‘The temptations to evil need to be understood in order to be avoided,’ UT Austin professor says
The University of Texas at Austin will host a two-day seminar on communism to encourage professors to host their own classes on the subject and ensure that, as one professor put it, the “destructive” ideology is not “easily forgotten.”
“Too often, courses on communism focus on theory at the expense of real-world outcomes,” UT Austin Professor Alexander Duff told The College Fix.
“Communism is among the most destructive ideologies in history with regard to personal liberty, prosperity, and the rule of law. Reckoning with the truth of this is of utmost urgency, given that such mistakes are too easily forgotten,” Duff said in a recent interview.
The conference, “Teaching the Twentieth Century: Communism and Dissent,” will take place this October.
The event is a partnership between the university’s School of Civic Leadership and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The foundation, authorized by U.S. Congress in 1993, works to educate the public about the 100 million people who have died as the result of communism’s human rights abuses.
Eric Patterson, president and CEO of the foundation, told The Fix in a recent email that the purpose of the conference is to “empower university faculty with the resources needed to teach about communism — its history, its ideology, and its terrible legacy.”
The seminar aims to prepare professors to teach classes on communism from within various disciplines. The conference is free, but professors who participate must agree to teach a related course following the seminar.
Patterson, (pictured) a foreign policy expert and former U.S. Department of State official, told The Fix that professors “have an important role to play to analyze the claims and evidence of communism, because for the past century it has been the main alternative worldview to the Western moral order.”
“Much needs to be done to empower educators to tell an accurate history of the crimes and destruction wrought by communist revolutionaries and governments,” Patterson said.
He told The Fix that communism is usually taught in two main ways in higher education today.
“The first is that it comes up briefly as a topic in courses that deal with Cold War history. It is largely explained in terms of totalitarian government rooted in a Marxist-Leninist ideology that sought to compete and undermine Western democracies, but students do not learn much about its origins, its philosophical commitments, and its egregious violence against its own people,” Patterson said.
He said there are “plenty” of professors who promote communism, too – “whether as an ‘untried’ idealistic system that promotes equality or a well-intentioned system that was hijacked by tyrants.”
Others teach neo-Marxist variants and “critical theories” such as “world systems theory” as well as “critical race theory,“ he said.
Too rarely do students learn about the massive human rights abuses resulting from the ideology, he said.
“At least 100 million people were murdered by communism, not to mention the countless people bullied, oppressed, threatened, tortured, or who lost family members, from the Soviet Gulags to China’s so-called Cultural Revolution to the ‘killing fields’ of Cambodia” Patterson said.
Through the October seminar, professors will learn about cross disciplinary ways to teach in-depth about the ideology, including through “history, political science and sociology, economics, international relations and security studies, comparative politics, etc.,” Patterson said.
Duff, (pictured) who teaches political philosophy, is helping to organize the conference because he also believes it’s important to educate students about the ideology.
He told The Fix: “History has shown that communism is not compatible with individual freedom and respect for human dignity. The history of communism shows, as perhaps its greatest student, Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it, that the line between good and evil is drawn through every human heart. This means that we remain permanently liable to repeat its mistakes.”
As to the importance of the event, Duff said, “The temptations to evil need to be understood in order to be avoided—both as they emerge in our own society and as they may reappear in other societies.”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A portrait of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong hangs on a wall; Poco a poco/Wikimedia Commons; Eric Patterson, Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation; Alexander Duff, University of Texas at Austin