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which I forgot, an anti-intellectualist strain which has remained, and the
exemplar would probably be Andrew Jackson. According to Hofstadter,
this dreadful educational virus was carried by several institutions, one of
which was the church and the other the educational system. I was won–
dering if you thought that the problem is not part of the hull of our
country that's been around for a long time.
Jerry
Martin: In my earlier years professors defended the classics and the
hoi polloi
out there didn't see why that mattered. They wanted students to
get a business degree or a hotel management degree and get a job. Now,
we live in an environment in which the classics, elitism, and standards are
deplored by professors and have wider support among the public. As Sandy
Pinsker said, now it's professors who are dumping Shakespeare as a require–
ment. When I did talk shows, people who called in wondered why
everybody in America knows that Shakespeare is the most important
author in the English language and English professors don't. That's a
bizarre turnabout.
Peter
Wood: I agree with you, Dr. Lanham. Hofstadter's analysis is very
powerful. American anti-intellectualism has been around a long time. It's
a complex phenomenon with a lot of strands. Certain strands can be traced
to the religious origins of some American colleges and have been carried
in the academy all along. Another strand is represented by Senator Morrill,
an advocate of "training" in the applied arts to be taught in colleges and
universities. He helped to institute the pragmatic turn in American higher
education, that element of American utilitarianism which has never been
very far away from American anti-intellectualism. So the question is: has
this problem deep and complex historical roots? It certainly does. I agree
with President Martin that it has emerged in a new and frightening form
in the last twenty-five years. But to understand it truly we should read
Hofstadter and look deep into the roots of American culture, which have
an anti-elitist strain that is closely connected with anti-intellectualism
from the late eighteenth century.
Edith
Kurzweil: I want to address two points, one by Michael Meyers,
and the other one by someone else. About ten years ago, here at Boston
University, we had a conference like this one, and we heard a wonderful
talk by a black member of the faculty, Wilson Moses, who among other
things said that he learned how to read on his mother's lap and she was
reading Shakespeare to him. "Of course," he said, "Our
Othello
is different
from your
Othello,"
but that didn't matter. Okay? As a postscript, I must
add he did not allow me to print his talk verbatim because he was afraid
