A group of religious academics came together recently for a conference. During the opening session, an announcement was made that in Room A there would be a lecture about heaven, and in Room B there would be heaven. So all the academics got up quickly and headed to Room A for the lecture.
Maybe academics are easy targets. There seems to be no lack of cynicism directed toward the ivory towers of the university. The abstract professor is, of course, a kind of cartoon caricature. But lying behind the image is a common perception, "Bright folks, but can they say anything intelligible in the real world?"
Community activists hold suspicions that run much deeper. They share with academics a concern for such things as historical forces, technological change, social and economic relations, and value formation. That is about all they share. Rarely do they meet in a picket line, on a peace march, or at a tenants' meeting. Activists honestly wonder whether academics ever really get their hands dirty. What to them feels like a life-and-death struggle often seems little more than grist for the mill of stimulating discussion over at the university.
Certainly the activist/academic tension is more keenly felt today than in times past. Particularly in the 1960s the university was a hub for social movements. Some professors even were vilified by parents and government officials alike for "brainwashing" young minds. All the same, student activists often had little faith that their professors would be there when it really mattered; "never trust anyone over 30" ran the popular wisdom.
The "greed-lock" of the 1980s created an entirely different campus environment. Faculty members with an activist bent have been put under tremendous pressure to conform to institutional demands. Tenure (read: job security) is increasingly conditional on a track record of recognized research and committee work within the academy; teaching skills and community activities are far less valued. So crude is this tenure process that the academy now keeps track of how many times a scholar's research is cited in the works of other academics. If you aren't being quoted by your colleagues, you must not be saying anything important.
So where does that leave those of us who have a passion for both theory and practice? Must we make a choice between our activism and academics? Or can the classroom and the pen possibly contribute to movements for justice?
Whenever we weigh our participation in any institution, it is vital first to name the real interests it serves. Higher education does not exist simply to provide space for free inquiry and exploration, nor is its primary aim to nurture enlightened individuals. Granted, many are drawn to academic institutions for these very reasons. Bottom-line, however, academic institutions service the economic infrastructure of society.
"SO WHAT are you going to do with your college education after you graduate?" The one question every student hates (Dustin Hoffman perfectly captured that contempt while floating in a swimming pool in The Graduate) may not be so stupid after all. The survival of any college, university, graduate school, or seminary depends on its ability to train students who can manage. Manage what? You name it - manage people, manage bureaucracies, manage children, manage money, manage products (even plastics, though Hoffman's character would have hated to hear it). Whenever it fails this task, an educational institution will not receive the economic resources it needs to survive.
This is the academic's ballpark. It is a field of contradictions for any activist. (Of course the social location of any institution - religious communities and non-profits included - yields its own set of contradictions.) But there is a good deal of flexibility how the game can be played within the foul lines.
Three strategic tips for those who are new to the league or for those who are veterans but have always played the game by the rule book (to their great frustration):
First, do not keep both feet firmly planted in the institution; it seriously damages your ability to link theory to practice. Do everything possible to adopt a one-foot-in, one-foot-out stance; that is, stay involved in a community organizing project. Then your outside foot will raise the problems that your inside foot will struggle to resolve. A two-feet-in stance, on the other hand, moves your teaching and writing toward abstraction (say what?) or a lack of relevance (who cares?).
Second, throw out the notion that you are on a set team that competes against other institutions in the league. Redefine your teammates; they are scattered in universities and graduate schools everywhere. It is remarkable what creative alternatives can result when you network your resources. For instance, four years ago I worked with colleagues in other universities to set up political awareness tours to Central America. We each worked within our own institutions to set up course credit, gain institutional funding, and recruit students. Now our program is a set part of the curriculum in six different universities.
Third, turn your classroom into a training ground for community organizing. Knowledge is not the accumulation of data, regardless of subject matter - science, art, or the humanities. Learning inescapably takes place within a social world that gives it meaning. Help your students identify their own personal connection to the material, and how their appropriation of it can become part of the process of transforming (or maintaining) the world. Your one-foot-in, one-foot-out stance will be a great help as you hone this skill.
In short, brainstorm how the opulent resources of the academy might be used for the construction of justice. My advice is no more sophisticated than that which Moses gave the children of Israel in their journey out of slavery: "Despoil the Egyptians."
DAVID BATSTONE has one foot planted at Santa Clara University and the other at Central American Mission Partners in Berkeley. He is editor of a new volume of essays on social change, New Visions for the Americas (Fortress Press). This editorial was inspired in part by the 1993 annual conference of the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature, held last November in Washington, D.C.