Carol Iannone

Civics and Civility in Thought and Action

While some insist emphatically on the importance of “American exceptionalism”—that the United States serve as a beacon of democracy and self-government to the world—many Americans continue alarmingly unaware of the very principles on which their nation was founded. This is having consequences. The adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 marked a fundamental change in that country’s legal system, making communities more important than individuals. In “Canadian Crackdown” (National Review, June 11, 2012), Canadian television host and columnist Michael Coren notes that various groups up north are seizing new powers to assert their interests over the personal freedom of others. Although America has not entirely lost its focus on individual rights, Roger Clegg and John S. Rosenberg point out in this issue of AQ that we too have moved quite a distance toward group rights—even without passing anything resembling the Canadian charter. Defending affirmative action from the charge that it discriminates against whites, for example, its supporters will blandly cite statistics that show whites still a majority in the area under discussion, as if that should settle the matter. Indeed, the uproar over the Department of Health and Human Services mandate that all health insurance plans must include free contraception coverage revealed the startling extent to which many are fully prepared to hold the purported interests of women as a supposed group superior to religious freedom and freedom of conscience. Renewed attention to civics education is thus certainly due, and became especially urgent with the publication earlier this year of A Crucible Moment: Acad. Quest. (2012) 25:319–322 DOI 10.1007/s12129-012-9316-5

Tell Me No Lies

In one sense it might be said that the whole academic enterprise became something of a fraud the moment postmodern relativism began to reign within its hallowed halls. To declare that there is no truth, the better to enforce leftist indoctrination in diversity, multiculturalism, sustainability, political correctness, and the like is certainly a gross and dishonorable violation of what the transmission and impartation of knowledge is meant to be. And our special section in this issue, “Frauds, Fallacies, Fads, and Fictions,” zeroes in on instances of how preordained political goals corrupt the scholarly enterprise. What the perpetrators of these fictions have in common is a slippery relationship to truth and the very idea of truth, and a tendency to resort to name-calling and ad hominem attacks when challenged. We can take comfort in that all of these frauds and fictions have been exposed by careful scholarly work, but can only be dismayed at the extent to which they continue to be purveyed. As readers probably know, parts of I, Rigoberta Menchu (English edition, 1984), an autobiographical account by Guatemalan activist and 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu, were exposed as fictional by anthropologist David Stoll in 1999. In “We, Rigoberta’s Excuse-Makers,” Daphne Patai gives a satisfying account of the whole and ongoing episode, in which she played a part, showing how Stoll’s conscientious research in bringing the truth to light was and continues to be vilified by the academic establishment. (When the facts won’t cooperate, there is always postmodernism: Acad. Quest. (2012) 25:186–189 DOI 10.1007/s12129-012-9295-6

Law Schools and Other Tyrannies

At one time the very idea of “the law” inspired respect, admiration, and even awe. One thinks of the thrilling words of Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons (1960). His future son-in-law Roper advises More to arrest a man who is likely to harm him at some point. More answers that the man must stay free even “if he were the Devil himself until he broke the law!” Roper balks at the idea of granting the devil the benefit of law, but More responds:

Ideas Both Good and Bad

If it is true that nothing can stop an idea whose time has come, it is also true that nothing can stop the departure of an idea whose time has gone. We offer an assortment of interesting essays in this issue that examine both good and bad ideas in the firm expectation that intelligent analysis will help the good to flourish and the bad to fizzle out. To begin with the good, can there be a professor—past, present, or future—who would not like to see a reduction in the number of academic papers published in his field? In “The Glut of Academic Publishing: A Call for a New Culture,” Stanley W. Trimble, Wayne W. Grody, Bill McKelvey, and Mohamed Gad-el-Hak describe the grim facts—how “too much material of too little substance” is being pumped into print (in their case in the social sciences), and how deceptive, negligible, poorly evaluated, and little read it is—and offer viable suggestions toward creating a more honest and responsible scholarly practice. Happily, the privately run International Spy Museum that opened in Washington, D.C., in 2002 has turned out to be a fine idea according to Ronald Radosh, author of “Scoping out the International Spy Museum.” During his visit, Radosh observed groups of schoolchildren hovering around exhibits and actually learning something about American history. Although generally well disposed toward the museum’s offerings, Radosh did have a few criticisms of the section on the Cold War, so we asked the museum to respond and him to reply in turn. Acad. Quest. (2010) 23:272–275 DOI 10.1007/s12129-010-9181-z