The Shirley Sherrods of Academe?Inside Higher Ed
April 29, 2011Videos posted by the conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart appear to have ended the teaching career of an adjunct at the University of Missouri -- even as university officials issued a statement backing the contention of the two instructors of the labor studies course that their comments in the class had been edited to present an "inaccurate and distorted" picture of what was said.
Breitbart posted the videos (here and here) on his Big Government blog and, based on the recordings, called the course "advanced thuggery" . . . .In interviews Thursday, both Ancel and Giljum [the instructors] said that their statements in the videos were a mixture of different teaching techniques, including describing how labor leaders felt during certain periods of time, directly quoting specific individuals (whose views they did not necessarily share), and intentionally taking an extreme position to prompt class discussion.
They said that the full recordings would make this clear, and that they would like the complete class sessions released. The problem, they said, was that the recordings show identifiable students as well as the instructors (which is the case in the excerpts posted by Breitbart, too), so the university can't just post the recordings without violating student privacy rights.
Late Thursday afternoon, Gail Hackett, provost of the Kansas City campus, issued a statement that backed the instructors' description of the class, based on administrators' review so far of the 18 hours of available video (of which Breitbart's two excerpts are together under 15 minutes).
Even looking at Breitbart's edited version of the videos, this struck me as a pretty normal class, with ideas proposed and batted around by both teachers and students without any implication that the teachers endorsed all the ideas raised. In short, it's a discussion, not a lecture or an indoctrination -- or, to put it another way, the goal is critical thinking, not information (or ideology) transfer. Giljum does have some fairly colorful anecdotes, but even the incidents he describe seem to fall more in the category of psychological warfare than outright thuggery, and to illustrate the complicated interplay of different kinds of power that takes place in labor negotiations. The only example of his that left me really queasy was union members arranging to "bump into" bosses on a regular basis during their off-hours routines; that struck me as uncomfortably close to stalking.
Q How do you think your own classes might appear in a "Breitbarted" version? Do you ever worry that one of your students might share class materials that you post under password protection with the broader public in a way that distorts the purposes of the class and/or violates other students' privacy? Has something similar ever happened to you? And does the distinction between education-as-information-transfer/indoctrination and education-as-development-of-critical-thinking-skills strike you as crucial to understanding this kerfuffle?
As of 15:15 05/08, YouTube has taken down the videos due to ToS violations.
ReplyDeleteCould it be someone has finally stood up against the almighty Breitbart?
But reviewing the comments posted on Breitbart's site ... ::shudder::
ReplyDeleteThat people can be whipped into such a hateful and (potentially) violent frenzy by doctored video is chilling.
Oops; I'd read that, but didn't realize the youtube copies were the ones running on Breitbart's site. Well, youtube was right to take them down, since they did violate student privacy. I'll edit the questions accordingly.
ReplyDeleteI've certainly had students go to the chair of my department and give a very skewed version of classroom events and then I've been called to the mat as a result. I've also had a chair look at my course materials and insist that I stop teaching some of them without asking me the context in which they were taught.
ReplyDeleteBreitbart will only be finally shut down when someone successfully sues him.
ReplyDeleteHe's doing an advanced version of what many students have been doing for yeas via The Other Site and anonymous evaluations.
If an administration doesn't care about truth and honesty (and let's face it...it seems so few do nowadays), more instructors will lose their livelihoods in the new McCarthyism.
Faculty and schools' PR must learn to deal with this or outside political players will control the classroom. Conservatives are successful now but liberals and other groups will get into the game too. It's an effective tactic for removing your target and, more importantly, getting some publicity to drive you website hits and attract political/charitable donations.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Breitbart is a conservo-manwhore (media division) and I would say no if he wanted to film me teach. Or eat blinis.
ReplyDeleteBreitbart's schtick is basically a digital-age version of quote mining, which has been around for ages. The 'Climate-gate' emails were an example. Out of thousands of emails, you quote one or two that sound bad in isolation. It's been going on in my field for thirty or forty years, so we're pretty used to the tactic, but it really seemed to catch the climate guys by surprise. Using video and bringing it into the classroom definitely steps it up a notch (or three)
ReplyDeleteIt's dead easy to do. Take the Gettysburg address for example... "The world will little note, nor long remember .... government of the people, by the people, for the people" Just a little selective editing and then ask "Why does Lincoln hate democracy?"
Because it's so easy, there's not much you can do, and the only way to be completely safe is never to say anything. So for touchy subjects in the classroom I just try to be very clear when I'm presenting an argument to critique it and very clear what conclusion I'm drawing, and make sure these are spelled out on the powerpoints that go up on the website. Then at least, I can call the bastards out if the need arises.
Most of my class materials are public, though not for all classes, and I do use our LMS for assignments that would expose student work (how secure our LMS is, especially if another student decided to violate it, is another question), but all of my syllabi eventually see light of day.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't new in academia: David Horowitz has been paving the way that Breitbart ran for years.
Oddly, I've never had a content complaint that I know of. I play my cards pretty close to the vest in class, keep the focus on history. And Asian history doesn't attract the ideological attention, I guess, that labor or environmental or women's history would (though I've taught Japanese women's history, my primary-source heavy style keeps the focus on the materials and students' views).
Hmmm...so they could conceivably do an entire semester's worth of taping and come up with a single minute of footage where I say nothing but "damn" and "shit." In another two minutes, they could suggest I was a Communist. With a full five minutes, they could make me look like someone who wanted to blow up public buildings.
ReplyDeleteAlthough...there are two topics that I could potentially give more attention to in my classes: lynching and female genital surgery. I don't teach about either one because I don't know what I think about them yet. (Obviously lynching is bad, but past that...why did/do people go see lynchings? Should I show that iconic photo of folks gathered around a lynching tree picnicking? re: FGS, I actually can't condemn it 100%, which is not so good in my very feminist-heavy department.)
@Strelnikov & BlackDog: I think in this case the professors arranged for taping their own class (which was conducted simultaneously on two campuses via video link) and put the tapes up on a password-protected LMS. Someone (probably a student in the class) leaked the tapes to Breitbart, and he did the quote mining/extremely selective quotation.
ReplyDeleteBut of course any student could tape/video surreptitiously, and, in that case, there wouldn't be full tapes of the class for others to review. I think Horowitz and/or his supporters have, in fact, done this.
I've been pretty sure a few times that students were taping conferences via a phone sitting on my desk without asking me first, but I didn't say anything, since when students do ask whether they can tape a conference, I always say "yes." Since my courses are skills rather than content ones, the only reason I can think of for students to tape me would be to support some sort of grade challenge ("but you said. . ."), and I don't think that would get very far.
But I wonder whether we should be adding language to our syllabi forbidding taping of the class and/or sharing of class materials without prior permission? I worry most about sample student papers (or current student papers) traveling further than intended; I put the samples up in PDF form, which used to limit their steal-ability somewhat, but now that one can cut and paste text from PDFs (or do OCR on older ones with google docs), that's less of a protection.
The whole argument that we're indoctrinating our students seems soooo silly: If we were good at indoctrination, then students would come to class every day, turn off their cell phones and turn in their homework, and, well, behave like students, wouldn't they?
ReplyDelete