MARK MIRSKY
665
English courses I regularly see students who have been passed along by
other instructors though they lack basic skills. I don't want to partici–
pate in such a cruel hoax.
The faith in the role of the university to heal society which is the
basic tenet of "political correctness" is something I share. What
r
am
suspicious of, however, is the belief that it can be done today and to–
morrow. This is why the struggle over the traditions the university
teaches is so bitter. If it were only a question of literary and historical
texts, the texts themselves would be at the center of the discussion.
Under the guise of the canon, it is the role of the university which is
being argued. What is frightening is that in their search for tax funds,
university administrations have been willing
to
represent themselves to the
public as evangelical bodies ready to save society if they are adequately
funded. Everyone who actually teaches knows how slow education is,
and how uncertain, how dependent on the attitude of the student.
This is the real political situation, and the question of the correct
texts and courses follows from it. Here we arrive at the cases of Michael
Levin and Leonard Jeffries. Real politics, as
r
learned on the knee of my
father, who was a state legislator, turns out to be a circus in which the
public, guided by the media, turns to the clowns who have the wit or
luck to parody the issues. No one on the campus easily discusses Professor
Jeffries, because we are most of us, as my former student and colleague
Michelle Wallace has pointed out, intimidated. "Just knowing he's
down the hall makes discussion of race and ethnicity loaded," she told an
interviewer for
The New Yorker.
We have all seen the professor walking
down the corridors with what seems to be a praetorian guard, and some
of us wonder why this is happpening on an academic campus. We read
in the
Harvard Crimson
interview that threats were made to the inter–
viewer and shuddered.
Yet like many other professors at City College, I would consider it
dangerous if Professor Jeffries lost his tenure or position as a teacher be–
cause of unpopular, even outrageous views. I don't require Professor
Jeffries or Professor Levin to muzzle their very wounding and often un–
founded remarks. The court cases had nothing to do with this issue.
Why should Professor Levin have sought
to
challenge the college admin–
istration's decision to give students, aware of his oft-expressed view that
"poor educational and economic attainment by blacks in society is due
to
a lower average intelligence, not to race discrimination" and upset by
this rhetoric (as I am), a chance to enroll in another section? A particu–
lar teaching schedule as opposed to a demonstrably inappropriate one is
not a constitutional right. The college was not punishing Professor
Levin, who has a reputation among some minority students as a good
