BY AARON BARLOW

In “From Austerity to Attacks on Scholars,” an article for Inside Higher Ed, Syracuse University professor Dana Cloud writes, “I discovered how the people attacking me were organized and trained through right-wing radio programs and websites in the language to use against intellectuals; they were set off like arrows from a bow” (italics mine). Yes: language has been deliberately manipulated to turn quite a few Americans, particularly those already on the right, against American universities—look no further than the work of David Horowitz for proof. But it is just as true that language is being used to manipulate all of our views of American universities—as I argue in an article for the current issue of Planning for Higher Education, “Fighting Fire with Fire: Reinvigorating the Language of American Universities.”

File under “Sad but True”: American academics have been losing this two-pronged battle over words for decades. We need to turn it around.

The legendary science-fiction writer Samuel K. Delany published a novel in 1966 in which he used the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the idea that language structures affect the worldviews of their users. Babel-17 won a Nebula award and was nominated for a Hugo. The idea Delany used was anything but new; he did manage to make it stick in baby-boomer minds, however—no mean feat (we were never the most focused generation).

One of Delany’s characters, called “the Butcher,” explains, late in the book: “But they had just come up with their own secret weapon: Babel-17. They gave me a thorough case of amnesia, left me with no communication facilities save Babel-17.” Another character expands on this:

“Babel-17 as a language contains a preset program for the Butcher to become a criminal and saboteur. If you turn somebody with no memory loose in a foreign country with only the words for tools and machine parts, don’t be surprised if he ends up a mechanic. By manipulating his vocabulary properly you can just as easily make him a sailor, or an artist. Also, Babel-17 is such an exact analytical language, it almost assures you technical mastery of any situation you look at. And the lack of an ‘I’ blinds you to the fact that though it’s a highly useful way to look at things, it isn’t the only way.”

Manipulating vocabulary: that’s what the right has been up to for some time. The Treaty of Tripoli of 1797 says, “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” This treaty, signed by President John Adams and supported by ex-President George Washington as well as quite a few of our other ‘founding fathers,’ is quite clear. You have to distort the language to imagine it means something else. But people do, especially those wedded to the idea of the United States as a Christian nation.

Instead of accepting meaning, these contemporary right-wing followers of 1984 try to change meaning to muddy debate. We academics know that words are as powerful as sticks and stones, yet we are strangely unable to strip away this manipulation of meaning and distortion of vocabulary.

Reading Dr. Cloud’s piece on the heels of the final proofs of my own article, I immediately thought of Delany—and decided that I should have been even more forceful in what I wrote about responding to the corporatization of the university that is happening, in large part, through language. As I said above, we in academia are under a two-pronged, language-based attack, one from outsiders who are wresting our own vocabulary from us and another from administrative insiders who are imposing the vocabulary of commerce upon us. If we don’t start striking back intelligently (most of our responses so far have been befuddled), we are going to lose this “war” and our independent faculties will disappear, leaving our universities, those that continue to exist, as training mills.

One need look no further for proof of the ubiquitous nature of one prong of this attack than the comments following Cloud’s essay. One person, “failureofreality,” writes, “The academy is socialist. Socialist institutions require exploitation. In the case of colleges and universities, the exploited are teachers and students… The complete failure of academics to acknowledge their dependence on productive people is astonishing.” Another, “AssociateProfessor,” writes, “If the humanities are so degraded that open racism against certain unpopular skin-color groups is de rigeur, and the tentacles of ‘social justice’ are infesting spaces where objectivity is paramount, then yes—perhaps there is a reason why certain professors are being blackballed.” This poster goes on to claim, “The only relationship that ‘social justice’ has with Justice is usage of the same word.” Both commenters might better have chosen the pseudonym HumptyDumpty: “’When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’” “Socialist,” “racism,” “social justice” and even “blackballed” are used in ways uncommon to their normal senses… and for manipulative purposes, not for discussion. This drives real academics to distraction, for their entire careers are based on pinning down meaning, not manipulating it for deception, making it difficult for them to do anything but sputter.

Manipulation of meaning extends to current events. When Republicans call theirs “the party of Lincoln,” they imply that it should be the party of African-Americans, ignoring the shift in party alignments that occurred during the 1960s. An example concerning academia, one used directly against the American faculty’s own vision of itself, is David Horowitz’s redefining of “academic freedom.” He caused academics to have conniption fits by changing the definition to, essentially, one of free speech—but without informing the scholars he argues against (Dr. Cloud, by the way, was one of those directly attacked by Horowitz in his broad campaign against the faculty—a real honor).

A third example, one used in the other prong to restructure academia, is the reimagining of “student” as “consumer.” “Consumer” itself is a word that has come to serve a purpose often quite different from the one generally imagined. That is, “consumer” as “user” or “eater” is long gone, replaced by “rational consumer” as in the sense of smart shopper. Students, however, who most certainly are users of education and, in that sense, are consumers of education, are, by definition, not smart shoppers. In fact, one of the purposes of education is to make them into smart shoppers. When students become consumers (in this new sense), the way institutions consider them changes—which is exactly what the corporate, or neoliberal, overlords of our universities want.

Not surprisingly, Horowitz, one of the creators of these methods of attacking academia, once combined “students” and “academic freedom” into his campaign to weaken the power of the faculty. When looked at through traditional definitions, his conception of “student academic freedom,” that makes no sense at all. But that fact did not deter him.

In all three of these examples, to more or less success, political saboteurs have tried to manipulate reality through vocabulary.

Most faculty members who have tried to counter either prong of this attack have found themselves stymied by refusal of their opponents to accept definitions that have been commonplace for generations. They have been reduced to arguing the genesis of meaning instead of approaching areas of real concern. This has proven frustrating and fruitless—exactly what the enemies want.

It is impossible to refocus the debate when faced with an opponent using this two-pronged tactic. Academics find themselves running hither and yon trying to herd discussion back into its proper place to the point where, exhausted, they just give up and let the sheep wander where they will—including into their own living rooms where the ovines chew indiscriminately on furniture, wallpaper, books… with no mind to what they are destroying. They don’t care, and it feels good.

There needs to be a different approach.

Delany’s Babel-17 language, through the logic of its grammar and vocabulary, leads thought in certain directions. Maybe what we need is to take a lesson from that but, instead of attempting to lead thought or even convince, we should deliberately and carefully use our language to provide real freedom of thought. When someone uses a phrase like “social justice” or “politically correct” or words like “freedom,” “individuality,” or “democracy,” or “outcome” or “assessment,” we should hear the words as so much noise and react as such, forcing their users to backtrack to basic concepts instead of simply manipulating definitions. When the commenter on Cloud’s article uses “socialism,” for example, the word (and his or her definitions) should signify nothing. Her, or his, entire comment should be reduced to its core, “I don’t like it when people form groups for their mutual benefit.” He or she also used the word “productive,” another that begs a number of questions and that can be reduced to “controlling wealth” (college professors, according to the post, are not “productive,” so “creating wealth” cannot be part of the definition). The word, then, signifies nothing more than self-flattery.

Where this gets touchy is when threats are involved—and this is where Cloud’s own suggestions become important. The recent spate of hate thrown against academics who have ventured into the public sphere is quite disturbing but, unfortunately, it is augmented by the heightened responses it engenders. One must call the police when one’s person, home or family is threatened. But we also know these threats are, for the post part, spurious and that their numbers grow when we do anything but ignore them.

What to do? First, look at Cloud’s advice and follow it. But consider carefully your approach. And be sure, as Cloud says, to enlist unions and professional organizations in your defense—immediately. Are you an AAUP member? Alert your chapter or even the national office.

In the context of hate mail, “I will kill you” means, most often, “I want to make you uncomfortable.” The fact of calling the cops shows that the words have succeeded. But I cannot suggest ignoring such threats. Still, we can makes sure that our personal responses are muted (that is, are not responses in kind) without sacrificing safety or conceding ground.

We cannot control the conversation, or even participate in it, when we read hate mail simply as threats. As Cloud writes:

it is imperative to try to break out of the “civility” and “free speech” frames that portray the right’s threats and our scholarly critiques and activism as equally violent and uncivil.

One thing the right-wingers are doing is taking comments, posts and tweets out of context and circulating them through opinion leaders like Ann Coulter and the website Campus Reform to portray us as the violent ones. They are interested in defining all critique and protest as violent and outside the pale.

Rather than squabbling over the results of this tactic, we can take it back a step or two. When they try to define our speech, instead of arguing over definition, go behind the words, writing as though they didn’t exist. We can do this, for we understand the concepts, not simply the words and definitions, in ways that most of those who are attacking us do not. Don’t get caught up in a back-and-forth or in an attempt to counter false equivalency. If someone accuses you of being out to destroy, respond about building.

The right has had years to perfect its strategy. For the most part, our responses have been off the cuff.

As Dr. Cloud advises, we need to change that.

Next, we can address that other prong, the language of administrators attempting to bring us into the corporate fold.