South Dakota Lawmakers Pass Affirmative Action Bill for Conservatives in Academia
Man, these guys are on a roll. Thanks, South Dakota, for making North Carolina and Virginia look progressive!
Actually, I can kind of understand where these guys are coming from, even if I think they're wrong.
As I've said many times, I'm concerned about leftist and liberal bias at universities. Concerned enough that I've discussed it with many of my classes and individual students, discussed it with my colleagues and my Dean, and tried to sketch out a survey we can use to determine whether it really is a problem and, if so, how much of one.
But I am adamantly opposed to these attempts to enforce right-wing political correctness (or any other kind) via legislation. If conservatives want to make the academy more conservative, there are at least two things they can do:
(a) Adopt more coherent ideas, i.e. ideas that can more easily withstand logical scrutiny
and
(b) Put in the damned work to get a Ph.D. and try to get more uinversity teaching jobs
We really are facing the era of intrusive, big-government conservativsm...and of conservative cry-babies. Everyone who fails to toe their party line is biased. The media, the universities, (formerly) the courts. Many of them can't seem to even imagine that the weakness of their ideas could play any role in the under-representation of those ideas among the people who think about ideas professionally. Well, it's time to grow up and accept some of the responsibility--both for the problem and for fixing it.
Remember, I agree with many on the right about left-of-center bias in the university, and I still think they're going about this all wrong.
Nevertheless, it's liberals with whom I'm really disappointed here. Left-of-center bias in academia is not as bad as the right makes it out to be, but it's fairly clear that it exists. If liberals continue to refuse to address this problem, then conservatives will continue to push legislation in an effort to fix it. And I'm fairly certain that those on the left would do so, too, if the shoe were on the other foot.
Furthermore, if I might make a grubby prudential appeal: one of the things that drives many smart students into the arms of the right is their experiences with dogmatically leftist profs and students. I wish that liberals would address this problem on grounds of principle, though, and that appeals like this one were not necessary.
Incidentally, it may be worth noting (as a gesture at a defense of our conservative friends) that the academic disciplines in which outspoken far-leftists are most common also tend to be those disciplines which are widely considered to be the least intellectually rigorous. Profs in, e.g., econ and the sciences may mostly be liberal, but they seem to be less far left and less inclined to proselytize than folks in what some describe as the "weaker regions" of the humanities and social sciences.
Man, these guys are on a roll. Thanks, South Dakota, for making North Carolina and Virginia look progressive!
Actually, I can kind of understand where these guys are coming from, even if I think they're wrong.
As I've said many times, I'm concerned about leftist and liberal bias at universities. Concerned enough that I've discussed it with many of my classes and individual students, discussed it with my colleagues and my Dean, and tried to sketch out a survey we can use to determine whether it really is a problem and, if so, how much of one.
But I am adamantly opposed to these attempts to enforce right-wing political correctness (or any other kind) via legislation. If conservatives want to make the academy more conservative, there are at least two things they can do:
(a) Adopt more coherent ideas, i.e. ideas that can more easily withstand logical scrutiny
and
(b) Put in the damned work to get a Ph.D. and try to get more uinversity teaching jobs
We really are facing the era of intrusive, big-government conservativsm...and of conservative cry-babies. Everyone who fails to toe their party line is biased. The media, the universities, (formerly) the courts. Many of them can't seem to even imagine that the weakness of their ideas could play any role in the under-representation of those ideas among the people who think about ideas professionally. Well, it's time to grow up and accept some of the responsibility--both for the problem and for fixing it.
Remember, I agree with many on the right about left-of-center bias in the university, and I still think they're going about this all wrong.
Nevertheless, it's liberals with whom I'm really disappointed here. Left-of-center bias in academia is not as bad as the right makes it out to be, but it's fairly clear that it exists. If liberals continue to refuse to address this problem, then conservatives will continue to push legislation in an effort to fix it. And I'm fairly certain that those on the left would do so, too, if the shoe were on the other foot.
Furthermore, if I might make a grubby prudential appeal: one of the things that drives many smart students into the arms of the right is their experiences with dogmatically leftist profs and students. I wish that liberals would address this problem on grounds of principle, though, and that appeals like this one were not necessary.
Incidentally, it may be worth noting (as a gesture at a defense of our conservative friends) that the academic disciplines in which outspoken far-leftists are most common also tend to be those disciplines which are widely considered to be the least intellectually rigorous. Profs in, e.g., econ and the sciences may mostly be liberal, but they seem to be less far left and less inclined to proselytize than folks in what some describe as the "weaker regions" of the humanities and social sciences.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:53 AM
13 Comments:
I’m confused. Do you run into lots of communists on your campus? Because you mention a problem with the “far left”, which would be Marxists, Leninists, Trotskyites etc. Do you really have too many dictatorship-of-the-proletariat types at your university?
How about the moderate left – these would be folks who allow for private property but want the State to own the means of production. Is there surplus of democratic socialists on your faculty?
And why are liberals an issue at all? Liberalism is considered center-right on most spectrums (and in most countries) since liberals tend to be staunchly capitalist and pro-private-property. At best it’s the most centrist of philosophies, tolerant, pragmatic and relatively non-ideological, sitting more or less at the midpoint between fascism on the right and communism on the left, or halfway between conservatism on the right and democratic socialism on the left. Sure, liberalism is to the “left” of fascism, but it is not remotely a leftist political philosophy – the current bizarre configuration of American politics notwithstanding.
Given that liberalism is the most centrist of outlooks, a faculty of all liberals would be perfectly balanced politically (although it would lack diversity…) while a faculty consisting of liberals and conservatives but few or no socialists is clearly skewed to the right, not the left. Yet you worry about a “left-of-center bias” on campus. What I’m not clear on is whether this is because you (contra my assertion) actually consider liberalism a leftist viewpoint, or because conservatives (and any fascists) really are outnumbered by democratic socialists (and any communists) on your faculty.
WS, learn from the experience of the media, which met the conservatives half-way. The big, urban media outlets, having started on the left side of the post-WWII consensus, moved right. The smaller suburban and rural outlets and a few already conservative city media also moved right!
If you meet the wingers half-way in academia, the same thing will happen. Don't succumb to what looks fair when the result would be to cede yet another institution to the right. Wait until they show a similar willingness to compromise with the politics of business institutions, for example.
Until they'll part with half the cake on grounds of fairness, there's no reason we should even consider parting with half the cupcake.
Furthermore, keeping academia outside of the dead, dull perfect center should be a societal goal. The academy is a literally progressive institution that should encourage new ideas and allow radical thinking. Otherwise, we're destined for foggy senescence as a culture, which sounds pretty soviet to me.
Elton,
'far left' doesn't mean only Marxist types. In fact, many campus leftists consier Marx insufficiently far left or otherwise deplorable. It's more common to run into postmodernists, radical feminists and other similar types.
Also: I'm worried that you have just defined liberalism as the center. 'left', 'right' and 'center' are problematic notions I admit, but I fear that your response has, as Russell said of postulation, all the advantages of theft over honest toil.
LL,
I don't mean to meet them halfway. I actually think people are focussing on the wrong thing here. IMHO we don't need a massive re-structuring of academia or anything like that. The problem would be solved if fewer lefty profs injected their opinions into classes where they aren't appropriate and made a greater attempt to be objective. When students complain to me, it's not usually about their profs being lefties, nor about them saying what they think when it's relevant. it's more often about profs who spew their opinions indiscriminately and berate students for having the temerity to disagree with them. How often does this happen? Maybe not that often, but often enough to be a real problem.
One problem: many PoMo lefty types don't BELIEVE in objectivity. They think it's a "liberal hang-up." Their theories of the world entail that it's permissible--even obligatory--to indoctrinate students.
Remember, I agree with many on the right about left-of-center bias in the university, and I still think they're going about this all wrong.
They're going about it wrong if they want to improve the academy, but not if they want to disaccredit the academy in the public eye.
'far left' doesn't mean only Marxist types. In fact, many campus leftists consier Marx insufficiently far left or otherwise deplorable. It's more common to run into postmodernists, radical feminists and other similar types.
In how many disciplines do you think there is a problem of leftist bias? On how many campuses?
I've taken a pretty wide range of classes in 4 years at U. of Pittsburgh, and never had a faculty member who thought Marx was insufficiently far left, and never heard anybody else mention such faculty members, with one exception (Guess what he was a teacher of? That's right, post-colonial African history. And he was univerally seen as a complete joke.).
I think the problem of leftist academic bias might be entirely the product of maybe 200 extremist professors in the United States, who are not balanced by 200 extremist right-wing professors.
Well, A, all I can say is that your experience has been very different from mine...and from that of many others.
How wide-spread is the problem of leftist bias? Not that widespread, but widespread enough to be a genuine concern. Am I right? Probably, but maybe not. that's why I want to do surveys.
There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that the the number of problem profs is as low as 200. It's lower than the right thinks, but it ain't that low.
Also: it's not just a few problem profs: it's also profs who aren't habitually problematic giving in to the urge to pontificate in class.
The problem is real. We dismiss it at our peril.
Couple of things. First, you're dismissal of Elton's argument is rather short sighted. You are arbitrarily defining some center based on your local observations. What Elton was trying to do was get you to look at a more global perspective and actually get serious about your definitions.
Next, you consistently fail to lay out what you think the problems of this bias are. I think if you're going to have anyone take you seriously, you should at least lay out what the problem is. Otherwise, it's like me going to my boss to get him to buy into solving one of my pet peeves. If you can't even begin to qualitatively describe what the damage is, then why do you say we dismiss it at our peril?
Finally, get thee to a statistics class and/or hang out with some people who actually do this kind of work. You've consistently thrown out claims without so much as a single piece of data to back yourself up.
To summarize:
a) Get a firm grasp of political definitions.
b) There may well be a problem, but you have never identified it.
c) Please, oh god please, get some actual data. Develop a model.
If you don't have any data, it's just opinion. If you can't state the problem, you're just going to be ignored. If you can't give moderately crisp definitions, then you're simply out of luck.
Anonymous,
Your comment illustrates what's wrong with many responses to this problem.
OF COURSE we need to get more precise about all these things...in fact, I just logged on to write a post to that effect...but that's not the level we were operating at here. We weren't discussing the particulars in this post, and to cite that as an error suggests that you're just making excuses. What you should have done was just ask: what are the specific problems. Fortunately, I was just making a list of them while not paying attention in the Faculty Senate meeting.
One way of being biased in this matter is to uncritically accept what one side says, while demanding more of the other side. That seems to be what you're doing here. Casual dismissals from one side are accepted, whereas data and specifics are demanded from the other side.
My position here for a long time has been: there's a problem, but we can't be sure enough about that unless we collect some data.
In past posts I've even made suggestions about what to look for.
So, anyway: take a chill pill, think this through, and try to control your bias at least long enough to get the right questions asked.
Some points of agreement:
- Objectivity is possible, though maybe only as a heuristic. Philosophical difficulties of this left as an (easy) exercise.
- Objectivity is a good goal in most instruction. Bad teachers indoctrinate.
- It's easier to notice and recall instances of bias that don't match one's own biases. (Didn't TVD say this in a previous thread?)
Points of disagreement:
- The problem would be solved if fewer lefty profs injected their opinions into classes where they aren't appropriate and made a greater attempt to be objective. This is the problem you identify, WS, not the problem the SD lege wants to solve. They want to indoctrinate and won't settle for less, in perfect parallel with the liberal media myth.
- The professorial abuse of authority is much more common than its political variety alone. Given how eager students are to push limits, this is not surprising, but it's still bad. Even though I favor tenure, I have to admit that this is one ill effect of it.
Comments:
- At one of those elite universities that get under your skin, WS, what I saw was mainly centrist bias. Yeah, the big economics intro brought in John Kenneth Galbraith - for one lecture. The rest was done by mainstream neoclassical economists, some moderate left, some moderate right. (Not UChi!)
- The poli sci weed-out course had two profs. In retrospect, they were both liberals, more or less. One was a Francophile and quite heterodox even as a liberal; the other did a lot of work on arms control agreements for both parties, but that means he couldn't be a paleocon.
- My Soviet politics professor clearly had great affection for Russians, but he made it clear by repeating sly Russian jokes about Brezhnev that the USSR was faced with change or die even then in 1977.
- My gov tutor was an in-your-face right-winger, and he was not shy about propounding his views.
- My sister the English professor tells me that she works hard to keep her politics out of her classes but didn't always succeed in the run-up to Nov. 2004. Even so, she labelled her bias, which is a good practice.
- The biases I encountered in public K-12 schools (new topic!) in the South were uniformly conservative about electoral politics, religion, evolution, sexuality, and pluralism.
Oops, the second disagreement really should have been a comment. I'll blithely blame it on trying to proofread while holding a conference call.
I agree with lots of this, LL, but here's a possibly important comment:
(A) the real problem and (B) what the righties want to accomplish do not meet up. You're right about that. Some of them actually want right-wing dominance. We saw this in the controversy about the media. What they call "fair and balanced" isn't anywhere close to that. and furthermore, even the right knows this isn't so, and admits that they were just "working the refs."
BUT:
I still think that there IS a real problem, and that that real problem is making the right-wing efforts to (allegedly) solve it look plausible.
If there is really a problem (as I suspect), then it needs to be solved anyway. And if the problem is minimized, there's no opening for the right to do what they're trying to do.
And, again: I just want some real studies of this stuff. If there's no problem, I'll be happy to know it.
I'm not denying there could be a problem, but I decline to look at it in isolation from other institutions that tilt other ways.
Oh, and don't forget the engineering faculties.
Even more important, remember how media bias has remained received wisdom (and has been internalized by reporters) long after it became implausible. The SD lege does not require plausibility, only a hot-button narrative and lots of Horowitzian noise, so deflating plausibility is not an effective response.
You can't reason with the Terminator.
Even more important, remember how media bias has remained received wisdom (and has been internalized by reporters) long after it became implausible.
Hehe. I love it.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home