It’s unsurprising, of course, that the AAUP, an academic union itself, favors establishing more academic unions. But claiming that NYU’s policy violates “academic freedom” stretches the concept beyond recognition, and calls into question whether Joan Scott isn’t the only AAUP officer who seems unclear on academic freedom’s meaning. The report’s reasoning does not befit the AAUP’s (rapidly eroding) status as the conscience of the academy.

The committee made five principal arguments to justify its position:

1.) NYU’s action violated the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, since “among the fundamental rights enshrined in that document was the right to unionize,” to wit, Article 23: “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." By this logic, if kindergarten students—who are, after all, a subset of “everyone”—voted to unionize, the local public school would be compelled to recognize the union.

2.) Graduate employee unions are “appropriate to the Academy,” given that the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan, Rutgers University, the University of Toronto, and the University of California system all have graduate student unions; and the AAUP supports their establishment. Hundreds of graduate programs exist in the country. And because a small fraction of these programs (none of which are at private schools) have unions, NYU should do so?

3.) NYU’s actions violated AAUP policies, chiefly the 1970 guidelines, which declares that"graduate student assistants are to be informed in writing of the terms and conditions of their appointment and, in the event of proposed dismissal, are to be afforded access to a duly constituted hearing committee”; and the 1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which identifies procedures for"the dismissal for cause of a teacher previous to the expiration of a term appointment." (Quotes from the AAUP committee report.) Both of these clauses use the word “dismissal.” Even though many graduate students refused to teach during the fall 2005 term, none were “dismissed.” Quite the opposite: NYU continued to pay them for not working. True, those who would not promise to actually show up and teach their classes were not hired for the spring 2006 term—hardly an unreasonable position from the University’s standpoint. Not hiring someone, however, is not the same as “dismissing” them.

4.) A majority of NYU graduate students voted in favor of forming a union. If a majority of NYU graduate students voted in favor of abolishing the institution’s language requirement and NYU refused to do so, would the institution still be guilty of violating AAUP policies?

5.) “The Wagner Act of 1935 gave employees the right to bargain collectively through ‘representatives of their own choosing.’” I realize that the AAUP represents an academy that seems to believe it’s perfectly acceptable for today’s college students to receive no instruction in the political and institutional history of their own country from people trained in the field. But the last time I looked, the Wagner Act established the NLRB to adjudicate disputes under the measure, and in this case, the NLRB held in favor of NYU. The AAUP might not have liked the NLRB’s ruling, but it’s hard for me to see how an AAUP committee could claim with a straight face that the Wagner Act justifies the report’s conclusions.

R. I. Moore,"A New Framework for European History," TLS, 15 February, reviews Chris Wickham's Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400 to 800 and Julia M. H. Smith's Europe After Rome: A New Cultural History, 500 to 1000. Remarkable what's happened to the"dark ages" in the last thirty years. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.

"Scholars Rate Worst Presidential Errors," USA Today, 18 February, reports the results of a survey conducted for this past weekend's"Presidential Moments" conference at the University of Louisville. The 10 worst mistakes, according to the survey:

•1: James Buchanan's failure to act to prevent Southern states from seceding prior to Lincoln's inauguration.
•2: Andrew Johnson's approach to Reconstruction, which favored quick reintegration of Southern states in the Union and opposed reforms beyond abolition of slavery.
•3: Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the war in Viet Nam.
•4: Woodrow Wilson's refusal to compromise on the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.
•5: Richard Nixon's involvement in the Watergate cover-up.
•6: James Madison's failure to keep the United States out of the War of 1812 with Britain.
•7: Thomas Jefferson's Embargo Act of 1807, a self-imposed prohibition on trade with Europe during the Napoleonic Wars.
•8: John F. Kennedy allowing the Bay of Pigs Invasion that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
•9: Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair, the effort to sell arms to Iran and use the money to finance an armed anti-communist group in Nicaragua.
•10: Bill Clinton's rendezvous with Monica Lewinsky.

Thanks to my virtual son, Chris Richardson, for the tip. Chris offers an alternative list of 10 presidential errors, but I do not endorse the title of his post,"Historians on Crack." All historians on crack are expected to report it in comments here, but there's gotta be a better explanation for our fuddled behavior and opinions!

This month's publication of A Godly Hero, his biography of William Jennings Bryan, has kept Michael Kazin busy. In addition to his"A Difficult Marriage: American Protestants and American Politics," Dissent, Winter 2006, see: Kazin,"The Other Bryan," American Prospect, 5 January; a subsequent debate about it between Kevin Mattson and Kazin,"Life of Bryan," American Prospect, 25 January; and his interview on"The Diane Rehm Show," 15 February. Thanks to Russell Arben Fox at In Media Res and Hiram Hover for the tips.

In"Burn, Bébé, Burn," Dissent, Winter 2006, Penn's Thomas Sugrue sees significant parallels between France's urban upheavals and America's"long, not summers."

Francis Fukuyama,"After Neoconservatism," New York Times, 19 February, is essential reading for charting a future in foreign policy.

Richard McGregor,"China's Great Wall: A Symbolic Separator," Financial Times, 17 February, reviews Julia Lovell's The Great Wall: China Against the World: 1000 BC to 2000 AD.

Robert Hughes,"Connoisseur of the Ordinary," The Guardian, 11 February. On the 400th anniversary of his birth and the eve of a major exhibit of his work in Amsterdam, Rembrandt's artistic accomplishment is re-assessed.

Francine Du Plessix Gray,"Vanderbilt Family Values," New York Times, 19 February, reviews Amanda MacKenzie Stewart's new, trans-Atlantic dual biography, Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and a Mother in the Gilded Age.

Christopher Hitchens,"Robert Conquest's realities and delusions," TLS, 15 February, reviews Conquest's The Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History.

According to both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, members of the Harvard Corporation are consulting with members of the University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences in regard to tensions with President Lawrence Summers. A second vote of no confidence in him is scheduled within the FAS for 28 February.

Shooting executives department: On 11 July 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr shot and killed former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Less than two years later, on 30 May 1806, future President Andrew Jackson shot and killed Charles Dickinson in a duel over a gambling debt. Two hundred years later, shortly after the Vice President of the United States wounded a friend in a hunting accident, Dean Barnett's"Godfather of Democracy," Weekly Standard, 17 February, reviews H. W. Brands' new biography, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, and recommends Old Hickory to us as a model of national leadership.

Alternate History department: Kevin C. Murphy gives a thumbs-up to Spike Lee's and Kevin Wilmot's new satire documentary, C. S. A.: The Confederate States of America. Here's the trailer for it. By contrast, Murphy gives Philip Roth's The Plot Against Americaa thumbs down. In order to work, alternate histories have to walk a nimble line between what did happen and what might have happened. Roth stumbles, says Murphy, where Lee and Wilmot succeed.

Yale department: Yotam Barkai,"Search for Scholar Spotlights Politics in Classroom," Yale Herald, 17 February. A student weekly newspaper at Yale reports that Juan Cole of the University of Michigan is under consideration for an interdisciplinary appointment at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies.

Congratulations department: To Sharon Howard, whose Early Modern Notes has just been named Best Expert or Scholar Weblog in A Fistful of Euros' European Blog Awards! We already knew it was, but it's great to see other people recognizing that.

Heine (along with Rahel Varnhagen and Fanny Lewald) seemed to represent the ability of German Jews to cast off the burden of the Ancien Regime and move freely through civil society (whereas the truth was probably closer to Heine's friend Karl Marx.) Although he converted to Protestantism, Heine's literature reveals an ongoing affinity for Jewish traditions. Indeed, he contributed to the translation of Jewish narratives into European literary conventions. Some would see his conversion (like so many others) as more of a ticket to social and political freedom rather than an expression of conviction.

Heine was also a German nationalist--at least the idealist type that abounded during"Springtime of Peoples." The striving of the people for liberty, not the hegemony of states, would bring about Germany. Because of his political idealism, he was forced into exile in France, wherefrom he continued his literary career. The poetic cycle, Deutschland, was a return trip to Hamburg, and along the way he witnesses the stifling of German creativity and universal rights under Prussian authority.

His vision of Germany conflicted with those who saw unification as a valorization of ethnicity and power. When he was censored by the federal council of the German Confederation, he wrote a short extract positioning Junge Deutschland (Young Germany) against the hegemony of the state:

"Allow me to point out to you, that you either know what Junge Deutschland is, or you know what the Hegelian school is."

In the same work he wrote something curious. Addressing a charge made by critics, he said,

He claims that we are all Jews, even if no one from Junge Deutschland is acquainted with the Cult of Moses and also no one, with the exception of your obedient servant, carries a drop of this glorious blood ... .

Without shame for his heritage, Heine acknowledged the problem of ethnicity and nationality as nationalism evolved. (Quotes are translated, poorly, by me.) But what he said boldly turned into an apology for his participation in discussion about German nationalism. After the unification of Germany in the kleindeutsch model and the National Liberals conversion to Bismarckian notions of statecraft, Heine (and people who thought like him) became decidely un-German. As Jost Hermand has put it,

The post-1871 German nationalists saw in Heine only an immoral wag, a spineless scribbler without any sense of German nationalist virtues, virtues easily summed up in terms such as homeland, the German temperment, depth of soul, inwardness, a sense of community, comradeship, solidarity. For them, Heine was mrerely an exponent of Western liberalism, a doctine that in their eyes was based on vices of egoism, sensualism, and gossip mongering.

It's not surprising that after WWII, Germans would grasp at Heine as they searched for democratic roots on which to rebuild their society. But the tension between ethnicity and nationality still exists. It is difficult for Turks, for instance, to speak about social and cultural problems without referencing their exteriority. The expression of identity can still be an acknowledgement of having an uncertain position in society.

• History of Heinrich Heine
  
• 150 Years without Heinrich Heine (in German)
• On the Bebelplatz Portal in Berlin, which bears a Heine quote as an insciption:"He who burns books, will burn people in the end."

• Er ist eine matte Fliege und besingt Maikäfer (on Heine's misrepresentation of Karl Mayer, in Die Welt)
• Kulturkampfe mit Heine (great article on using Heine on whether Germans can be patriotic, in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger)
• Wikipedia bio
• Jewish Encyclopedia bio
• Literary Encyclopedia bio
• Heinrich Heine Portal (University of Trier)
  

UPDATE, February 16, 11:39 p.m. From the OMB Watch (that is, Office of Management and Budget Watch) web site:

Religious, charitable, educational and scientific organizations have been tax-exempt since 1913, although no political activity parameters were included in the first exemption statues. In 1954, however, Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson (D-TX) added the"express prohibition" on political campaign activity—without the benefit of hearings, testimony, or comment from affected organizations during Senate floor debate on the Internal Revenue Code. The amendment prohibits 501(c)(3) organizations from"participat[ing] in, or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office." The law was eventually applied to churches and now includes all 501(c)(3) organizations.

The genesis of Johnson's desire to reduce 501(c)(3) participation in elections reportedly stems from the great effect nonprofits had in campaigning against him,"by producing Red-baiting radio shows, television programs and millions of pieces of literature”; however, committee records demonstrate a general congressional mood towards increased regulation of nonprofit speech.

Despite copious rhetoric about promoting “excellence” and “quality” in providing a “21st century” education, the AAC&U made perfectly clear its intended audience: at a conference with dozens of sessions, panelists from three low-quality but AAC&U-oriented schools (Evergreen State, Cal. St.-Monterey Bay, and IUPUI) more than doubled the combined number of presenters from the eight Ivy League institutions, Cal.-Berkeley, Stanford, and the University of Chicago. (Two-thirds of those from the latter group came from Columbia’s Teachers’ College.) The AAC&U’s fundamental agenda—shifting the emphases of a college education away from instruction in the traditional disciplines of the liberal arts toward a focus on “skills,” and infusing the resulting courses with content designed to purge lower- and middle-class (white) students of their allegedly intrinsic racism and sexism—has no chance of adoption by any school in which parents or alumni play an active role. So the group targets middle and lower-tier, mostly public, colleges and universities. To date, around 20 colleges follow most of the AAC&U line, while the organization has some influence over the policies of perhaps 30 or 40 more schools.

Around a third of the conference panels (such as important one, by several people from CUNY, on how the “integrated university” concept has improved the opportunity for all CUNY students to receive a quality general education) represent the type of fare you would expect at any conference of a major higher education organization. The remainder, however, dealt with themes more central to the AAC&U’s approach.

The group’s elitism occasionally yielded unintentionally hilarious proposals. One of this year’s sessions, for instance, described “nutrition”(!) as among the “topics that often divide us.” Panelists intoned that all colleges must explore the nutrition issue, along with questions such as religion, philosophy, and human rights, because “nothing less than global dignity is the natural and logical end of liberal education.” Another panel urged abandoning the “variations on the teacher/scholar theme” seen in “visions of excellence emerging from ancient Athens and late 19th century Berlin.” To where should the academy look for a new conception of quality? Los Angeles!! (Or"L.A.," as the session description coolly notes.) With such an approach, attendees learned, “new, more capacious visions of scholarly excellence will be required.” Right.

Most of the sessions, however, were far less amusing. The AAC&U has consistently sought to blur the line between the faculty and support and co-curricular staff. And so a panel entitled “Collaborating for Excellence” discussed achieving “transformative learning” by creating “intentional partnerships” between the faculty and offices of student life/affairs. Any quick glance through Kors and Silverglate’s Shadow University will reveal the one-sided, heavily ideological orientation of student life offices. Giving such bodies any curricular role—much less a significant one—is deeply dangerous. Along similar lines, the AAC&U regularly promotes “service learning,” which one conference panel termed critical to fostering among students “essential dispositions, ways of thinking, and skills.” “Dispositions,” of course, is an important code word in itself, and while volunteer work is wonderful, surely course credits are more important. The recommendation of yet another panel that service learning become “a defining characteristic of higher education’s mission” represents a step in the wrong direction.

A second AAC&U focus is a war on the culture of academic research. The 2004 conference devoted a session to strategies for administrators in dealing with those tenured faculty members who defined academic merit through demonstrated skills as researchers or lecturers. Such a demand, one session noted, presented “barriers to realizing the benefits of inclusive excellence.” The theme received prominent play this year as well. One session worried about a personnel system that “rewards individual faculty performance” in research, rather than professors’ ability to structure courses “which are more collaboratively designed.” Another panel advocated “new pathways to tenure,” moving beyond evaluations based on “research, teaching, and service.” To what? Collegiality?

Third, AAC&U programs have consistently implied that “diversity” is incompatible with U.S. democracy as traditionally defined. (Association publications always describe as their goal fostering a “diverse democracy,” rather than a democracy; one session at this year’s conference suggested that the contemporary United States was a “would-be democracy.”) Along these lines, the organization urges colleges to foster not American but “global” civic ideals—such as combating the “continuing Eurocentric intellectual tradition,” or redefining globalization to support “empowering individuals, especially those who are non-western and non-white.” Public universities still rely on some taxpayer funds. Does anyone believe that even one state legislature appropriates moneys under the belief that their state’s colleges and universities will adopt such goals as central?

Fourth, along the lines of the ABA diversity resolution passed last weekend, the AAC&U has been at the forefront of efforts to blur the distinction Justice O’Connor made in the 2003 Michigan decisions—in which Gratz outlawed the use of racial quotas while Grutter upheld race-based admissions in the name of “diversity.” Groups such as the AAC&U have responded not by heeding O’Connor’s wish that higher education move beyond race-based admissions by 2028 but instead by attempting to institutionalize “diversity” as a central academic goal. (Indeed, AAC&U rhetoric strongly suggests that “diversity” should be the preeminent academic goal of colleges.) Such a strategy would require indefinitely retaining race-based admissions, since without them the rationale for a college education would vanish. One panel, which included Michigan’s senior vice-provost, urged AAC&U members to do more to “integrate diversity and quality initiatives on campus, so that diversity becomes an integral aspect of all students’ learning.” Another group, composed of several AAC&U senior officers, was even more blunt: in the “‘post-Michigan’ educational environment,” campuses should “connect their educational quality and inclusion efforts more fundamentally and comprehensively than ever before.” Therefore, colleges needed to show the courts how “diversity, as a component of academic excellence, is essential to higher education’s continuing relevance in the twenty-first century.”

In only one respect did the 2006 AAC&U conference depart from its customary pattern. In past years, the organization has been coy about overtly conceding its ideological motives, preferring to operate by stealth through coded phrases. Not so in 2006. Panel after panel demanded reorienting college curricula around promotion of “social justice”—an inherently political concept that has caused enormous problems when applied at Education schools. As applied at most of the two dozen or so institutions that have established programs in the field, “global studies” has been nothing more than a forum for professors to structure classes around their political beliefs. A session on the topic, entitled “The Politics of Interdisciplinary Engagement,” asked such loaded questions as, “Can or should faculty try to maintain political neutrality in the classroom? How can students learn what is involved in global citizenship without examining their geopolitical positions in the world?” A panel from the University of Southern Maine proclaimed that “neutrality's just another word,” since “advocacy and academic freedom” go hand-in-hand in the classroom at their institution, which defines its curricular goals as “an extended inquiry into democracy, sustainability, justice, and difference.” The panel asked, “Does the obligation to protect free and open debate demand a stance of neutrality? Or does it call us to model the passionate commitments and thoughtful engagement we hope to foster in our students?”

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to determine which option conference attendees preferred. To borrow words from a perceptive movie review by Leon Wieseltier, the AAC&U “asks its questions in ways that make its preferred answers perfectly clear.”

David Mendel,"2 Illini editors are suspended," Chicago Tribune, 15 February, indicates that two editors of the student newspaper at the University of Illinois have been suspended for publishing the offensive Danish editorial cartoons about Muhammad. The editor-in-chief indicates that he expects to be fired at the end of an internal investigation. Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief at the University of North Carolina's Daily Tarheel defends his decision to publish a similar cartoon. I've criticized the original publication of the cartoons as imprudent and I think it was. But student editors ought not face punishment, even for imprudent decisions, unless – you know – you want to teach them that there's no such thing as freedom of the press in the United States.

Mitchell Langbert,"Slush Money in the Groves of Academe," Front Page Rag, 15 February. As the attribution suggests, I take a backseat to no one in my contempt for David Horowitz's e-rag, but Mitchell Langbert's article is a good reminder of why my colleague, KC Johnson, is one of my heroes.

Archaeologists are reporting the discovery of a massive tomb in Pella, the birthplace of Alexander the Great and capital of ancient Macedonia.

Der Spiegal recommends UCLA's"Hypermedia Berlin," by which you can do virtual tours of the city, choosing from interactive maps that span the years from 1237 to 2003. Thanks to Dale Light of Light Seeking Light for the tip.

Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith,"CIA Chief Sacked for Opposing Torture," Times Online, 12 February.* Is there no bottom to what the administration does? Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.
*But, see also: Larry Johnson,"House Cleaning at CIA?" TPM Cafe, 7 February.