The University In Chains

Henry A. Giroux. The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

This book must be subversive; it is not to be found in any public or college library in the state of Iowa.I only happened upon it through a citation in Chris Hedges' latest light-hearted frolic Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. Giroux who lost a battle for tenure at Penn State University argues that the “trilogy of forces now shaping education” are patriotic correctness, consumerism, and militarization. The American university has continued to see its position as a public sphere of democracy erode by virtue of its relationship with corporate and military interests. “As a handmaiden of the Pentagon and corporate interests, it has lost its claim to independence and critical learning.”

The book's first and by far longest chapter is in large part a digression of how militarism has afflicted American society in general. Rather than sticking to concrete examples of the military establishment having their way with the American university and calling the shots through the funding of research (of which he does some) Giroux drifts into a semi-poststructural digression. A strained effort to further develop the theoretical construct of a biopolitics through militarization as a means of explaining how American culture at large has been infected with the intersection of war, violence and the spectacle is somewhat tiresome. Perhaps it is small-minded prejudice on my part but the mention of Michele Foucault and the use of words such as “praxis” puts this reader in a foul mood. Then throw in the empirically incorrect assertion that George W. Bush originated the grab and torture program of “extreme rendition” (p.27) and further reading is done with a jaundiced eye. President Bush may have elevated the practice to an art form but there are multiple sources that attribute the start of the policy to the Clinton administration in 1995 and 1998 in both Egypt and the Balkans respectively.

The most interesting chapter dealt with the concerted right-wing attack on higher education. This phenomenon is exemplified by David Horowitz and his organization Students for Academic Freedom (SAF). Horowitz, who has opined that the American Library Association is “a terrorist sanctuary,” advances the notion that what the academy lacks is “balance.” Seeking to do for university education what Fox News has done for broadcast journalism Horowitz maintains that conservative students are being victimized by leftist college professors who are indoctrinating the vulnerable youth. One point that one wishes Giroux had made was, if what Horowitz says is true [sic], where are the fruits of these efforts? Where are all the university-trained radicals that should be apparent as they aid the barbarians and terrorists in the destruction of America?

Perhaps the most horrifying part of this book is the subject of the consumer model of education that has spread like a virus. This is the belief that college students are fundamentally customers. By further imposing corporate hierarchies on the university it only follows that part-time faculty should be utilized as much as possible. A particularly brutal example of this is the plan that the University of Illinois has for developing a completely online entity which is an explicitly for profit operation that employs no tenured faculty. The University of Phoenix and Western Governors University are further examples of the marriage of corporate culture and higher education. For profit institutions,that are publicly traded, are poised to take advantage of the high-speed technologies that allow for huge opportunities in cost reduction. By cutting maintenance expenses and eliminating entire buildings such as libraries and classroom facilities university education in this country can be more fully made into a commodity.

Perhaps someday in the future colleges and universities might run advertisments heralding a coupon good for a reduction in tuition. The education “consumer” of tomorrow might avail themselves of Priceline.com or look for a satisfation guaranteed or your money back arrangement.

Two Novels that I can't find the will to finish

Franzen and Rakoff: Two Novelists

Rebecca Stuhr

I have recently looked forward to reading two novels and find that I can't finish either of them. Both of them I picked up at least two times more than I really wanted to and then finally said, nah. It just isn't worth it. And I like to finish books. What happens if you don't care how they end? The first is A Fortunate Age by Joanna Smith Rakoff (Scribner, 2009. Burling, Smith Memorial: PS3618.A437 F67 2009 ). It has been said that it is an homage to Mary McCarthy's The Group. McCarthy's group members were all Vassar graduates and Rakoff's are Oberlin graduates who are living in New York. For all Oberlin students and alumni, the references to Oberlin buildings and practices could be fun, but the characaters won't make them nostalgic for their own Oberlin buddies. These Obies are artsy and literary but lacking in soul or a spirit of community beyond the end of their lovely noses. There is no compelling plot, and what there is of it is mostly moved along (as opposed to revealed) by dialogue, which one does not get lost in. I got about 3/4ths of the way through and set it aside for a book by Jonathan Lethem, a favorite author of mine. This is one of his recent novels, You Don't Love me Yet (Doubleday, 2007). This novel features a group of aging and emotionally sagging young adults in Los Angeles. They are part of a band on the verge of making it big. I stopped reading just after their first real concert takes place. The bass player is a young woman who has fallen for "the complainer" who she meets via her part in a phone service for people with complaints, which in reality is part of a performance art project. She meets him, breaking the rules of the service and project, and finds that he is an older, enormous man. She goes on to get sick drunk and spends days and hours making love with him... barely making it to her concert in one piece. The band's performance is also part of a performance art project by the same artist empressario--the project which goes wrong but the band is a success--the words of the bands songs are all words that the bass player collected from the complainer, writing them down on a yellow pad and handing them off to the band's song writer (a wraith of a young man who doesn't remember to eat but is fed at rehearsals by the drummer). The singer is the bass player's former boyfriend. He works at the zoo and has abducted a kangaroo that is ailing and he is keeping it in his bathtub. I know it sounds fascinating and quirky, but Lethem must have been feeling cynical about novel writing. This novel has a hard unattractive feel to it, or maybe he wrote this under a contract deadline-- it lacks any joy or humor or beauty (at least what I recognize as humor, joy, and beauty) and, as of yet, I'm not sure what the message might be. I will give him another try, but this one I won't finish (and it's short!).

What am I reading that I like? Jonathan Franzen's collection of essays called How to Be Alone, John Buschman's dense Dismantling the Public Sphere (more about this one later), Matthew Battle's Library: An Unquiet History (more about this one as well), and finally Gary Snyder's No Nature: New and Selected Poems. I love Gary Snyder.

Methland:The Life and Death of an American Small Town

Nick Reding. Methland: The Life and Death of an American Small Town. New York: Bloomsbury Books, 2009

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Nick Reding's Methland is loosely organized, inattentive to detail, and yet still persuasive in its main argument. The subject of the book is how a small town in Iowa (Oelwein) is ravaged by the epidemic of crystal methamphetamine use starting in the late 1980s. The social costs were staggering.

In its modern incantation methamphetamine appeared in Oelwein in the 1980s. But the problems associated with the drug really became manifest in the 1990s. The meat packing industry which formerly employed around eight hundred people at wages of up to $18 per hour in 1990, through a ruthless process of consolidation, cut wages by two-thirds to a little over $6 an hour. In addition to the wage reductions jobs were lost as well until the last owner of the plant,Tyson Foods, finally closed down entirely in 2006 laying off the last hundred or so mainly undocumented immigrants still employed there.

Reding argues that the twin rails of the town's demise were the savagery of agribusiness' consolidation techniques and the concomitant spread of crystal meth which became both more potent and less expensive as the town took an economic nosedive. While the story of Oelwein's woes needs context, Reding wanders all over the state and country, e.g. the chapter on his father's hometown of Algona, which detracts from the focus of the story. In fact the chapters dealing with Lori Kaye Arnold (the actor/comedian's sister) and the city of Ottumwa are in many ways more compelling.

There are a number of details in the book which are empircally wrong. The mayor of Oelwein is fifty-five years old at the time of the book's writing yet Reding has him organizing a grocery store union in Dubuque in 1959 when the future mayor is fourteen years old (pp.123-124). Oelwein is not northeast of Iowa City it is northwest (p.145). Lori Arnold allegedly has no access to workers compensation while employed at Cargill-Excel in Ottumwa. There are a limited number of exemptions to the workers compensation law in Iowa. One has to work in agriculture, be self-insured, or an independent contractor not to be covered (p.151). How exactly is Ecuador a “rogue” state? (p.209). And, there are yet more examples of literary sloth throughout the book with which I shall not continue to bore the reader.

Yet despite these deficiencies the book is worth reading. It would also make a great gift for the drug- using-middle-age- Iowan on your holiday shopping list.

Burling Library 2nd floor HV5831.I8 R43 2009