>Date: Sun, 3 Dec 1995 08:55:36 -0600 (CST)
>From: Tibor R Machan <machatr@mail.auburn.edu>
>Subject: Letter to the Editor (fwd)

>To: "cEric Exec.Dir.APA Hoffman" <ehoffman@brahms.udel.edu>

Dear APA Bulletin:

	In the November 1995 issue Martha Nussbaum writes that the public
has various negative views about "academic humanists" and that "we are
being portrayed" in numerous unflatterings ways.  (I don't wish to quote
her list of undocumented types of cases - see page 144 for her claims.)

	I would like to know where she has learned about "what the public
has come to believe" and about how "we are portrayed."  What I see does
not square with what she sees and it would be nice to have some data.  I
see nothing but continued yet often undeserved respect and honor extended
toward academic humanists, especially by the media, in contrast to how
most films, TV programs, and other popular forums portray, say, people in
corporate business or trial lawyers.  While nearly every movie shows a
professional in the field of business with the smoking gun, whatever the
crime ("it was motivated by the crass pursuit of profit"), hardly anyone
portrays professors as being motivated by envy, jealously, laziness, or
evangelistic zeal - all of them at least plausible pictures of a good
many of the people I have encountered over thirty years in the academy.

	Indeed, has anyone ever seen 60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline or any 
other television magazine, let alone some major news weekly, expose any 
professional educator to the kind of scrutiny that, for example, the 
tobacco companies have experienced over the years?  (A few scientists are 
caught now and then, engaged in dubious research practices, but that's 
nearly all.)  

	I have the fantasy of Mike Wallace walking into a class room,
followed by a camera crew, addressing a surprised professor of philosophy
or history as follows: "We have had some 60 Minutes staffers enrolled in
this course for the last three weeks and they report that you use 20 year
old notes as you give your lectures, you give multiple choice tests in all
your courses, you haven't been to a conference, written a peer reviewed
paper or read any book in philosophy for the last twenty years, you are
disdainful toward students and consider them zeros, etc., etc."  

	Of course, this is a highly unlikely scenario, given that perhaps
the only professionals able to intimidate people more with their verbiage
outside TV reporters are professors, not to mention the presence of age
old deference to educators throughout western culture (just remember "Herr
Doctor, Doctor," for starters). 

	Contrary to the suggestions Professor Nussbaum seems to be making,
I think it is high time that academic humanists be examined with the kind
of scrutiny that the FDA applies when it comes to what the commercial
market produces for public consumption - although I would not approve of
this being done by any kind of government outfit.  We have a very
corrupting system (given that in the majority of cases we are funded by
taxation, which removes the normal avenue of care people who obtain 
services in the market place have the chance of exerting in their 
exchange with professionals in other fields of work) and given the tenure 
system (which has clearly produced dead head and dead beat professors 
across the academic landscape).  

	While a few right wing attacks have been made on all this, their
source tends to give them little credibility and few in the profession
take it more seriously than to dismiss it all as ideologically motivated
ranting.  It would be nice if the bias in favor of the intellectual life -
fueled considerably, of course, by philosophers - did not blind so many of
the self-appointed critics of culture to the widespread malpractice within
our profession.  We are, after all, the most educated, most competent team
of special pleaders in society, should we choose to defend ourselves -
so addressing what we do critically and meaningfully would be a very
challenging and risky business. 

Sincerely,

Tibor R. Machan
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Tibor R. Machan		(1107 Eagle Circle)	Home Phone (334) 826-1511
Dept. of Philosophy	(Auburn, AL  36830)	Office Phon(334) 844-3784
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