The Liberal Liberal Arts

After reading Michael Bérubé's "reply to academe's conservative critics" and the numerous reviews and blog postings that appeared shortly after the publication of What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?, I confess to some trepidation in writing a review of it for symploke¯. First, because so much of the waterfront has been covered already. Second and contrarily, because reaction to the book had led in so many directions that I feel as if I am witness to—well—an accident in a kitchen that leaves tomato sauce sprayed into every corner of the room, and beyond. How to clean up? Where to begin? As importantly, where to end? And third, because the book's target audience isn't academics or even, more narrowly, experts on the influence of "bias" or politics in the pedagogical and hiring practices of higher education. As other commentators have observed, it is difficult to assess a work that relies so heavily on the experience, especially the classroom experience, of the author. One might add that it's difficult to assess a work that relies so heavily on the authority of the author, which, of course, is not insubstantial.

What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? is well written and a fun read, but it is a bifurcated book, the best chunk of which offers "curious readers a look into the classroom dynamics of undergraduate courses in contemporary literature and culture" by revealing how Bérubé tries to organize and frame classroom discussion (20). Many commentators praise this section of the book, and Bérubé has reconstructed his classroom with care and wit, allowing readers to witness how he responds to students both orally and in writing; how he uses references to the common culture of students—music, movies, sports—to underscore a point or make a transition; and even how he responds to his own moments of frustration and confusion, moments that can lead to intellectual growth for Bérubé himself. Reading these chapters leaves the impression that Bérubé is an excellent teacher, in no way coercive about politics in his classrooms. This assertion I believe, because I subscribe to it, too: "I never—explicitly or implicitly—ask my students to agree with anything I say, in or out of class," and he adds that "I consider it part of my job to let students know where to go to reinforce or expand their beliefs as well as to challenge them" (140, 266-67). The professor's job, Bérubé thinks—and again I agree with him—is to challenge intellectual complacency and conformity, to get students to think hard again about what they read and think. This is her job regardless of whether complacency and conformity is found in the foundationalism of undergraduates or the postmodern chic of graduate students (224-25). Furthermore, whether a professor votes Republican or Democratic or Socialist or Libertarian is irrelevant to those tasks. I find Bérubé's efforts in these pages (and in the classrooms where the pages have their origins) to be admirable and worth emulating. Conservative critics, however, are unlikely to be impressed, since they are unlikely to be persuaded that Bérubé's tolerance in the classroom is the whole of the story. Even if conservative critics were to generalize from Bérubé's account of his pedagogy, and accept that most professors, even if they are politically liberal (and Bérubé admits they are), do not indoctrinate their students, the story about "bias" for these critics is more complicated, concerned as much about content (or what is taught) as form (or how it is taught).

The less compelling pages of What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? are Bérubé's attempt to answer conservative critics of the academy and particularly of the humanities—David Horowitz, for example, he of the "Academic Bill of Rights." On television, on the Web, and in print, such critics—perhaps I should call them "pundits"—accuse us of all manner of sins: undermining Truth, Beauty, and Goodness; turning the analysis of literature into a political screed; pursuing diversity at all costs...