Manifesto of a Tenured Radical

Nelson's book takes its title from Richard Kimball's volume "Tenured Radicals" and is an unabashedly leftist response in many ways. While some have criticized the book for elitism, Nelson is right to point out that some in academic institutions have lost sight of rigorous, critical thinking and engagement--which must be the foundation of a liberal education. Nelson is hardly part of the cultural elite---he writes not from Harvard or Stanford---but from a public university that stays alive with taxpayer support.On the other hand, he takes D'Souza, Cheney, and William Bennett all to task for being demagogues. This may sound like just nasty name calling, but it is important to remember that these pseudo-intellectuals (who have hardly any experience in academia yet claim to know it intimately) have more or less called for the expulsion of anyone from positions of influence who are not lock-step conservatives.....he backs up his accusations with factual citations, such as William Bennett's tirade at the NEH that no more academic conferences dealing with Marxism would ever get taxpayer funding again (even though the vast majority of American Marxists are taxpayers too). D'Souza comes in for slightly more sympathetic treatment, although Nelson rightly exposes Illiberal Education for the collection of unsupported half-truths that it was. Is Nelson getting nasty?---yeah, he speaks the truth as he sees it. That this offends so many is a testament to the "kid-gloves" treatment right wing criticism of academia gets in the national media. That he does it with humor and style causes many to misread him as an elitist (like the "wine" incident that other reviewers mention).The difficult part of Nelson's book is the "12-step" program for academia that he proposes---such as turning away eligible graduate students and getting rid of PhD programs that produce more doctorates than the academy can handle.While I understand that impulse, it strikes a defeatist note with regard to higher education's political influence, and may not be necessary, given that another portion of his advice, publicizing the achievements of the humanities, would provide a counter to the drivel that reactionary demagogues have been feeding the public consciousness regarding scholarship in this country.As Nelson demonstrates, sometimes you just have to directly resist injustice, as the Yale TA unionizing debacle shows. Maybe that's also true with regards to the anti-intellectualism, political and economic harassment that the academy endures from other public institutions (like state legislatures) and private ones (like reactionary think-tanks).

Near Midnight? In Manifesto of A Tenured Radical, Cary Nelson, citizen of Urbana-Champaign, turned gunslinger for a day, steps into the halls of postmodern academia, white hatted, theoretical guns blazing, to scare fellow citizens into cleaning up the corruption of academic Dodge. The corrupt academic practices that he targets include the hiring of part time academic labor, faculty hiring and exploitation of graduate students. He also draws a bead on the future of literary studies as the town understands them, sighting cultural studies, as a big young gun who may be taking over. As often occurs during demonstrations of target shooting, Nelson stirs up interest and controversy. Yet, almost anticlimactically, he finally asks the curious but already beleaguered citizens of academia to return to their offices, good guys and gals to the left and bad old dudes to the right, and apply their various theoretical stances to solve the problems of their corrupt town. Nelson fails to acknowledge that many of these problems and inequities have emerged from the deep seated conflict among the theories (and theorists) he suggests be applied to solve them. Maybe Nelson is forgetting the longstanding feud between Plato and the Sophists, the absolutists and the relativist. What he actually seems to suggest is that all the new gunslingers, Feminists, Marxists, Cultural Studies theorists, who have been around only twenty-five years or so,take over, apply their theories in place of the old--in place of the Historicists,Formalists, New Critics--and like religion, this will clean up the town. To guide them through the difficult process of reconstructing the town, Nelson then offers that the citizens might iniate a twelve-step program. The use of the twelve step model is disturbing because of its associations with obsessive addiction to alcohol, drugs and sex, and it is not clear whether he suggests that academicians are addicted to their theories, to the status quo, or other obsessive and self defeating practices. His twelve step program advises 1) a bill of rights for graduate students,teaching assistants, and part-time faculty 2) Unionization of teaching assistants and adjunct or part-time faculty 3) making teaching assistants full employees 4) paying these employees a years work for a years wage 5) Challenging the priorities given to faculty salaries. 6) urging Community Colleges to hire PH.D.s 7) Exchanging Postdoctoral teachers 8) Challenging disciplinary organizations, 9) fighting false consciousness/educating the educators 10) Closing marginal doctoral programs and preventing new ones from being created 11)Encouraging ineffective and effective faculty to retire and rehire effective ones part time. 12) popularizing the achievements of the academy. While I admire his white-hatted idealism, and his High Noon sense of resolve, I would have more confidence in him if he had shown how these 12 steps are likely to solve the obvious problems he targets with his