We're pleased to offer you another interview with the contributors to Stephen Aby's forthcoming The Academic Bill of Rights Debate: A Handbook.  Previous installments have included interviews with Aby and with Lawrence Poston.  In this edition, we had the privilege of chatting with contributor Kevin Mattson about the role of the college professor, the on-going threats to academic freedom, and "postmodern conservatism."  We hope you'll enjoy the interview as much as we enjoyed conducting it!

Mattson: BecauseI think the question of academic freedom is one of the most pressing issues forthose working in higher education today. The recent attack by the right demands that we rearticulate the idea fora new generation of scholars.  Theright's attack helps us do that. 

Free Exchange: Yougo over various views on what professors are supposed to do, like being"intermediaries" who transfer the university's values to the students, or suppliersof goods to consumer students. How do you define the role and responsibilitiesof professors? How does the Academic Bill of Rights make that job moredifficult? 

Mattson: Professorsare responsible to their training in their field - whatever that might be - andtheir need to convey that training's findings to their students.  My own professional training is in history,and it is my responsibility to stay on top of current research and presentfindings to my students in ways that they can understand the past better.  Often that means that I am responsible toquestion my students' preheld beliefs or opinions. That can become quitecontroversial when it comes to the legacy of Vietnam, say, or the civil rightsmovement and the South. Controversy and debate are at the center of teachinghistory today, and it is my responsibility to do it as well as I can. 

Free Exchange: Basedon your discussion of landmark events in 20^th century academics likeBuckley's God and Man at Yale and thestudent movements of the 1960's, how has academic freedom become imperiled inthe last 50 years? What can we expect in the future? 

Mattson: I'm notone who believes we'll ever put these debates behind us.  As academe gets more politicized - includingas state institutions face cuts in their budgets, as for-profit institutions inhigher education grow, etc. - they will face increasingly hostile publics abouttheir purpose.  Academe is an institutionthat gains public support and yet can wind up nurturing professionals who arecritical of opinions held in public. That puts it in a special bind. And that's again why a collection explaining the principle of academicfreedom is so important - not just today but far into the future. 

Free Exchange: Whatdo you think David Horowitz's real motives are in attacking universities? Whatdo you mean when you say he's grafted the "1960's style to his conservativepolitics" and how does that method of attack make change in the academy moredifficult? 

Mattson: Conservativeshave been stereotyped as fuddy-duds, as crotchety naysayers and critics.  Horowitz tries to challenge that style - asdo many other conservatives today (including those at the Weekly Standard: I explore this theme in more detail in a futurebook entitled Rebels All!: A BriefHistory of the Postwar Conservative Mind). Horowitz uses his 1960s style of takingit to the man to pose as a hipster conservative taking on elitistuniversities. And yet he winds up trying to defend very conservativeprinciples.  The way he does it isdifferent from the past - it's more postmodern and more post-1960s.  William Buckley believed firmly in objectivetruth and the idea that academic freedom was a form of relativism.  Horowitz uses relativism - the idea that allopinions are able to be disproved eventually - as the means to justify his ownconservative argument for state intervention to police classrooms.  So he uses 1960s style ideas to justifycontemporary conservatism.  This mirrorsarguments made against the Mainstream Media (MSM as it's now called) and thosearguments for Intelligent Design.  It's anew form of conservatism - what I call postmodern conservatism. 

Free Exchange: Youtalk about the new marketing-impulse of many colleges and universities - inwhich colleges try to "sell" themselves as a consumer good to students who feelentitled to hear only what they want to hear - on how students understand theirrights. How does this new understanding support ABOR legislation? What can bedone about it?  

Mattson: Whenstudents believe they are consumers that have the right to judge education likeany other product they consume (video game or movie), then they are susceptibleto the claims of those who want to say that their opinions should matter in howeducation is delivered to them.  Aseducators, we need to stand for the principle that education is not a commodityand is not something that should be treated as such.  We need to make clear that a student'sopinion doesn't matter in terms of how that student evaluates new informationpresented in a classroom.  They have theright to speak in class and challenge the professor - and I've never met aprofessor who hasn't enjoyed having students take an active role in theirlearning - but they don't have the right to judge a professor based upondislike of the information presented in class, so long as that information waspresented professionally.  We simply haveto point that out in debates. 

Free Exchange: Basedon the argument you make in your essay, what kinds of questions should we beasking about ABOR and so-called "intellectual diversity" legislation in orderto steer the debate on academic freedom in a more productive direction? 

Mattson: I thinkwe need to present how dangerous the idea is that professors have to cater totheir students' opinions.  We need to goto the extreme cases - like in Arizonawhere professors were asked to create alternative curricula if studentsexpressed their dislike of what was presented in the classroom.   We need to point out how legalistic andridiculous legislation like this would become - how it actually betrays"conservative" ideas like professional responsibility, etc.  We need to expose the conservative activistas revolutionary rebel - as someone more intent on destroying institutions andclaims to professional credibility.  Andwe need to articulate the principle of academic freedom more clearly to a newgeneration of scholars and teachers and ask them to take up the causetoday.  That's a big challenge. 

Free Exchange: Arethere any other comments you'd like to add that might be of interest to ourreaders? 

Mattson: I justhope that this collection gets a wide audience and that the principle ofacademic freedom is better understood by a new generation of teachers. 

Free Exchange: Thankyou for taking the time to answer our questions!