An Interview with David Graeber
Without Cause: Yale Fires An Acclaimed Anarchist Scholar
By JOSHUA FRANK
David Graeber, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale
University, and the author of
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312240457/counterpunchmaga>Toward
an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams
and
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0972819649/counterpunchmaga>Fragments
of an Anarchist Anthropology, among many other scholarly
publications. Last week Prof. Graeber was informed that his teaching
contract at Yale would not be extended. However, it was not Graeber's
scholarship that was ever in question; rather it was his political
philosophies that may have played a heavy hand in the
administration's unwarranted decision. Graeber, a renowned anarchist
scholar, recently spoke with CounterPuncher Joshua Frank about the
fiasco. As one of our other favorite anthropologists David Price put
it, this "is a ghastly look under the hood at how academic knowledge
is manufactured at America's 'finest' institutions."
Joshua Frank: Prof. Graeber, can you talk a little bit about the
circumstances leading up to Yale's decision not to renew your
teaching contract? How much of their decision do you think was based
on your political persuasion and activism?
David Graeber: Well, it's impossible to say anything for certain
because no official reasons were given for the decision and I'm not
allowed to know what was said in the senior faculty meeting where my
case was discussed. In fact, if anyone who attended were to tell me
what I was accused of, they would themselves be accused of violating
"confidentiality" and they would get in trouble, too. But one thing
that was repeatedly stressed to me when I was
<http://www.brickburner.org/>preparing my material for review is that
no one is really taking issue with my scholarship. In fact, it was
occasionally hinted to me that if anything I publish too much, have
received too much international recognition, and had too many
enthusiastic letters of support from students. All that might have
actually weighed against me. Again, I have no way of knowing if
that's really true, because everything is a secret. But I'd be
willing to say this much: What happened to me was extremely irregular
- almost unheard of, really. It happened despite the fact that I'm
one of best published scholars and most popular teachers in the
department. Does it have anything to do with the fact that I'm also
one of the only declared anarchist scholars in the academy? I'll
leave it to your readers to make up their own minds.
JF: If I am not mistaken, you have been up for review at Yale before,
correct? What has changed since those reviews were held?
DG: I had an official third-year review and I had no problems with
that, they told me I was doing fine. Then, after that, I started
writing essays defending anarchism, and getting involved in big
mobilizations against the IMF and G8 as well organizing with the
peace movement. When I got back from my sabbatical, everything had
changed. Several of the senior profs wouldn't even say hello to me. I
was assigned no committee work. When I came up for review in my sixth
year for promotion to term associate - normally a rubber stamp -
suddenly, several senior faculty virulently opposed my promotion on
the grounds that I didn't do any committee work. Not surprising since
they refused to give me any. They also produced a whole panoply of
petty charges - "he comes late to class," that sort of thing - which,
as usual, I was not allowed to know about much less respond to. Of
course I was acting exactly as I'd acted for the first three years,
too, but suddenly it was a terrible problem. The vote deadlocked so
they took it to the Dean who told them they couldn't fire someone
without a warning, so I was given a letter telling me I had to do
something about my "unreliability" and do more service work. My
contract was extended for just two years instead of the usual four,
and I was told they would vote at the end of the next year to see if
it would be extended (so that I would be able to come up for tenure.)
So this year I've been running the colloquium series, doing all sorts
of extra teaching - this term for instance, I effectively taught
three courses instead of the required two because I had one weekly
class with undergraduates who were all taking independent studies
with me - taught one of the most popular courses in Yale (Myth and
Ritual, with 137 students) ... But on Friday May 6, I was informed
that they had voted not to renew my contract anyway and offered no
explanation as to why.
JF: I know there is no union you can turn to at Yale for support, as
faculty members are not allowed to unionize, but have you reached out
to the Graduate Employee and Student Organization (GESO, Yale's
graduate student union)? I know they are not recognized as a
legitimate union by the university, but have they been an ally in all
of this?
DG: To be honest, I actually tried to avoid getting involved in
campus activism for many years. I figured we all have to make our
little compromises, mine would be: I'd be an activist in New York,
and a scholar in New Haven, and that meant avoiding the whole
unionization question as much as I could. In the long run, of course,
it was impossible. Our department is extremely divided, certain
elements in the senior faculty hate GESO with an infinite passion and
campaign tirelessly against it, the students are all factionalized;
it's a mess. I supported the principle of unionization of course; I
was also very critical of what I saw as the top-down organization of
the union (after all, I'm an anarchist - my idea of a good union is
the IWW); I just tried to be fair to all sides. But in the end I got
drawn in. It all came to a head a few months ago, actually, when
certain elements in the senior faculty tried to kick out a very
brilliant graduate student who also happened to be one of the
department's major organizers. As it turned out, I was the only
professor on her committee willing to openly stand up for her during
the meeting where they tried to terrorize her into leaving the
program. She refused to back down, and with the help of some of my
colleagues, we managed to get her through her defense successfully,
but after that, certain elements in the senior faculty seemed
determined to take revenge.
I'm definitely working with some union people now. But almost all of
the graduate students, the most pro-GESO and the most anti-GESO, seem
to have been shocked and outraged by what happened. In fact, one of
the things that has come of this, that's strangely wonderful, is that
it's the first thing that really brought both sides together. The
students are organizing and they've put together a petition and are
already starting to take all sorts of action to try to pressure the
university to reverse the decision.
JF: Do you think some of this extreme tension within your department,
and the episode with the grad student you defended, played a role in
your contract not being renewed? Or was this just an extension of an
already contentious relationship? There seems to be a huge divide
between some of the senior faculty and yourself. What else, if
anything, have they done to show their dislike for your political
persuasion - or is it more your activism that gets under their skin?
DG: I don't want to give the impression that the senior faculty are
all the same: there are some amazing, wonderful scholars amongst the
senior faculty here. We're really just talking about three, maybe
four, who are atrocious bullies. I have five colleagues who were just
awesome, and who fought as hard as they could to defend me. It's just
that the bullies never give up - they're willing to throw all their
time and energy into these battles, since after all, most have long
since given up on any meaningful intellectual life - and of course
since everything's secret, there's no accountability.
They can tell one lie about you, get caught in it, and then next time
around just make up another one and eventually the majority of the
faculty will say "it doesn't matter whether what they say is true. If
they hate this guy so much, then clearly his presence is divisive.
Let's just get rid of him." As for the episode with the grad student:
absolutely. Again, some of these people have no intellectual life. In
most departments there's one or two characters like that, you know.
Their power is the only thing they really have. So anyone challenges
that power in any way and they react like cornered tigers. That's why
they hate the union so much. That's why they go berserk if anyone
stands up to them.
One thing that I've learned in academia is no one much cares what
your politics are as long as you don't do anything about them. You
can espouse the most radical positions imaginable, as long as you're
willing to be a hypocrite about them. The moment you give any signs
that you might not be a hypocrite, that you might be capable of
standing on principle even when it's not politically convenient, then
everything's different. And of course anarchism isn't about high
theory: it's precisely the willingness to try to live by your
principles.
JF: So are academics not supposed to be activists then? I'm thinking
of Ward Churchill's recent controversy at the University of Colorado
and Joseph Massad's at Columbia. Do you think your case is
symptomatic of a larger problem in the US where radical professors
are being targeted for their unpopular political views? Or are these
just isolated incidents?
DG: If you'd asked me six months ago, I would have probably said
"academics can be activists as long as they do nothing to challenge
the structure of the university," or anyone's power within it. If you
want to make an issue of labor conditions in Soweto, great, you're a
wonderful humanitarian; if you want to make an issue of labor
conditions for the janitors who clean your office, that's an entirely
different story. But I think you're right, something's changing. I
mean, I'm sure it's not like there's someone giving orders from above
or anything, but there's a climate suddenly where people feel they
can get away with this sort of thing, and the Ward Churchill and
Massad cases obviously must have something to do with that. I've been
hearing a lot of stories, in recent weeks, about radical teachers
suddenly being let go for no apparent reason. They don't even have to
dig up something offensive you're supposed to have said any more - at
least, in my case no one is even suggesting I did or said anything
outrageous, in which case, at least there'd be something to argue
about.
If I had to get analytical about it, maybe I'd put it this way. We're
moving from the neoliberal university to the imperial university. Or
at least people are trying to move us there. It used to be as long as
you didn't challenge the corporatization of the university, you'd be
basically okay. But the neoliberal project - where the politicians
would all prattle about "free markets and democracy" and what that
would actually mean was that the world would be run by a bunch of
unelected trade bureaucrats in the interests of Citibank and Monsanto
- that kind of fell apart. And of course the groups I've been working
with - People's Global Action, the DANs and ACCs and the like - we
had a lot to do with that. It threw the global elites into a panic,
and of course the normal reaction of global elites when thrown into a
panic is to go and start a war. It doesn't really matter who the
war's against. The point is once you've got a war, the rules start
changing, all sorts of things you'd never be able to get away with
otherwise become possible, whether in Haiti or New Haven. In that
kind of climate, nasty people start trying to see what they can get
away with. "Fire the anarchist for no particular reason? Maybe
that'll work."
That's why I feel we have to fight this. I don't think it would be
all that hard for me to find another job. My CV and publications kind
of speak for themselves. But if you let something like this stand, it
hurts everyone. So when people asked me whether they should start
mobilizing for me, I said, go right ahead. And the outpouring of
support has been just amazing. We already have 1400 signatures from
Argentina to Singapore and the petition has only been up for a couple
days now. I hear that the European parliament is about to pass a bill
specifically about my case. The teacher's union in the UK is going to
consider placing Yale on their "gray list." People are mobilizing all
over the world.
Prof. Graeber can be reached at
<mailto:David.Graeber@yale.edu>David.Graeber@yale.edu.
Joshua Frank is the author of the forthcoming book,
<http://www.brickburner.org/>Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect
George W. Bush, to be published by Common Courage Press. You can
pre-order a copy at discounted rate at
<http://www.brickburner.org/>www.BrickBurner.org. Josh can be reached
at: <mailto:Joshua@BrickBurner.org>Joshua@BrickBurner.org.
May 13, 2005