Terrence Des Pres

There are, however, other issues at stake, in particular these: What has happened to the argument that there are two sides to everything, which once worked to foster truth but now works against it? How does information overload undermine the older, critical role of knowledge in favor of newer practices that are more commodity-oriented? What does it mean when a client-state like Turkey can persuade a superpower like the United States to abandon its earlier stance toward the genocide of 1915-1922. And finally, what is happening to the university if increasing numbers of scholars occupy positions funded or promoted by governments and have no ethical qualms about work that aims, sometimes less, sometimes more, to shore up the official claims of nation-states? These are among the developments that allow Turkish denial to go forward. In ways like these the pressure of cold-war politics distorts information, demotes the university to a station of service, and redefines "truth" as that which can be made to prevail.

The political control of truth quite naturally calls up Orwellian impressions, but in fact the manipulation of knowledge goes deeper than censorship and is more subtle than outright propaganda. It can include conditions under which research will be funded and given a forum, and also the designation of legitimacy to be conferred or withheld in specific fields of inquiry. Jobs, tenure, professional advancement, all can come to depend on taking the approved line. Along with these come the adjacent phenomenon of the "institute" and "think tank," in most cases with official backing of one sort or another. And then too, there is the way universities pressure their faculties to bring in big money by securing government projects. What all this scrambling means is that in the struggle of memory against forgetting we must compete with official versions and special interests, with public and private demands for serviceable knowledge, with the kinds of on-line information geared to short-term needs. Amid this din the scholar's independent voice is hard to hear.

We who pride ourselves on learning must now decide if research is to become the service industry that governments require. We are accustomed to denigrate Marxist distortions, and we point with scorn to situations in which Soviet scholars produce results useful to the state. Such cases are highly visible, and the machinery of coercion, which includes exile and imprisonment, makes the Soviet example impressive. But coercion may take other forms as well. I've mentioned appointments and grants, which reminds us that the economic factor is always active. We might also recall the general bias of professionalism, which opens its best avenues of advancement to those whose methods are duly authorized. And not the least, there is always the influence of nationality, by which I mean the need to display in one's work a patriotic spirit, especially in times of political stress. At its worst, pressure of this kind becomes McCarthyist; at its best, the gentle nudge of commonweal. And over everything, the profounder nudge of the governing narrative.