I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence

"Fredy Perlman wrote this text following his stint in the Economics Department at Western Michigan University. The pamphlet outlines the hypocrisy of the liberal—as opposed to the radical—academic.13Perlman and a colleague, Bob Rafferty, were fired—or, in the university’s words, “not re-hired”—by the Economics Department at WMU. No specific reasons were given, but Perlman writes that they were accused of being “Unobjective, Dogmatic, Vulgar, Violent, Stalinist, Extremist.”14Perlman details the ways in which the professors and administrators who run liberal universities benefit from state violence and terror.15The text is spirited and righteous. His anger is palpable in the recurrent use of all caps, capitalized words, and sarcastic quotation marks:The Liberal rejects Imperialism, Patriotism, Racism, and even Capitalism—IN WORDS, but never in actions; and he knows the line between words and actions. Words make it possible for him to be a GOOD PERSON; action would make him an OUTSIDER. That’s why the radical is a threat to the Liberal: HE FORCES THE LIBERAL TO CHOOSE. In the face of a radical, the Liberal is forced to choose between acting on his “principles” (and therefore becoming an “outsider”), or accepting the dominant bureaucracy. The mere presence of the radical exposes the “neutrality” of the Liberal: HE CHOOSES TO ACCEPT THE DOMINANT BUREAUCRACY. In Perlman’s view, the “reactionary conservative” is, at least, openly disdainful of radicals and recognizes them as a threat. The conservative openly supports big business and military and corporate power. The liberal, however, claims to sympathize with the far left, but, in fact, tacitly supports military-corporate power structures. In the case of Perlman and Rafferty, they present a threat to their liberal colleagues because they force a choice: “In the face of a radical, the Liberal is forced to choose between acting on his ‘principles’ (and therefore becoming an ‘outsider’) or accepting the dominant bureaucracy.” As soon as a line is crossed—for instance, when the radical disobeys a bureaucratic rule—the liberal invokes the crossing of the line as a justification of violence. This text was first published in Black & Red no. 6, then reprinted as a pamphlet which was distributed on the WMU campus. The interior text is typeset on a typewriter in Courier. The title is set in widely spaced lines in large, sans serif black type. Behind the text is a full-bleed photograph of a building on the WMU campus—with the school’s name visible on the side of the building. Appropriately, the photograph looks like some-thing that could be used in a promotional cata-logue: it’s a sunny day, the building is modernist in design. It looks new, typical of public university buildings erected in Michigan in the 1950s and ’60s when state universities expanded to accom-modate large numbers of students and when tuition was virtually free. The essay’s title is in stark contrast with the photograph behind it." The Detroit Printing Co-op by Danielle Aubert