[lbo-talk] Stomping Out the Reds/Go Blue/Scarlet & Gray

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Thu Aug 28 12:21:56 PDT 2003


Actually, it's probably easier to be a red at an elite school, where passing acquiantance with the subversive doctrines is part of the polish that is imparted to the professionals, upper level managers, and bourgeois as part of their training, whereas it ian obvious waste of the lower technical experts' time to get that sort of gloss when he could be learning actual skills. That in part is why all the top 20 law schools have classes -- some times several -- in critical legal studies. C Race S, and Feminist Legal Theory, while this is not common at a mid ranked law school like my own Ohio State Law, which is very much a trade school. And speaking as an ex-professor in the phil Dept at Ohio State, let me tell you that they were not pleased to discover that in me they had hired an actual firebreading red, which is why I had to go to law school . . . jks

--- Gregory Geboski <greg at mail.unionwebservices.com> wrote:
> No offense meant to the U-M left. And that's a big
> concession for me, but Red trumps Green. (Of course,
> that's not Wisconsin red. Or of course scarlet...)
>
> But I still stand by my general assessment, only
> because it would be a big exception in US higher
> education if U-M wasn't more careful in its
> ideological controls than MSU. I wasn't arguing that
> MSU was somewhere on the Left--it wasn't. It's just
> that, in general, MSU is geared to reproducing a
> technical class, while U-M reproduces a
> professional-managerial class. Leftists (and,
> frankly, not a few eccentrics, drunks, etc.) could
> more easily slip into less-prestigious MSU because
> the ideological orientation of its "product"
> (graduates, research) is just less important.
>
> Since they're both public universities, their
> funding is discussed publicly, and the solons of the
> Michigan legislature are often quite explicit about
> allocating funding along such "prestige" (class)
> lines.
>
> Students figured this out, too. Personally, it was
> made clear to naive me during a hockey game in Ann
> Arbor some years back when, after MSU took a lead,
> the following chant rose up from the Blues:
>
> That's all right! That's OK!
> You're gonna work for us some day!
>
> (Harvard fans would chant this while *visiting* East
> Lansing. Cocky? Stupid? But I digress...)
>
> Chomsky and Michael Albert have often noted this
> distinction between another technical/ideological
> pair, MIT and Harvard. Chomsky:
>
> "By conventional measures, the Harvard faculty is
> much more liberal, in fact left-liberal. MIT faculty
> are very conservative often, even reactionary. I get
> along fine with MIT faculty, even when we disagree
> about everything (which is the usual case). If I
> show up at the Harvard faculty club, you can feel
> the chill settle; it's as if Satan entered the
> room." ("Disciplined Minds," Jeff Schmidt, Rowan and
> Littlefield, 2000, p. 14).
>
> ---------- Original Message
> ----------------------------------
> From: andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 11:47:15 -0700 (PDT)
>
> >
> >As a late 70s-early 80s vintage U-M red, I
> represent
> >that remark. Nothing against East Lansing, mind
> you,
> >we did a lot of work with comrades there. No
> >invidious comparisons. But Ann Arbor in that era
> was a
> >good time and place to be a commie, and there were
> a
> >fair lot of us. Now, as to the faculty then: there
> was
> >a pretty decent political economy program in the
> econ
> >dept, since shut down (Tom Weisskopf), Dean Baker
> and
> >Mark Weisbrot, whom people will know, as well as
> Hans
> >Ehrbahr, were in grad school with me in that era.
> My
> >main dept, philosophy, had Peter Railton (still
> does),
> >at that time a Marxist (I know he's still a
> leftist);
> >at the end of my time there the dept hired
> Elizabeth
> >Anderson, one of the leading left philosophers
> today.
> >English, there was and is my comrade Alan Wald;
> >physics there's Dan Axelrod; Natural resources,
> Bunyan
> >Bryant; sociology there was Tillt and Geoff
> Alexander
> >and Howard Berman -- oh, U-M was red enough in them
> >days.
> >
> >
> >
> >__________________________________
> >Do you Yahoo!?
> >Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site
> design software
> >http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> >___________________________________
>
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list