To the Editor:

Stephen H. Balch and Herbert I. London’s superb report on the grotesque, self-righteous political posturings of left-wing academics [“The Tenured Left,” October 1986] and André Ryerson’s letter in the February issue of COMMENTARY detailing the machinations of the Peace and World Security Studies program (PAWSS) at Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, and Hampshire Colleges and the University of Massachusetts should provide ample evidence to anyone seeking to gauge the political climate of the American university campus.

But if further documentation is wanted, I should like to draw your readers’ attention to a resolution recently passed by the Delegate Assembly of the Modern Language Association (MLA) of America, and submitted to the MLA’s membership for approval or rejection by ballot. The MLA is the largest and most influential professional organization of teachers of modern languages and literatures, and hence its membership constitutes a substantial percentage of the faculty of many American colleges and universities. The resolution its members are being asked to consider reads as follows:

Rationale: When a government persistently follows a cruel and undemocratic course of action, when it does so behind a screen of secrecy and lies, and when it violates even the meager restraints it has imposed upon itself, scholars and teachers have a special responsibility to protest. That responsibility follows from our privileges: the time and resources for inquiry, a platform outside official bureaucracies, and a tradition of freely critical thought. That the government of the U.S. is pursuing in Central America a murderous course of action, to which the people of the U.S. have not consented, has become appallingly evident in recent weeks. This is a time for the membership of the MLA to speak as citizens and intellectuals, not just as specialists.

Resolved: The Modern Language Association of America condemns our government’s unjust and frequently illegal assaults on the people and government of Nicaragua. We urge our colleagues in all fields to speak, educate, and act against these policies and against the deceptions that accompany them. [Emphasis added]

I need hardly point out the strident, reflexive anti-Americanism of such an inflammatory rhetorical effort, or the undercurrent of elitism (a fine irony, indeed!) in the assertion that “the people of the U.S. have not consented” to the Reagan administration’s efforts at containing Marxist expansionism in the region: what fraction of the American population may the MLA fairly be taken to represent?

What is worthy of note, however, is the final sentence of the resolution. It suggests an appalling myopia on the part of its authors, a confusion of the ideals of teaching and free inquiry with blatant political indoctrination. In fact, from one perspective such a polemical resolution, if passed and implemented by such a widely respected professional educational organization (and my experience with my academic colleagues indicates that ratification of the resolution is quite possibly a foregone conclusion), may well be more insidiously effective than initiatives, like the PAWSS program, that are limited to a few institutions. After all, as such things go, a pervasive, creeping cancer causes greater damage than an identifiable, localized infection. . . .

Michael J. Neth
New York City

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