--- 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