{"id":1229,"date":"2015-01-29T19:54:10","date_gmt":"2015-01-30T00:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2015-01-29T19:54:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-30T00:54:10","slug":"occupying-the-white-male-syllabus-at-berkeley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2015\/01\/occupying-the-white-male-syllabus-at-berkeley.html","title":{"rendered":"“Occupying” “the White Male Syllabus” at Berkeley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Upon witnessing the trials of Nazi war criminals in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt remarked that they shared in common one salient feature: \u201cit was not stupidity,\u201d she said, \u201cbut a curious, quite authentic inability to think.\u201d\u00a0 This inability or refusal to think is on full display in a student editorial\u2014\u201cOccupy the Syllabus\u201d\u2014that was recently published by The Daily Californian<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Rodrigo Kazuo and Meg Perret are Berkeley students who are none too pleased by\u2014surprise, surprise!\u2014the lack of gender and racial diversity among the canon of assigned authors in most humanities and social sciences courses.\u00a0 In short, there are just too<\/em> many white guys<\/em> that students are expected to know about.<\/p>\n

The students\u2019 \u201ccall\u201d for an \u201coccupation of syllabi\u201d was \u201cinstigated\u201d by their experience in \u201can upper-division course in classical social theory.\u201d\u00a0 The syllabus for this course is scandalous, for it \u201cemployed a standardized canon of theory that began with Plato and Aristotle, then jumped to modern philosophers: Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, Marx, Weber and Foucault, all of whom are white men.\u201d\u00a0 Not \u201ca single woman or person of color\u201d was included.<\/p>\n

Kazuo and Perret insist that it is \u201cabsurd\u201d for these courses to \u201cpretend that a miniscule fraction of humanity\u2014economically privileged white males from\u2026imperial countries…\u2014are the only people to produce valid knowledge of the world.\u201d\u00a0 The authors convict the \u201cwhite male syllabus\u201d for \u201csilencing the perspectives of the other 99 percent of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

These white theorists can\u2019t relate to \u201cthe lives of marginalized peoples,\u201d or \u201cgender or racial oppression.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, they didn\u2019t \u201ceven engage with the enduring legacies of European colonial expansion, the enslavement of black people and the genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas.\u201d\u00a0 When \u201crace and gender\u201d are <\/em>mentioned in \u201cthe white male canon,\u201d they \u201care at best incomplete and at worst racist and sexist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe standardized canon,\u201d Kazuo and Perret conclude, \u201cis obsolete.\u201d While their course in \u201csocial theory\u201d purported to be \u201crelevant\u201d to the day\u2019s issues, its failure to \u201caddress gender and racial oppression\u201d belie that claim.<\/p>\n

Yet the failures of the white male canon aren\u2019t merely theoretical: they affect non-white, non-male students adversely.\u00a0 The student writers allege that \u201cthe classroom environment [in their classical social theory course] felt so hostile to women, people of color, queer folks and other marginalized subjects that it was difficult for us to focus on course material.\u201d Even worse, there were times \u201cwhen we felt so uncomfortable that we had to leave the classroom in the middle of a lecture.\u201d\u00a0 Kazuo and Perret offer as an example of such moments the time that their instructor, while lecturing on Marx, noted the plausibility of the latter\u2019s theory of \u201cthe natural division of labor\u201d between the sexes given that women tend to get pregnant.\u00a0 When a student objected that this does not apply to transgendered people, the instructor replied that there will always be \u201c\u2019exceptions.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Then, presumably to lighten the mood, he joked: \u201c\u2019We may all be transgendered one day\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 Kazuo and Perret warn that \u201cmocking\u201d and referring to transgendered persons as \u201c\u2019exceptions\u2019 is unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

In conclusion, the authors encourage other students to help them to \u201crestructure the way social theory is taught.\u201d\u00a0 The white male canon is a \u201ctyranny\u201d that students must \u201cdismantle [.]\u201d\u00a0 In its place, students must \u201cdemand the inclusion of women, people of color and LGBTQ* [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer] authors on our curricula.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only in so doing can students hope to \u201cbreak, systematically and explicitly, the epistemological assumptions on which this exclusionary education rests.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kazuo and Perret end their essay with a question: \u201cIs it really worth it to accumulate debt for such an epistemically poor education?\u201d<\/p>\n

Given both the content and logic of their op-ed, our only reply to this question is a resounding no<\/em>!\u00a0 These poor students, like the vast majority of their peers in liberal arts departments around the country, have indeed been getting the shaft.\u00a0 But this is because they are not receiving an education <\/em>at all; rather, it is training, <\/em>or maybe indoctrination, <\/em>in an ideology, a doctrine or creed, of which they are the unfortunate <\/em>recipients.<\/p>\n

It is obvious, so painfully<\/em> obvious, that these Berkeley students are paralyzed by \u201cthe inability to think\u201d to which Arendt alludes. Their essay amounts to a caricature <\/em>of the Politically Correct orthodoxy, i.e. the militant leftist ideology, for which academia has become known\u2014and for which it is routinely ridiculed.\u00a0 In an essay that can\u2019t be more than a 1,000 words, there is scarcely a leftist stock phrase, clich\u00e9, or sacred cow that isn\u2019t exploited.<\/p>\n

The problem, though, is not that the students are incapable of thinking beyond leftist <\/em>stock phrases and clich\u00e9s; the problem is that they are incapable of thinking beyond stock phrases <\/em>and clich\u00e9s.\u00a0 <\/em>As Arendt writes: \u201cClich\u00e9s, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality, that is, against the claim on our thinking attention which all events and facts arouse by virtue of their existence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arendt admits that if \u201cwe were responsive to this claim [on our thinking attention] all of the time, we would soon be exhausted [.]\u201d\u00a0 In other words, we must trade, at least much of the time, in \u201cstandardized codes of expression and conduct [.]\u201d\u00a0 However, \u201cthe difference\u201d between some of us and the average Nazi defendant that she observed is that the latter \u201cclearly knew of no such claim\u201d on his <\/em>\u201cthinking attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what was true in Eichmann seems equally true of these Berkeley students.<\/p>\n

The latter can also be likened to some of Socrates\u2019 pupils to whom Arendt refers, men who were not \u201ccontent being taught how to think without being taught a doctrine<\/em>,\u201d a creed on which to hang their hats (italics added).\u00a0 Yet the activity of thinking \u201cis equally dangerous to all creeds<\/em> and, by itself, does not bring forth any new creed\u201d (italics added).<\/p>\n

Substantively, of course, Kazuo\u2019s and Perret\u2019s comments are outrageous.\u00a0 The point here, though, is that even if<\/em> there was truth to them, that they are framed in terms of all of the buzzwords of any<\/em> orthodoxy\u2014in this case, the prevailing orthodoxy at Berkeley and in academia generally\u2014reveals the shallowness of their intellects.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Kazuo\u2019s and Perret\u2019s op-ed serves as an indictment<\/em> of the faculty and administrators of their institution.\u00a0 Not only has Berkeley (like colleges and universities throughout the land) failed miserably to supply their students (in the liberal arts) with an education, the ability and willingness to interrogate their own most cherished doctrines.\u00a0 Berkeley has actually supplied<\/em> them with the doctrine <\/em>that resulted in this essay: After all, can anyone really doubt that Kazuo and Perret are, <\/em>from tip to tail, the children of Berkeley?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s ironic\u2014richly<\/em> ironic\u2014is that it is largely their white male<\/em> instructors that filled their heads with this conceptual claptrap in the first place.<\/p>\n

Rather than occupying their instructors\u2019 syllabi, the Kazuos and Perrets of the world would be much better served trying, for once, to occupy their own minds instead of allowing them to be fed with the dogmas and vapid slogans of their professors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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