Posted on 03/24/2002 1:47:13 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
"In a nutshell, it means I have a fundamental disagreement with capitalism," he said. "I think that capitalism is a system based on exploitation and oppression and domination and racism and war and lots of other things.
"So I'm totally opposed to capitalism, and I think that the majority of the people of this country ought to get together and transform the system," he said. "I think we need to replace capitalism with some kind of democratic socialism."
TEXAS CITY -- It rarely stirs up much of a fuss beyond the campus boundaries when a college board considers granting tenure to a professor.
However, the case of David Michael Smith -- avowed Marxist and unabashed critic of capitalism -- can indeed be called a rare one at College of the Mainland in this Galveston County town.
The 47-year-old Smith has attracted a small but vocal group of critics who say that, rather than receive job security, he should be fired.
That doesn't appear likely. The board is expected to approve his application for tenure Monday, or protection from firing for arbitrary reasons such as his political beliefs.
Opponents of Smith, an assistant government professor who joined the faculty in August 1998, say he has violated academic principles by pushing his political agenda in his classes.
He denies trying to indoctrinate students in Marxist philosophy in his classes but says he's not shy about expressing political views that few Texas academicians espouse.
Born in Salina, Kan., Smith received his three degrees at City University of New York and taught at the university's York College from 1985 until he joined College of the Mainland.
His specialties are political theory and American politics, and his classes are popular. He has been nominated as "Outstanding Teacher of the Year" each year since he arrived.
That doesn't carry much water with Howard Katz, who was 10 when he and his parents fled to the United States from Nazi Germany in 1936. Katz says he joined the Army as soon as he turned 17. He went to the Pacific but didn't see combat.
Katz, a former faculty member at the college, is among Smith's most outspoken critics.
"I lost both sets of grandparents in the Holocaust," he said. "I'm a strong defender of free speech and of academic freedom. David Smith has a right to stand on any corner and say anything he wants.
"But in a classroom, teachers are held to a higher standard by the principles of academic freedom."
What does being a Marxist mean to Smith?
"In a nutshell, it means I have a fundamental disagreement with capitalism," he said. "I think that capitalism is a system based on exploitation and oppression and domination and racism and war and lots of other things.
"So I'm totally opposed to capitalism, and I think that the majority of the people of this country ought to get together and transform the system," he said. "I think we need to replace capitalism with some kind of democratic socialism."
Smith's personal political beliefs didn't draw substantial public criticism until a guest column he had written appeared in the Galveston County Daily News on Sept. 20, when emotions were still running high after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In the column, he argued that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was not necessary to end World War II.
At least two other columns were written by others debating the issue, and many residents sent letters to the editor as the dispute heated up.
Then, in November, at a campus ceremony honoring veterans a few days before Veterans Day, some of Smith's students handed out fliers advertising a demonstration against the war in Afghanistan.
"It totally disrupted the Veterans Day celebration here," said Katz, 75, who lives in Houston.
Fifteen students later signed a letter that was published in a local newspaper, condemning the decision to hold the veterans' ceremony on campus. They likened the affair, attended by some college board members, to a formal endorsement of the war by the college.
"I can judge David Smith by his writings and the writings of his students," said Katz. "I read the letter by `sickened' students about us murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians every year, bombing innocent civilians and dropping cluster bombs that are dismembering children as if we were doing it deliberately. No other country has gone to the pains that we have to keep what they now call collateral damage to a minimum.
"They didn't get that at high school. They didn't get that at home, I don't think," Katz said. "There's only one place they could have gotten that, and that's in David Smith's class."
Smith said Katz misinterpreted the letter.
"What the students were pointing out is that the United States has, in fact, killed large numbers of people, whether it's in Korea, Vietnam, indirectly in Indonesia, more directly in Nicaragua and El Salvador," he said. "So the students were pointing to a history of U.S. imperialism, and that is something that more conservative folks don't want to admit."
Katz was among a half-dozen people, including former Galveston County Judge Ray Holbrook, who attended the college board's human resource committee meeting March 18 to oppose tenure for Smith.
Informed that that was not on the committee's agenda, the group promised to attend the board's meeting Monday.
While they'll get their say, they likely will go home unhappy.
Board members, who are elected, recently expressed general support for Smith and indicated that he'll win tenure based on his performance.
"We have nothing that says (Smith) is doing anything but what we've asked him to do, and he's doing it in an excellent, incredible way in the classroom," board President Ralph Holm told fellow members.
Board member James E. Butler said he believes Smith's opponents are trying to turn a purely academic issue into a political battle.
"I've been torn between keeping my mouth shut and fighting back against them," Butler said.
Katz and others believe Smith distorts history, leaving out details that don't fit his political views.
"He is disingenuous in citing authorities, and these authorities are only the ones supporting his views," said Katz, a former police officer who taught criminal justice courses at the college. "That is known, by any standard, as intellectual dishonesty and deceit."
Tenure is a longtime, and often controversial, policy in American higher education.
Among other functions, it "protects the instructor from termination of employment by an influential person or group for arbitrary reasons," said Dr. Homer "Butch" Hayes, College of the Mainland president.
To qualify for tenure, a faculty member must document to the satisfaction of a peer group that, among other qualities, he plans instruction well, provides classroom experimentation and innovation and improves instruction.
At this campus of 3,400 students, the faculty works in teams. If an instructor's team approves, it recommends tenure to Hayes. If Hayes agrees, he carries the recommendation to the board.
Hayes said he will recommend tenure for Smith on Monday.
Bob Young, an economics professor who leads the faculty team to which Smith belongs, said Smith's political views shouldn't be banned from the campus.
"I'm a veteran myself, and I don't remember ever being told that I was fighting for a single point of view or that, in the time I spent as a light-weapons infantryman, I was going to be exposed to only one set of ideas when I went to a university setting," said Young, who served in the Army in the 1960s and was stationed in South Korea. "I think these other veterans have a slightly different view of what America's all about."
Smith teaches two introductory courses on national and state government and an elective course in political science.
"In each of the courses, my syllabus sets out certain topics that I cover, and I certainly am honest about putting forth my own views," he said. "But I actively encourage people to question my views -- to express their own different views.
"Sometimes, a lot of the best learning is done by debate, discussion and disagreement," he said. "And one hallmark of my classes is that you can get extra credit by arguing with me during class. I think that's a good thing.
"We ask embarrassing, tough questions, like who is in the government, exactly whose interests are served by the government, what are the connections between business and government and what can working people do about it."
His politics don't include violence, he noted.
"Do I favor a small group of people going out and getting guns and attacking the government or anybody else? Of course not," he said.
Smith said he does support "radical or revolutionary social change."
"I think we need deep-seated, fundamental, systemic social change," he said. "But I believe it has to be done by a vast majority of the people, using a combination of electoral and (other) tactics."
He said he respects his critics' right to their opinions.
"But they are deeply misguided in trying to impose a political litmus test on faculty at College of the Mainland," Smith said. "Thankfully, the college has a long record of defending academic freedom in the face of controversy."
Tenure is a benefit which has an "opportunity cost". For me, it has a specific value. It is calculated as part of salary in determining whether a job is beneficial.
Also, being in academia has little to do with teaching. The game is scholarly research. Maybe not at this small Texas college, but at most medium to large Universities, it is THE determining factor.
If job performace were tied only to teaching, I wouldn't concern myself at all with it. Teaching is easy.
As far as potentially having to move if you get laid off,
There aren't "lay offs" in academia as such. The department, for example, could decide that they will go into an entirely different field of research because it's "hot" now. They could fire virtually the whole faculty (if no tenure) and start anew.
This would have nothing whatsoever to do with job performance or self-induced insecurities. Now, if a University wanted to have such a possibility exist, that's fine, but they're going to have to pay me a lot more to get myself into such a situation.
That's what Cornel West does at Harvard, allegedly. Also, this guy is probably entertaining. I'm sure the student's think he's funny with his anachronisms.
Well I'm off to a Sunday help session with my students (They have an exam next week). I give them help sessions just about every weekend, for 3-4 hours. Like it "matters" or will help me.
Realistically, a fairly-run courtroom with an honest judge is the only thing that will help me at this point.
I do have lots of good fodder for a legal case though: E.g., a handwritten letter from a colleague which states that the Union said it wanted to get rid of me because I was personally against Prop. A, a recently passed & very expensive bond measure, to fund Community College contruction projects and improvements. I do feel the taxpayers are burdened enough, by a big wasteful ed bureaucracy, but -- like my husband says, "What do you think you have, free speech, or something??"
I also sported a "YES ON SCHOOL VOUCHERS!" sticker on my car. The word, "vouchers" is like a cuss word, to teachers' Union types. I think that bumpersticker was my second "mistake." It's all about money, monopoly power, corruption -- not about freedom of speech, diversity of opinions, or expression.
I attended George Mason University - where Dr. Walter Williams, Rush Limbaugh's occasional substitute, teaches economics. Isn't he great? He's just super. :)
take care all.
Katz is 100% right. The students are being taught to hate America by this lying campus commissar.
I wonder how much of a "defense" the college would mount if the "academic freedom" in question was politically incorrect, say, reasons why reparations for slavery are wrong. Ask David Horowitz about the myth of "academic freedom" when you're on the Right.
The time to clean house is BEFORE these jerks come up for tenure. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, that applies in the halls of academe as well as on the streets.
I suppose it will happen when they actually lose. The fact of the matter is that they are still very much in the fight. Not only that but they are gaining ground at an incredible rate. Don't believe me? Click here for some seriously depressing information.
But the other side of me knows that they are like rabbits---they breed within departments because their only goal is power, not teaching. They tend to dominate the faculty committees and boards because the rest of us are doing real work.
Also, would anyone ever think to have a prof. whose "bag" is "flat earth theory?" Or "Lysenkoism?" No. These are proven completely wrong, so we do not teach them anymore. Well, nothing has been proven "wronger" than Marxism. From that perspective, it should not be taught, because to teach it is to deliberately expose students to false "knowledge" masquerading as fact.
However, there are a couple of pretty devout Marxists on my campus in other departments. It has gotten around to me that at least one spends MUCH of his time in class basically trying to refute "schweikart 101." In other words, my class has dominated his agenda! So as long as the playing field is even, I'm confident free market ideas and democratic/republican concepts will easily triumph.
Perhaps he means the indoctrination of America's youth.
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