EDUCATION BEYOND POLITICS
405
Arthur Schlesinger:
We tend
to
have apocalyptic reactions. There are
problems, there are irritations. One way to overcome them and tame
them is to denounce them or at least discuss them. Education has always
been in a ferment. There's always an argument. And it's a good thing
too. It is evidence of vitality.
Roger Kimball:
Two things. First, there is going to be debate over it.
But at some places that debate is not being allowed. One side only is
represented, and everything else is castigated as right-wing propaganda.
Second, when you have the president of the MLA publicly pronouncing
that reading and writing are hegemonic "technologies of control," you
have the academic equivalent of martial law, enforced by the largest,
most powerful academic body in the country.
Arthur Schlesinger:
It's the largest, but it's not the most powerful. Do
you think all the members of the MLA agree with their president?
Roger Kimball:
The rank and file do not. But the leaders do.
Arthur Schlesinger:
But people pay no attention to it. They figure it's
out for publicity. 1 don't think it's a powerful organization, in the sense
that it exerts organizational discipline on its members.
Roger Kimball:
But English professors, especially untenured ones, feel
they have to join. To get a job they feel they have to go to the annual
MLA convention. Graduate students and young professors feel they have
to toe the line.
Arthur Schlesinger:
That doesn't mean they obey the idiocies of
whoever happens
to
be in charge.
Roger Kimball:
If you look at the papers they present, it does. It
shows their research.
Arthur Schlesinger:
For reasons 1 don't fully understand, the English
department is usually the focus of infection.
Celeste Colgan:
You have to appreciate where the organizational
power is. It's political power. These are the people the congressmen lis–
ten to. They listen to folks who say, " 1 represent thirty thousand peo–
ple." It's not as if these organizations have power over the discipline, or
even that they really change what goes on in the classroom. Their power
