Liberal education is dead.
Furman University as a liberal arts institution purports to embody liberal education – as pluralistic and holistic training of students to think critically. “Let a thousand flowers bloom” – a liberal arts institution must be a marketplace of ideas, of all ideas, to justify its theoretical commitment to liberal education.
The Political Science department at Furman distinguishes itself through its strong faculty, departmental programs (internships, study away), and an affiliated leadership institute. However, the department’s over-arching approach to Political Science fundamentally contradicts the vision of a liberal education. In the United States, Political Science operates largely within a positivist framework – a framework which operates on an un-questioned ontological foundation – a foundation which is transcendent to scientific criticism, and consequently, presents itself as infallible.
I am well aware that this is an old and ongoing debate in graduate schools. For better or worse, this debate is, however, also pertinent, perhaps even more so, to undergraduate education. It is here, at the very latest, that students should be liberated from the socialization experience of their earlier years, an experience that all too often is, in fact, an unconscious indoctrination experience. It is here, at the latest, when they should be endeavored to become true liberal thinkers.
As the readers know, positivism assumes a scientific, objective and rational understanding of politics. It strives to achieve certainty – to produce (technically) useful ‘knowledge.’ However, positivism fails miserably in embracing such pronounced standards. Positivism assumes the given order as the natural order. The refusal to acknowledge ontological foundations as historically situated, fallible, and operative only within defined structures, results in liberal arts institutions, and the “knowledge” that they are perpetuating, to rest on assumed but not necessarily legitimate givens. Related, positivism fails to recognize the normatively-loaded elements of its already defined structures. As such, the much acclaimed positivist ideals of value-free and objectivity fundamentally give way to ideological structures that limit, rather than expand, political discourse.
Such built-in ideological bias serves to reify the existing (and all too often illegitimate) power structures. The positivist seeks certainty through describing as things are. A liberal education ought to produce critical thinkers – critical thinking requires deconstruction and the distaste for dogmatism. As critical thinkers, it is our responsibility to not settle with how things are, but to ask: are things? Critical social theories, such as feminism, post-structuralism, and post-modernism, pursue such projects. Such approaches towards the study of politics are de-ontological, provide no exclusivist structures, and operate without a center. As a result, they fundamentally expand political imagination and discourse.
Positivism, as the much-celebrated approach towards politics is fundamentally anti-intellectual through its remarkable lack of comprehension of the language of the oppressed – it speaks from a position of power eternally sidelining those as ‘irrational,’ who speak from a perspective of ethics, equality, and empathy. Contrary to the popular assertions, this is not disinterested scholarly professionalism; rather, it is active subservience to the hegemonic power structures. Being an academic, however, by definition, necessitates opposition to any hegemony as opposed to reifying or perpetuating it. The contemporary predominance of positivism in the liberal arts institutions requires intellectual silence on the ‘givens’ it presupposes – such silencing is the active marginalization of invaluable dissidence, through reinforcing all that needs no reinforcement.
The practical manifestation of such ideological education is also evident in the various organizations and institutes prominent on many campuses, such as, the Riley Institute at Furman. Too often, these institutes seek out unreflective politicians as models for the students. Unsurprisingly and also unfortunately, those in power are held as ‘models’ for students, but not those intellectuals who embody moral distaste for (what is often illegitimate) power. Of course, such narrow ideological ‘educational’ paradigms are equally reflective in both the neo-liberal bend of economics departments, and the marginalization of critical theories such as any Marxist-inspired approach. That these are not outdated is very much demonstrated by the leftist critique emanating from the ongoing ‘ninety-nine percent’ debates.
Furman University is chronically suffering from an ideological antithesis to liberal education. The failure to appreciate the value of a pluralistic and critical education – at a liberal arts institution is not merely a self-contradiction; but largely, is the final condemnation of liberal education itself. We, as an intellectual community which shares the commitment to pluralism, ought to “let a hundred flowers bloom,” and must not stifle the growth of any through ideological exclusivism. Our society could flourish best if we indeed let a thousand flowers bloom, and then pick the most beautiful. As it stands, we may never get to see the most beautiful.
