A Propagation of Popular Stereotypes

To the Editor:

I found William Deresiewicz’s recent piece, “Academe’s Divorce From Reality” (The Chronicle Review, November 21), disappointing in its propagation of popular stereotypes and sweeping generalizations. To begin with, there is no monolithic “the academy.” Higher education in the United States is made up not only of expensive, private Ivy League schools peopled by “elites,” but of state university systems, regional comprehensives, community colleges, early college partnerships with public schools, and small private schools — to name only a few. All of these institutions do not share identical policies, politics, funding, or missions. There are no ideas or positions that meaningfully apply to them all, certainly not those that Deresiewicz attributes to them — for instance, state universities do not commonly insist that “the state is evil.”

Moreover, Deresiewicz’s assumption that all faculty at all institutions constitute a “liberal elite” ignores the fact that the majority of faculty in America are contingent, that most of their salaries are far lower than their qualifications, experience, and workload would merit in most other settings, and that those salaries do not begin to keep pace with inflation or the cost of health care. His implication that all these faculty are “elites” who are somehow less “answerable to reality” than Deresiewicz is extremely problematic. So is Deresiewicz’s explanation of what “everybody’s” best interests are — as he excoriates “academics” for allegedly telling others what their best interests are.

There may be many reasons for Mr. Trump’s victory; unlike Deresiewicz, I don’t claim to know the One True Answer. But Deresiewicz’s case that it was because overworked, underpaid adjuncts at non-Ivy League schools — who constitute the majority of academics in this country — were spitting on the nuclear family, or because institutions which remain overwhelmingly white claim that “‘whiteness’ is evil,” is unconvincing. Rather, for some reason, Deresiewicz seems to be mapping some strong emotions of his own about “the academy” onto a vast system of institutions and individuals much more complex and varied than he’s able to allow.

Catherine Carter
Professor

English Studies
Western Carolina University