Why Is So Much of Our Discussion of Higher Ed Driven by Elite Institutions?
One of the things that makes me crazy about the media’s discussion of higher education is how much of it is driven and framed by elite schools. During the 90s, when it seemed like every college and university was fighting over whether Shakespeare should give way to Toni Morrison on the syllabus, it occurred to few pundits to look at what was happening in community colleges or lower-tier public universities, where most students get their education. And where the picture looks quite different.
The same goes today for the wars over trigger warnings and safe spaces: on both sides of the debate, this is primarily an argument over elite schools. Which has little to do with a place like Brooklyn College, where I teach. Seriously: just check out Judith Shulevitz’s recent piece on the topic in the Times, which got so much notice. In a 2100-word oped, here are all the institutions that make an appearance: Brown, Columbia, Northwestern, Oxford, Smith, Hampshire, Barnard, and the University of Chicago. There are fewer students in all of these institutions combined than there are at CUNY alone; between them, these colleges and universities enroll less than .5% of all students in America (not counting Oxford, of course, though it wouldn’t really change the numbers).
This is all a long windup to a piece in this morning’s Washington Post by a Columbia philosophy professor who is teaching at a prison in New York. It’s a lovely article about her experience teaching Aeschylus’ Oresteia to women prisoners, and it makes all the right points about incarceration and education. I really don’t want to take anything away from it. I’ve noticed that an increasing number of professors at institutions like Columbia, Bard, and NYU are teaching in prisons, and I think it’s a wonderful way to share and spread the wealth.
What caught my eye was this passage:
My incarcerated students differ radically from the ones at Columbia. When I walk into a tidy, well-equipped classroom on Morningside campus, I know my undergrads have spent years preparing for academic achievement, supported by family and teachers. Trained to ask hard questions, they consider diverse perspectives and then expect to get to the bottom of things.
When a correctional officer escorts me into a prison room equipped with rickety tables, tangled Venetian blinds, and no chalk, I know my incarcerated students have been locked away for years – sometimes for decades — with virtually no opportunity for intellectual stimulation.
…
My main goal as a teacher in prison has been to create a space comfortable enough for exploration and insight. The circumstance does not make that easy. With a heating system so loud we can barely hear ourselves think…
As any professor at CUNY will tell you, the telltale signs that the author of this piece attributes to prison—rickety tables, tangled blinds, no chalk, loud heating systems—are ubiquitous features on our campuses. I have a very strict no-gifts policy for my students: at the end of the semester, I only accept emails or cards of thanks. But one day a student gave me a gift, and as I protested to her that I don’t accept them, she gently pressed it into my hand and said, “Just open it.” It was a box of chalk: I gratefully accepted it. That’s how bad things can get at CUNY.
Now college is not prison; a seminar room is not a jail cell. I’m not making that argument. I’m making a different claim. Two actually.
First, the way that elite institutions dominate our media discussions really skews how the public, particularly that portion of the public that is not in college right now, sees higher education. There is a war being fought on college campuses, but it’s not about trigger warnings or safe spaces; it’s about whether non-elite students will be able to get any kind of liberal arts education at all—forget Shakespeare v. Morrison; I’m talking essays versus multiple choice tests, philosophy versus accounting—from mostly precarious professors who are themselves struggling to make ends meet.
And that brings me to my second point: at Brooklyn College, we have students who have been to prison or who have friends and relatives who are in prison. The wall between the Columbia philosophy department and prison is impermeable and high; not so the walls surrounding CUNY. There’s a lot of talk these days—thankfully—about prisons and carceral institutions. But when the discussion is framed as Columbia v. prison, we get a false sense of the distance many ordinary Americans, black and white, have to travel in order to get from their everyday lives to jail. It’s often not as far as you think.
My friend and colleague, Paisley Currah, has a paper that he’s presenting today at the CUNY Graduate Center. It’s about how transgendered people are treated in prison, and how that relates to how they, and other people, are treated outside of prison. It’s a complicated and fascinating argument—if you want a copy, email gcpoliticaltheoryworkshop@gmail.com—but the last line hits home:
Prisons aren’t “real life,” but for many, neither is the realm of putative freedom. It’s slow death.