Now that bloggers are reporting news and fact-checking the biased media, liberals in newsrooms no longer control the flow of information or how it’s reported. I predict a similar change will occur in leftist academia. George Will offers an update on liberal domination of colleges and universities:
One study of 1,000 professors finds that Democrats outnumber Republicans at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. That imbalance, more than double what it was three decades ago, is intensifying because younger professors are more uniformly liberal than the older cohort that is retiring.Another study, of voter registrations records, including those of professors in engineering and the hard sciences, found nine Democrats for every Republican at Berkeley and Stanford. Among younger professors, there were 183 Democrats, six Republicans.
So why the disparity? Is there a hiring bias?
But George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at Berkeley, denies that academic institutions are biased against conservatives. The disparity in hiring, he explains, occurs because conservatives are not as interested as liberals in academic careers. Why does he think liberals are like that? “Unlike conservatives, they believe in working for the public good and social justice.” That clears that up.
A few months ago I read a study on leftists in media, and a liberal journalist said that Democrats dominated the media because conservatives tend not to pursue low-paying journalism jobs. You buy that? Remind me to tell you about the job interview I had with PBS.
Will quotes someone who offers what I consider an objective explanation of why leftist ideology dominates universities:
A filtering process, from graduate school admissions through tenure decisions, tends to exclude conservatives from what Mark Bauerlein calls academia’s “sheltered habitat.’” In a dazzling essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University and director of research at the National Endowment for the Arts, notes that the “first protocol” of academic society is the “common assumption” — that, at professional gatherings, all the strangers in the room are liberals.
It is a reasonable assumption, given that in order to enter the profession, your work must be deemed, by the criteria of the prevailing culture, “relevant.” Bauerlein says various academic fields now have regnant premises that embed political orientations in their very definitions of scholarship…
The “common assumption” extends to most gatherings unless they’re specifically conservative. Almost everywhere I go, almost everyone I meet assumes I’m a Democrat. But things are slowly changing. Enjoy it while it lasts, liberals. I predict that the “red state drift” will eventually enter the halls of higher education.
I also predict “red state drift” will enter the blogosphere’s lexicon. Remember, you read it here first! 
————————————————
Links: Funny post on media bias from Scrappleface.
A cool commenter found a link I was looking for: Mark Bauerlein’s article.
Patterico on NYT’s shoddy journalism.
Update: I extend a hearty welcome to readers of a certain high-profile liberal blogger who blogged about me again! 
This is my “house” and I expect you to remember your manners. With that in mind, you may comment on this blog.
Update II (12/1) : David Limbaugh links to a study that concludes liberals dominate academia.
Once again, something that is only a shock to the lefty media and the academics themselves…
I’ve worked in the education field (my original career plan was teaching english lit at the HS or college level), and I’ve worked in media, and the echo-chamber effect is in full effect.
I imagine there are careers out there that are dominated by conservatives (the military springs to mind), and I wonder if they suffer from the same myopia.
Comment by SCSIwuzzy — 11.29.04 @ 9:21 am
“…working for the public good and social justice”
I worked for a very liberal professor in Graduate School. He explained to me that professors must revise their textbooks every year (if they have written one) requiring the students to buy a new one. Thus, the publisher and professor can design a more lucrative contract when the professor can guarantee that a certain number will be sold in the future. This doesn’t sound like working for the “public good” to me.
Comment by Wade Calvert — 11.29.04 @ 9:31 am
This post makes me happy I attended a Christian liberal arts college (though I think it’s called something like “comprehensive” rather than “liberal arts” these days…or is that just in the US News & World Report ratings?). While there were certainly some “progressive” minds among the professors, the majority I interacted with were more conservative.
Comment by LawWife — 11.29.04 @ 10:07 am
Is there a union for college professors like the NEA for public school teachers?
Comment by RepJ — 11.29.04 @ 10:32 am
There was a great article about this at http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=56a4b06e77oshwaiq5psszuc2gti5neb
I hope that comes out. If you can’t pull it up, let me know and I’ll post a link on my web site.
Comment by ccs178 (Chris) — 11.29.04 @ 10:33 am
Just a reminder: Tell us about that PBS interview!
Comment by TheAnchoress — 11.29.04 @ 11:03 am
‘One study of 1,000 professors finds that Democrats outnumber Republicans at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences.’
There’s much more to the acadamy than humanities and social sciences. There’s business and hard science, as well as liberal arts like math.
Of course, the other selection bias is that perhaps talented right wingers have values other than talented left wingers, and instead of the academy choose the much more materially rewarding fields of business or working for right wing think tanks.
Comment by actus — 11.29.04 @ 11:53 am
Tell us about your PBS interview !
Comment by Baklava — 11.29.04 @ 12:12 pm
Comment by ccs178 (Chris AKA: Cool Commenter) — 11.29.04 @ 12:17 pm
Yes Actus,
There is much more. But I wonder if people could explain to me why so many leftists are teaching hard science and business classes as well?
I once had a teacher who every 6 minutes went off on an anti-gun tangent. So when it came time for me to do a report I did a pro-gun report showing how rape declined by 87% the following year in Orlando, FL after in 1987 1500 women were armed and given weapons and training.
I showed example after example of the positives in states and counties where people were armed. I showed example after example were criminals run free to commit terror in the anti-gun statues and cities like Washington D.C. and New York City. (Both of these cities have been murder capitals of the United States as a percentage of population having the most murders per 100,000 people).
Why was I driven to write this report?
Because of the teacher who was supposed to be teaching what I was paying to learn.
Comment by Baklava — 11.29.04 @ 12:25 pm
OOps..
I left off….
Because of the teacher who was supposed to be teaching what I was paying to learn was not teaching what I was paying to learn.
…. And it was my hard earned money that was paying for the course not my parents money or a scholarship or a grant.
Comment by Baklava — 11.29.04 @ 12:29 pm
‘That imbalance, more than double what it was three decades ago, is intensifying because younger professors are more uniformly liberal than the older cohort that is retiring.’
…Which suggests most intellectuals are liberals. Talk about a shot in the foot. You cant be an indoctrinated pinko loon and be a proffessor, despite popular belief.
Comment by TheMariachi — 11.29.04 @ 12:37 pm
Yes,
Despite “facts” and “truth”, which professors ignore they are supposedly “intellectual” and smarter…
Cornel West may be the most brilliant mind on the east side of the Mississippi, but in my opinion if I fly from California to Virginia my brilliance supercedes his because he is in favor of government imposed preferential treatment (discrimination) and I’m not.
That last paragraph was a little convoluted but it is quite mind-bending to hear those who think that just because someone is a teacher in academia that they are “smart” and that may be proof that liberals are smarter. Far from it.
Comment by Baklava — 11.29.04 @ 12:47 pm
Mariachi,
Have you been to say… Berkley? Columbia? Princeton?
At those 3 schools alone you can find a bushel or 3 of indoctrinated pinko loons without working up a sweat.
What schools do you have expercience with, that have no IPLs? I’d like to recomend them to my high school aged relatives and friends’ children as they search for a good school.
Comment by SCSIwuzzy — 11.29.04 @ 12:51 pm
Please detail that PBS interview. I think it is very healthy that in the past month the closed-mindedness of the liberal left has been exposed.
Comment by Zendo Deb — 11.29.04 @ 1:11 pm
Baklava - what kind of grade did you get on that paper?
Comment by LawWife — 11.29.04 @ 1:22 pm
HAHA, you even made up an acronym, nice. Well, im from SF, and my high school was full of stern faced teachers with crew cuts. The kind of guys that want the cane back. We said our prayers and what not. Princeton?! I’ll believe that when i see it. As for Columbia and Berkley, i dont have first hand experience but my experience from other Universities suggests most proffessors are quite neutral in regards to lecturing.
Comment by TheMariachi — 11.29.04 @ 1:24 pm
LawWife,
Believe it or not I got an A-
But the paper was full of red writing. She was arguing back at me (having the last word).
She’d use the arguments like “what about the toddler who wandered into the bedroom and found the gun and killed himself”. Those are tragedies but I would point out that generally people are safer where the criminals can’t run free committing terror. I could point to tragedy after tragedy like the one on the New York subway who killed 30 people one after another or the Texas restaurant where there was a man who killed person after person and in each one of these tragedies there was a person who lamented that they had a permit and had a weapon but just not with them. How many people could’ve been saved? Why is it that there are less murders and violent crime where the citizenry are freer to carry weapons?
Comment by Baklava — 11.29.04 @ 1:33 pm
You must have done an impressive job, Baklava! I applaud you for taking the time to “do it right,” so she really didn’t have a leg to stand on. Yea, you!!
Comment by LawWife — 11.29.04 @ 1:40 pm
Every time hear the toddler argument, I ask how many people are killed or injured in home invasions each year. The answer is always higher than the number of toddlers…
to me, the answer to the toddler question, or the Columbine rampage arguments are the same: the owner of the gun gets charged with manslaughter. If he/she took the proper precautions, they either get a lesser charge OR they get acquitted/not guilty. Though how a toddler get’s past the propper precautions… I’ll never know. But everytime I hear about a school shooting or the like, I want to know what the gun owner is charged with.
Comment by SCSIwuzzy — 11.29.04 @ 1:50 pm
I think the disparity on campus exists for one reason only - a life in academia is easier (thats why it pays less). Its easier than going into the world of private enterprise where you are measured by your performance (meritocracy) and if you don’t deliver - BAM! you’re out the door. Only the most persistent, dedicated, driven and effective people can succeed in private business & industry. Private industry knows no such thing as tenure, an idea that in private enterprise world would spell death to the entity. Most professors would rather think, ponder, pontificate & procrastinate than to bust ass and deliver the goods time & time again. Not all, but most. There are exceptions to every rule.
Comment by michael — 11.29.04 @ 3:08 pm
Granted, there are people who, by way of politics and connections go farther in the private sector than their talent would merit.
But the point about tennure is on the mark. Where but in academia can you get a job for life and rest on your laurels? And not fear reprisal for poor performance or acting out?
Comment by SCSIwuzzy — 11.29.04 @ 3:24 pm
‘There is much more. But I wonder if people could explain to me why so many leftists are teaching hard science and business classes as well? ‘
How many? you tell me of one. and he did get you to learn quite about about guns and crime.
Comment by actus — 11.29.04 @ 3:34 pm
‘a life in academia is easier (thats why it pays less). Its easier than going into the world of private enterprise where you are measured by your performance (meritocracy) and if you don’t deliver - BAM!’
I don’t know what experience you have with academia, but most of the ones i’ve seen and met think that there is plenty of a meritocracy, plenty of competition for a small number of positions. Tenure is the exception, rather than the rule.
Comment by actus — 11.29.04 @ 3:36 pm
Baklava: Your paper reminds me of an incident after President Reagan was shot. I responded to a full-page anti-handgun ad in the newspaper and was about to join the group. In the info the group sent me was a bumper sticker that had a gun in a red circle with a line through it. I shared this information with an antigun friend and said I was going to apply the bumper sticker the next day. He said, “Don’t do that! You’ll be advertising that you don’t have a gun. That will make you more likely to be the victim of a crime.” I went to sleep that night pondering that the fact that because criminals know that some people own guns, I am safer. I didn’t join the group after all. Years later watching the police not doing anything outside the Columbine School while students were being shot inside, made me think about getting a gun. If the police aren’t going to protect you, you had better be ready to protect yourself. Just another reason why I’m a Republican.
Comment by Evon Bachaus — 11.29.04 @ 4:01 pm
Actus,
That’s not what I paid to learn about and SHE was teaching an opinion. I taught HER some facts.
That was one. There were many more that I encountered while going to 3 different colleges.
Comment by Baklava — 11.29.04 @ 4:20 pm
Evon,
Yep.
And here’s a liberal way of arguing……
I think that the people against guns were for the 87% of women in Orlando not getting raped to get raped in 1987.
Why do I say that? Because liberals tell us that they know Bush’s motives and intentions.
Examples:
1) Supposedly liberals know that Bush went to Iraq for oil.
2) Supposedly liberals know that Bush lied (even thought everyone was saying the same thing even before Bush was president)
3) Supposedly liberals know that Bush went to Iraq to finish the war that daddy started.
4) Supposedly liberals know that Bush wanted to divide the country
Back on topic:
Personally, I just think that teachers should teach what we paid them to teach.
And if class discussion turns off topic, all points of view (not cussing) should be considered legitimate. I think the teacher would’ve learned a valuable lesson in life if she “tolerated” “diversity” of opinion.
Comment by Baklava — 11.29.04 @ 4:27 pm
‘That’s not what I paid to learn about and SHE was teaching an opinion. I taught HER some facts.’
looks like you learned some too. you didn’t write the paper from memory did you?
Comment by actus — 11.29.04 @ 4:50 pm
So maybe then more Conservatives/Republican parents should point their college children in the direction of teaching rather than Law, Medicine and Investment Banking.
Comment by Dr. Jason Weinberg — 11.29.04 @ 5:35 pm
Still, Actus, while he may have learned something, it was not what he was supposed to be learning.
If you sign up for a statistics course, and spend signifigant time in class discussing Shakespeare, are you getting what you paid for? Are you likely going to be on the same footing as someone whose class spent all their time on statistics?
I had a lit prof like the one Baklava is talking about… he spent more time railing against Newt Gingrich than discussing Coleridge and Lord Byron. And we were in PA, and it was before the “republican revolution” and the Contract With America
Very annoying indeed, esp to someone who was working full time to afford tuition, rent and food.
Baklava… I missed it, if it was covered, what was the class you were taking?
Comment by SCSIwuzzy — 11.29.04 @ 5:40 pm
As a father of a brilliant son who was offered a ‘full ticket’ to a certain Ivy League school in upstate New York, I can tell you with certanity that the culture at the ‘elite’ schools is seriously out of step with America and does not express an interest in getting in step.
I am getting the new book by Tom Wolfe about university life to hopefully find some insights. We pray a lot for our son, and trust God to see him through this. The left is not a friend of liberty. I am wondering what they are actually accomplishing in the fields of study they work in, if they approach political life and school diversity with the same level of integrity as their work.
Comment by ebnelson — 11.29.04 @ 5:48 pm
Because parents get to dictate their children’s interests, huh? My husband chose law w/out input from his parents. He currently plans to practice for a couple of decades and then become a professor, but who knows what God has in store for him (and for us)?
Comment by LawWife — 11.29.04 @ 5:50 pm
I don’t know if it is true that academics are more likely to be left-leaning than those outside academia. But supposing it is for the sake of argument - why think of it as bias? If the most educated — the people who’ve thought, studied and learned the most — are lovely lefties can’t you concede that it’s just possible that they’ve used their critical faculties to arrive at those opinions?
I’m only asking…
Comment by Richard Hall — 11.29.04 @ 7:11 pm
Hello, all:
Actus said something above which I agree with: it ain’t easier in academia than in business or law. You gotta produce A LOT—or else. Especially before you get tenure, but also afterwards.
Another point: it may not be true that most academics are extreme fringe left-wingers, but most are left-of-center.
Which brings me to an irony: most academics say they hate capitalism, but capitalism’s what they live day and night in the university.
But—heresy!—I’m not so sure that capitalism belongs in the university. The only thing that belongs in the university is THINKING.
Just some thoughts, m’friends.
A.
Comment by adrian — 11.29.04 @ 7:30 pm
Richard:
That’s too simplistic.
Underneath the apparent diversity of our universities, there’s actually an orthodoxy.
No one tells youngsters that the’re getting something more than just education and enlightenment—thet they’re getting those things mixed in with a worldview.
What worldview is that? Well, in recent years it’s acquired a left-wing cast, but it goes deeper than that.
It’s basically the worldview of modernity, which boils down to this: through the achievements of modernity, mankind has finally acquired the tools to master nature, non-human and human, and so to better his condition. That sounds noble, and, in some ways, it is, but the flipside is the belief that there’s no moral purpose woven into nature, that nature is indifferent or even hostile to our judgments about right and wrong, good and bad. That God is dead.
There’s also a “conservative” version of this modern worldview, which, in America, at least, de-emphasizes the death of God and emphasizes individual self-betterment through hard work and responsibility. This conservative version has lost ground in the universities to its “liberal” rival, but the same unquestioned assumption of modernity remains in place.
So that, without self-criticism, the universities effectively becomes the places where modernity indoctrinates the young into its assumptions and techniques.
A bleak assessment, I know, but I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em.
Adrian
Comment by adrian — 11.29.04 @ 7:47 pm
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
I will blog about my interview with PBS tomorrow.
Comment by La Shawn — 11.29.04 @ 8:17 pm
Adrian:
As we used to say in the seventies, right on. You’ve hit the nail square on the head.
Richard, read the Bauerlein piece. He makes the point–and based on my experience over 13 years as a humanities professor, he’s right–that academia’s leftist leanings are the results of habit and a lack of critical thought and rational assessment. Like everyone else, liberal professors have worldviews, and those worldviews are based on underlying philosophical and cosmological assumptions–or, to put it in language that invariably drives them crazy, their opinions stem from certain matters of faith (like the unprovable assertion that “God is dead”). They think they’re all brave, Nietzschean skeptics, who have slipped the bonds of “conventional morality” to embrace the “meaninglessness” (or, to use the word they prefer, “contingency”) of the universe. Bauerlein points out that in academia, leftists so drastically outnumber conservatives that the left has been able to shelter themselves from anyone or anything that can or will challenge these worldviews. Leftist thinking has become the orthodoxy of the American university.
Comment by Funky Ph.D. — 11.29.04 @ 8:20 pm
Conservatives on the otherhand, tend to join evil churches that spread ‘values’, or the evil military that occasionaly requires them to give their lives for the ‘public good and social justice’ of others. Many conservatives actually do BOTH.
Comment by Fretless — 11.29.04 @ 8:46 pm
Left leaning ideologies aren’t tied to the university level. Most of your education professionals are left of center across the board. I know this from my experiences as an educator. Most of my fellow co-workers assumed I was a liberal until I displayed my Bush/Cheney 04 sticker on my “gas guzzling enviro wrecking” SUV.
Comment by Chris Roberts — 11.29.04 @ 9:27 pm
Richard Hall
I believe that Academia can and has produced great things.
Presently, it is a stagnant swamp.
Look at it from a market perpective. Do you think that we only need one company producing cars? While markets can degenerate into monopolies, at least markets have a built in incentive driving diversity.
If you would like to look at it in a more abstract light check out “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki (There is an NRO article on it, but I couldn’t find a link)
Here’s a quote:
“even the “smartest” groups of experts are often outsmarted by more diverse groups that boast members with far less impressive credentials.”
I like the term “distributed intelligence”. A robust/diverse network can find solutions to (some classes of ) problems that can not theoretically be solved any other way.
Comment by josh — 11.29.04 @ 9:50 pm
LaShawn–
I’m a little disturbed at the numbers you’re showing for the College of Engineering at Berkeley. Rest assured that there are a lot of us who have no qualms about making the powers that be at the Berkeley sandcastle understand that civil liberties will be observed with no questions asked. I’m a veteran of kicking liberal butt on that miserable piece of real estate, and I also come from the birthplace of the one and only one officer, George Patton, who had no compassion for Stalino-fascist guerillas during the Battle of the Bulge (no doubt, today’s Liberals can’t locate where that battle took place nor understand the context under which it took place). The University is hurting badly for funding at the present time, and guess who they are sucking up to — people like me! Guess what, we ain’t gonna contribute **** until we see real results that send the Stalino-Fascist-Islamists down the garbage disposal!
Comment by Chuck — 11.29.04 @ 11:14 pm
My take on academia is that it won’t change until the funding starts drying up. The funding won’t dry up until Alumni and government start holding them accountable for result driven projects.
However, on the downside there is a certain self interest to Almuni propping up their educational records. It may be that journalism employers will demand a more diverse, critical thinking type of end product. That may be the impetus. Otherwise, it will be some kind of individual rights movement by students or a youth oriented counter culture trend toward conservatism. Youth tend to rebel against the establishment. Liberalism is now viewed as the establishment by most critical thinking types. Conservatism is now liberalism. So when this becomes the prevailing thought then that would signal the end of leftist academia.
Another possibility is that the USA conservative political trend will spread beyond our borders which may force universities to offer more than one world view. I think this and the employer demand angle have the most promise.
Don’t hold your breath.
Comment by Vanyogan — 11.29.04 @ 11:20 pm
Thanks for including a link to Scrappleface. I read him(her?) for the first time today, and had to inlude his(her?) blog in my favorites I enjoyed it so much.
Comment by Kiki B. — 11.29.04 @ 11:24 pm
In my view the problem with our post secondary educational system has the same core problem as our problem with health care. It is primarily economic.
We have disconnected both systems from economic reality. No one can tell you what health care procedures cost because we have created a system where (with rare exceptions) the consumer does not pay for the service consumed.
Post secondary education now functions largely in the same fashion. Anyone can borrow enough federal backed money to pay anything that a university charges. As a result post secondary education’s stated costs have skyrocketed.
Students are told that the education will pay for itself and therefore to a large extent don’t think about the level of borrowing until after graduation. As the costs have risen, direct government aid has also increased. In addition many private groups have created or increased grants and awards.
But sitting back at the university there is no market based incentive to be productive, or to have any realistic cost constraints. I know that there is much crying and complaining about fiscal restraints in secondary institutions, but there is nothing to compare to what happens to a for profit company in a recession.
In both health care and secondary education, we end up with less value and super egos.
The massive federal funding of education is much younger than the tax exemptions for health care. Full federal funding for college is only a decade or two old. The tax exemption for health care that created the third party payers goes back to World War II and wage controls.
The current state of health care has super high pay for many doctors. I would not be surprised if pay for college professors follows the same path as pay for medical doctors since World War II.
It seems that as doctors get paid more they become more conservative. Could this be the wave of the future?
Comment by Allan Yackey — 11.30.04 @ 7:23 am
Actus:
I am a 4th year engineering student at UVA and I have encountered numerous cases of off-topic liberal indoctrination in my courses. For example, in STS 200, a writing course all engineers are required to take, the teacher regularly lectured on the Iraq war, despite the fact that the course was about the industrial revolution. Currently I am in STS 401, which features a completely biased reading list (just read Fast Food Nation, previously read Things Fall Apart, and also Retooling, by an ultra liberal prof. at MIT.) Last, in a thermodynamics course I was in the professor regularly lamented on the “lack of diversity” present in the class. There was 2 out of about 30 black students in the course. Despite his lamentations, there were plenty of “diverse” students.
Comment by Actus — 11.30.04 @ 8:26 am
How many of those who have talked about the difficulties and “production” requirements for academia have any level of experience in private enterprise, so as to compare the requirements?
No doubt there are some level of requirements in academia, as there are in any job. Especially at the very top and in the research departments, producing is required. But the vast majority of the 90% of academics have it far easier in their cocooned envirnoment of lock-step thinking and culture, than those in private enterprise who have to deliver day in and day out, or not get paid. Its a demanding environment, requiring true diversity of thought and action. The environment changes continually, and you either learn to change and leverage the momentum, or look for work elsewhere.
Comment by michael — 11.30.04 @ 9:47 am
Michael said: “Most professors would rather think, ponder, pontificate & procrastinate than to bust ass and deliver the goods time & time again.”
There is nothing like job survival to guide ones ‘pontification’ toward ‘performance’ every time. Guarantee a job and watch ones self-interest begin to trump the interest of those being served everytime.
Communist governments have been experimenting with the idea of ‘tenure for all’ for a long time.
Comment by Jim R — 11.30.04 @ 10:14 am
Michael:
I could ask you the same question.
Look, nobody’s saying that the academy is the same as the business enterprise in every respect. The point is that the academy isn’t as market-unpresponsive as non-academics think.
On your way to tenure, for example, your effectiveness as a teacher and researcher gets measured constantly in all kinds of ways that will determine whether or not you keep your job. One of the ways that plays a huge role is customer satisfaction, meaning: student evaluations.
Now, I actually think that this is a problem. In business, the key is whether people want, or can be persuaded to want, what you’re selling. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t matter whether they should want what you’re selling or not. You can be as successful selling porn as you can selling Bibles. But when it comes to education, the whole idea is that the customers have to be brought to want what they should want, to believe what’s right to believe, etc. In other words, the whole point of education is NOT to equip people to succeed, but to equip them to seek and find the truth.
So, it doesn’t matter to me if the business world is more market-responsive than the academy. It’s enough that the universities conceive of themselves on market lines at all—enough, that is, to be concern for worry.
Cordially,
Adrian
Comment by adrian — 11.30.04 @ 10:23 am
Let me be clear: I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be vigorous debate in the university. Au contraire: there needs to be more of it. The university should be as ruthlessa testing-ground for ideas as the market-place is supposed to be for products. But there’s a crucial difference: in the market-place, you succeed if people want your stuff; in the university, you succeed if your ideas hold up. Why is this a difference? Because the way ideas holding up is by being shown to be TRUE.
My point, then, is not that the universities shouldn’t be testing-grounds for ideas, but that the only way they can be that is if everyone agrees from the get-go that there’s such a thing as truth, that it’s possible to come to know it, and that it’s worth doing that.
In that sense, the university HAS to be different from the market, at least as the market is conventionally understood.
Adrian
Comment by adrian — 11.30.04 @ 10:53 am
‘For example, in STS 200, a writing course all engineers are required to take, the teacher regularly lectured on the Iraq war, despite the fact that the course was about the industrial revolution. Currently I am in STS 401, which features a completely biased reading list (just read Fast Food Nation, previously read Things Fall Apart, and also Retooling, by an ultra liberal prof. at MIT.) Last, in a thermodynamics course I was in the professor regularly lamented on the “lack of diversity” present in the class.
The last one is the only one that looks like an engineering course. Is diversity that liberal a topic? The Armed forces and major corporations filed Amici briefs in support of affirmative action because they saw the need for racial diversity in their ranks. Are the Armed forces and major corporations also ‘liberal’?
Comment by actus — 11.30.04 @ 1:24 pm
‘No doubt there are some level of requirements in academia, as there are in any job. Especially at the very top and in the research departments, producing is required. But the vast majority of the 90% of academics have it far easier in their cocooned envirnoment of lock-step thinking and culture, than those in private enterprise who have to deliver day in and day out, or not get paid.’
I have no idea what this academy is that you are writing about. Most people I know in higher education work more than your standard 9 to 5. Some of them have to do that just to get by at a very low wage, as adjuncts or grad students.
I think you picture the academy as tenured professors smoking pipes in a lounge. Thats not what it looks like — which is not to say that its out there.
Comment by actus — 11.30.04 @ 1:30 pm
Richard Hall,
“can’t you concede that it’s just possible that they’ve used their critical faculties to arrive at those opinions?”
We can concede that it’s 100% accurate that they’ve used their critical faculties to arrive at their opinions. But their opinion was no more accurate than mine. And just because they are a teacher of Psychology or Critical Thinking or Economics doesn’t give them the know it all better that I think you think that they have.
For instance. If a professor is a professor does it make his/her opinion more valid just because he/she is a professor when they teach that tax cuts don’t help the economy? Empirical evidence is out there that shows that tax cuts do help the economy because more money is held by the people to spend on goods and services. When more goods and services are purchased from companies there is more goods and services that the company must produce and that creates economic activity. Liberals argue that the government takes the money and then turns around and spends it so that there must be the same economic output as if they government didn’t take it. That assumes the same amount of efficiency. I’ll break it down this way.
If 50% earn income from the private sector and 50% earn money from the public sector due to the confiscation of taxes from the other 50%, it is such a drain on the first 50% that their ability to afford more than the basic necessities is difficult. Let’s say the private sector 50% earns 50,000 each. In order for the government to pay the other 50% $25,000 each the private sector people have to be taxed at 50%. I am going with the assumption that the private sector 50% is providing needed government services.
Now that we broke it down that way, what you have to consider is what services the 50% public sector people are providing.
Even if they are providing health care, roads, DMV, education, defense of country, police, fire, library services and equal opportunity enforcement people start to legitimately question why it costs so much to provide these services and can’t the private sector do it better and cheaper. In example after example there is evidence that the private sector can provide the same services better and cheaper. And when the government gets out of the way, lets the people keep more of their own money and allows the private sector to provide the service the economy goes through a boom.
It is clear by the constitution what the federal government must do. Provide for the common defense. It is clear that the states are responsible for most other things and that is why each state spends about 50% of it’s budget on education. The other 50% gets spent on police, fire, and this and that. But both the states and federal government spend way more on entitlement programs. They go way beyond helping the non-able-bodied and elderly.
The debate in this country to me should center on why the federal and state governments have spent more every year for 54 years (moving left). The federal government has not spent less any one of these years.
To tie it back to the topic on hand:
Professors aren’t exposed to market forces and they have a certain amount of idealism about redistribution of wealth so that nobody is poor. Unfortunately their opinion due to their lack of exposure Richard, but many years of opining doesn’t make their opinion more valid just because they’ve been in academia.
Comment by Baklava — 11.30.04 @ 1:41 pm
Adrian,
I appreciate the sincerity of your arguments, and do not disagree wholly. The question we were discussing is why there are so many liberal/left leaning people in the academic fields. My take is that it is a more cocooned environment, it is an easier environment in which to survive long-term, and does not require the constant re-education, re-training & ongoing diversity of thought and applied skills that private enterprise does. This will tend to attract people to academia who would not perform well in that more competitive and demanding private enterprise environment, and for some reason many of those seem to be on the left side of spectrum.
There are thinkers and chatters (TCs), and there are thinkers & do-ers (TDs)in this world. TCs tend toward academia, TDs tend toward private enterprise. Alot of this goes back to the old adage “Those who can, do. And those who can’t, teach”.
Academia has it’s own set of requirements, challenges, and difficulties. I am not arguing that. I am stating my thesis as to why academia appeals to the blue left, and why private enterprise and the marketplace appeal to the red right. Academics pride themselves on being intelligent, open minded, diverse people. But if you compare academia to private enterprise, you will find far more of those qualities in business and the marketplace than you will in the university. This is out of the necessity of surviving in the marketplace–it requires constant updating and rethinking and new strategies. I don’t see that in todays university environment. It existed in the past, but not today.
As with all generalized theories, this does not hold true for all cases. Thanks for your thoughts on this, and I do appreciate this discussion.
Comment by michael — 11.30.04 @ 2:14 pm
Dear Michael,
Thanks for your clear (re)statement of your position.
I agree with you in part. There is a difference between thinkers and doers. I disagree, though, that thinkers are just doers who couldn’t do.
To put it another way: Plato and Aristotle distinguised action (doing) and contemplation (thinking). But, unlike most moderns, they thought that contemplation was actually better than action.
Now, one can disagree with that. My point is simply that your somewhat disparaging remarks about thinking aren’t just obviously true. They need argument.
But perhaps the problem has to do with what we mean by thinking. If thinking means sitting around daydreaming, then you’re right. But if thinking means understanding the world in which we live, then we need it even more than we need food and air, because thinking in this second sense is what makes us human. Gorillas and squirrels can and do figure out strategies for meeting their animal needs. But they can’t understand the world in which they live.
Now, the main value of understanding isn’t instrumental. It’s value is in itself.
It’s tempting to dismiss the idea that certain things are valuable in themselves. But just think what would happen if we didn’t have a connection with anything that was valuable in itself. We wouldn’t have any reason to “do” anything.
Think of it like this: the successful entrepreneurs whom I know aren’t people who are “in it” just for the money. They’re in it because they enjoy what they’re doing. The creativity that enables them to innovate comes out of this enjoyment. But what does it mean that they enjoy what they’re doing? It means that, by doing what they do, they get a certain connection with reality, a certain intimacy with the world. They get, in other words, a certain kind of understanding. True, this understanding is wrapped up in, and inseparable from, the actual practise of their enterpreneurial work. But it is a form of understanding nonetheless. As Ignatius of Loyola said, there’s a certain contemplative aspect in the middle of their action.
Even for entrepreneurs, then, a certain form of understanding the world is a value in itself for the sake of which they do what they do. Of course, not all entrepreneurs would put it exactly like this. Some might even laugh if you told them that they were closet contemplatives. But, in order to give a coherent account of what they’re doing, you have to say something like what I’m saying.
Understanding, not money, makes the world go round.
The university is supposed to be a place for the cultivation of understanding. Unfortunately, as we know, the reality is different: it’s become intellectually monolithic. But the reason isn’t that the academic life is less responsive to the market.
As I tried to explain just now, people who are thinkers aren’t just wimps who chickened out of the market. They’re people who have a calling to devote their lives to understanding. As I see it, then, the cause of the problem we’re discussing is this: it’s not that the universities attract chickens who are too lame to “do,” but that they attract people with real vocations to be thinkers—and then corrupt them. How? By indoctrinating them, without telling them they’re being indoctrinated, into a certain worldview, the worldview that, supposedly, all enlightened people hold.
I’ve tried to describe that worldview in an earlier post, so, if I may, I’ll just refer you to that.
How did this happen? Well, to quote Richard Weaver: ideas have consequences. They shape cultures and drive men’s lives, often without their even knowing it. The modern, market-driven world in which we live wasn’t just a natural development. It was created in part by thinkers, by people like Bacon and Descartes, Locke and Adam Smith—people who substituted the old ideal of contemplation for the modern ideal of transforming the world through technical innovation.
Cordially,
Adrian
Comment by adrian — 11.30.04 @ 3:13 pm
I’ve commented on this before, but Juan Cole nails it — http://www.juancole.com/2004/11/shock-of-week-liberals-in-liberal-arts.html — so now I don’t have to — again.
Comment by c — 11.30.04 @ 3:34 pm
Here’s my theory, and I going to try to make it simple and not jump to conclusions.
The reason for this disparity isn’t discrimination, it’s that people of a liberal mindset are more inclined to seek careers in academia than those of a conservative mindset.
I’m fairly certain of this.
The cause?
It may be, because among conservatives in general, there is a distrust of academia, with the occasional exceptions for Hillsdale, Texas A&M, Brigham Young, etc.
I don’t know. Just a theory, and I’d be very interested in others opinions on this.
Comment by Ben F — 11.30.04 @ 3:38 pm
Adrian,
So much of what you said is true, and you have done a good job of elucidating your points. However, I did not say there were thinkers & do-ers, but that there where thinkers and chatterers, and thinkers and do-ers. To your point, thinking first is the essential starting point for both classes–that then launches into either chattering or doing.
Those that pursue knowledge (thinking raised to the nth power) are to be commended, and that is best done in universities, research firms and think tank environments. These are the true academics, despeartely needed in our world. They are the Newtons, Bacons, & Jeffersons. However, folks of that ilk are generally not fooled by indoctrination of any kind, and they are not the people we are talking about, because they represent a minor fraction of the full academic population.
If truth were the goal of academia, and these folks pursue it relentlessly regardless of it’s outcome, why are they so easily indoctrinated? I don’t know, but I accept your belief that at some point they are.
I’ve enjoyed this exchange, and you have made some excellent points and observations. But I think we have reached the point of arguing angels on a pinhead. I don’t have time to do much more. I’m a red-stater and an unapologetic capitalist red-voter, and have to get back to producing something concrete! I don’t want to be out on the next wave of restructuring!
Thanks again. Perhaps you and I can start helping our like-minded peers to understand each other better. You are not an idiotic, brain-dead moron and neither am I. We are both intelligent and thinking people with differing views on some things. Hurray for diversity of thought! Good luck to you in your endeavors.
Comment by michael — 11.30.04 @ 4:58 pm
Dear Michael,
Thanks. Sorry I misread you. You did say, though, that TC’s tend towards academia. . .
You’re right: the intellectual “entrepreneurs” are few and far between. But there is indoctrination. It’s just that it’s very subtle. No one—at least not yet—gets subjected to Chinese Water Torture. So unless you’re a genius and a hero, you’re more likely than not to get sucked in.
Thanks for a stimulating exchange and go get ‘em.
Adrian
Comment by adrian — 11.30.04 @ 5:40 pm
Brit Hume of Fox News Channel had a short segment today about bias in academia today. This was about professors or instructors bashing Bush or Conservatives or Praising Kerry or Liberas. The word is getting out.
Comment by Evon Bachaus — 11.30.04 @ 6:42 pm