To the Editor:
Your article about the establishment of the Hamilton Center for Civic Education outside of the professional structures at the University of Florida seemed careful and thorough (“How a Center for Civic Education Became a Political Provocation, The Chronicle, February 22). But it was mistitled. The Center did not become a political provocation; it was a political provocation. You note that the new academic unit “would act as a defense,” because the ordinary conduct of the University of Florida was deemed offensive by advocates of the Center — i.e., those driving the DeSantis caravan for more political power and higher political office. My interest in writing this letter, however, is not the political dimensions of this assault on academic freedom and higher education. Rather, it is the linguistic ammunition used for the assault and its intellectual roots — namely, America’s “culture wars” of the 1990s, which politicized the teaching of Western texts and seeded today’s politicization of higher education itself.
Any politicization of the Western tradition elides the distinction between educating us in that tradition — rendering it problematic (but ours) — and its politicization -- moralistically dividing its authors and their texts as good or bad, pro-feminist or anti-feminist, racist or anti-racist. For that venture enables right-wing partisans to fear that the country’s (mostly) white, European heritage was being vetted by left-wing partisans — uprooting their roots (even as they refuse to cultivate that heritage).
I doubt that public views of the last generation have a uniquely truthful perspective on human and political life. Indeed, some display the kind of arrogance which a critical appreciation of historical texts and political power subverts. To believe in the unqualified superiority of our benighted present (or troubled past) is (also) a partisan performance, and education is not supposed to promote practical political agendas. My ground is not middle; it’s critical.
Unfortunately, overreaching by intellectuals who place themselves in the vanguard of progressive change has offered red bait for political saboteurs (fearful of criticism) to grab every opportunity to seem to occupy high ground (e.g., “civic education”) when the latter’s efforts are actually designed to subvert critical thinking, free speech, and the integrity of public discourse.
John R. Wallach
Professor of Political Science
Hunter College & The Graduate Center
The City University of New York
