National Socialism and Higher Education

Today's InsideHigherEd.com ran an interesting piece reviewing The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses, a new book by Stephen H. Norwood (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Norwood has generated some controversy, as any discussion (rather than mere condemnation) of Nazi Germany will do. While I was writing my PhD thesis, my research in social memory theory raised questions about how Hitler and the Third Reich are remembered in American and European memorial frameworks. Specifically, I'm fascinated that Hitler and symbols evoked with him (the swastika, but also the terms Nazi, National Socialism, fascism, and so on) are associated in Western memory with evil, even pure evil.

I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that this association isn't appropriate; Hitler—and to a greater extent the general populace who followed him—make vivid the potentials of human depravity and wickedness (though Hitler isn't as historically unique as we too easily think). But this association (again, appropriate as it certainly is) between Hitler and evil is socially constructed, and this social construction is what fascinates me. In other words, there was a time when neither National Socialism, Adolf Hitler, fascism, the swastika, or anything else associated with the Third Reich automatically conjured images and feelings of evil, either in Europe or in the United States. Undoubtedly some voices within European and American political discourse in the 1930s always saw the National Socialist movement as dangerous; but the dangers posed by the German state were topics of debate rather than the foregone conclusions that they are today, conclusions that motivate visceral, almost primitive emotions of anger and outrage.

So what changes, whether historical, social, cultural, or whatever, explain this change in the place and function of fascism in Western social memories? Is it simply the historical development that the Allied nations didn't know the extent of the Third Reich's pugnaciousness, and in the course of liberating Western Europe we learned the extent of the awful truth? If so, we might believe that everyone in 1930 America would have agreed with us today about the evils of fascist Germany, if only they knew about Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and other details of the Final Solution. But is that really all that's wrong with fascism? Was Hitler evil only because he killed a lot of people, or is fascism reprehensible on a more fundamental level? (hint: Yes.) And if so, how do we evaluate American and European institutions that admired, valued, and advocated National Socialist structures and/or policies other than the murderous ones?

This last seems to be the question driving Norwood's book. I think I'll have to order a copy, as soon as I'm given permission to spend more of the family's resources on books.

diversity of Christian campuses

A few weeks ago I commented on an Inside Higher Ed piece concerning racial diversity on college campuses and on their promotional materials (see here). Today's Inside Higher Ed has this piece on the diversity of Christian college campuses. I have a couple thoughts.

1. First, this is good news. Diversifying Christian campuses, especially more conservative/evangelical campuses such as the one I proudly serve, is arguably more difficult than diversifying public or private non-religious institutions because requirements other than race have significant impact on the racial makeup of the student body. Christian campuses often have denominational affiliations that constrain the cultural and theological changes they can make to attract students from other faith traditions (read: races). Relatedly, those denominational affiliations also provide a major recruiting ground for Christian institutions, so colleges affiliated with traditionally White faith traditions already face an uphill battle in recruiting students of other races. Also, at many of these institutions (including mine) full-time faculty have to sign a statement of faith and/or attend a specific denominational church. As in the case of Calvin College, that means that professional and academic qualifications alone do not suffice to make one eligible to teach at Christian institution. The lack of diversity among full-time faculty is a major impediment to the diversification of the student body.
2. Second, despite being a good thing, the article suffers from a major weakness. As I pointed out in my post on Facial Diversity, too often in American discussions of race focus exclusively (or nearly so) on the Black population. This comes through in the current article in two ways. (a) Most obviously, the article focuses exclusively on the (commendable) increase of Black students on Christian campuses. Other minorities are mentioned only as an after-thought, as in the following quote from Paul R. Corts, president of the CCCU:

   Seeing that there are more black students enrolled is only part of the picture because one of the reasons you get more black students is because you’ve been making your campus more welcoming to blacks and other minorities as well.

   
   ". . . and other minorities as well." While I'm sure this is unintentional, as a member of a non-Black minority group, I can't help but read this as a marginalizing of non-Blacks as quasi-non-minorities (but still also non-White/non-majority). While Black and White is more racially diverse than just White, it still misses out on a lot (even most) of the potential diversity that the Church (and all its affiliated institutions) should be pursuing. (b) More subtly, the article nowhere addresses the responsibilities of the Black community to participate in the effort to diversify Christian (and other) campuses. The phenomenal increases in enrollment of Black students reported in the article are not simply the result of the efforts of predominantly White Christian colleges to attract a broader mix of students. Those colleges have had to develop relationships with other organizations, not least traditionally Black faith traditions and churches, colleges and social organizations, which themselves have had to participate in the efforts to encourage Black students to matriculate into those colleges. In other words, I think the credit for the good things going on among CCCU's member institutions ought to be more broadly spread.
3. Third, my own institution, as I've already said, still has a lot of work to do to diversify our student body, our faculty, and our staff and administration. That said, we already have a surprisingly diverse campus community, if race is not allowed to be the sole criterion of diversity. And while we do still have our work cut out for us, we also need to be up front that there are some aspects of diversity that our campus outright rejects. As the most obvious example, we will always be a Christian college, so religious diversity, beyond the boundaries of Christian praxis and theology, will never be welcomed here. That's not to say that Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and atheist individuals, etc. will be driven off campus by angry students with pitchforks and torches. But those individuals will never be integrated into our identity as an institution.

I hope that the trends identified in the IHE piece continue in up-coming years; even more to the point, I hope these trends are already more broadly applicable and continue to be so in the future. My dream of a more diverse Church (in all its related institutions) jives with the politically correct emphasis on diversity, but it is not motivated by political correctness. Rather, I have in view the vision of John the Elder, who was granted a glimpse into heaven and was surprised by the gathering from every nation, tribe, and tongue to worship the Creator of the universe. Making our colleges and universities more accurately reflect the racial make-up of the country (or even the world) isn't a bad idea; a better one is to bring our institutions into conformity with the racial make-up of heaven.

yeah, CCU!

A week ago Thursday the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed both reported that Colorado Christian University won its federal appeals court case against the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, which had denied CCU access to state funds on the basis that it is "pervasively sectarian." At least one factor in the appeals court's ruling was the distinction the state tried to make between "sectarian" and "pervasively sectarian." These are the kind of public policy decision making practices that deserve to be publicly mocked, preferably involving some form of tar and regurgitated cat hair. Or better yet, we could use feathers. [NB: I am not calling for a person or people to be tarred and feathered but rather decision making practices.]

I applaud the court in arriving at an obviously sensible decision, which is clearly an unbiased way of saying they done good. Too often Christians whine and moan about their tax dollars going to causes they don't support, and this whining and moaning is no more appropriate or deserving of serious public attention when secular (or anti-Christian, if that's the better term in this particular case) groups are raking the muck.

If the government is going to fund art initiatives with public money, I don't think Christian taxpayers can reasonably expect to have a say in which artists get funded and which ones will have to buy their own jars to pee in. But the same goes for education: If the state is going to fund higher education, then secular groups cannot reasonably expect to be able to exclude schools that have otherwise met external accrediting standards from public monies. This is the nature of the public marketplace (of ideas, of funding, and so on): We might not like everyone else sitting at the table (to mix my metaphors here), but neither can we demand to be dealt a hand for us to play while shouting that the ugly guy opposite us shouldn't be allowed to ante.

Facial diversity

Inside Higher Ed. reports on a study by a sociologist at Augsburg College on the discrepancy between the image of [racial] diversity portrayed in the recruiting materials of many institutions of higher education, on the one hand, and the actual diversity of the student body. The problem is, obviously, real, but the article does a commendable job of avoiding the easy criticism of these institutions as "hypocritical" or "deceitful." While colleges and universities need to be held accountable when the appearance of diversity suffices in the presence of a lack of any substantive diversity, the portrayal of a diverse campus can legitimately function as an expression of an administration's hopes and plans and may even encourage bringing about the reality the promotional pieces manufactured.

But the article hints at another problem, one I first encountered when working at a church in Uptown Cincinnati that legitimately (and somewhat successfully) strove to diversify its worshipping body as well as its ministerial staff. The problem is well-stated by Timothy Pippert, the sociologist behind the study.

Black equals diversity for many people. If you show African American students, people think that means your institution is diverse. [my emphasis]

Given the torrid (but not completely so) history of race relations in this country, this perception is understandable. But let's be clear: An absence of Black persons does not equal homogeneity, and vice versa. On my own campus I can think off the top of my head of only two current students, both of whom are biracial, who self-identify as African American and one recent graduate who is currently enrolled in one of our Masters programs who is Black. We also have (at least) one international Black student (though he is not African; the use of "African American" as a euphemism for "Black" runs into trouble precisely in the cases of non-Black African[-American]s and non-African Blacks). And while my institution has some way to go toward becoming a legitimately diverse campus (and knows it has its work cut out for it), our campus is more diverse than a simple count of Black (or even darker) faces would suggest.

My father is, to put it nebulously, a professional in the area of diversification and diversity-training. And though I would never claim to speak for him or on his behalf, he has said on numerous occasions something that we would all do well to remember: "Diversity means difference: young or old, American or international, male or female, Black, Caucasian, Latino/a, Asian (and so on)," all these things go some way toward promoting and expressing diversity. None of this excuses campuses that are content to operate without regard for racial minorities, but hopefully it does remind us that efforts toward diversification have be more than skin-deep.