Nerd from the Future
The Activist Scholar
Since the explosive aftermath of nation-wide student activism in support of Palestinian self-determination in the Fall of 2024, the right of scholars to take strong political positions on the most pressing issues of our time has come under extraordinary scrutiny. Despite the supposed protections of tenure, which are intended to protect professors from retaliation for unpopular beliefs or intellectual claims, faculty across the country have been summarily fired or censured not only for explicit political critiques of Israel, but also for supporting initiatives for diversity, equality and inclusion, teaching about histories of marginalized and oppressed people in the U.S. and around the globe, even questioning homophobic and transphobic sentiments made by students in their writing assignments. Echoing the era of McCarthyism, when the mass termination of suspected Communist sympathizers in the academy was coupled with the institution of political purity tests and loyalty oaths, today, professors are pressured into claiming false and intellectually bankrupt forms of political neutrality, backing away from teaching so-called controversial issues and rewriting grant and fellowship applications to remove all references to questions of diversity,histories of violence and oppression, or progressive political values. Pitting the term activist against the idea of the scholar destroys the transformative potential of both: it suggests that activists are problematic upstarts, malcontents and contrarians who contribute nothing but headaches tonational belonging and harmony, while relegating scholars to inert, boring purveyors of supposedly neutral knowledge incapable of having an impact on public affairs. The purpose of this move is to remove professors from public life and to demote their extraordinary influence on generations of American youth. In this episode, I gather with two of the profession’s most energetic and unflagging scholar-activists, Noura Erakatand Caroline Levine. Far from rejecting or denying the link between scholarly work and activist practice, we argue that the fundamental role of the scholar is to be an unwavering, bold, and courageous intellectual activist fighting forthe values of free thought and expression, collective deliberation, the pursuit of truth (in its many forms), and the sharing of perspectives in the public realm, even those worldviews that many would rather not tolerate or evenconsider. We underscore that taking positions, sharing one’s distinct beliefs, and making a case for why they matter is, in fact, central to the job of a responsible scholar, who’s aim is to teach students how to formulate their own, unique beliefs in dialogue with others. At the same time, we expand the definition of activism, to include a vast range of practices beyond street level protest, including the facilitation of in-class debate and discussion;the presentation of public talks outside the university; and participation in the crafting of new policy around issues like climate change, international human rights, and universal access to healthcare. In so doing, we reframe the professor as a figure of moral and ethical responsibility, who must play adynamic role in helping generations of youth identify our society’s sources of suffering and come up with varied solutions to collective struggle. We stress that professors with political commitments do not traditionally teach and mentor with the purpose of imposing their beliefs on others, but share them in a spirit of open-ended exchange. This kind of activism is reciprocal, dynamic, playful, imaginative, and meant to inspire the movement of minds, bodies,beliefs, and social worlds against the potential political stagnation and inertia that hounds all projects for democratic freedom.
