From Antioch's "Well-Trained Activist" Blog
Steve Chase
Over the winter break, Antioch University’s Environmental Advocacy and
Organizing Program got some free media attention. In a January 1, 2008
news story on the "first in the nation" primary, a Washington Post
journalist quoted EAOP instructor Abi Abrash Walton on the political
situation here in New Hampshire and went on to report that she “teaches
advocacy and organizing at Antioch University in Keene.” It’s small
mention, but this kind of earned media attention helps us get the word
out about our one-of-a-kind environmental studies program in activist
training.
Abi and I had to chuckle, however, when we learned that the EAOP was
also featured in a December 27 story on the website of the extremely
rightwing National Review magazine. In the National Review Online
article, the author starts out by complaining that Antioch
administrators and alumni are now working together to try to keep the
Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, alive and kicking—and, worse,
they might succeed! The article then falsely claims that during the
recent effort to save the College, Antioch administrators also started
several other adult campuses across the country operating under the
name of Antioch University. In fact, rather than being founded in 2007,
Antioch University has been around since the early 1970’s and it has
been offering an expanding number of cutting edge master’s and doctoral
programs at its five other campuses across the country for nearly four
decades. I guess the news is even worse than the poor readers of the
National Review knew!
The really big whoppers only started rolling, however, when the
National Review piece made the Environmental Advocacy and Organizing
Program the centerpiece of its fiercest criticism of Antioch. The
biggest lie they told was their claim that the EAOP “does not require
any knowledge of markets” and that, “in fact, knowledge of market
processes is actively discouraged” within the EAOP. The only evidence
that the author offered for his claim was the opening paragraph on our
EAOP website:
"Do you want to build a well-organized social movement that can
challenge the downsizing of democracy and promote the common good? If
so, check out our master’s program in Environmental Advocacy and
Organizing where we train students for activist careers as public
interest advocates and grassroots organizers working for ecological
sustainability, social justice, and the democratic control of
corporations."
It would appear that the National Review author believes that any
university that runs a graduate program designed for people who want to
work in the advocacy and organizing field--at least those in support of
participatory democracy, the common good, ecological sustainability,
social justice, and corporate accountability--must be committed to
keeping its students from gaining “any knowledge of markets” and will
actively discourage any consideration “of market processes.” This is a
huge leap of illogic and, in our case, it is patently false.
The study of both the strengths and weaknesses of markets and market
processes--and the debate over how they might best be influenced by
consumers, workers, socially-responsible investors, entrepreneurs,
NGOs, and democratically-run governments--is built right into the heart
of several EAOP and other Environmental Studies Department courses and,
I might add, in Antioch New England’s brand new Green MBA program. We
believe that such key issues of political economy are absolutely vital
for concerned people to consider if they want to create more a more
just, democratic, and sustainable society in the 21st century.
From the National Review’s lens, the EAOP’s real crime seems to be that
we refuse to indoctrinate our students into the National Review’s
ideological agenda like some business schools do--and that our students
seek out instead, and are given, an opportunity to explore and debate
several different alternatives to the neoliberal agenda for corporate
rule, including ideas and proposals by the likes of Adam Smith, Thomas
Jefferson, modern pro-market environmental economists like Herman Daly,
and global justice activists like Vandana Shiva.
Now that we seem to have been added to the National Review's
increasingly long list of "nutty professors," I guess we should expect
a call from FOX News soon. Perhaps they will want Abi and me to appear
on air so Bill O'Reilly can yell at us to "Shut up!" ;-)
If you can think of anyone, or any listserves, who might appreciate
this post, please forward it to on to them--as well as the link to the
EAOP's "The Well-Trained Activist" blog at
http://eaop-blog.blogspot.com.
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Steve Chase
Director, Environmental Advocacy and Organizing Program
Department of Environmental Studies
Antioch University New England
40 Avon Street, Keene, NH 03431
603-283-2336; 603-357-0618 (fax); Steven...@antiochne.edu
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