BY JULIA SCHLECK
The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing. -Toni Morrison
A recent analysis of United States media revealed that the phrase “critical race theory” was practically unknown in television news and commentary prior to December 2020. Since then, its mentions have skyrocketed, culminating in bills in state legislatures across the country aimed at restricting or banning its teaching at institutions of higher education. One report suggests that this sudden surge of popular interest in an erudite strand of academic analysis can be traced to the December 2020 meeting of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), a conservative “bill mill”, that featured a workshop on the dangers of something labeled “critical race theory”. It was followed by dark money-funded efforts to push the issue into the national spotlight. In Nebraska, widespread local interest is most clearly attributable to its role in the GOP gubernatorial primary that in this red state will almost surely determine the next governor.
After being prodded by local opponents, University of Nebraska Board of Regents member Jim Pillen, one of the major contenders in the primary, used his position on the board to announce his intention to introduce a resolution “opposing the imposition of critical race theory” in university classrooms. UNL’s AAUP chapter president Matt Cohen gave an excellent description on this blog of the public response by the local AAUP, Faculty Senate, students, and eventually even the system president and chancellors, all condemning the resolution. In short, this resolution has generated a huge outpouring of prose and frustration within the university community, representing hundreds of hours of work.
It is unclear whether the resolution will ultimately be introduced at the August 13 Board of Regents meeting. Regardless, the damage has already been done in terms of hours spent defending the legitimacy of critical race theory as a methodology and the academic freedom of the faculty to make such determinations. In their public statement on the issue, UNL’s Institute for Ethnic Studies rightly asks “what crucial questions are obscured by labeling something ‘un-American’ and/or ‘divisive’ without further exploration—and without providing accurate definitions of the terms under discussion? What goal is served by such erasures?” We all might well ask what politicians hope to gain “by barring trained educators from teaching history, politics, and culture through the lens of critical race theory?”
Distraction, for one thing. But the immediate goal here is clearly electoral, as Nebraska Republicans scrap over issues forced to the forefront of this cycle’s debates, using the university as one of its battlegrounds. The candidate that can hit the university hardest on this issue will likely gain in the polls. But what are the effects of situating this fight within university classrooms? As a state-funded institution, the University of Nebraska is dependent on the votes of politicians who are themselves elected by voters in largely conservative districts, all of whom are repeatedly being told that, in the words of the resolution, the university is filled with teachers who “disparage important American ideals” and “silence opposing views”. They are being told that the university should be a place of “open reflection, discussion, study, research, and learning” where “inclusive and honest dialogue” is fostered, but that it is currently a site where those who “oppose discrimination” are being stifled. Whether it was a deliberate goal or not, one of the effects of the latest campaign will be to damage the university, materially and reputationally, within the state.
The irony of framing a resolution designed to censor certain topics of discussion in the language of “inclusive and honest dialogue” is painful. So are the choices now put in front of the faculty and graduate students teaching at the university. Do they continue teaching according to the professional standards in their field, knowing that those standards include readings and discussions that would now almost certainly be condemned by at least one of the university’s regents and many of the politicians and voters in the state? Or do they modify their syllabi and language in order to stay more safely under the radar? UNL has not yet fully recovered from its last high-profile attack by political groups hostile to higher education, one that resulted in the placing of UNL on the AAUP’s censure list. Faculty and grads know what they risk and they know that that risk has now been dramatically elevated by the GOP’s use of this talking point in their primary campaigns and by Regent Pillen’s resolution. Furthermore, the primary itself is still nearly a year away. That’s a lot of time for politically charged incidents to occur. And as Toni Morrison notes, there will always be one more thing.
The chill on the academic freedom of the faculty and students at UNL has already settled over us, despite the summer heat. I hear many of my colleagues are choosing bravely to stay the course and teach their classes with their usual integrity. Many of them are tenured, which will afford them some protections. UNL’s Institute for Ethnic Studies has wisely resisted accepting faculty lines that are off the tenure track, recognizing the importance of tenure to protecting an academic freedom likely to be frequently challenged in this state. However, plenty of teaching addressing US racial history and contemporary issues takes place outside the Institute, and UNL is only one of many universities being affected by the current right-wing focus on “critical race theory”. Many courses are taught by graduate students, or adjuncts, a group in which faculty of color are disproportionately represented. In short, classes that address race are increasingly taught by those without the protections of tenure or even a decent paycheck. The material employment conditions of academia lay the groundwork for the chilling effect to work, changing the calculations of faculty confronted with rhetoric like that we are currently facing in Nebraska.
Since there will always be one more thing, it would behoove faculty proactively to fight back by opposing the adjunctification of their institutions through strong organizing on their campuses. They should also speak and write about issues of systemic racism in all appropriate venues in order to educate not only their campuses but the larger public. These tasks, especially the latter, should not fall exclusively on the shoulders of BIPOC faculty. It’s on all of us. We must build powerful campus unions and/or faculty senates, creating an organized faculty ready to resist increased non-tenure track hiring and to push for the tenuring of faculty who have successfully taught for years off the tenure track. Such a faculty will be better prepared to protect those who bravely teach their subjects in the face of outside pressure. We’ll be working to build that faculty at UNL.
Julia Schleck is associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a member of the AAUP’s Committee on College and University Governance.
