The NYTBR blows it again
Alan Wolfe wrote a very, erm, unsatisfactory review of Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? in the NY Times book review on Sunday. We could just slap it into that largish collection we’re starting to build up of Weirdly, Almost Perversely Bad Reviews from the NYTBR – there’s the one William Vollman did of a book on Nietzsche that Brian Leiter ripped up one side and down the other, there’s the Leon Wieseltier one of Dennett’s new book that Brian also took issue with, there was that Wonkette mess on Katha Pollitt’s new book that I was faintly critical of, and now this.
It starts horridly – “Bérubé comes off as spunky, likable and anything but a left-wing extremist…” Spunky? Spunky? Why not just tell him he’s cute when he argues? Spunky is right up there with feisty, and feisty is a word that needs to be expunged from the language. It’s a wonder people don’t (as far as I know) call me that. Pleasingly, they’re much more likely to call me things like acid, savage, and acerbic, which I have to tell you, makes me beam with quiet but deep happiness. (Then again there was that time someone called me twee. O the agony. But still, that’s not as bad as feisty.)
But then the wheels really come off.
…and he convinces me that Horowitz is as unpleasant as he is ungracious. But he does not persuade me that Horowitz is wrong. I’ve taught in at least two universities known for their leftism, and I know full well that those who teach at them strenuously opppose hiring conservatives and treat students who venerate the military, for example, as misguided. Were Horowitz not in fact intent on replacing left-wing thought police with their right-wing equivalent, I would applaud his efforts.
But that’s why Horowitz is wrong! His schtick is not just saying hey there are too many lefties in universities, it’s working to get laws passed that would ‘fix’ this putative imbalance by getting the state to micromanage every aspect of university teaching, hiring, curriculum, grading, evaluation, and haircut. Der. You might as well say ‘if eliminating the estate tax didn’t benefit the rich while shifting the tax burden onto the poor, I would applaud it’. And then there’s the bit about ‘venerating’ the military, and the sloppy notion that thinking ‘veneration’ of any military might be misguided is a necessarily lefty idea.
It is instructive to learn that anthropology is not a discipline composed entirely of like-minded people because left-liberals do not always agree with poststructuralist Marxists, but this hardly addresses the widespread perception that cultural anthropology has little room for those who might believe that America’s presence in a third-world country might bring about some good.
The what? The widespread what? The widespread perception that what? What does ‘America’s presence’ mean? Some Americans? Undercover agents? Invasion? The whole country picking up and plopping itself down inside a third-world country, squashing everything in sight and slopping all over the neighbours? Surely whether that presence ‘might’ bring about some good or not depends heavily on what that means, but it’s impossible to tell what it means. It’s just loose sloppy hand-waving in the general direction of a thought without bothering to pin it down. That’s lazy, frankly. One gets the irresistible impression while reading this article that Wolfe scribbled it down while watching a football game on tv or something. It doesn’t seem to have his full attention.
Also fueling conservative anger is the fact that universities work remarkably well. They bring jobs and new industries to the regions in which they are located. They tend not to lay employees off with the haste of the private sector.
Hello? Some universities are in the private sector? I know conservatives think they’re some sort of alternative world because they’re not always directly shuttled around by the profit motive, but all the same, quite a few of them are private rather than state. Maybe there was a touchdown just then, and he lost the thread.
And then he wraps up with a disjointed, lazy last paragraph, in which he even admits to a kind of childish boredom. But the Times thought this was good enough. Well it isn’t.
The point about book reviews is that you EXPECT wild surveys of prejudice and speculation triggered by the book, rather than examination of its ideas and writing – isn’t it?
And the definition of a BAD review is that the reviewer gives away the fact that they have only read the jacket blurbs, while delivering the same prejudice and speculation.
At least in newspaper reviews, whether the NYT or the West Australian.
No, it isn’t! This is the NY Times, not the Puyallup Weekly Gazette. Look at book reviews in the Guardian for instance: say what you like about the Graun, it has great stuff in the book pages, often. But the Times is just crap, perversely crap. It’s as if they tell their reviewers to make a mess of it.
I don’t agree with your opinion. I think that maybe you are being too harsh. I am not getting a clear picture of what you are upset about in his article.
I think what’s riling OB is that the ‘review’ is not so much a review as a flagpost up which Wolfe is running Horowitz’s tired old banner – and seemingly doing so in brain-in-neutral mode, since it’s just a running together of uninspired wingnut cliches.
There are other bits that piss me off more than those cited by OB, though. Look at this:
Left-wing domination of academia is so obvious a fact that Bérubé never tries to deny it. He knows that … [t]here is “more than a grain of truth” in the charge that Middle Eastern studies departments are generally biased against Israel.
it just me that sees this as a clear alignment of ‘leftist’ with ‘anti-semitic arab’? I would not be surprised to find more than mere ‘anti-Israel bias’ in at least some Middle Eastern studies departments, but how does this become evidence of the left? It’s just more unconsidered wingnut rubbish.
Yeah, what outeast said. I’m not upset, I’m riled. It’s the brain-neutral mode and the run-together uninspired cliches. It’s just a terribly lazy, sloppy review; it’s Not Good Enough for the putative newspaper of record.
This is, of course, a gross simplification, but I always thought that people with brains who gave a sh1t about humanity went into academia, and those who didn’t went into business. Therefore, it’s no surprise that academics are overwhelmingly left-leaning, and businesspeople are the opposite.
Heh heh heh heh – that’s probably too simplifying, but it is strange that people such as Horowitz worry that subjects such as literature, archaeology, etc. are dominated by leftists, while not saying a thing about the political leanings of business and law schools, where the _actual_ power lies.
Horowitz is just still wrestling with the student maoist he was, I think. No shame in that, in principle. I was a student Trot. OB once mentioned an affinity with the Old Man as well. But neither of us is frotting at the mouth over it.
OB,
“Also fueling conservative anger is the fact that universities work remarkably well. They bring jobs and new industries to the regions in which they are located. They tend not to lay employees off with the haste of the private sector.
Hello? Some universities are in the private sector? I know conservatives think they’re some sort of alternative world because they’re not always directly shuttled around by the profit motive, but all the same, quite a few of them are private rather than state. Maybe there was a touchdown just then, and he lost the thread.”
Well I agree that the review is sloppy, although I disagree with you as to the reasons why. Wolfe fawns over Berube (without much evidence to support his fawning) and summarily condemns Horowitz without really engaging either of them on the basis of their ideas.
The real problem with the part you quoted though isn’t that Wolfe’s sloppy about what’s in the private sector. It’s that he’s, well, he’s wrong. He’s sloppy about what conservatives think.
When was the last time you heard Rush Limbaugh complain about universities because they work remarkably well and bring jobs etc? When was the last time you read an article in the National Review or the Weekly Standard or Commentary complaining about those things?
Sure conservatives complain about universities but the complaints are about what’s taught, not that they work remarkably well. If conservatives are complaining about what’s taught, how can Wolfe seriously say the complaint is that universities work remarkably well?
So the real problem is that Wolfe’s been spending too much time in the echo chamber.
MdS
“it is strange that people such as Horowitz worry that subjects such as literature, archaeology, etc. are dominated by leftists, while not saying a thing about the political leanings of business and law schools, where the _actual_ power lies.”
Actually business and law school profs are split more evenly than in the humanities. Also, the humanities have quite a bit of power. After all, all students have to take composition or rhetoric or something along those lines.
I don’t see Horowitz as letting business or law profs off the hook. My gosh, the man can only do so much at any one time. He’s complaining about the radicalization of faculties, and the suppression of certain points of view. These problems are more prevalent in the humanities than in the sciences, or in business or law schools, so one would assume that’s why he’s focusing on them.
Doug,
I’m sure that there are many people who would like to go into academia because they care about people, but that has nothing to do with leftism. The leftism many of them espouse has nothing to do with caring for people. The vast majority of it is about attaining prestige and power, with a smattering of one-upmanship.
Allan,
No doubt a certain proportion of lefty academics were motivated to go into their professions by the desire for prestige and power, but the vast majority? I doubt it. It seems to me that the vast majority of those who seek prestige and power eschew any kind of challenge to the status quo and the prevailing belief system, and are therefore moderates or right-wingers.
Doug,
I didn’t say the vast majority of “them”. I was referring to the leftism that many of them espouse. Maybe for clarity’s sake I should have said “much of it” So I don’t necessarily disagree with you on your first point.
Where I disagree is with your statement about those who seek prestige and power eschew a challenge etc becoming moderates or right wingers. As I see it, the relevant universe for academics is fellow academics.
If those who seek prestige and power do so by not challenging the prevailing belief system, then those in academia who seek prestige and power become or remain leftists because the prevailing belief system in their universe is overwhelmingly leftist.
“The real problem with the part you quoted though isn’t that Wolfe’s sloppy about what’s in the private sector. It’s that he’s, well, he’s wrong. He’s sloppy about what conservatives think. When was the last time you heard Rush Limbaugh complain about universities because they work remarkably well and bring jobs etc?”
But that’s not what Wolfe said. He didn’t say they complained that universities work well, he said the fact that they work well fuels conservative anger, which is a different claim. It’s a claim about motivation, possibly hidden or unconscious motivation, not about explicit claims.
But Wolfe certainly doesn’t ‘fawn’ on Bérubé. I read a bit of the book at a bookstore yesterday, which quadrupled my irritation at that review. Wolfe might have mentioned how good it is.
“He’s complaining about the radicalization of faculties, and the suppression of certain points of view. These problems are more prevalent in the humanities than in the sciences, or in business or law schools, so one would assume that’s why he’s focusing on them.”
That’s way too kind to Horowitz, because he doesn’t say he’s focusing on the humanities, he talks about universities in general. He makes it sound as if universities in their entirety are leftist redoubts. It’s tabloidy, McCarthyite, fear-mongering stuff.
OB,
One of the reasons I thought that Wolfe fawns was that he said something about Berube being an outstanding teacher, without citing any evidence that he actually is. The tenor of the article also tends in the direction of fawning.
I suppose technically your reading of Wolfe’s comment about fueling anger is correct. But Wolfe hasn’t given us any reason to believe that he has any insight into what unstated or unconscious motivation fuels this so-called conservative anger.
One has to wonder then where he’s getting his ideas from if not from the echo chamber he inhabits? So even if your interpretation is technically correct, it suggests that Wolfe is unwittingly proving Horowitz’s point.
As for Horowitz, sorry but no I don’t think I’m being too kind. It’s just that the truth matters. I doubt that anyone seriously thinks he has an ax to grind with Math and Engineering Departments. He talks about humanities faculties and university administrators, and cites evidence that they have made universities leftist redoubts. If there are pockets within the universities that are still holding out, that doesn’t change the big picture.
The left usually responds to his charges with personal attacks rather than by refuting the evidence he cites, so maybe there’s something to what he says.
Allan,
Truth matters, and therefore accuracy and precision also matter. You make a lot of sloppy claims and arguments.
Wolfe does not “[say] something about Berube being an outstanding teacher, without citing any evidence that he actually is” – he says, after noting that Bérubé describes what he does in his classes, “Bérubé is no doubt a terrific teacher, the liveliness of his mind a sharp contrast with the plodding didacticism of David Horowitz. One teaches, the other pontificates.” The “no doubt” flags the fact that he doesn’t know for certain, and the whole quotation shows that he is extrapolating from Bérubé’s writing to his probably way of teaching; it’s a reasonable inference, and the evidence is the book plus the writing of Horowitz. And the tenor of the article does not “tend in the direction of fawning,” in fact it underpraises rather drastically.
Yes, technically my reading is correct, and yours was incorrect and inaccurate; accuracy matters. No, Wolfe doesn’t give any reason to think he knows what fuels conservative anger, but that’s a separate question and it’s not what you said. The point you were gesturing at may be right, but it doesn’t follow that inaccuracy doesn’t matter.
“I doubt that anyone seriously thinks he has an ax to grind with Math and Engineering Departments.”
You doubt. You think you can make a good guess at what no one thinks. You’re doing a Wolfe then. What’s your evidence for that guess? And in any case, that’s a crap excuse for exaggerated claims. If Horowitz talks about universities full of lefties, it’s no good saying everyone knows he doesn’t mean math, engineering, law, business, dentistry, medicine, marketing. It’s no good defending Horo by saying everyone can figure out what he means.
“The left usually responds to his charges with personal attacks rather than by refuting the evidence he cites, so maybe there’s something to what he says.”
Or maybe not. What the “personal attacks” amount to is the fact that Horowitz is, to put it euphemistically, not always careful enough about accuracy.
Feisty is a perfectly good word. From what I gather its original use was to describe a dog that farts alot. In that context it is both more efficient and less unpleasent than the phrase it replaces.