Truth in American Academe

Michael Platt

How do we stand with truth these days? In public life, in family life, and especially in academe? Let’s look at a day in the life of a college teacher.

After the regular dose of coffee and NPR, the morning is spent peacefully enough, reading final student essays on King Lear, Passage to India, and Othello. Some are very good, but grades being due by 5:00 p. m, you read quickly, zero in for the grade, and offer just one comment. Still to be decided is what to do about the paper you recognize as plagiarized, but will take arguing through three boards to convict. Maybe just lower it a grade, cite where it’s from, daring her to object, and invite her to submit something else. Also there is the first pile of graduate applications with letters of extravagant recommendation. A generation of demi-gods! Time for a break.

Going for a coffee, one colleague reports that the Dean is about to resign and the head of another faction will be appointed. The discussion warms, each bringing his faggot to the fire; only the chairman abstains. Is he simply absorbed by his two discrimination suits or taking names? He mentions “the news that once again the increase in administrators exceeds that of faculty.” (And you think, that’s news, but not new news.) After a lull, two colleagues descant on the liberations that flow from the rejection of truth as a standard, “oppressive” they agree, but only to disagree on which celebrity nihilist truly best maintains the view, Foucault or Rorty, and nevertheless they conclude amicably enough that it’s all a matter of personal definition. On the way to lunch, the mountain of anonymous student evaluations on the secretary’s desk is topped with the last issue of the independent weekly student newspaper; under pictures of five professors, there are titles: “solitary,” “poor,” “nasty,” “brutish,” and “short.” (So, at least one student has read Hobbes.) One of the five, your friend, has discovered, consulting with a lawyer, how weak the laws against slander are, and how ineffectual the AAUP is, since the university itself authorizes, even requires, evaluations by students.

At lunch the big topic is the rioting at a guest’s lecture last night; she only got to give it after an hour when the authorities retreated to a locked room; later leaving she was assaulted by students; videos with some masked assaulters have gone viral; one colleague says the administration should have stopped the maskers last week, but the shared worry marginalizing him is that applications to the college will suffer. After lunch, another colleague follows you back to your office and asks confidentially, “Are you sure Joseph is your friend? I saw him visit the dean’s office yesterday with two others. And through the door I heard your name mentioned several times.” Later in the afternoon, needing a break, getting another coffee, you drop in on a fellow teacher. The name of a former student now junior faculty comes up and he says, “Ah yes, Tom is like the youths who listened to Rector Heidegger in 1934 and were unsure whether to learn Greek or become Storm Troopers. So, he did both.” You laugh, detach yourself, and once again wonder what Prof. Wit Marvelous already has on the tip of his sharp tongue to say about you to the next visitor.

Later that evening at home, a young friend stops by shaken. From an unsigned letter dropped in her box she has learned that her fiancée has had a gaudy night with someone in the department. She doesn’t know whether to confront him, drop him without a word, or sink her “ten commandments” (nails) in his face. And you don’t know what to advise. Is it true?^[1]

What kind of a day is this? A typical one in Wobegone University, where all the men are catty, all the women ornery, and all the students way below average? And sigh, where seldom is heard good conversation.[2] With lots to savor during, and later, something to think about. Long ago when you were a student you imagined your professors having such conversations. And late one night your oldest professor regaled you with what Whitehead used to say at the Thursday dinners of the Society of Fellows.

Certainly, it is difficult to truly “know” anything when almost all accounts are mediated, by report, rumor, hearsay, story, and stance, and all by human beings, just like the one Ibn Qutayba describes: “His knowledge is at fault in four respects, what he hears is different from what he is told, what he remembers is different from what he hears, what he writes is different from what he remembers, and what he says is different from what he writes.”[3] Accordingly, students and teachers have recognized that their powers of understanding benefit from training: that attentiveness can be sharpened, concentration increased, memory strengthened, and understanding improved. That’s what’s supposed to happen in Academe, but there too, there are human beings, and human beings do say things about each other; and they don’t keep their criticisms to themselves; they want others to adopt them. Should we? Of course, some judgments are solicited or sanctioned, or otherwise justified; parents should discuss their children, teachers their students, and officers their subordinates. However, other things people say have no good in view. For these, whether negligent or malicious, and even if true, we have an expressive name, “bad-mouthing.” Earlier ages had a different one. They called all detraction, belittling, wanton criticism, whether whispered or blared, when moved by malice, all these they called calumny. “Calumny.” It sounds so strange. Even old-fashioned. That it sounds so is not, on balance, in our favor. Our great grandfathers and great grandmothers understood calumny better, restrained themselves more carefully, and as a consequence probably practiced it less. They probably suspected that the tongue was a member quite as likely to do evil as the member Woody Allen meant when he called his brain his second favorite member.

What can be done? Considering human nature and its inclination to speak evilly, all the traditions of the West, philosophic, religious, and civil have discouraged calumny. Already in Herodotus, we read, “Of all evils calumny is the most terrible. In it there are two who do injustice and one who suffers it: the slanderer does wrong when he abuses someone who is not there; the other does wrong when he believes what he has not searched into thoroughly. And the one slandered suffers doubly, from the falsehood of the one and the credulity of the other.”^[4] In his Apology, Socrates makes clear that the old informal calumnies planted the seeds that grew up to prevail against truth and hemlock him. And the calumnies against Christ might not have crucified him except for Pilate contemning, “What is truth?” Our civilization was founded by two who loved truth more than opinion, and suffered death, at the hands of the calumniators.

The heir of both these traditions, aware of the fate of both Christ and Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, gives a most subtle, discerning, and embracing account of the forms of calumny: vilification, backbiting, tale-bearing, and derision. Vilification is direct and angry; backbiting is indirect and envious; tale-bearing would slyly destroy friendship; and derision is light, captious, and ridiculing toward everyone worthy. All are sins, either mortal or venial; all are failures to do the good, by going to the person we find in error in and speaking with him first before we speak to others, and for the same reason refusing to listen to anyone who does not do the same.[5] And even Machiavelli, opposed in so many ways to Thomas, holds that the first law of a Republic is a law against calumny (Discourses, I,7). When “God” and the “Devil” agree, perhaps we should take note?

The traditions on calumny are very clear about its nature and its kinds; the guidance it offers more often stems from a maxim than a rule, and where there is a rule, it will be prudence, the crown of the moral virtues, that will decide when to follow the rule and when not to, justice or mercy. For that decision, there is no rule.

It is true that Machiavelli’s students, frank Spinoza and judicious Locke, proposed that a certain latitude in speech be beneficial to the polity, but it was never such latitude as to countenance slander, libel, false witness, defamation of character, or wanton detraction (or the embracing, class-action calumny that both racism and pornography are). Thus, in America, to whose founding Locke contributed something, the First Amendment was not intended by the founders to suspend the common law protections against calumny, the common law standards of evidence, especially the strictures, amounting almost to entire exclusion, against hearsay evidence, or the practice of jury trials. On the contrary, the Bill of Rights guarantees such protections. The broad protection of “due process,” the right to trial by jury, the Grand Jury system, the reservation of factual finding of a jury from later review, and limitation of searches, are but a few of the Constitution’s protections against trial by calumny. While guaranteeing a new degree of freedom of speech, the Bill of Rights would, nonetheless then, have protected nature’s best teacher, Socrates, and nature’s God’s best teacher, Jesus, from the judicial murder that calumny visited upon them.

III.

So much for truth in our lives, our homes, our public life, and our civilization. How is truth doing in American Academe today? Surely there, where the desire for it is stronger, the standards for it are higher, and the penalties for dishonoring it greater, surely there truth must be doing well.

Let’s ask some questions then. Are there more or fewer exposures of fraud in scientific research than decades ago? Any more patch-work mice? What about plagiarism by professors? Less? More?^[6]And claims of experience? Serving in Vietnam? (Were there more bogus claimers after WWII or Korea?) Claims of ethnic blood? And what about the thriving plagiarism mills where students buy papers? (Do the faculties truly care?)^[7] Some fellow students have always “just looked over your paper for mistakes,” and I know of a Harvard grad who ran to much more, so much he learned to write well thereby, but why on campuses today, right out in the open, are there “writing centers” advertising: “bring your written assignment, we’ll brain storm, order, revise, and polish it with you”? Why are colleges corrupting students, both those paid to work on papers and those getting that “help,” and thus penalizing the honest ones who turn in work only their own? Do the professors truly object? Or are they just relieved not to see so much poor writing and glad to shirk the work, as of old, of teaching writing? And more generally, what about wide-spread grade inflation for students?^[8]Are the students truly that much better than decades ago? Considering the studies of how much less time they spend studying, and how much more cheating they admit to when answering anonymously—a rare case when anonymity does help truth out) might they in truth deserve grade deflation?^{^[9]} And what about the professors? What is the deal: “I don’t teach much, you don’t learn much, and mum’s the word to the world.” Certainly the professors don’t teach as much as they used to. Three courses a year is half as many as when I began in 1969. And yet colleges are so much more expensive, burdening parents, and the young themselves. Are colleges truly so much better than when they believed in the truth?

I’ve used “truly” quite a bit in that summary. I leave it to readers, especially those in Academe, to address these questions.

There are two reasons they might not. One is the potency of two widely held views of truth in Academe. On the one hand, for years now eminent academics have maintained that truth is an illusion, an oppressive one, and on the other hand, that truth is a matter of definition, or choice, by the sovereign individual, and how dare question me. Those two are somewhat contradictory, but those who hold either, or a mix, won’t moderate their contempt for truth because of anything so reasonable as a contradiction.

The second reason truth is ill-treated in Academe stems from a novel practice that swept through American Academe some decades ago, which has not received the attention it deserves.

IV.

In the long history of the University, back to medieval Europe, and the longer history of its noble precursors, back to the schools of antiquity, back to Aristotle’s Lyceum and to Plato’s Academy, if the phrase “student evaluations” had been heard, it would always have meant the evaluation—more exactly the judgment—teachers provide their students. But suddenly, as the University was about to begin its second millennium in the New World, in the United States of America, anonymous “evaluations” by students of their teachers were instituted.

That was the opening sentence of my unwelcome inquiry, “What Do Student Evaluations Teach?” of 1993 on the innovation that in the late 1960s swept through American Academe.[10] That it meant the substitution of something else—feeling, opinion, attitude, prejudice, enmity, etc.—for truth, the confusion of “valuation” with judgment, and the usurpation of Machiavellian “effectual truth” for the real virtuous thing, my long essay was devoted to showing. Let’s look at an example.

Some years ago, in Caldwell, Idaho,I met a history teacher who had received some low scores on student evaluations. Two students had “evaluated” him a zero. One also commented, “He should be fired. I am so sick of having my Catholicism criticized.” The other, who also gave him a zero, commented, “He should be fired. It really irks me the way he pushes his medieval religion at me.” What do “evaluations” conclude from such zeros, except that: “This teacher failed. He did not please the students.”

Assumed in the design and interpretation of evaluations is that there cannot be good teaching and a good teacher where the ratings by anonymous students are low. If the students were displeased, the teacher must be bad. Low scores, bad teacher. But is that true?

Leave aside that evaluations ignore the fundamental distinction in Academe between those judged worthy to teach and paid to do so, and those judged worthy to learn, who pay for the opportunity. Ignore also, that not being teachers, students cannot be called as expert witnesses in court; ignore as well that students invited to evaluate their teachers should logically be asked to judge, and grade, their fellow students, though even current Academe will not do that, lest other students protest. So much for the intellectual qualifications of students, what about the moral qualifications? Allowed anonymity, no one will ever know whether they did the assignments, if they attended class, or studied at all; their motives in “evaluating” cannot be ascertained; and never can they be held responsible for the damage they do. Leave all of that aside, and just ask yourself: who with any experience of teaching or of fathering and mothering, or remembers their own youth, believes the young are always right, or even frequently so? And who can deny that softness, easy requirements, and substituting treats for trials, and then indulging patent excuses, can secure approval, and that flattery will stimulate approval? Or contrariwise that demanding hard things will seldom please immediately, commonly only when they have become someone they aspire to be? Only students who are already good like hard exams. And who doubts there even exist bad students who, while they persist, no teacher can teach?^[11]

In particular, is it not true that these two zeroes and accompanying comments Prof. Howard Berger in Idaho received are actually evidence of good teaching (and thus a rare case of mere errant opinions establishing a truth)? According to the scores, as a teacher Prof. Howard Berger was a zero twice over, and by the negative comments, squared. Whereas as any worthy fellow teacher can see, Berger is an exemplary teacher, for the zeros and expressed displeasure, came from two oppositely opinionated persons. This is, to my mind, a most notable proof Prof. Berger is a good teacher; and proof the people who have invented “evaluations” misunderstand teaching. They think the purpose of what goes on in a classroom is to please students. To comfort, to entertain, to flatter students are not the occasional subordinate practices of a good judicious teacher, but the whole purpose. Really these are persons who know nothing about learning and care nothing about teaching.^[12]

Cui bono? Who has benefited from the innovation of anonymous student evaluation? Let me recount something revealing that happened when evaluations were first proposed at Queens College.

When in the late 1960s, the administrators at Queens College proposed to institute anonymous student evaluations, the faculty resisted with arguments, evidence, and reasons, all to no avail. However, as the innovation was headed to passage, at the next meeting, one prudent teacher spoke for the faculty, much as follows: “I’ve had time to think. You are right. How could we have not seen what a good idea evaluations are? Yes, let us have them, in every course, in every term, by every student, and of every teacher. What a good idea! Indeed, it is such a good idea, what reason have we to limit its scope? It should be university wide. Just as there are to be anonymous evaluations of teachers by students, so there should be anonymous evaluations of administrators by faculty. And likewise, of course, just as the continuance, the promotion, and the salary of the teachers will depend on the composite student evaluations, so the continuance, promotion, and salary of the administrators will depend upon the anonymous faculty evaluations of the administrators. Surely no one can object to this. What a good idea.” The result of this speech was that for many a year not another word was heard from the administrators at Queens about introducing student evaluations.

By now of course, the ubiquity of “evaluations” is almost total in Academe, and it has meant that the beneficiaries, the administrators, are everywhere the rulers, for East or West, whether in the Asiatic tyrannies or the Western academies, he who has files on you and you have not files on him, has you. This creeping coup d’etat has changed Academe utterly. Now everywhere it is the administrators who rule, not the teachers; they swell their own numbers, while they depress those of the faculty, to the point where those on the payroll who are still in a classroom may only be a sixth; and that sixth is diluted by the stable of temps (utterly subject to “evals”), who at some universities teach half of all courses, for well below half pay, and never vote.

This coup does not just change who rules. It is a change in the kind of persons who rule and the very purpose of the institution.^[13] The ideal is the administrator, not the teacher, and the administrator, like the evaluations themselves, conceives of students as customers, whom he calls “tuition units,” understood to crave only entertainment and praise (easy work and high grades), not learning and achievement, and though the administrator wants it to be thought that learning goes on and that grades are signs of achievement, he does want the customers to be pleased, and he will see that they are. In usurping the teacher’s understanding of what goes on in the classroom, the current administrator has weakened the striving for excellence by students, as is obvious from the grade inflation that everyone admits to and that no one halts or slows, and by the teachers who face trying choices. Learning and teaching do still go on here and there in Academe, but the prevailing slack standards, evident in the reduced hours of weekly study, in the reduced teaching loads, and in the atmosphere created by sport, resort, health spa, and noncurricular diversions on campus, make study a lonely thing.

Who has suffered the most from the innovation of “evaluations”? Certainly the students, and among them the best. In my time at Harvard, “A” grades were reported to be only 15 percent; now A-minus is the average, and if you award such a grade you are liable to get a complaint, “you ruined my career.” A “B” used to be an honor grade, and above it was the long ladder of achievement drawing you on, and your teacher telling you to do better. And gone too is the pit below, of a failing grade, which many having fallen into, only then turned things around and lived to thank the teacher whose “F” prompted them to.[14]
Others of the young have suffered too. The eager administrators and supine professors have with their revolution created, as both an instrument and a shameful result, a whole class of abused persons, the adjuncts and temps who, subject to incessant “evaluations,” have no steady life of learning and teaching. To wheedle a 4.6 from the class of the unlearned, these exploited persons must do everything to court, to soothe, to flatter, and above all to please the students filling out the “evals” who being masked are bound by no measure of trust or requirement of responsibility. These temps must strive, and sweat, and tremble to please not the best, but all, and just to secure the same ill-paid classes next term. Even serfs had stability of place; these new academic “slaves” have no future longer than a term, and none if they teach as their self-respect whispers they should.

It is a scandal of the first order that for their own students, the current tenured generation have not provided a path to a steady life of teaching and learning, such as their teachers provided them. In addition, since no temp belongs to the voting faculty, the current tenured generation has neglected their duty to govern, ceded that to the swarms of administrators, and compromised the very purpose of Academe, to seek, to learn, to teach the truth.

VII

The Harvard, the Oxford, the Yale I enjoyed as a student, and the colleges and universities I have enjoyed as a teacher, no longer exist.

I shall believe something of the good I enjoyed as a student and as a teacher is being restored when I hear that, among other things, the class of adjuncts is eliminated, faculties have voted to eliminate “anonymous student evaluations,” and administrators are so reduced that faculties once again govern Academe.[15]

Meanwhile, some of the many good students I’ve enjoyed still meet together, in seminar each week via the internet, blessedly free of American Academe no longer keen on truth.

^[1]Is my “day in the life of Ivy Denisovich,” fake news? I hope it is true fictions, Dichtung that lets in Wahrheit.

[2] Typical of first-time participants in the Liberty Fund colloquia I enjoyed and led, secluded four day conversations of fifteen, was an appreciative, “Gosh, this is what I always thought a University should be.”

[3] Quoted from Bernard Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople: Vol. II, Religion and Society (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1987), 272.

^[4] Histories, 7.10; I have consulted the translations of Rawlinson and Cary.

[5] Summa Theologiae, II, II, Q. 72-76.

^[6]See Thomas Mallon, Stolen Words (Ticknor and Fields, 1989).

^[7]See John Silber, Straight Shooting (New York: Harper, 1989), 111-112), for the story of how Boston University pushed to shut the plagiarism mills down.

^[8]On grade inflation, see Craig Klafter, “Good Grieve! America’s Grade Inflation Culture,” Academic Questions (Fall, 2019).

^[9]Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011); Cheating is a Personal Foul, Educational Testing Service and The Ad Council.

[10] Michael Platt, “What Do Student Evaluations Teach?” Perspectives on Political Science 22, no. 1 (Winter, 1993).

^[11]Robert Weissberg, Bad Students, Not Bad Schools (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2010).

^[12] My original essay and especially its augmented version, to appear separately soon, addresses some important matters at the proper length not possible here, namely what good teaching is, how it is to be discerned, and by whom best, including a section on “Don Rags.”

^[13] Read, among others, Benjamin Ginsburg’s sharp Fall of the Faculty (Oxford University Press, 2013).

[14] As Alan Dershowitz observed, hours after the scandal of paying bribes to get their borderline kids into colleges, when he began to teach at Harvard, no one would have risked $70, let alone $700,000, because colleges in those days flunked failing students out.

[15] Have any colleges improved recently? I can name only Hillsdale with Larry Arnn; Thomas More (NH) with its coherent curriculum, and perhaps the University of Dallas with a new president who, mirabile dictu, can give a talk on learning and teaching that those in the midst of it would find worth listening to.

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