Kavulla Might Learn From Class He Criticizes

To the editors:

The Feb. column by Travis R. Kavulla ’06 entitled “Brian Palmer’s Academy” (Feb. 24) convinces me that Kavulla is someone who would benefit from my lecture course this term.

Apparently Kavulla imagines that the course lacks diversity, but think again: he would have the opportunity to interview 24 guests, who range from billionaires to janitors; from entrepreneurs to nuns; from American leaders like Larry Summers to the Indian banker Chetna Sinha. He would engage with many more minds than he has in past classes, when he has sat through two dozen lectures by a single conservative individual.

Surely Kavulla would profit from the readings as well. Granted that there are weeks when I assign almost 200 pages, but the richness of the material would keep him going. For example, we are about to read former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich’s new history of radical conservatives. Reich describes how these “Radcons,” as he calls them, have used backing from conservative billionaires to build up an army of broadcasters and pundits. They have thereby succeeded in mainstreaming ideas once propounded only on the extreme-right fringes of American society.

This would interest Kavulla, since he has worked hard to become—I trust he’ll take this as a compliment—our own local Rush Limbaugh, by means of his attacks on women’s studies, affirmative action, etc. He is the publisher of the Harvard Salient, which is subsidized by radical-right sponsors, but does he really want to be seen in such company?

With a friendly eye to his future success, Kavulla should be alerted that he may be picking up a bad habit from Limbaugh: a disregard for factual accuracy. He charges me with contributing to grade inflation, but the average grade in my most recent large lecture course, Religion 1528, “Globalization and Human Values,” was identical to the mean for my department and well below the Harvard humanities average. The Office for Undergraduate Education periodically sends out a graph of this information, which is publicly available.

“Facts are stupid things,” Ronald Reagan famously misspoke, but Kavulla would have to check his if he wrote the 27 assignments required for my course. The essay questions are focused on the readings and interviews, and are followed by a final exam.

Speaking of fact-checking: Kavulla also asserts that my two largest lecture courses are interchangeable, when the syllabi contain only three short articles that overlap. Most of the interview guests are new; but even those who are returning, such as the philanthropist Swanee Hunt, answer an entirely new set of student questions.

But there is a deeper precipice whose edge Kavulla has neared. He seems to feel that deviations from rightist orthodoxy must be squelched. He suggests in his column that I should not be “allowed to teach.” But where is his outrage about, say, Social Analysis 10, “Principles of Economics”—taught by Reagan’s chief economist—which lacks the range of voices of my courses? Students are forced to take Ec. 10 as a Core and departmental requirement, while my 584 students enroll of their own free choice.

After suggesting that I should not be “allowed to teach,” Kavulla calls for discussions about terminating me to take place, as he puts it, “behind closed doors.” Is this really his vision of a good society—conservative elites carrying out political firings “behind closed doors”?

In contrast to his attack on academic freedom, my course models a democratic openness. This week, the students will read about and then interview Dr. Paul Farmer, who labors among AIDS patients at the clinic he founded in Haiti. The interview will give us an opportunity to deliberate pressing moral questions, about how we choose to use our own abilities, and about our collective choices in a world of health inequities. I admire my students for taking such issues seriously.

Brian C. W. Palmer ’86

Feb. 29

The writer is Lecturer on the Study of Religion.