The hard right’s new target: Labor studies under assault

Is MSU's Labor Relations a target?

It started when the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland issued a FOIA request to Wayne State, University of Michigan and Michigan State University requesting all emails from their labor studies faculty that include words like Wisconsin, collective bargaining, Maddow and Madison. The center’s fishing expedition was no doubt intended to intimidate labor studies professors (We’re watching you). And there is always the danger that there is an embarrassing statement in an email or two - or something that might seem embarrassing if it’s pulled out of context.

Which brings us to the new front in this escalating war on labor studies scholarship - selectively editing video of labor professors in the classroom.

Raw Story and Media Matters have stories about Andrew Breitbart’s promotion of heavily edited videos on his Big Government website. The clips in question purport to show labor studies professors at the University of Missouri campuses in St. Louis and Kansas endorsing union violence. Right-wing bloggers such as Hennessey’s View have taken up the cry for universities to close their labor studies’ departments.

Huffington Post is reporting that the University of Missouri is so far supporting Professor Judy Ancel, director of the university’s Institute for Labor Studies. However, according to the St. Louis CBS afffiliate, University of Missouri Adjunct Professor Don Giljum, who helped Ancel teach the classes in question, has resigned, though Ancel reportedly still backs him.

(Added 4-30-11 - 2:42 p.m. - Here is a link to Ancel’s email on the matter.)

I would happily invite you to watch the videos but YouTube has pulled them, saying that they violate their terms of service. Huffpo reports that the video slices offered up by Breitbart et al were taken from recordings made in the classrooms by the university, so using them may well have violated copyright law.

As we have learned from Breitbart’s treatment of ACORN at the hands of James O’Keefe and his repugnant video smear of Shirley Sherrod, who was hastily fired by the U.S. Department Agriculture as a result, there is a big difference between editing video to emphasize a valid point and doing so to deceive. Sadly, that’s a line that Andrew Breitbart and his cohorts often insist is not there at all.

A larger concern, however, is that too many liberal organizations are quick to cave before they have the full story - and even after they can see the attempt to distort the facts. From my personal knowledge, I would argue that ACORN did great work in many communities. And I also believe that the real reason the GOP targeted ACORN was because it did such a good job of registering voters likely to vote for Democrats and not out of concern for underage hookers abused by their pimps.

This brewing assault on labor studies is really not about rooting out dangerous calls to violence on our college campuses. It is instead a way to intimidate influential people who well remember our union history. (This Detroit News article on the historic 1936-1937 Flint sitdown strike offers a brief reminder of what people in Michigan endured to earn the right to collective bargaining.) Even if they don’t succeed in persuading universities to close down labor studies units, they risk making all progressive professors feel threatened.

At the beginning of each of my classes, I have my students agree to a Code of Conduct, an agreement about how we will treat each other, in class and in outside communications. One of the things I insist on in our agreement is that we grant each other some modicum of goodwill.

I tell the story about how I was relating an anecdote in class one day when I said that my grandfather had been brought home from jail in the “paddy” wagon. I never thought twice about using that word until my grad student took me aside to ask whether I had intended to be insulting. Insulting? He explained that Paddy is, of course, a diminutive of Patrick, and that affixing it to the police vehicle that brought home the drunks arrested the night before was a slur against the Irish.

I had no idea the word was so offensive. (My student also warned me that “biddy” is a diminutive of Bridget and was again often used as a slur against the Irish.)

I apologized, of course, and I think he believed me. But many of us grew up hearing terms whose derivation we didn’t completely understand. I tell my students that we should all grant each other some goodwill in the classroom. I am sure there are times we all misspeak - or we fail to challenge some comment that we should not have let slide.

I also know that propagandists like Breitbart will make me think twice when students ask if they can video me in class. I have always allowed students to tape me, but given what can happen when people edit tapes with outright malice, next time I may elect to say no.