Rothman wary of shift in culture; scholar Stanley Rothman says there has been a change in society and a breakdown in the social order that one day will turn around, but he does not know when

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 1, 2002 | by Stephen Goode

Stanley Rothman, chairman of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), is a professor emeritus at Smith College in Massachusetts. He's a prolific author of numerous scholarly essays as well as articles in popular magazines. Among his books are such highly regarded works in political science as Roots of Radicalism and Media Elites.

Rothman joined the U.S. Navy in July 1945. "The bomb was dropped when I was in boot camp," he tells INSIGHT. Then he entered Harvard University on the G.I. Bill of Rights to earn his doctorate. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation and the Social Science Research Council.

Never an academic specialist, Rothman's books in recent years have included American Elites (1996), Hollywood's America: Social and Political Themes in Motion Pictures (1996) and Environmental Cancer: A Political Disease? In the fall of 2002 his book on the Supreme Court, The Least Dangerous Branch: The Consequences of Judicial Activism, will be published. Nevertheless, he is a man who values his family and who now has two grandchildren. He says with a smile, "I'd give up all the books I've written to have six or eight grandchildren."

This interview took place at the 2002 NAS meeting in Washington.

Insight: Has your field of political science been changed or damaged by political correctness?

Stanley Rothman: Political science tends to be among the more conservative of disciplines. Unlike sociologists or anthropologists, political scientists tend to be more conservative because they are concerned with questions of power. We assume there is such a thing as disorder and that you need power to bring it under control.

Nevertheless, the profession is turning in ways I find dissatisfying. There is tremendous emphasis on queer studies, gender studies, all of the postmodernist stuff. You also have the group that is concerned with "rational choice" that applies economic categories to everything. They also are very important, though I find them dull.

But I find the stuff that is done by the queer- and gender-studies people--people on the left--to be worse.

I'm not very impressed by the way the profession is going today. I'm pessimistic; I'm skeptical.

Insight: Is it the subject matter or the jargon that bother you about gender studies and queer studies?

SR: Both the subject matter and the jargon. And it's partly the fact that in their concern for these subjects they ignore the larger questions of the political order and the role of the state. They also tend to have their answers in advance, and that's another fault. The only reason they hold panels and discussions is to confirm the answers they already have, and this tends to make their work not very useful. They also tend to be very prejudiced against objectivity and antipathetic to white, heterosexual males.

Insight: They've made one of their favorite sayings, "The personal is the political;' into a central tenet, haven't they?

SR: They've taken it literally. But it's not a person as a whole that they look to, but the person in his or her sexual role, gender role or racial roles. It only considers the person in a certain kind of way writ large.

Insight: Has the National Association of Scholars helped to counter the power of the left on American campuses?

SR: I think it's slowed the process of decay and may in fact have reversed it in some isolated cases. I think FIRE [the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which was founded by NAS activists; see picture profile, Feb. 12, 2001] has done a wonderful job in using the courts to stop universities and administrations from doing certain kinds of things. Without them, the situation would be much worse.

I come to the NAS meetings. I see the turnout and meet people who share my own views and see the situation as I do. I get temporarily optimistic. Then I realize they're all middle-aged. There are some women now, but few younger people and very few minorities.

Insight: Some critics have said that political correctness has gained the power it has because of the natural timidity of professors. Are academics more timid than any other segment of the population?

SR: I can't speak about other segments of the population, but professors are notoriously timid. They don't like being disliked: They don't like being disliked by their colleagues; they don't like being disliked by their students; they don't like being disliked by the [school's] administration.

People are afraid. I'm not afraid, I'm retired. I once kept my mouth shut and now I don't. But people who want jobs, who want to achieve positions in the profession, have to keep their mouths shut to get ahead.

I think most people are timid. I gave a talk to the Chinese Academy of Science many years ago and talked about whether there was a radical movement in the United States. I told them no, that maybe 3 percent of the country was radical. But then I turned to them and said, "You know, during the Chinese Revolution, 3 percent were for, 3 percent opposed and the rest hid under the bed." They all laughed, because it was true. The communist revolution in China was won by 3 percent of the population, maybe 5 percent, but it was won.