The Chronicle of Higher Education
Date: October 18, 1996
Section: Personal & Professional Concerns
Page: A11
By Denise K. Magner
New York -- When a few intellectuals first proposed a national teach-in to forge a new alliance with organized labor, their worst fear was that no one would come.
Instead, too many showed up this month at Columbia University to participate in "The Fight For America's Future: A Teach-In With the Labor Movement." More than 1,500 people thronged to the event, and some were turned away from overcrowded meeting rooms.
Academics and union activists have viewed each other with distrust for the past quarter century. Their once-close alliance began to fray in the 1950s and disintegrated in the 1960s, partly because of the political conflict over the Vietnam War. But the mutual hostility began to diminish, many here said, following the October 1995 election of a new slate of progressive leaders to head the A.F.L.-C.I.O., a federation that includes most of the nation's unions.
It was not clear until the teach-in just how ready many liberal and leftist academics were to embrace a reform-minded labor movement.
It was wall-to-wall people in the rotunda of Columbia's Low Memorial Library, where the opening session featured fiery speeches by some of academe's biggest names.
Cornel West, the Harvard University religion professor, told the crowd that "unregulated, unfettered capitalism is killing us." The philosopher Richard Rorty of the University of Virginia, said it was "time to revive a leftist politics which focuses on the need to prevent the rich from ripping off the rest of the country." And Patricia J. Williams, a law professor at Columbia, described a pervasive "worker-bee" philosophy: "Telling children in gutted inner cities that all they have to do is improve themselves and work hard, harder -- just stop complaining and work more -- sort of John Henry as role model."
Betty Friedan, the feminist author, urged students and professors to transcend the "identity politics that has dominated for the last 30 years" and take on "the culture of greed." John J. Sweeney, the new president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., asked academics to support labor in their writing, speaking, and research. He acknowledged that unions had become "isolated and insulated. That's why the rlationship we are beginning to renew is so important." He added: "We need you and you need us."
Several hundred people watched the proceedings on closed-circuit television in an adjacent lounge in the library or listened to an audio feed in nearby Schermerhorn Hall. Outside, as activists passed out union pamphlets and others hawked socialist newspapers, a few hundred more people listened to the evening's speeches as they were broadcast on the steps of the library.
The next day, hundreds more scholars, activists, and students attended talks on topics such as "The Incorporation of America" and "Organizing the Unorganized." The two co-chairmen of the teach-in, Steven Fraser and Nelson Lichtenstein, hovered like proud parents as it was called "extraordinary" and "incredible." The word they both used was "historic."
"What is historic is that we've taken the first big step in re-creating an intellectual, political, and cultural alliance that used to be an important part of our public life," said Mr. Fraser, executive editor at Houghton Mifflin Company.
Mr. Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of Virginia, agreed: "The real problem in this country is economic inequality." He continued: "Right at this moment labor is losing members. They have to turn things around, and they have to do that with muscle and also with new ideas. We're trying to generate them."
The teach-in was not a haven for conservatives. If any were here, they didn't speak up.
The people who did speak said stagnant wages in the United States were plaguing not only the urban and rural poor but also middle-class families. With corporations shrinking their work forces in a quest for higher and higher profits -- "shamelessly boasting about being lean and mean," as one speaker put it -- many here said the labor movement was perhaps the only sector of the economy willing to defend non-market values, such as loyalty and kindness.
Joel E. Rogers, a fast-talking professor of sociology, law, and political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, offered an array of prescriptions for unions, such as to organize sectors of the economy, instead of just single employers.
He also had some advice about the role that academics could play in revitalizing organized labor. "We need to spend less time deconstructing fairy tales and more time constructing a reality that we can believe in," he said, and added: "We should learn how to talk to people other than depressed graduate students."
He and others noted that labor history was usually ignored in schools and treated as "exotica," as Dr. Rogers called it, in colleges. He said it should be taught as an important part of the nation's history. "My favorite labor poster says, 'The labor movement: The folks who brought you the weekend.' Every kid in America should understand that."
While people here seemed to reach a consensus on the need to revitalize unions, that doesn't mean they agreed on whether it was possible or how it should be done.
Old and new political quarrels surfaced. Dr. Rorty angered some here when he said that student radicals who burned flags and spit at American soldiers had done long-lasting damage to the American left and were a key reason for the split between union activists and intellectuals. "The best thing that could happen to the American left," he said, to a mix of hisses and applause, "would be for academics to get back into the class struggle, and for union members to forgive and forget the stupid and self-defeating, anti-American rhetoric which filled universities in the late '60s."
In another plenary session, it was Orlando Patterson who was verbally attacked. Dr. Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard University, was booed for suggesting that the wages of low-income workers were being held down by the influx of too many immigrants. He maintained that the left needed to take a position on immigration, instead of leaving the issue to right-wing critics.
Two professors at New York University -- one a well-known white '60s activist and the other a young black historian -- tangled in a discussion that occasionally got personal on "Culture, Identity, and Class Politics." Todd Gitlin, a professor of culture, journalism, and sociology, said the left's "obsession with difference has painted us into corners" and must be transcended to focus on economic inequalities. "Minorities need majorities," he said.
Robin D.G. Kelley, a professor of history, challenged that reasoning. He questioned why race and gender were regarded as identity politics, while issues of class were "regarded as some kind of transcendent politics." The notion of transcending group identity, he said, appealed to "white radicals uncomfortable in rooms with loud colored people."
The defense of identity politics spurred this reply from Dr. Gitlin: "It's a dead end. We've done it. We can feel mighty good about who we are. We can have carnivals. We can speak Yiddish. And we have all these workers who it doesn't help."
There were a few complaints about the teach-in itself. To some it seemed ironic that the speakers describing the low wages and insecure futures of U.S. workers were some of the best-paid professors in academe, whose jobs are protected by tenure.
Other critics suggested that the ideas expressed at the meeting were not radical enough. "People came here for an alternative," said Nagesh Rao, a third-year doctoral student in English at Brown University and a member of the campus chapter of the International Socialist Organization. "What we got was a lot of invective against the right and no real criticism of the Democratic Party and its move to the right."
Still, he added: "The positive aspect is that so many people showed up. It shows people are angry with the way things are."
Organizers of the teach-in said it was only a beginning. At least nine regional teach-ins have been scheduled this fall at institutions as diverse as Clinch Valley College and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In January, Mr. Fraser said, a small group of academics and union activists will meet to assess the impact of the teach-in and plan their next move.
Mr. Lichtenstein, co-chairman of the event, was bursting with optimism. At one point, he picked up a large poster advertising the teach-in and stuck it under his arm.
"I'm going to take this home and frame it," he said, "because I think this is such a historic moment."