The subtitle of this collection of essays* "Essays criticising the teaching of the humanities in American Universities", is wildly misleading. It is not a pedagogic text book for left inclined lecturers but covers a far greater field. The catalyst for this rethinking of what American universities are and what they ought to be is Vietnam. Vietnam is the "liberal's war" serviced and propagandised for by the "para-military intellectuals."
Roszak locates the origins of this academic delinquency in the function of the university, It acts as a service station for capitalism which will teach "anything we can get anybody to pay for". This has its obvious effect on the teaching staff. "And what are the imperatives our students would find inscribed upon their teachers' lives? 'Secure the grant!' 'Update the bibliography!' 'Publish or perish!' The academic life may be busy and anxious, but it is the business and anxiety of careerist competition that fills it, not that of a dangerous venture."
The book is at its most useful when it itemises how effectively the American military have used the academics. A director of the CIA, Admiral Raborn, described his close relationship with the intellectuals: "...in actual numbers we could easily staff the faculty of a university with our experts, In a way, we do. Many of those who leave us join the faculties of universities and colleges. Some of our personnel take leave of absence to teach and renew their contacts in the academic world, I suppose this is only fair; our energetic recruiting effort not only looks for the best young graduate students we can find, but also picks up a few professors from time to times,"
The State Department spends about $30 million on research in American universities per year. In 1966, it had 5,000 foreign affairs studies underway in American universities.
One of the more ambitious undertakings of the United States Army was project Camelot, designed to "assess the potential for internal war in national societies." Up to $6 million was subscribed for work in thirty-one countries before the project folded in the middle of an international scandal, Project Agile, in 1967, used over [illegible] anthropologists in Thailand to work out ways of counteracting guerilla warfare, The NEW YORK TIMES reported: "The old formula for successful counterinsurgency used to be ten troops for every guerilla, one American specialist remarked. Now the formula is ten anthropologists for each guerilla." It is scarcely surprising that out of 10,000 political scientists, only 65 were listed as sponsors of the national Teach-In Committee - the other 9,935 were probably on the military pay-roll!
For those who are shy of the military, big business opens its arms, Grayson Kirk, of Columbia for example, serves on the board of directors of Consolidated Edison, Socony-Mobil, IBM and Nation Wide Securities Company, Not all of the academics have to be bought. They believe the rubbish they come out with. Professor David Rowe, Director of Graduate Studies explained to the same committee that like all people who have lived under communism, the North Vietnamese "would be perfectly happy to be bombed to be free."
The writers of the essays turn their attention to what should be the concern of the universities, It is here that they are less successful in their analysis. They correctly despise the approach that either treats the humanities as the "ditty bag of an idiot, filled with bits of pebbles, straws, feathers, and other random hoardings," or uses the discipline to grease the chariot-wheels of capitalism. Some get no further than posing the question while others retreat to the liberal mystification of socially-unattached intellectuals[.] With all these inadequacies, it is still an enlightening book. If only we had such dossiers on our own Encounter-revolutionaries,
* THE DISSENTING ACADEMY - edited by Theodore Roszak, Penguin 8/-