On the The Teach-In and its role in Academic Freedom. From Arnold Kaufman to Meena Krishnamurthy

Before Rawls’ shadow in left-liberal political philosophy there was Arnold S. Kaufman (1927-1971), who died when his airplane collided with a military jet while traveling (recall this post). While there is no Wikipedia page devoted to him, Kaufman was rather famous during the 1960s because of his involvement with the student movement at the University of Michigan and especially by promoting ‘participatory democracy’ in the context of the Port Huron Statement (as the New York Times noted fifty years later, and The Nation a decade earlier). In fact, he had been regular contributor to Dissent during the last decade of his life. So, for example, an early version of his book (1968), The Radical Liberal: New Man in American Politics, appeared as a long essay (1966) “A call to Radicalism: Where Shall Liberals Go?” in Dissent. [HT Kevin Mattson.]

Despite his fame in his own era, Kaufman has left almost no trace in the Stanford encyclopedia of Philosophy, except that once he was a participant in the debate over Black Reparations. His actual views — in favor of what he calls ‘compensatory justice’’ — are not mentioned. (One can find the argument in the July – August 1969 issue of Dissent.)

Then after he moved to UCLA, he became a key defender of his then junior colleague, Angela Davis, against, inter alia, Ronald Reagan’s (gubernatorial) administration’s repeated attempts to get her fired because of her membership in the Communist Party.* The shape and rhetoric of today’s culture wars are already visible in the debates over her appointment. The essay in her defense that Kaufman published on January 3, 1970 in The New Republic is rather significant to understand his thinking about academic freedom, especially in light of his polemic with Sydney Hook’s more restrictive understanding of it. (Some other time more on that.)

Today, my interest in Kaufman relates to one of his more important intellectual contributions. As regular readers know (recall here; here; and here), I argue that student protests, as instances of ‘experiments in living,’ may fall under academic freedom. In particular, so understood (with emphasis on experiments) student protests may advance the epistemic mission of the university and, even, society. While the former is salient at all universities, the latter is especially important at universities whose (corporate) mission involves preparing students for citizenship, to contribute to democracy, and to public life (etc.) A key premise of my argument is that during student protests there is quite a bit of individual and social learning, not the least through (but not limited to) so-called ‘teach-ins.’

Kaufman was central to originating the practice of the teach-in. This was partially modeled on the idea of a sit-in popularized by the civil rights movement. This link is explicitly noted by Kaufman, “the tactics of the civil rights movement may be useful, especially when, as in the case of the teach-ins, they are creatively modified.” (“A Call to Radicalism,” p. 624.))

The phrase, ‘teach-in’ was coined by Marshall Sahlins (who, inter alia, was the mentor and supervisor to David Graeber). I quote from a footnote on page 32 of a Senate Judiciary report, The anti-Vietnam agitation and the teach-in movement: The problem of Communist infiltration and exploitation, as reported by Marshall Sahlins (2009). The note reads:

During a meeting on the night of March 17 [1965] they were batting around alternative ideas […] when Anthropologist Sahlins suddenly interrupted the discussion: ‘I’ve got it. They say we’re neglecting our responsibilities as teachers. Let’s show them how responsible we feel. Instead of teaching out, we’ll teach in – all night.

Kaufman then helped develop the concept, including speaking at the first “all-night teach-in” on March 24, 1965, at The University of Michigan. There is a lovely essay on this event by Jack Rothman in an old issue of Social Theory and Practice.

Now, as the quoted note suggests, and Sahlins himself also emphasizes in his essay,+ the teach-in originates with then young faculty at the University of Michigan. In some ways this feature makes it easier to show that teach-ins at student protests fall under academic freedom because it is faculty doing what they are paid to do in virtue of their expertise. This makes it easier to suggest that some student protests fall under the mission of the university to advance and educate the truth.

I don’t offer this as a legal argument. After all, during a teach-in faculty may well be teaching outside the classroom and generally outside the formal curriculum. (For example, in my home country, the Netherlands, the academic freedom of academics is constrained by their role in the curriculum.) I am rather offering a practical and conceptual argument for thinking that the presence of teach-ins turns student protests into possible sites of academic freedom.

The significance of the very idea of a teach-in is that it makes explicit that a student protest may be a contribution to widening and developing the intellectual life of a campus in the service of teaching and constituting truth. This last fact is at the root of the idea that I defend that student protests as ‘experiments in living’ may fall under academic freedom. In the reception of Kaufman the fact that he himself was educated in an environment where Dewey was an important presence makes this focus on experiments in living not ad hoc.

As it happens Kaufman himself thought seriously about the role of teach-ins in wider context. In a “A Call to Radicalism,” he treats student protests where teach-ins take place themselves as a response to administrative “empty rhetoric” about a university’s mission that “generates aspirations among people who take it seriously.” (p. 564; see also p. 568) This anticipates Agnes Callard’s recent observation. Student protests may act as a kind of public conscience of the university; in so far as it shapes what is worthy of attention in the classroom and research, student protests clearly advance the academic mission of the university. (As I have noted before (recall) this thought has roots in Max Weber’s ideas and is not just the province of radicals.)

Kaufman himself also treats teach-ins as “expressions of the need to participate more directly in the making of policies that vitally affect one’s life.” (“A Call to Radicalism,” p. 603) That is, he sees student protests as sites of participatory democracy in shaping the agenda of the university. This mixes the idea I attribute to Weber with experiments in living. He also thinks it is a form of education in citizenship, teach-ins and the like “are surrogates for participation in the processes by which public policies are formed and from which those involved in these activities are normally excluded,” (“A Call to Radicalism,” p. 605.)

I wouldn’t endorse this argument for everyone at every university. I am distinctly reserved about the enthusiasm for mass demonstrations among certain faculty colleagues. But as Meena Krishnamurthy (Queens) has suggested (2012), one cannot know this without experiment in living for oneself: “in order to determine if my ends are most rational for me, I need to be able to implement my ends or put them into practice.” (“Reconceiving Rawls’s Arguments for Equal Political Liberty,” p. 269; see also p. 271ff.) That is, student protests and social movements may, amongst other ends, be sites of true experiments for individuals, and society, in the service of truth.

This argument is not just high-minded philosophy a kind of rational reconstruction after the fact. It also reflects a key original insight of the student movement. For, in the Port Huron Statement, there is hope that the “university could serve as a significant source of social criticism and an initiator of new modes and molders of attitudes,” (p. 10; emphasis added.) That is to say, on the interpretation offered here, student protests when they are experiments in living in which a true education is central are intended to prefigure the kind of university worth having for a more desirable society.

• An earlier, abridged version of this essay appeared at Digressionsnimpressions.

*It may be worth quoting his colleagues’ obituary:

His arrival at UCLA coincided with that of his colleague, Angela Davis. Like all of the members of the Philosophy Department, he was plunged into the uproar and turmoil that surrounded The Regents’ efforts to prevent her from teaching. Throughout that first year, he worked to articulate both within the University, and to the outside community, the critical principles of academic freedom and constitutional rights that were at stake in the Davis case. His special contribution consisted in the organizational genius that he brought to the defense both of Professor Davis and the campus, and the political wisdom that was of great value to the Department and to the University at large, particularly through the Faculty Union, which he vitalized and led through this period

+Sahlins’ views on how he coined it and the wider political context are very much worth reading also because of his analysis of the way different kinds of protests complemented and competed with each othr.