FOMENTING DISSENT ON CAMPUS

It's about time we demonstrated to our students that educated critique is better than brand loyalty.

Main of my colleagues say they are frustrated by their students' failure to "get involved," take a stand on an issue, or protest. I hear this lament not only at my own institution, a private school known mostly for business education, but also from colleagues at private liberal arts schools, community colleges, and state universities. But how often do we as faculty members demonstrate how to dissent? Do we teach students to disagree with dominant positions and to use their political franchise? Do we speak openly about problems at our institutions? Too often, we fear that we will be seen as insubordinate or disloyal to our colleges or universities, and thus we neither model nor teach the importance of dissent.

September 11, 2001, gave rise to a nervous citizenry, and not everyone agrees that dissent is a good idea. How do we create a system that allows for a healthy exchange of competing ideas? First, we need to consider some of the obstacles to creating (or re-creating) an engaged academic community in a culture in which corporate, commercial, and capitalistic practices have been naturalized into the university structure. The new corporate academy relies on a highly managed workforce and a clearly defined clientele. Anna Marie Cox, in her study of the rise of the corporate university, quotes John Sperling, the chief executive of the University of Phoenix: "This is a corporation, not a social entity. Coming here is not a rite of passage. We are not trying to develop [students'] value systems or go in for that 'expand their minds' bullshit." What he dismisses as nonsense, however, is the stuff that allows for dissent as opposed to docility, control, and uniformity.

The Corporate University

As U.S. universities rely increasingly on corporate models of institutional management, faculty are expected to perform as employees first-indeed, employees in need of firm management-and educators second. A recent selection of articles in the journal Radical Teacher highlights how this new arrangement has affected the shape of the academy. English professor Larry Hanley notes the replacement of a stable cohort of tenured faculty with casual, temporary employees-a replication of practices in the corporate sector, which profits from an unprotected and easily replaceable labor force. American studies scholar Joseph Entin argues that with the increased presence of a temporary workforce, tenure is understood as a "privilege," not as a "right or even an expectation." With the erosion of tenure, faculty find it much more difficult to dissent openly. As English professor Michael Bérubé has argued, dissent in education has been relegated to an extremist position-nutty leftist professors, far outside "mainstream" thought.

Faculty have, to some degree, accepted this transformation as inevitable. They have often consented to changes furthering university corporatization, although they might express dissent in moments of contract negotiations, in the formation of graduate student unions, and in periodic revisions to academic freedom clauses in contracts. Perhaps department chairs, who hold quasi-administrative positions, are the most visible consenters to changes within the system. Chairs, as Hanley and Entin note, are responsible for managing the large contingent labor forces. As education professor Joel Westheimer argues, chairs are increasingly seen as administrative appointees loyal to the administration, which often places them at odds with the faculty.

Once we agree that departments must compete with one another for limited resources, or that enrollment numbers justify everything, we have accepted a corporate model. As faculty labor unions lose power while corporate structures grow, faculty performance becomes increasingly subject to surveillance by human resources offices rather than by faculty governance processes. Human resources offices, no matter how wonderfully staffed and run, are ultimately an arm of the administration. Faculty concerns should be protected and voiced through faculty governance in unions or senates.

Student as Consumer

Not long ago, I asked students in a first-year class to write an essay applying principles of the new urbanism we had been discussing to buildings on campus. Recent construction has made my campus attractive and greatly improved the environment. I wanted to see if students could analyze whether the institution had responded to a particular ideological approach to urban planning. I thought the essay topic would give them a chance to apply some critical-thinking skills. Most, if not all of the students, however, ignored the instructions and came back with what I can only characterize as promotional statements for the campus; they seemed to think that was what I wanted.

Perhaps I did a poor job in preparing them for this exercise, but what struck me very hard, even after classroom discussion, was their hesitancy to critique the campus in any way. They saw criticism as disloyalty and tried to convince me that nothing needed improvement. The essays echoed what they had heard on campus tours. These newly admitted students were heavily invested in the brand name of what they had purchased. Such investment made it difficult for them to accept or to engage in criticism.