Cultural Roots and Knowledge

by Jamie Haft

Chief Oren Lyons opened with a story about attending a major New York City museum exhibition that juxtaposed European art, including abstract expressionism, with indigenous creation from around the world: "It was astonishing how much was taken from the indigenous art to be what you call modern art." Studying the faces of the museum patrons, Lyons remarked, "I could see they were stunned because they had just been educated!" How is it that only certain aesthetics are valued, while others are overlooked? What are the biases of the current dominant pedagogies and epistemologies that result in such closed mindedness?

As an undergraduate training to be a professional actor in a hermetic studio at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, I received subtle and persistent messages to lose the traces of my culture. It seemed a professional actor needed to become an instrument capable of playing any tune, regardless. To make matters worse, I was becoming increasingly stressed about the financial burden the high cost of tuition was placing on my family, and disillusioned at the prospect of performing for only elite audiences predominant in the US professional theater scene. I was just about to drop out of school when I met Professor Jan Cohen-Cruz, who was teaching an introduction to community-based performance.

During that year's spring break, I traveled to Whitesburg, Kentucky for a weeklong immersion in community-based art making. I found the plays of Appalshop's Roadside Theater more powerful and authentic than anything I'd seen on mainstream stages. The Appalshop and Roadside artists were performing their own culture, and, as I was drawn into the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual aspects of their traditions, I began to feel the possibilities of creation springing from my own roots.

I grew up conscious that I was a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, but I never knew the story. Not long after the trip, I learned how my grandfather, Harry Haft, survived Auschwitz as an entertainer for the Nazis, and I realized part of my impulse for social justice was connected to my legacy as the last generation to personally know a Holocaust survivor. Now I better understand how many other students feel their identities, drawn from their cultural roots, are a motivation for their creative and civic work, an understanding reflected in the video series I am producing, The New Activists: Students in Community.

The majority of arts funding presently goes to institutions that focus primarily on the elite aspect of the Western European canon and serve audiences that are predominantly white and wealthy (Sidford 2011, 1). In a democracy like ours, why is there not a level playing field where people from all cultures have an equal opportunity to express themselves, develop, and, inevitably, cross-pollinate? Adopted in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms this principle of cultural equity: "Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits" (United Nations General Assembly, Article 27, Section 1). During the Appalshop immersion, I learned some of the fascinating ways Roadside Theater creates new intercultural plays with its longstanding ensemble partners Idiwanan An Chawe in the Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico; Pregones Theater in the Bronx; and New Orleans' African American Junebug Productions.

To resist the cultural stereotypes that pervade mass popular culture, such intercultural performances depend on deep, authentic roots in each respective culture being enacted.

My transition to becoming a civic actor was not all joy. I felt shame as I dropped out of the traditional acting conservatory, even though it was to pursue theater that is of, by, and for community. I figured the people who knew me in high school (where, after all, I was voted most likely to become famous) would think that my new pursuit was a fallback plan. How could I explain such theater to my Broadway-obsessed friends?

Cantor emphatically describes how our dominant mode of education contributes to such closed mindedness: "It's almost like education has become how do you strain out all the humility, all the sense of doubt, all the complexity, all the not knowing something, and at the end of the day, you give someone a PhD and tenure because they know something!" Cecilia Orphan testifies to the pressure on graduate students to become experts on a narrow topic. Articles in the media advise young people to "make a name, develop a personal brand," which can be incongruent with the collaborative work I want to do. We need to understand why the present dominant culture invariably elevates the genius of the individual artist (or expert) over what folklorist Alan Lomax described, in "An Appeal for Cultural Equity" (1972), as the inherent genius of every cultural community.

Cantor called for Imagining America to "redouble its efforts to say that the arts, humanities, and design disciplines, broadly defined, can put this country and world back on the right path to democratic process." To that end, higher education would need to teach and value a full range of cultural and artistic expression; presently diverse ways of knowing are too often buried under market-driven imperatives and their technocratic delivery systems. It's hard enough for communities to lose the talent of students who go away to school, but then to have that educational experience strip them of their cultural identities, that's a one-two knockout punch for the health of communities that Lyons believes is key to the survival of our species.

For many, institutional transformation is an important theme for revitalizing community-based, grassroots democracy. In his 1965 essay "From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement," Bayard Rustin argues: "It is institutions—social, political, and economic institutions—which are the ultimate molders of collective sentiments. Let these institutions be reconstructed today, and let the ineluctable gradualism of history govern the formation of a new psychology." How can Imagining America best contribute to a transformation of the culture of arts and humanities departments to recognize diverse knowers and knowledge? Will Imagining America develop equitable partnerships with flagship community-based cultural institutions which are in danger of becoming extinct, as Dudley Cocke documents in his essay, "The Unreported Arts Recession of 1997"? Doesn't a more just and peaceful future for all of us depend in significant measure on our willingness to foster a global pluralism that deeply respects cultural roots and tradition bearers?

The Cults of Expertise, Artistry, and Prestige

by Cecilia Orphan

In Civic Agency and the Cult of the Expert, Harry Boyte describes the danger of relying on technocrats to solve public problems, theorizing that subscribing to the 'cult of the expert' strips everyday people of a sense of agency and excludes them from democratic processes (2009, 2). There exists a corollary cult of the artist that erodes the intrinsic human potential for creating art. The cult of the artist excludes from canonized spaces the art created by people who are not recognized as "artists." Chief Lyons' story about the "juxtaposition" art exhibit exposes the operating strategies of the cult of the artist. The word "juxtapose" describes the act of placing two objects that are deemed dissimilar next to one another. In this example, we see the juxtaposition of canonized art with Native art, the assumption being that one art form (that of recognized artists) belongs in the MoMA, while the other (that of American Indians) is a novel, surprising addition.

The twin cults of expertise and artistry, as affirmed by Chancellor Cantor and Chief Lyons, have recast education as a process of ridding oneself of not knowing instead of unleashing a curiosity that is creative and generative of lifelong learning. Within graduate schools, the culture of acquiring expertise and denying ignorance is particularly dominant. This is not surprising—graduate programs are by design expertizing. Despite these dominant norms, people often discover immense agency when admitting ignorance because doing so allows for learning, growth, and vulnerability. In doctoral programs, the cult of the expert is perpetuated through the expectation that students will select narrow, specific areas of study. Students are encouraged to brand themselves through this process, the message being clear: what we study is who we are. I am fortunate to have an advisor who encourages me to integrate several theoretical and disciplinary approaches within my work, but I believe he is an exception. This drive toward specificity and self-branding has the benefit of making distinct contributions to knowledge, but it also creates discomfort and temptation to hide the things we do not know instead of asking questions, admitting ignorance, and learning.

Canonized forms of expertise and art also reinforce our conceptualizations of prestige and quality. I have observed a dominant tendency to conflate prestige with quality, and while both can exist simultaneously, this is not always the case. Within a higher education context, some colleges and universities that are prestigious do not offer high-quality educational experiences for students. Conversely, there are institutions that offer phenomenal educational experiences but are not prestigious. I have spent the last ten years attending, working for, and now researching state comprehensive universities. State comprehensive universities are open-access, learner-centered, locally engaged institutions that tend not to be prestigious or highly ranked. Indeed, many people have no idea what a state comprehensive university is, despite their status as educating close to 50% of all college students and 50% of K–12 teachers (AASCU 2013).

When I describe my work to people, they often transparently communicate their prejudices and assumptions about these schools. Surely they must be low quality and the last resort for people with no other options. The faculty and students must not be as bright and motivated as those at flagships—flagships being universities that often command the lion's share of state resources and have broader name recognition (for example, Indiana University, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, etc.) —and private elites. Yet none of this conventional wisdom matches my experiences as a student, employee, and researcher of state comprehensives.

In response to these judgments, I have cultivated a practice of interrogating people's assumptions about quality and prestige through the following questions: What constitutes excellence in higher education? What metrics are used to assess excellence? (Often rankings are mentioned.) How are these rankings calculated? (Many people do not know how rankings are determined.) What do you think happens at a state comprehensive? And then I share my own experiences and research. Do I always win converts? No. But at least I help people examine their assumptions about quality and prestige.

It is my suspicion that when an institution is prestigious and has a reputation for being excellent, there are fewer incentives to innovate. People believe without question that these institutions are excellent and rarely question this assumption. It is true that elite, prestigious institutions make important contributions to society. Indeed, the research and scholarly contributions of elite institutions are unparalleled. I am currently attending an Ivy League institution (the University of Pennsylvania), and chose to do so because I was impressed by the community engagement of the university. Additionally, I wanted to advocate for public higher education within a space that is elite and private. I also came to Penn because, as a research institution, it has allowed me to focus solely on cultivating research skills. I have found supportive faculty who, perhaps because they study higher education, understand, appreciate, and celebrate public universities for their indispensable contributions to society.

That all said, what troubles me about prestige is that because there are few widely recognized models of excellence within higher education (one might argue that there is just one: elite, private, selective, research-intensive), many public institutions are tempted to eschew their core missions of access, learning, and democracy-building in order to emulate the practices of prestigious universities. These practices tend to focus more on research than teaching and civic engagement, and are exclusionary through 'selective' admissions practices. I believe in an ecological model of higher education, with institutions fulfilling different roles and exhibiting markedly different missions. The dominance of a single recognized model for universities creates distortion within this important ecosystem, as colleges and universities strive to look and act like prestigious institutions.

Despite being poorly understood and susceptible to mimetic pressures, many of the state comprehensives I have worked with are possessed by deeply innovative spirits and forceful desires to serve their students and regions. These institutions are often more nimble than their prestigious peers, a deftness that I believe is derived from three sources. The first is a real need to respond to the challenges facing public higher education, including cuts to funding, increased accountability, and changing student demographics (Mehaffy 2010). If these institutions are going to survive, they must adapt. Second, they also enjoy greater freedom to evolve because there is less pressure to remain the same in order to preserve reputation. Because so few people understand the work of state comprehensives, they are not required to 'toe the line' and uphold tradition. The final source is the immense human capital within state comprehensives—they are among the most brilliant, passionate, and dedicated individuals I have ever known.

Recently I asked a fellow doctoral student about her research interests. Her face flushed red as she told me that she had attended a community college and had a wonderful experience that inspired her to study community colleges. What I saw in her face was the shame at having attended a public, open-access institution and the evidence of the judgment she had experienced. This anecdote illustrates the harm we do to one another, and to public higher education, when we allow our unexamined assumptions to dominate our understanding of quality. I am grateful to the plenary speakers and to Imagining America for raising conversations that challenge our assumptions. The work, as I see it, is to continue cultivating conversations and action that will dismantle the cults of expertise and artistry, while critically interrogating notions of prestige, reputation, and academic quality.

Works Cited