Q:Some people argue that you have become
a cultural and educational icon of the Left in the United States
and internationally. Some argue that you are not a token leftist
n Madison because Madison has a tradition of progressive thought.
Others may argue that, despite your transformation, you still
work from a critical neo-Marxist ideology that enables but also
constrains some of your options. How do you relate these criticisms
to your own trajectory?
A:Yes, I do have an endowed chair. I'm
quite proud of having gotten that, and that has to do with my
autobiography. I'm a kid from the working-class inner city who
went to night school and made good in the midst of an institution
that is filled with people who never had to experience poverty.
Yet, when I look back on my life, I owe deep debts to many people
for what I have become. However, of all the people I went to
high school with, most of them never got the opportunity to
become this. So, in a paradoxical way, it reminds me of my grounding.
There's a recognition of collective victory in the fact that
somebody like Michael Apple can get to have a distinguished
professorship. I don't think about the distinguished professorship.
Now what does it mean in terms of institutions?
Wisconsin has a very long history of progressive activity. The
fact that someone who is not quiet about his political position,
is ratified by an institution where there are very limited numbers
of endowed chairs, says something about the institution.
While I think I've been relatively
effective here, a better word that should be used is we.
Over the last seven or eight years in Educational Policy
Studies and in Curriculum and Instruction, let's say ten people
have been hired. Seven have been women, a number have been gay
and lesbian activists, and a number are activists in antiracist
struggles and scholarship. Thus, you've got an institution that
has been a site of progressive movements. Again, the best metaphor
is that there's a vast river of democracy, and this place is
one of the places that's in that river.
In education, Clinton gets support from many
people who are progressive, because of the great fear
of privatization and the great fear of the racial terrain that
is being established.
The danger in human beings is arrogance, that
you think you have a lock on reality. This is especially a danger
for people who call themselves critical. One of the things that
I do not want is clones as doctoral students.
