The Counterpublic Papers vol. 7 no. 7

I'm a bit behind, so what I'm going to do is something I haven't done before--try to "catch up" by writing sending more than one of these over the course of the next few days. In part this is because there's simply so much going on--within a short time span we've lost Greg Tate, bell hooks, and Julius Scott (to name a few), and we're up to 800,000 deaths as Omicron moves with reckless abandon. (I'm typing this from Detroit but NOT from my parents home but from the confines of the MGM Grand Hotel--once I realized how bad Omicron was in Baltimore I needed to be sure I was good before I reached out.)So the following represents a take on Ron Daniels' What the University Owes Democracy. I'll likely follow this up with something about Tate, hooks, and Scott.... ...

In 1987 Allan Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind in the wake of a seeming tidal wave of student protests and curricular battles that transformed the landscape of higher education. Bloom’s argument was simple and explosive—the university had gone to the dogs largely as a result of the counter-cultural movement of the sixties, and with its transformation we stood the risk of losing the best of western civilization. It wasn’t until writing this issue that I realized the book’s subtitle: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Student. Bloom’s book would spend much of the year on the NYT best-seller list for good reason—the university was in the midst of a sea change that it hadn’t witnessed since the period Bloom blamed for everything. 

In a way we can take Ron Daniels’ What the University Owes Democracy as proof that the forces Bloom blamed for corrupting the university and by extension American democracy had definitively won. Or at the very least that the questions Bloom was concerned with were no longer central concerns amongst university faculty. 

(Some might point to the recent announcement of a university dedicated to unorthodoxy as a counter proof of sorts. I’d suggest that if anything this is proof of my point—even if any faculty member worth his/her/their salt would agree to participate in an institution that from what I see seeks to have the trappings of a university without the faculty governance mechanisms that makes the university unique, the fact that they had to create such a university further proves the point that they’ve lost.)

But even as the forces dedicated to articulating the university as the bastion of white elites lost, another more terrible force lurks. Here I’m talking about the trump tendency and everything it represents. These forces aren’t those Buckley was speaking of when he wrote God and Man at Yale. However they are the forces he was thinking of when he argued that whites in the south had the responsibility to do everything in their power to keep blacks from overrunning them. 

It’s against this tendency Daniels writes, suggesting that the university has a critical role to play in advancing the cause of liberal democracy. In particular Daniels suggests four unique functions the university can and should serve: 1) social mobility 2) civic education 3) the creation and dissemination of knowledge 4) pluralism. In order to better serve these purposes Daniels suggests a range of solutions including but not limited to increased financial aid, making a course or suite fo courses dedicated to democracy a university requirement, reimagining how publishing and scientific research functions, and incentivizing students of different backgrounds to interact with each other.

I think one would be hard pressed to challenge these four functions, although one can critique Daniels solutions. In pushing for financial aid rather than making college free, Daniels is more than a bit self-serving—if public schools like Michigan were made free or incredibly inexpensive, schools like Hopkins would likely face enrollment challenges. Any course I’d teach about democracy would begin with the premise that we don’t actually live in one. Further, it seems to me that there’s a tension between Daniels’ position on democracy in the world and his position on democracy within the university. The university isn’t simply supposed to promote knowledge, in order to prevent that knowledge from being corrupted, the university is supposed to be governed by faculty using more or less democratic practices. Although there are institutions that in their defense of democracy probably shouldn’t function democratically—I don’t believed armed forces should function democratically—the university shouldn’t be one of those institutions. 

I’ve another critique. I suggest that Daniels doesn’t quite go far enough. And this is because he has a fairly limited conception of how the university actually functions. The university is an institution that promotes and disseminates knowledge. It is an entity that prepares young adults for adulthood, propelling some of them into spheres they never would have had a hint of otherwise. At the same time though these universities, specifically the private universities Daniels has been associated with, the private institutions most writing of the university have in mind when they either assail or laud it, fulfill a number of other functions. They are land holders and real estate developers. They are employers. They are wealth generators. They not only own physical property, but they own intellectual property. 

The two universities Daniels has worked for while in the United States, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania, are the biggest private employers in the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania respectively. They are some of the largest real estate owners and developers in their respective states. Going back to their inception they, and the individual donors responsible for them, have had a disproportionate impact on the trajectories of the states and of the cities they reside in. Finally while this impact is often aided and abetted by city officials, it comes without paying taxes. 

Over the past two decades we’ve seen two trends in Philadelphia and Baltimore. On the one hand we’ve seen them both undergo budget crisis after budget crisis, causing state officials in Pennsylvania to enact a series of austerity measures that work to force Philadelphia public officials to shy away from public good provision. On the other we’ve seen both turn to policing as a primary means of social control. I’d suggest that both trends can be tied more or less directly to the way universities like Penn and Hopkins function. Rather than increasing the functioning of democracy they weaken it. 

In 1987 Allan Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind in the wake of a seeming tidal wave of student protests and curricular battles that transformed the landscape of higher education. Bloom’s argument was simple and explosive—the university had gone to the dogs largely as a result of the counter-cultural movement of the sixties, and with its transformation we stood the risk of losing the best of western civilization. It wasn’t until writing this issue that I realized the book’s subtitle: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Student. Bloom’s book would spend much of the year on the NYT best-seller list for good reason—the university was in the midst of a sea change that it hadn’t witnessed since the period Bloom blamed for everything. 

In a way we can take Ron Daniels’ What the University Owes Democracy as proof that the forces Bloom blamed for corrupting the university and by extension American democracy had definitively won. Or at the very least that the questions Bloom was concerned with were no longer central concerns amongst university faculty. 

(Some might point to the recent announcement of a university dedicated to unorthodoxy as a counter proof of sorts. I’d suggest that if anything this is proof of my point—even if any faculty member worth his/her/their salt would agree to participate in an institution that from what I see seeks to have the trappings of a university without the faculty governance mechanisms that makes the university unique, the fact that they had to create such a university further proves the point that they’ve lost.)

But even as the forces dedicated to articulating the university as the bastion of white elites lost, another more terrible force lurks. Here I’m talking about the trump tendency and everything it represents. These forces aren’t those Buckley was speaking of when he wrote God and Man at Yale. However they are the forces he was thinking of when he argued that whites in the south had the responsibility to do everything in their power to keep blacks from overrunning them. 

It’s against this tendency Daniels writes, suggesting that the university has a critical role to play in advancing the cause of liberal democracy. In particular Daniels suggests four unique functions the university can and should serve: 1) social mobility 2) civic education 3) the creation and dissemination of knowledge 4) pluralism. In order to better serve these purposes Daniels suggests a range of solutions including but not limited to increased financial aid, making a course or suite fo courses dedicated to democracy a university requirement, reimagining how publishing and scientific research functions, and incentivizing students of different backgrounds to interact with each other.

I think one would be hard pressed to challenge these four functions, although one can critique Daniels solutions. In pushing for financial aid rather than making college free, Daniels is more than a bit self-serving—if public schools like Michigan were made free or incredibly inexpensive, schools like Hopkins would likely face enrollment challenges. Any course I’d teach about democracy would begin with the premise that we don’t actually live in one. Further, it seems to me that there’s a tension between Daniels’ position on democracy in the world and his position on democracy within the university. The university isn’t simply supposed to promote knowledge, in order to prevent that knowledge from being corrupted, the university is supposed to be governed by faculty using more or less democratic practices. Although there are institutions that in their defense of democracy probably shouldn’t function democratically—I don’t believed armed forces should function democratically—the university shouldn’t be one of those institutions. 

I’ve another critique. I suggest that Daniels doesn’t quite go far enough. And this is because he has a fairly limited conception of how the university actually functions. The university is an institution that promotes and disseminates knowledge. It is an entity that prepares young adults for adulthood, propelling some of them into spheres they never would have had a hint of otherwise. At the same time though these universities, specifically the private universities Daniels has been associated with, the private institutions most writing of the university have in mind when they either assail or laud it, fulfill a number of other functions. They are land holders and real estate developers. They are employers. They are wealth generators. They not only own physical property, but they own intellectual property. 

The two universities Daniels has worked for while in the United States, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania, are the biggest private employers in the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania respectively. They are some of the largest real estate owners and developers in their respective states. Going back to their inception they, and the individual donors responsible for them, have had a disproportionate impact on the trajectories of the states and of the cities they reside in. Finally while this impact is often aided and abetted by city officials, it comes without paying taxes. 

Over the past two decades we’ve seen two trends in Philadelphia and Baltimore. On the one hand we’ve seen them both undergo budget crisis after budget crisis, causing state officials in Pennsylvania to enact a series of austerity measures that work to force Philadelphia public officials to shy away from public good provision. On the other we’ve seen both turn to policing as a primary means of social control. I’d suggest that both trends can be tied more or less directly to the way universities like Penn and Hopkins function. Rather than increasing the functioning of democracy they weaken it. 

Sturmabtielung.

In posting on fb about the Rittenhouse ruling, Touré Reed noted that the ruling increased the odds that we might see something like an American Sturmabtielung. I didn’t know what the original term for the Brownshirts were, but there we go. His father Adolph suggested we were already in the middle of an American Reichstag, and now perhaps we’re one step closer. I still believe that there’s something to be 

In 1987 Allan Bloom wrote The Closing of the American Mind in the wake of a seeming tidal wave of student protests and curricular battles that transformed the landscape of higher education. Bloom’s argument was simple and explosive—the university had gone to the dogs largely as a result of the counter-cultural movement of the sixties, and with its transformation we stood the risk of losing the best of western civilization. It wasn’t until writing this issue that I realized the book’s subtitle: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Student. Bloom’s book would spend much of the year on the NYT best-seller list for good reason—the university was in the midst of a sea change that it hadn’t witnessed since the period Bloom blamed for everything. 

In a way we can take Ron Daniels’ What the University Owes Democracy as proof that the forces Bloom blamed for corrupting the university and by extension American democracy had definitively won. Or at the very least that the questions Bloom was concerned with were no longer central concerns amongst university faculty. 

(Some might point to the recent announcement of a university dedicated to unorthodoxy as a counter proof of sorts. I’d suggest that if anything this is proof of my point—even if any faculty member worth his/her/their salt would agree to participate in an institution that from what I see seeks to have the trappings of a university without the faculty governance mechanisms that makes the university unique, the fact that they had to create such a university further proves the point that they’ve lost.)

But even as the forces dedicated to articulating the university as the bastion of white elites lost, another more terrible force lurks. Here I’m talking about the trump tendency and everything it represents. These forces aren’t those Buckley was speaking of when he wrote God and Man at Yale. However they are the forces he was thinking of when he argued that whites in the south had the responsibility to do everything in their power to keep blacks from overrunning them. 

It’s against this tendency Daniels writes, suggesting that the university has a critical role to play in advancing the cause of liberal democracy. In particular Daniels suggests four unique functions the university can and should serve: 1) social mobility 2) civic education 3) the creation and dissemination of knowledge 4) pluralism. In order to better serve these purposes Daniels suggests a range of solutions including but not limited to increased financial aid, making a course or suite fo courses dedicated to democracy a university requirement, reimagining how publishing and scientific research functions, and incentivizing students of different backgrounds to interact with each other.

I think one would be hard pressed to challenge these four functions, although one can critique Daniels solutions. In pushing for financial aid rather than making college free, Daniels is more than a bit self-serving—if public schools like Michigan were made free or incredibly inexpensive, schools like Hopkins would likely face enrollment challenges. Any course I’d teach about democracy would begin with the premise that we don’t actually live in one. Further, it seems to me that there’s a tension between Daniels’ position on democracy in the world and his position on democracy within the university. The university isn’t simply supposed to promote knowledge, in order to prevent that knowledge from being corrupted, the university is supposed to be governed by faculty using more or less democratic practices. Although there are institutions that in their defense of democracy probably shouldn’t function democratically—I don’t believed armed forces should function democratically—the university shouldn’t be one of those institutions. 

I’ve another critique. I suggest that Daniels doesn’t quite go far enough. And this is because he has a fairly limited conception of how the university actually functions. The university is an institution that promotes and disseminates knowledge. It is an entity that prepares young adults for adulthood, propelling some of them into spheres they never would have had a hint of otherwise. At the same time though these universities, specifically the private universities Daniels has been associated with, the private institutions most writing of the university have in mind when they either assail or laud it, fulfill a number of other functions. They are land holders and real estate developers. They are employers. They are wealth generators. They not only own physical property, but they own intellectual property. 

The two universities Daniels has worked for while in the United States, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania, are the biggest private employers in the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania respectively. They are some of the largest real estate owners and developers in their respective states. Going back to their inception they, and the individual donors responsible for them, have had a disproportionate impact on the trajectories of the states and of the cities they reside in. Finally while this impact is often aided and abetted by city officials, it comes without paying taxes. 

Over the past two decades we’ve seen two trends in Philadelphia and Baltimore. On the one hand we’ve seen them both undergo budget crisis after budget crisis, causing state officials in Pennsylvania to enact a series of austerity measures that work to force Philadelphia public officials to shy away from public good provision. On the other we’ve seen both turn to policing as a primary means of social control. I’d suggest that both trends can be tied more or less directly to the way universities like Penn and Hopkins function. Rather than increasing the functioning of democracy they weaken it. 

Sturmabtielung.

In posting on fb about the Rittenhouse ruling, Touré Reed noted that the ruling increased the odds that we might see something like an American Sturmabtielung. I didn’t know what the original term for the Brownshirts were, but there we go. His father Adolph suggested we were already in the middle of an American Reichstag, and now perhaps we’re one step closer. I still believe that there’s something to be