Dan Drezner writes, on the subject of professors and Libya:
For a scholar, engagement with power should not be automatically rejected, particularly if it means altering policies in a fruitful manner. When the exercise morphs into intellectual kabuki theater, however, then disengagement seems like the best course of action.
Those scholars who stopped participating after it was obvious that Qaddafi wasn’t really interested in genuine change don’t deserve much opprobrium. By that count, [Benjamin] Barber really has a lot to answer for, while some of the others seem to have emerged relatively unscathed.
Yes – the calendar matters. When did people withdraw from involvement? And in the case of Libya, was it ever much more than theater?
But money also matters. Getting paid is fine; getting paid strikingly large sums should raise eyebrows, because it threatens to compromise the consultant’s intellectual integrity.
Finally, conflict of commitment matters. Barber writes:
[This] is about whether academics should stay in the ivory tower and do research and write books[.] Or engage in the world on behalf of the principles and theories their research produces? Do you simply shut your mouth and write? Or do you try to engage?
First, note the way he paints it – There’s the tremulous tight-lipped unengaged ivory tower dweller, and there’s the bold intrepid earth-changing Barber. This is a ridiculous either/or — plenty of academics engage politically in plenty of ways short of writing obsequious op/eds about authoritarians.
And second: How much teaching do professors like Barber do? (Barber no longer teaches, but taught recently at the University of Maryland and at Rutgers.) How often are they even on campus? A certain amount of traveling on behalf of democratic change is fine; but when professors become mainly consultants, when they appear maybe one day a week on campus, something’s terribly wrong.
March 9th, 2011 at 2:00AM
LIBYAN LOVE SONG
Fiddly dee, Muammar Gaddafi
What shall I say that pleases thee?
Shall I hint at your deity,
Naturally for a fee?
Or I could talk you up for free
If we could get the LSE
To put in a good word for me.
March 9th, 2011 at 8:29AM
What about all-expense-paid junkets to “study” (in 10-21 days) the culture of some monarcho-tyranny or tyranno-monarchy or people’s democratic republic?
I have several former colleagues who cheerfully snatched these gigs whenever available. Besides seeing some great scenery, they had the chance to interact with many average people who by sheer coincidence parroted the government’s line.
March 9th, 2011 at 9:34AM
I think the money issue (in itself) is to a considerable extent a red herring (after all, there seems to be a significant sense out there that professors’ salaries are already too high). The issue is whether or not an academic’s teaching and research are adversely affected, by bias or distraction. Barber appears to have stepped over both lines, but the LSE aspect is the most serious – and, not coincidentally, the one in which at least one head has rolled.