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Tenured Radicals, Revised: How Politics has Corrupted our Higher Education

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An early sally countering irrational trends in humanities studies, Kimball provides an overview of the impact of "deconstructionism." He sees the humanities in a state of crisis. At issue is the aim of the "new left" to displace the values established by the Enlightenment, replacing them with "politically correct" ideals. These ideals include "feminist studies," multi-cultural values, and various forms of "text analysis" asserting culture drives scholarship. These new ideals have crossed the Atlantic from their home among modern French "philosophes." Kimball argues these ideals have taken root and spread firmly throughout North American universities. They are eroding the traditional aims of universities to teach critical thinking, replacing that with slogans and a political agenda.

Kimball identifies the "Western canon" - the establishment of a hierarchy of valuable works of literature, history, critical studies based on value. That canon is represented by works of what the British refer to as "the Greats." While conceding that the membership of these "Greats" is Eurocentric, he counters that the Enlightenment has been successfully exported around the world. It is not the writers or critics themselves that have been received successfully elsewhere [although that's often the case], but the methods and values from the Enlightenment that have gained ascendancy. In contrast, the new "postmodernist" thrust seeks to abandon not only the people representing the canon, but the very methods of thinking and writing that gave rise to it.

Recognizing that the movement asserts it is making academia more "democratic," Kimball argues that in scholarship, democracy isn't a replacement for merit. Why, he asks, should a student "place Shakespeare on a par with Bugs Bunny"? Characterising the rise of deconstruction as an "intellectual spree" he mourns its nchallenged wide acceptance. He goes on to present numerous examples of the thinking [or lack of it] expressed by its advocates. The items range from magazine editorial policies to convocations of educators planning curricula. Perhaps the most jarring note is his description of the impact of deconstruction on architecture. Although that seems almost humorously self-contradictory, Kimball provides valid examples.

His presentation is passionate, perhaps even alarming to the unwary reader. A strong advocate of traditional Western ideals, Kimball sprinkles the work with his aversion to Marxist tenets. If the book has a serious shortcoming, it is that blatant political orientation. Since this book was published, other surveys have appeared. None have truly replaced this seminal work in examining the pronouncements of those setting the academic agenda today. This book deserves attention and study. The issues have not faded since it was published.

Roger Kimball's work is a refreshing look at the sad state of the Humanities today. Is the book rather one-sided in its views on the 'culture wars'? Yes, but then again one will not get much vigorous debate on the subject in most Humanities departments today-and this is exactly Mr. Kimball's point. Even putting aside the complete contempt for truth these scholars show, if this neglect and subversion of Humanities departments were simply an academic affair, perhaps Mr. Kimball would sound histrionic, but he clearly identifies the real victims-the students. Indeed, the book comes off at points almost conspiratorial, as Mr. Kimball implies that the failed radical fight these scholars fought while students is now being played out for the hearts and minds of contemporary students. Sadly, that argument is not without some merit. The adolescent postures of these scholars that are lauded as arguments by the so-called 'cultural Left' make amusing, if at times frustrating reading for those accustomed to the naive belief that the universities existed for higher learning in pursuit of such feeble contemporary notions such as truth. Mr. Kimball lances the proponents with their own words and ideas, not their backgrounds or politics, something his opponents should take note of.

Roger Kimball's "Tenured Radicals" is a response to a response, revenge against the academy for the academy's revenge against the initiators of the debate, namely Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" and William Bennett's "To Reclaim a Legacy." Kimball could have played a useful role in this debate, since late-1980s academics certainly deserved to critiqued for the broad and unkind brush they used to paint Bennett and Bloom, and for some of the more ridiculous extremes their theories sometimes took them. He opts instead for the easier, less instructive path, though, and "Tenured Radicals" is a half-informed slinging of mud, very little of which sticks.

Bloom and Bennett passionately believed in the legacy they were defending, and their earnestness is evident; Kimball seems rather to relish the opportunity to sting the "elitist academic Left." Castigating institutional figures like Houston Baker for resorting to name-calling rather than real engagement, Kimball himself is guilty of the most unpardonable of rhetorical sins. Unable, via logical argumentation, to truly invalidate the loathed theories, chapters often fade into dismissive sarcasm or rude ad hominems: Louis Althusser's theories can't be right because he later went insane, Kimball argues, and Rosalind Krauss can't be right because she lives in a nicely decorated apartment.

Kimball's prize piece is his rebuke of academics who held to Paul de Man even after it was revealed, in 1987, that de Man had written for a Nazi-friendly Belgian paper during WWII. Much should be made of this crisis, which still plagues academics to this day: When do the younger crimes of a man (or ought we to call them "youthful indiscretions"?) overshadow all the good he does later in his life? Kimball is spot on to point out the waffling of Derrida, Hartmann, and others in this regard. But he is wrong to claim that this invalidates everything they stand for. This would be like judging conservatism solely on the example of Watergate.

But then, Kimball is not interested in fairness, clearly. His prime example of post-structuralist close reading? Geoffrey Hartmann, who had practically an entire book written about how careless a critic he can be (Norris' "Deconstruction: Theory & Practice"). Here, too, Kimball is myopic, since he depicts the academy as an unthinking mass when, in reality, it is a site of constant debate and struggle; post-structuralism ran/runs rampant, yes, but that never means that everyone accepts it uncritically. "Tenured Radicals" doesn't bother to address the debates.

And so, Kimball's final image of Socrates' trial is both laughable and disingenuous. "Tenured Radicals" would have us believe that Kimball speaks, like Socrates, for eternal and unquestionable truths. The fog-thick irony in this moment was clearly lost on Kimball, so I'll help him to understand it. See, people of Kimball's ilk--that is, those who pretend to speak for "culture" or for "decency" everywhere, and who will not countenance their being questioned to any degree--are precisely the Athenians who found Socrates guilty of corrupting the youth of his city and exiled him. Kimball may not believe in the aims of today's "tenured radicals." But he owed them, in the spirit of Socrates at least, a fairer and less blindly partisan assessment.

Readers would do well to avoid Kimball. Read Bloom, and Gerald Graff's "Beyond the Culture Wars" if you really want to see a civil, earnest, and informed debate between a traditionalist and a "tenured radical."

Tenured Radicals is a powerful indictment of what passes for rigor and excellence in the humanities today. There's no doubt that Kimball exposes much of "the worst that has been thought and written" in academia recently, to misquote Arnold deliberately. But as one reader below suggests, Kimball often crassly simplifies anything with which he disagrees, appealing to common sense when we all know that things aren't always that simple (would that they were!). In hopes of reviving discussions of academic excellence--an endeavor that I, for one, truly applaud--he is often sadly anti-intellectual in his willingness to dismiss various subjects of which he has a rather paltry understanding.

So, I admire the courage expressed here--the willingness to hold various self-proclaimed "experts" accountable for the nonsense they have peddled. Much of the scholarly rubbish summarized here is truly deplorable and risible. But there IS another side to the story, a side leaving room for speculation, tempered debate, and inquiry. Kimball risks losing the proverbial baby with the bathwater when making simplistic links between valuable theories and their least coherent spokespeople.

When I read the first edition some years ago, when I was in college myself, I wanted to stand up and cheer. This book does an excellent job of exposing how the study of humanities has ceased to be an academic discipline, and more of an exercise in political posturing in Lit. and humanities departments across the nation. This book is also a wickedly funny skewering of all those in higher ed. who perceive their mission to be the indoctrination, rather than education, of today's college students. I see (sadly) that in the eight years since the publication of the 1'st edition, things have only gotten worse....

Read this book to find out how universities professing a dedication to free inquiry have become dreary factories churning out politically correct products. Sobering reading, and sad.

exposes the intellectual, moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the modern university academy. Populated with Leftist retreads from the 60's and teeming with vapid anti-intellectual dogma, today's university professors prattle on endlessly about marxism-leninism-environmentalism-anti-globalism and anti-capitalism, without any connection to the world outside that has passed them by. All the while ignoring the fact that throughout the world, their beloved doctrines of "humanism" and "caring for the oppressed" and "protecting the proletariat" have brutally enslaved more people and are single-handedly responsible for more human misery than any other political system known to humankind. This book clearly and concisely catalogues the absolutely non-sensical (and sometimes frighteningly assinine) drivel modern Leftists (you know them as anti-globalist activists) have been spoonfed by their handlers in the academy. As for criticisms from the Leftists that this book, its author, and other thinkers in the same vein, are "anti-humanist", it's called and ad hominem attack, and it's simply what happens to little minds when they run out of intellectual firepower and are forced to look at the destruction their procrustean dogma has wreaked. All in all, the book is a little dated, but still offers a glimpse into why your son or daughter went off to the university a bright-eyed, intellectually curious student, and came back an inthinking, mind-numbed robot from planet Woodstock.

In the introduction to the 3rd edition of this classic analysis, Kimball notes that at the conclusion of the 1990s all the trends he identified in the first edition at the start of that decade now hold sway as orthodoxy. Although Tenured Radicals focuses on the grotesqueries in the humanities departments at universities across the USA, it also throws light on how contemporary culture is absorbing it.

Besides scrutinizing the books and articles emanating from these intellectual swamps, the author attended a large number of symposia with a tape recorder in order to capture the meaninglessness and the madness that have overtaken the departments of literature and the arts. A variety of academic institutions are represented here including Yale, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Princeton and the universities of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Kimball first quotes the senseless blather then translates it into plain language and dissects it with hilarious results. The one-time custodians of knowledge have become purveyors of trash and conveyors of grievances under the guise of "Studies" or "Theory". These sophists are the academic equivalents of the Joker from the Batman movies with their political posturing, interest group politics, post-modernist, post-structuralist, post-everything jargon.

So those entrusted with educating the young have abandoned the quest for truth by denying its existence. They babble pompously about their narrow partisan "discourses" & "narratives" while heaping contempt upon the masterpieces of art and literature. Society, they claim, consists of groups competing for power; the notion of civil society is anathema and reality is a "social construct." In this regard, Stephen Hicks does a splendid job of explaining postmodernism in his book by that title.

Kimball examines the work of philosopher Richard Rorty and law professor Stanley Fish in detail, tracing it back to the Greek Sophists like Protagoras. Only power is left in the absence of truth so this revival of sophistry cheapens all intellectual activity. He warns that the very idea of literature as a unique form of expression with its own values and goals is undermined since the literary-aesthetic experience exercises an important claim on us only to the degree that it transcends time-bound political differences.

These intellectual impostors are really nothing but cynical and insincere parasites in the public purse. There's nothing genuinely radical about them as they infest public institutions where they enjoy job security unlike those who create wealth in the private sector. Demonstrating only disdain for our Hebrew, Greek and Roman heritage and the achievements of our civilization, they trample on notions of tradition, truth, rationality and the rule of law while promoting neo-tribalism.

Posing as dissidents and the champions of the downtrodden, they feed off the creation and achievements of others. Ideas matter and thoughts become things, so the Jokers are opening the gates to barbarism by their meaningless drivel extolling multiculturalism, postmodernism and relativism. In addition they have imposed politically correct speech codes to programme the young minds they are supposed to expand.

Based on a primordial lie that betrays the covenant between language and reality, the pathology of Leftism is forever attempting to suppress or subvert the Word. As Jean François Revel points out in Last Exit to Utopia, they have recovered from the shock of the Soviet Empire's collapse and are at it again. Kimball isn't optimistic about the possibilities of remedying the situation since the lunatics who control the humanities attract and hire their fellow ideologues and the academic institutions have vast monetary resources.

He recommends continued activism to try to bring about real diversity and in this and other books has provided us with a formidable arsenal to counteract the forces of disintegration. Further valuable works that expose intellectual deception include The Reckless Mind by Mark Lilla and Intellectual Morons by Daniel Flynn whilst Ophelia Benson & Jeremy Stangroom's Why Truth Matters provides further ammunition for defending and restoring truth.

That statement my radically liberal friend was said by non other than the bigot racist known as Louis Farrakhan. Fight the power! No not white people, fight the radicals that have our education by the balls. I'm only an undergrad student and I have thought the same things this book has for awhile now. After reading this book and books like it, I am glad to find out their are others who share my opinions. A must read for all students entering college, you must learn to think on your own, this book can help you remember that when you get here.

This book examines, in witty and pellucid prose, the doctrinal assumptions of the radical academics who have controlled the upper echelons of higher education these last twenty years. It lays bare the fundamental dishonesty of their "intellectual" agenda--which, in simple terms, is to put Western civilization to the torch. Though it does not address the effects of this agenda beyond the ivied halls, this book illumines the values, attitudes, and methods of the Clinton apologists. It details how the Left academicians have themselves abandoned the search for truth, in the process ruthlessly discrediting anyone who aspires to make that search. Having read this book, one has little trouble descrying manifestations of their illiberal teachings in Bill Clinton's abuses of presidential power, in the Democrats' naked power grab in Florida, in the bias of the elite media. This book casts a stark and unflattering light on the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the academy today, and offers sobering, if not chilling, insight into its brutally totalitarian goals. If you wonder why Democrats often seem so intolerant, this book will tell you why.