Recently, Larry Elder, a libertarian right wing talk show host
on KABC Radio in Los Angeles has gone on the offensive again.
Elder is clearly unsympathetic to criticisms of economic
globalization and the critique of the growing social, political and
economic inequality. Elder cites a letter which he received from a
disgruntled sixteen year-old student who complains that
universities and colleges across the United States have now been
overrun by leftist professors and instructors. In the letter, the
student says things like, “I have experienced excessive
stomach-churning liberal bias in school,” “these
teachers constantly avoid allowing me to contradict their senseless
preaching,” and “look no further, this is the problem
with the public school system.”
We are not aware of the last time that Elder visited UCLA or any
other university or college, but the claim that leftist professors
and teachers have taken over universities is palpably misguided. It
is as ludicrous as the right wing argument that the corporate
mainstream media is occupied by the heirs of Lenin and Trotsky.
In fact, to advance the charge publicly that campuses are a
hotbed of radicalism has been a longstanding right wing strategy
from the days of Joe McCarthy in order to create a climate of fear
and paranoia with respect to an ever-present communist threat.
If Elder’s claim is in fact true, then we should ask why
corporations and foundations continue to fund universities that are
allegedly stacked with leftist professors. Corporations and private
foundations have enjoyed a longstanding relationship with public
universities and colleges. As Michael Parenti aptly puts it
“most of the institutions of higher education, like most
other institutions, are run by boards of trustees drawn almost
entirely from the business community, including real-estate
magnates, bankers, directors and chief executive officers of
leading corporations. Lacking any special training in the field of
higher education, trustees nevertheless exercise authority over
capital funding and budget; the hiring and firing and promotion of
faculty; the formation and abolition of academic departments. Study
programs, courses, and curriculum; tuition and student fees;
commencement speakers, guest lecturers, degrees, and awards; and
just about any other decision.”
If Elder is so concerned about the left wing university, we
wonder what he thinks about UC Berkeley, the campus that has been
scalded into the consciousness of many Americans as the
quintessential leftist breeding ground.
Recently, officials of this campus have refused to permit a
fund-raising appeal for the Emma Goldman Papers Project (Goldman
was a famous anarchist deported from the United States to the
Soviet Union when she spoke in opposition to World War I) to be
mailed because it quoted Goldman on the subject of suppression of
free speech and her opposition to war topics. The university has
deemed this to be too political as the country prepares for war
with Iraq. This censorship of free speech and anti-war advocacy is
hardly the action of a left wing university.
As the United States prepares for a war in Iraq for the
advancement of “free” market corporate capitalism,
control over Iraqi oil reserves, and in order to perpetuate U.S.
global military and economic supremacy, it seems fitting to echo
Goldman herself. In 1915, Goldman called on people “not yet
overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call
the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are
about to be perpetrated on them.” In 1902, Goldman warned
that free-speech advocates “shall soon be obliged to meet in
cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in
whispers lest our next-door neighbors should hear that free-born
citizens dare not speak in the open.”
We cannot think of more fitting wisdom in this era of George
Bush and John Ashcroft.