Purging the Past by Punishing the Present

The following item appeared recently under Quick Hits in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Daily Briefing:

Descendants of slaves are calling for restitution from Georgetown University based on the profits it made from a sale of 272 slaves in 1838.

Apparently the university has apologized, is determining how best to make amends, and is engaging in a long-term dialogue with descendants of slaves who demand restitution.  This entire situation is a primary example of the BS that is making a mockery of higher education in America. 

Christian Smith opened the can of bullshit in his piece entitled “Higher Education is Drowning in BS,” published on January 9 in CHE.  It is a scathingly accurate introduction to the silliness that pervades the higher education community, silliness that undercuts the very credibility of higher education and obviates its ability to address major societal concerns.  I have my own list of gripes, some of which appear in other posts on this blog, but let’s stay with this one for now.

It is simply, if unhappily, the case that much of Western Civilization (and the rest of the world, for that matter) was built on the back of a slave workforce.  This situation has resulted from cyclical conflicts among cultural factions seeking to dominate other factions, either within a single geopolitical entity or across cultural boundaries.  This is not a pretty aspect of human nature, but it is a fact.  

The good news is that we have evolved (somewhat) to a more enlightened state in which we have recognized our failures and are correcting our course.  We are not perfect, to be sure; but strides are being made on a number of fronts to address and redress, for example, previous errors in race and gender relations.  However, it makes little sense to expend time and effort attempting to purge the past by punishing the present.  The descendants of slaves are not the real victims; that would be their ancestors.   We recognize their plight, but we cannot help those ancestors. Conversely, the descendants, and present-day society, can help to mold a future that holds hope for all by moving beyond what cannot be changed to that which can.

But it would appear that groups like those confronting GU (and many other institutions) prefer to wallow indignantly in the past, seeking recompense for offenses that, while repugnant, cannot be redressed by tearing down statues, renaming buildings, or padding bank accounts.  If for some unfathomable reason we were to embrace their position, I would suggest that such groups have not gone far enough in their efforts.  For instance, how can we condone the teaching of art history, when that history (and its art) is steeped in cultures that tolerated and fostered inequality and oppression of many sectors of society?  And worse, how can we display and glorify the artifacts of such cultures publicly in museums?  Moreover, how can we justify ongoing political, economic and cultural relations with countries that were born of oppression and open aggression?

OK, you get the idea.  These last suggestions are, well, silly.  At least that’s how they were meant. And so are attempts to revise the present by denying the past by scrubbing it clean.  Revisionist history is one thing.  Revisionist present reality is quite another.  Even worse is higher education’s willingness to embrace this type of inanity as some sort of relevant endeavor.  Or perhaps as a way to preserve their endowments.  As Mr. Smith tells us, it may be too late to save higher education.  The world, as he points out, “is always being overrun by political, economic, religious and social unreason.”  Higher education stood apart, “a protected reserve for the practice of open inquiry, reasoned debate, critical and self-critical reflection…and genuine progress in shared learning.”

The GU state of affair shows us what happens when higher education descends from its perch into the murky and muddled depths of the real, pragmatic world—it rapidly becomes entangled in issues that it does not really understand and cannot cope with using its own theoretical constructs.  And so it ends up knocking down the past to appease the present, a present that clearly has not grasped a sense of its own being.