Correcting Leftist Wrongs? Not So Fast.

To the Editor:

Imagine my surprise to discover, upon reading Hollis Robbins’ ”How Business Metrics Broke the University” (The Chronicle Review, April 3), that someone with the title, “special adviser for humanities diplomacy” doesn’t work at Arizona State, my university, but nevertheless disdains it for its newfangled, jargon-ridden administrative culture. ASU deserves some good humored mockery; all institutions do. And we need to think about how universities have arrived in the pickle we’re in. But Robbins’ scare-quote laden lament offers little with which to work. She asserts that ASU’s student-centric model is responsible for a political radicalism that she claims exists not at ASU itself, but at Yale and Evergreen State, schools that have nothing like ASU’s model — and that probably wouldn’t have us over for tea any more readily than Robbins herself would.

She asserts that interdisciplinary centers supported by powerful administrations produce a progressive monoculture; yet the nation is awash in interdisciplinary centers and schools supported directly by powerful administrations and legislatures — every single one of which is right-leaning, openly so, and many of which are accused of violating the kind of faculty governance Robbins claims to value. The parade of horribles is difficult to follow but unmistakable in its bitterness: disdain for collective work on curricula, distaste for scholarship that interests the public, regret that senior faculty now hold less personal power over junior colleagues. Above all, she shows contempt for the belief that it’s a central faculty responsibility that our students learn, attain a degree, and find meaningful work. If those are the leftist wrongs of the modern university, I’m in no hurry to be right.

Catherine O’Donnell
Arizona State University