My teaching serves the public interest. Really.

I have absolutely no idea how it is to be a professional member of higher education in any country other than here in the United States.  In India, I have known the system only from my student days and my inferences on the teaching profession there might be incorrect and will also remarkably dated, given that nearly thirty years have passed since my graduation.

Here, in these United States?  I love being a faculty.  There is simply nothing else I would rather do in life.  As with many other aspects of my life--like how the generations past made it possible for me to even come to the US from a far away India--the previous generations of higher education professionals have made it possible for me to enjoy doing what I do.  For, the single most important aspect of my job is this: academic freedom.  I do not have to undergo any ideological litmus test (well, except when it comes to my ultra-left colleagues, which is another story) and as long as I behave professionally in the classroom and carryout my responsibilities, there is no constraint on what I can write and inquire about.  Fantastic!

This academic freedom wasn't always there, as this essay reminds me.

I know I would have never liked even a single moment, for instance, during those dark years of the Cold War, when the likes of McCarthy went after anybody suspected of being a commie.  Those were some brave souls who stood up and protested, even when it meant losing their jobs, and, as the essay points out, when even the Supreme Court got things all muddled because of the Cold War.  Yet, those pioneers of academic freedom fought on, thanks to which I can write opinion pieces critical of, say, higher education or even the university where I work. I can freely opine on my government's policies, without worrying about losing my job over it.  (Or, maybe one day I will be fired for all these, eh!)

A former student, with whom I had lunch last week, asked me why I don't let students in on my opinions when I am in the classroom.  "I am an old-fashioned traditionalist when it comes to it" I replied.  I stay focused on the topic for the day, and even if students try to engage me otherwise, I tell them to pursue that with me outside of class time.

I tell students that in the classroom my job is only to help them think through.  The content, yes, but ultimately it is about thinking.  Without thinking people, democracy will fail and will fail big time.

Therefore, I especially liked the concluding sentences of that essay:

[As] Justice Felix Frankfurter explained in a 1952 case that invalidated a test oath required of professors in Oklahoma, teachers are "the priests of our democracy" because it is their "special task ... to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens."
His point was that academic freedom is necessary not because teachers are smarter or better than everyone else, but because they serve the public interest by imparting the skills to think critically and participate meaningfully in the great, if often flawed, American experiment in democracy.

Now, I have yet another supporting argument to how my job is about helping students develop their thinking abilities: by thinking, the students and I are serving the public interest.

A few years ago, the editor of the Statesman Journal invited me to write a short piece on what motivates me to author newspaper op-eds.  I wrote there that I considered it a civic duty to use my abilities and think through public policy issues.  I thought my serving the public interest was explicit only via blogging and op-ed writing, and am delighted there is a much larger world outside that also believes in teaching serving the public interest!