How English Departments Became Broken

If you really want to understand the horrors of war, don’t just read accounts written years after a battle, but instead read first-hand accounts by soldiers who were on the front lines. Similarly, to understand what has happened in the hostile takeover of American college English departments, it’s best to read a description by a professor who fought to preserve them as places where students are taught to write well by studying books by great authors. Fought and lost. His story is at once enlightening and depressing.

Cotter’s experiences destroy the notion that zealous left-wing professors are acting in good faith. The book at hand is Broken English Departments: The Repair Manual by Reynolds Cotter, a pen name. It tells the author’s tale of earning his Ph.D. so he could teach students about great literature, obtaining a faculty position and tenure at a prestigious state university, and then losing his lonely fight against “progressives” who were determined to reshape the English department to suit their ideological agenda.

They have destroyed their discipline because it wasn’t consistent with their goal of transforming America. Cotter writes that his book “is an English professor’s unsparing analysis of an academic discipline that has lost its way, followed by a blueprint for reevaluating and overhauling English departments in which indoctrinating students about politics has replaced the former responsibility of instructing young people in the skills of effective writing and the achievements of English and American literature.”

“Indoctrinating students about politics”—isn’t that merely a trope that conservatives use to disparage left-leaning professors who are dedicated scholars but who happen to have a different point of view? After reading this book, that answer is utterly untenable. For one thing, Cotter is not a conservative but, rather, an old-school liberal who believes that professors should keep education separate from their personal views. For another, his experiences destroy the notion that zealous left-wing professors are acting in good faith to teach their discipline. They have actually destroyed their discipline because it wasn’t consistent with their goal of transforming America.

Americans who are old enough to remember college English courses in the 1960s and earlier will recall reading great novels and plays, analyzing them, and writing papers about them that the professor would scour for errors of all kinds. Courses like that have largely vanished. Cotter explains how that came to pass.

The root cause, he argues, was the military draft during the Vietnam War. Thousands of young men wanted to avoid conscription, and the easiest way for most was the student deferment. College students were not drafted. But the war continued on past graduation, so many of those students decided to keep their deferred status by going to grad school. Among the easiest graduate programs was English, and thus the country found itself with a glut of new English Ph.D.s looking for faculty positions. At that same time, higher education was enjoying a rapid expansion due mainly to federal student-aid programs initiated during the late 1960s and 1970s.

So, there were plenty of teaching jobs for those aspiring professors—but there was a problem. Cotter explains, “Since these professors had never truly wanted to read, study, or teach literature and the art of good writing, they had entered the profession—or, shall we say, backed into this field—for all the wrong reasons.”

What came along to rescue them from the hard work of teaching the traditional English course was a noxious European import, literary theory. Rather than teaching about great novels, it was far easier to deconstruct them, pointing out all the supposed biases of the authors. It was also much easier to publish papers denouncing authors for their shortcomings than to write anything new about Shakespeare or Austen.

Moreover, these new professors began to view themselves as revolutionaries. The worldview of the academic left slid easily into a hatred of not just once-revered writers but of all American traditions. The country needed a complete transformation, and they wanted to help speed it along by instructing students that ours is a hopelessly dysfunctional society. English professors who simply wanted to teach about great literature and keep politics out of the classroom were reviled as traitors to the cause.

English professors who simply wanted to teach about great literature were reviled. That was the milieu Reynolds Cotter found himself in when the English department at his university announced a new orientation for its required first-year composition course. He explains the change: “The principal textbook would be a compilation of political readings edited by a Marxist scholar portraying the deplorable conditions of life in the United States. The writing topics about ‘Differences’ suggested to me that students were to be graded on their politics regarding race, class, and gender issues. This one-sided, Leftist propaganda would vastly outweigh any token instruction in grammar and style.” Cotter regarded this as a blatant misuse of the course and said so.

What can be done to repair broken English departments? Cotter has several good ideas. For daring to oppose the cabal that wanted to turn English 306 into a course meant to saturate students in “progressive” obsessions, Cotter became persona non grata. He was subjected to constant harassment by his colleagues. He was slandered in the local newspaper. He was said to be mentally unstable. His opponents, calling themselves “The Collective,” declared that the course had always been political, but now it would be political in the right way. And so what if students weren’t taught good writing skills—it was more important for them to become activists.

Cotter’s opposition managed to delay the politicization of English 306 for one year. During that year, his life was made unbearable, but his superiors shrugged and said there was nothing they could do about it. He did have tenure, but, as he observes, “it can’t do anything to help buffer today’s professors from their radicalized colleagues.” And so he decided to leave. The best position he could find was at a satellite campus of a university in Montgomery, Alabama. At least his scholarship and teaching were somewhat appreciated there.

What can be done to repair broken English departments? Cotter has several good ideas.

First, remove the requirement for graduation that students pass a lower-level English composition course. Do so, and, Cotter writes, “like magic, this nightmare floats into the ether and vanishes.” He doesn’t explain why, but I think his argument is that few students would enroll in these hate-America courses if they didn’t have to.

Another step would be to embrace truth in advertising and stop calling these classes “English.” They have little or nothing to do with English and should instead be described as something like “Cultural Studies.” At least students wouldn’t be deceived into thinking that they’re signing up for a course where they’ll read some famous books and hone their writing skills.

Then, college officials should use their power of the purse and declare that such departments, whatever we call them, will receive no further funds to recruit new members. No one gets fired, but these politicized departments will gradually wither away.

In the absence of English courses that no longer teach great literature, Cotter recommends that colleges compile recommended reading lists for students and test them on their knowledge at some point. No “English” professors would be needed, but that’s no problem since, as Cotter observes, “public and college libraries are brimming with books explicating every possible aspect of classical, British, and United States literature.” And what about writing instruction? That too can be handled without radicalized professors who disdain such labor anyway. Cotter writes, “Computerized instruction could obviate the role of Leftist writing instructors. There isn’t a single grammar problem or writing strategy that isn’t fully explicated on the Internet.”

The book leaves no doubt that English departments are broken. Any college leader who reads it will be unable to pretend that all is well in the English department at his or her institution. Some might even choose to take action, even though it would mean facing the vicious academic mob that drove Reynolds Cotter from the position he loved.

George Leef is director of external relations at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.