Catherine Crisp, assistant professor
Goody Garfield, associate professor
Scott Harding, assistant professor
Helen Hartnett, assistant professor
Steve Kapp, associate professor
Jim Kreider, teaching associate
Holly Nelson-Becker, assistant professor
Deb Page-Adams, associate professor
Jean Peterson, associate professor
Chris Petr, professor
Judy Postmus, assistant professor
Allan Press, associate professor
Charlie Rapp, professor
Dennis Saleebey, professor
Ed Scanlon, assistant professor
Margaret Severson, associate professor
Rick Spano, associate dean for academic programs and associate professor
Ann Weick, dean and professor

Thanks to Dakota L. for the link.

UPDATE: The Ecumenical Christian Ministry has also issued a letter of support for Dailey.

Both sides are using the rhetoric for disingenuous ends: Wagle really does seem to be trying to use the shock value of unproven allegations against Dailey to hijack academic freedom at Kansas state schools; the social welfare faculty appears, likewise, to be using the rhetorics of diversity and academic freedom to evade the very real and valid questions about accountability Wagle raises.

— I don't think your equivalence here really works. Are you suggesting that Wagle intends to use newly gained leverage to dictate the legitimate content of political science, for example? Or is she merely guilty of picking out the most shocking pieces of a course that she finds broadly offensive?

It's nakedly obvious that the professors are guilty of making a leap akin to the first possibility. What "marginalized groups" has Wagle targeted in Dailey's class? Pornographers and pedophiles? Certainly not anybody on the basis of "race, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation or age."

Wagle may be guilty of exaggerating the offense — a cynical, but perhaps understandable, ploy for those seeking to galvanize support on the basis of a moral claim. However, the professors are merely showing, here, the strategy that they employ to avoid any accountability or responsibility more generally: claiming that questioning them — the guardians of "diversity" — is no less than racist oppression.

The professors' statement is certainly wince-making in its cliches and self-righteousness. And they are foolish enough to demonstrate - as so many Women's Studies departments do - that their program is ideological. This of course makes them even more of a target. They see themselves as imparters of knowledge only to the extent that knowledge "empowers" marginalized groups. This is a vague and sentimental agenda, worthy of the oppression tunnel.

The social welfare school needs to make clear in this statement they are perfectly willing and able to be "accountable" on the grounds of intellectual legitimacy -- indeed, that they welcome an opportunity to demonstrate to Wagle and anybody else the fascinating and valuable research and teaching that they do.

Their approach in their response should have been cold-blooded, academic, and strong rather than puling, self-congratulatory and weak. Everyone knows they aren't victims, and neither are their students. To pretend that they are victims of the big bad power structure that wants to crush the champions of the weaker people of our society is a big mistake.

Apparently they aren't arguing that the apecific charges made against Dailey are false.

While Wagle's actions may not be prudent (or correct), I still fail to see how they violate principles of academic freedom. If the Board of Visitors and Governors of a private college decided to pull a class, or alumni in sufficient numbers could inhibit fundraising to pull a class, would academic freedom be violated? If so, then "academic freedom" means that every professor has a right to be given funding and a classroom.

Ii understand that Wagle probaly won't be reviewing the physics curriculum, and that this could be a politically motivated act rather than a true interest in what goes on at the academy. But then the issue is one of disingenuousness and academic freedom.

BerkeleySurvivor,

Interesting question. Private schools can do more or less what they want as regards restricting what faculty say and do in the classroom, as long as they are up front about it and are consistent. Public schools, precisely because they receive government funding, have different obligations. The courts have drawn very explicit links between academic freedom and First Amendment rights, for instance.

As far as I can tell with a quick web search, the courts first drew a formal connection between civil rights and academic freedom during the McCarthy era in Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957). In that decision, Justice Warren wrote that "[t]he essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our nation" and Justice Frankfurter wrote that "No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. . . . Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die. ... Political power must abstain from intrusion into this activity of freedom, pursued in the interest of wise government and the people's well-being, except for reasons that are exigent and obviously compelling."

The courts have since made the constitutional tone of the Sweezy ruling explicit. In Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), Justice Brennan stated: "Our nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. ... That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom."

The AAUP statement on academic freedom and tenure seeks to strike a balance between the imperative of free inquiry and the role of the professor as an agent of the university, and at times the state. It can be accessed here.

Food for thought.....

"Accountability" is a terrible metaphor, and it hides a dangerous idea. Academics should not be "accountable" to anyone except themselves. State-legislators, left to their own devices, often as not spend their time doing things such as this or trying to ban evolution; and they are only accountable to a dangerously apathetic group of voters.

Before you accuse me of elitism, note that the effects of what academics do are not easily quantified. I shouldn't have to remind any actual academics here of the pernicious effects of quantitative research-assessment, and I'll just suggest that quantitative teaching-assessment is deeply flawed as well. Qualitative assessment, if you'll grant the above points for argument, is something that can only be done by those who understand what it is the academic does--i.e., other academics.

Whether someone is a good teacher or not is also difficult to judge, though here student input is more valuable. We cannot rely on student input as the sole criterion, however, as this unfailingly leads to consumerist pressures on professors to inflate grades and decrease standards.

In short, there are no very real questions about accountability and validity regarding Dailey.

Qualitative assessment, if you'll grant the above points for argument, is something that can only be done by those who understand what it is the _______ does--i.e., other _______s.

politicians?
writers?
lawyers?
doctors?
police?
business people?
parents?
social workers?
and so on...

So, here's a question: I studied English (concentrating on Literature) but am not currently an academic. Am I better qualified to assess an English professor than science professors, or even administrators? At what point of expertise on a topic addressed by an academic does one achieve an "understanding" sufficient to see over the wall of university employment?

You'll forgive me, if it is true that only academics can judge academics, if I suggest that public money oughtn't be made part of the environment. Such is the recipe for a patronage system.

That should read:

"Am I better qualified to assess an English professor than science professors, or even administrators, are?"

JK--that's simple. Your qualifications are equally non-existent.

The groups you list have little to do with each other, and the professionals do regulate themselves.

Many people who fear the equalizing effects of education don't want public money spent on it, but few of them are honest about their reasons for thinking so.

[Why do I bother?]

Your qualifications are equally non-existent.
— Alright. I studied and continue to make a bit of a study of 19th century American literature, particularly Melville. So am I less qualified to assess an academic in that specific area then, say, a professor of 20th century British literature? What's the criterion? I suppose another way to put it is: what's the quality being assessed?

professionals do regulate themselves
— There's a price to pay if they do not. You are suggesting that there ought to be no such price for academics gone awry.

Many people who fear the equalizing effects of education don't want public money spent on it, but few of them are honest about their reasons for thinking so.
— What a laugh... not even worthy of a considered response.

Of course, that should be, "than." Reading blogs while on hold to straighten out health insurance issues can lead to erroneous vowels.

"Academics should not be 'accountable' to anyone except themselves."

Well, that's certainly one point of view.

I think the more sunlight shed upon the actual course content of Dailey's class, the better. Either his well-meaning colleagues just spat out a bunch of gobbledygook, or he's standing up for the rights of marginalized pedophiles and other deviants. What a sterling example of public service that is. Regarding Erin's statement here: "Wagle sees herself as defending the women Dailey is allegedly harassing and the children whose sexuality he is allegedly parading and covetting." Well, sadly, some children are exploited sexually, and somebody needs to defend them. I wonder just how far academic freedom is supposed to extend here.

JK--again, unless you're an academic, you're not qualified to assess what they do. Believe me, academics don't assess themselves perfectly, but they do a far better job of it than anyone else could.

Sunlight is, of course, by no means the best disinfectant, and what Wagle wants is for the dim, vampiric fluroescence of cynical puritanism to cast its sickly, oppressive glow over Dailey's energetic and healthy teaching.

I find myself in qualified agreement with IPO on this one. The qualifications:

First, the usual disclaimer about not trusting IPO to be sarcastic or not.

Second, academics are (and should be) subject to the law of the land, just as everyone else is. If the prof is using his sex ed forum in inappropriate ways, he deserves to be be investigated, tried, fired, whatever. In that regard, some of what Dailey is accused of doing could cross into the realm of illegal behavior (soliciting masturbation videos as a requirement for a grade, for example). However, I'd insist on a trial verdict before accepting those allegations as evidence for legislative action.

Oops. Hit "post" instead of "preview".

My main point was that, outside of the normal matters of law, IPO is right to insist that educators should generally be self-policing in matters like this.

Are accountability and self-policing just other words for academic freedom? If so, I'm still unclear on what it all means. While we want professors to have academic freedom, it can't be a right such that they can demand funding. IPO, what if a state was in a serious budget crunch and said, "Instead of issuing more bonds and cutting services, we will eliminate 1/3 of state run universities?" Is this acceptable. At what point can a funding body say that the benefits of a particular curriculum don't outweigh the costs. In other words, put an fiscal, rather than political or idealogical, spin on Wagle's efforts.

Erin - thanks for the references to the Supreme Court. I havne't had time to read the cases, but from the parts you quote, I'm still left with this question: are we obligated to financially support academic freedom? I don't think we're obligated to support free speech. That right is like a negative covenant. And that's the difficulty with academic freedom; is it a negative or postive covenant between funders and fundees.

Erin, if I were teaching English or writing now, these topics would be among the last I would consider.

The obsession with ideology that your site represents seems to me to be precisely the weakness of the profession. If I were still teaching English or writing, I'd be discussing almost anything except ideology.

Two things that I would be discussing: the actual literature and history of the region in which I taught, and the impact and future of technology on literature and writing. These are much more difficult to address. I'd suggest that the academic obsession with ideology results from the fact that ideology is a lazy discipline that requires no difficult study. Just a lot of gassing.

The English department at the U of Ill from which I graduated is a good example. The wisdom, practical experience and technical prowess of farmers, corn traders and engineers provided the wealth that created the university. The English department seems to have absolutely no interest in the world of the prairie that surrounds it. Well, it does to this extent. Then and now, the English department seems to revel in the game of: "We're intellectuals, and you're dumb rubes." How boring. How suffocatingly arrogant.

Technology is wiping out the written word. Audiences everywhere prefer moving images to the written word. Increasingly, even in the corporate world, the writer performs only a backroom function. Let's face it, the literature of the racial and sexual quota era has barely been worth reading -- unless you have an endless supply of tears to weep for middle class "victims." Self-pity seems to be the only idea that literature has left to sell.

Arcane discussions of Marxism and oppression are of interest only to the faculty and a few brown nosing students.

Am I making any sense here? I used to love literature, and now I find little worth reading. The world of literature seems hell bent on suicide, as it become ever more obsessed with dead ideology and fantasized victimization. Does an English department have any purpose?

Stephen--do you really think that Richard Powers doesn't have any interest in world around him or the effects of technology in it?

IPO.

Ah, the great anti-corporate crusade.

Why does this crap appeal to you? I've got to ask you again. Are you just gassing? Is there any reason to take you seriously?

Let me try to talk some sense to you. (It's pointless, I know.) A Filipino kid who's grubbing for something to eat is better off with a job at the local Nike factory. A white guy like me who was born into poverty should be very grateful to be able to peddle his skills to the highest bidder among corporations.

The "social justice" vein of literature needs to be laid to rest. It's just plain boring and usually just plain wrong.

If I were looking for an inspiration figure to demonstrate to college kids, I might choose Arnold Beckman, a graduate of the U of Ill who rose to fame and fortune by developing an instrument that helped farmers to determine if oranges were ready to harvest. Or I might choose the great Hugh Hefner, the deservedly most famous alum of the U of Ill. Hefner rightly deserves credit for expanding the sexual freedoms of all Americans, his foundation has been one of the most stalwart defenders of individual freedom, and his efforts played a major role in the integration of media and entertainment.

The academic fascination with the malcontents has become a stupendous bore. It's a hangover from another era.

It is difficult to understand why English departments are homes to the dreary malcontents who want to preach dime store Marxism. Beats working, I guess.

In other words, you've never read anything by him. Gain was, I suppose, the object of your vague allusion; and it's not accurate to describe that book as a Marxist critique, though it does explore the role of the large corporation in American history.

On the technology angle, I'd suggest Galatea 2.2, which is even set at your godless a.m.

Stephen,

I think there's still plenty of fiction worth reading being published these days. Most of the contemporary writers I admire aren't obsessed with ideology or victimhood. They either satirize or otherwise critique such obsessions, or they simply pay attention to other facets of human life. My biggest problem often seems to be that the bookstore doesn't sell bottles of time for me to read all the good stories and novels I come across. Story writers like Lorrie Moore and George Saunders and Thom Jones, novelists like Gail Godwin and Robert Stone and Toni Morrison, to name just a handful, continue to publish brilliant stuff -- check out the work of any of these writers you might not have read, and I think you'll find some cause to hold out hope for American literature.

Now, if you were talking more about literary criticism than literature, then I'd be likely to agree.

Bob

IPO,

unless you're an academic, you're not qualified to assess what they do.
— But who is "an academic"? Somebody who happens to be employed in the position of professor? Or somebody who takes an academic interest in academic matters? And you still haven't answered the central question: what — specifically — is it that they are assessing that is such a mystery to the rest of the world?

-----------
Stephen,

If I were still teaching English or writing, I'd be discussing almost anything except ideology.

— The problem right now, as I see it, is that ideology has been cast over the entire profession. The project that must take place before the pursuits you suggest is extricating the distorted lens from the thing being viewed. (Part of this process is diminishing the extent to which ideology prevents the type of people with interests apart from it from following the career path.)

As an attorney, I am always amused at the suggestion that only certain types of people can have something meaningful and worthwile to say about certain things. For instance, IPO's claim that academics are the only one's fit to criticize acamdemics and structure curriculum.

JK makes a good point re: who is an academic. But assuming IPO can answer that question, is it fair for me to say that only lawyers can criticize other lawyers and only lawyers can meaningfully comment on what the law should be or is (we could also lump in legislators, too, since they make laws)?

I suspect that the real hurdles one must get over to meaningful comments are: honest concern for the subject matter and some amount of time studying the issues. This may take longer cases in some fields (higly technical fields), and less in others. Of all the poeple that post, IPO, why are you making a brightline, objective standard?

Justin--actual academics are the only people who should make decisions that affect the professional lives of other academics: tenure, teaching evaluation, etc. Breaking the law is a different--and irrelevant--matter. I fail to see what's controversial about this.

And it's lazy to consider "ideology" as something that occludes the truth from people you don't agree with; ideology permeates your being, and you could not reason about any social issue without it.

BS--lawyers should, in matters related to their professional conduct, regulate and evaluate themselves. Anyone can criticize an academic or a lawyer, but a lawyer should not be disbarred and an academic should not be refused tenure on the basis of such criticism.

IPO - but the events that sparked this discussion are about curriculum. Who gets to decide the curriculum? Professors? Regents? Researchers? Bill Payor?

Professors. These others may offer input, provided they do it in a non-intrusive way that recognizes their own limitations.

So back to my intial question, are we obligated to have public universities? Once a professor is hired at a private college, does he have a right to perpetual employment?

It seems that academics are in a unique position. Doctors and lawyers receive payment directly from their clients. And ultimately, patients and clients make the final decision (I don't want to have surgery, I don't want to settle). What external forces are allowed, in your mind, to be exerted by the funding entity?

BS--Yes. Yes. They can express their concerns, but other than that, none.

I can't believe that anyone would seriously take the position that a professor is somehow morally/legally/consitutionally privilged in such as way as to legitamately demand perpetual employment.

If an academic is deemed to be of sufficient quality by her peers, then yes she should be granted perpetual employment, conditional only on the fact that she continue to perform her duties in a satisfactory manner and be convicted of no violent felonies (unless Ashcroft and co. make protesting a felony, in which case mutatis mutandis).

If you try to apply "market" logic to academia, you end up with abominations like the University of Phoenix.

I wouldn't say that anyone who questions the value of tenure is a fool. Ignorance, resentment, and maliciousness could also lead one to take that position.

For the record, I am not an academic. I barely made it out of high school. I do, however, read the Chronicle at work; and I think that Fish fellow makes an awful lot of sense.

Well, so much for agreeing with IPO. This is too far:

I wouldn't say that anyone who questions the value of tenure is a fool. Ignorance, resentment, and maliciousness could also lead one to take that position.

For the record, I do not support ad hominem fallacies, no matter how subtle.

Jeff--are you claiming that ignorance, resentment, and maliciousness could not lead one to be anti-tenure? All anti-tenure positions are inherently principled? Is that what you would have us believe?

Jeff, there's sophistry and then there's demagoguery; and I think you've just crossed that line.

IPO,

You mean the Fish fellow who recently denied the value of the garbage he's been spewing for years?

IPO, You insinuated that all anti-tenure positions are inherently unprincipled. You are incorrect. There are many reasons to question the institution of tenure, some of them malicious and unprincipled, some of them not.

Since IPO has admitted that he is not an academic, and that non-academics cannot offer more than mere opinion on academic issues, then I humbly submit that he has nothing to offer in this discussion. That being the case, let's just ignore him.

Well, the ecumenical letter is interesting. "I've sat in on the class and there isn't a problem" is about 5000 times more useful than "we have a special commitment to helping vulnerable groups and individuals". But gosh, there's a huge disparity between the specific accusations and the statements in that letter. Where's the truth?

Whenever I teach Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom, my students ask me 'Where's the truth? Who has got the REAL story?' I'm not arguing that some relatively plausible version of events in the Dailey thing doesn't exist - but it's going to be very difficult to get at, and as things move forward it's going to get more rather than less difficult. People will always, in their rendering of events, twist and turn things. But I agree with Laura that the ecumenical letter, despite its creepy wording ("procreative capacity"?), is more useful than the letter from the department itself. As for the "huge disparity" between various accusations and statements in reply - that alone should suggest that this is a Faulknerian mess unlikely to be solved by the unsubtle ministrations of a state legislature.