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More on Conservatives and Liberals in Academia

ArchPundit November 22, 2002 No Comments

From David Hogberg concerning his thoughts on conservative/liberal imbalance in academia:
(Note: I did some minor editing due to problems with my e-mail program, so if there are mistakes below, it is safe to assume they are mine and not David’s)

I looked over your posts on the liberal-conservative (im)balance in academia and found them quite interesting.

First, let me say that I don?t think discrimination against conservatives is as widespread as it often hyped up to be. Certainly, some disciplines are far more hostile to conservatives in their midst?women and minority studies?than others. However, I don?t think there is an overwhelming amount of professors in academia who are determined to keep conservatives from becoming faculty.

That said, it is there, and does rear its ugly head on occasion?the case of John Lott, Jr. and his inability to find a tenure-track job comes to mind. And it plays a part in the fact that there are more liberals than conservatives. To explain, let me start with Stanley Fish?s thoughts. I think Fish was being a bit disingenuous with his editorial. Of course, ideology isn?t a part of the interview process; it would be way too easy for an aggrieved party to sue if it was. But surely Fish must know that
the hiring process is more than just interviews. For example, a prospective hire is often taken out to dinner by faculty, or to a party at a faculty member?s house. It isn?t too difficult to use such situations to discover the prospective hire?s ideology. Simply engage him or her in conversation, make remarks like ?Bush is a terrible president,? and chances are you?ll figure out their political proclivities. Do faculty members then bring such considerations to the decision to hire? Hopefully most do not, but surely some do.

Fish also ignores a huge part of the process, that of tenure. By the time a professor comes up for tenure, everyone in the department will know his or her ideology, unless that professor has made titanic efforts to be discreet. Do faculty members then bring such considerations to tenure decisions? Again, hopefully most do not, but surely some do.

As I said above, I doubt that such instances are widespread. They do occur often enough that it likely has a discouraging effect on many conservatives considering academia. They either avoid graduate school altogether or they get their degrees and seek employment elsewhere.

On your point of socialization I have to adamantly disagree. I don?t think most academic liberals are socialized as they continue on in the profession. The vast majority have their views well formed by the time they enter graduate school. The question, then, is why does the profession attract so many liberals? Frankly, I haven?t a clue. Why do so many conservatives go into business, why do so many liberals go into journalism, etc., etc.? I?d
really like to know the answer to such questions.

That leads me to the other reason why I think so few conservatives are in academia. I suspect that many of them feel like the turd in the punchbowl when they enter graduate school. They find themselves in a situation where they are in a very small minority, and they routinely encounter a lot of stereotypes about their political views. Not too many people are going to stay in that type of environment for the long haul.

To sum up, I think the stories about the occasional academic being denied a job because of his or her ideology, along with an often inhospitable environment in graduate school result in fewer conservatives in academia.

Even if these factors weren?t present, there would still be an imbalance (as I noted, the profession just seems to attract liberals.) It just wouldn?t be as severe as it is now.

As for me, I don?t intend to pursue work in academia. There are a lot of reasons, not the least of which is I?m pretty happy working in a think-tank. Two others are:

1. I had no success getting published in academic journals, which suggests I?m not very good at that type of research and writing.

2. I initially went to graduate school because I wanted to teach. After acouple of years, I was burnt out on teaching. I had lost most of my patience with students. I found myself correcting exams or essays, and screeching like Mr. Hand ?Is everyone on dope?!? Definitely not a good thing.

He forgot?

ArchPundit November 21, 2002 No Comments

Falwell (Scott not Jerry) apparently got free pot for favors. When he goes to testify I guess he can claim short term memory loss.

More on Liberal Academics

ArchPundit November 21, 2002 No Comments

Mike Finley takes on an ideological hack complaining about faculty partisan identifications

I don’t have a lot more to say other than what I said here.

Stanley Fish wrote an op-ed pointing out that partisan ID doesn’t come up in academic job interviews and described the process. It is a process that is mind-numbingly boring and has little to do with ideology in terms of liberal vs conservative. I can only think of one case where an issue of ideology came up at all and that was in relation to teaching style. The individual played an advocate role in teaching instead of using the Socratic Method. Most of the time if ideology is at stake, that ideology fight is over schools of thought which are theoretical points, not conservative vs liberal.

The assumption made by FrontPage magazine is that hiring decisions are made by ideology. There are several problems with this. PhDs are more liberal than the population as a whole regardless of field. If one examines voting behavior, for a long time there has been a relationship between increasing education and an increase in likelihood of being Republican until one gets to the PhD level and then it turns into an increase in the likelihood of being Democratic. As the parties have realligned, education doesn’t have the same impact on partisan ID anymore, but PhDs are still overwhelmingly Democratic.

The real issue is that as one is socialized into the education, one tends to change their views because of their political context. If you are a business exec you talk to other execs about your political beliefs and, not surprisingly, this affects your views. The same happens amongst PhDs and academics in general. It isn’t a dark conspiracy, it is political context. In the 1960s evangelicals voted for both parties. In 2002, evangelicals vote in high proportions for Republicans because their political context reinforces such choices. For studies on political context see Huckfeldt and Sprague.

The study itself was deeply flawed by not including those within other areas of the university. While I’m guessing the engineering and chemistry professors aren’t as liberal, they are still registered Democratic at much higher numbers than the population as a whole. Knowing this bit of information gives one something to compare the rates while controlling for education’s effect alone.

More troubling is what are we supposed to do about this? The lambasting of liberal faculty that are instilling their left wing agenda is a nice whine (and inaccurate for most classes), but it doesn’t tell us how to solve the problem. I defy anyone to demonstrate de jure discrimination. De facto imbalance may occur, but to solve such a problem, one would need to identify why this imbalance occurs.

From my experience in political science, conseratives don’t last in programs. It isn’t because they aren’t smart, it is because they see graduate education as a way to become advocates and not scientists. This isn’t universal, but for those who enter programs and are conservative, they are far less concerned with determing what is than they are advocating policy. Thus, they have less interest in becoming practicing social scientists. As an example, David Hogberg works for a think tank and hates doing professional conferences. He isn’t dumb, he just has a different interest from his public comments.

Update: Instead of assuming what David thinks I asked him. He said he’d reply later. Also some minor edits have been made above.

NYT Calls for no reform in Illinois

ArchPundit November 21, 2002 No Comments

The Times gets on a high horse and calls for commutation fo all death row inmates. As a strong opponent of capital punishment I think we ought to end the death penalty. But a cheap stunt like the Times is proposing will end reform in Illinois. Blagojevich is already reluctant to look at any serious reform and the legislature is dragging its feet. A blanket commutation will inflame the incoming Governor and the legislature and stop them from passing any substantive reform. We don’t need a pyrrhic victory, we need reform.

Even better would be if some paper besides the Chicago Tribune put its money where its mouth is and actually investigate the death penalty in other states.

Terrorists are scouring vanity web sites for ideas

ArchPundit November 21, 2002 No Comments

The aptly named USS Clueless is warning that terrorists are using warnings of vulnerabilities to think of new attacks.

I’ve known about many of these for a long time but have refused to discuss them for fear of giving our enemies ideas. One in particular is the idea of importing and releasing crop and livestock diseases and releasing them here to attack our agriculture.

I’m pretty sure that terrorists don’t spend a ton of time reading vanity web sites characterized correctly as full of "endless rambling diatribe"s.

More importantly, democracies work better than authoritarian regimes because they are able to circumvent hierarchies that often suppress such information through a free press.

Real University Politics

ArchPundit November 21, 2002 No Comments

The Trib takes George Ryan to task for his crony appointments to the university system.

He is sort of a soulmate with Jeb, isn’t he?

But What I Still Want to Know is…

ArchPundit November 21, 2002 No Comments

Why should Augusta stay segregated?

The defenses so far:
1) Tradition

Tradition isn’t a reason for continuing discriminatory practices. Not admitting African-Americans was tradition too.

2) There are more important issues

There are always more important issues to almost any single problem. This is on the agenda.

3) Legal Right

I have a legal right to be an asshole and practice that right quite frequently. However, that is not a defense of my behavior.

4) Other groups are segregated

Yes, and they should either integrate or they are substantially different. Augusta is a rich guy networking club. I find no reason why it shouldn’t be a rich person networking club. What is it about networking and being chums that requires segregation by gender?

The Problem with Fisking

ArchPundit November 20, 2002 No Comments

Jeff Cooper demonstrates why I have him on my regular reads by giving the perfect example of why fisking is pointless.

Jeff also makes a good point that the technique (preferably without the name fisking) can be useful. I would point out it is very useful when used to combat creationists and others who make a wide number of unsupportable claims in a minimal amount of writing. talk.origins is full of such examples largely because creationists tend to lie, misrepresent, or simply are too confused to know what they are talking about. In that case, the only effective way to discredit their writing is to take each minute claim apart.

In most articles there is a structure. Attention getter/introduction, thesis, supporting evidence and conclusion. Taking apart a single sentence away from that structure is often either pedantic or a misrepresenation of the actual point. Somewhere around 6th grade most people learn that they make a point with a paragraph, not a sentence.

Gasket Blowing

ArchPundit November 20, 2002 No Comments

Reynolds is still insisting:

TAPPED still has its panties in a wad over the Martha Burk fertility-control "satire" issue, which McElroy also mentions. But I repeat: a non-lefty white male wouldn’t be allowed to claim "satire" as a defense for writing something similar about fertility control in women — any more than he would be allowed to claim "Halloween" as a defense for appearing in blackface.

The problem is it is irrelevant to the point. The work was misrepresented by several people including Lopez. Somehow Reynolds has decided that in a hypothetical other situation, an author who did a satire wouldn’t be allowed to claim satire as a defense. So what? In this case it was obviously a satire and people are misrepresenting it. If, in another case, someone misrepresents a satire that would be wrong as well. The Halloween example is assanine since those involved aren’t claiming it was a satire, but frat hijinks (I agree the incident shouldn’t be seen as a disciplinary issue, but an educational one). The individual with his panties in a wad is the guy obscuring the issue.

First, one can claim any excuse they care to claim. Whether that is a legitimate claim or a believable claim is dependent on the work in question. No one with a brain should be questioning that Burk was writing satire. In the hypothetical other situation, one would have to see the work. Assuming it was as clear as Burk’s work, the people misrepresenting it would be wrong to claim it wasn’t a satire. Others could still argue it was a bad satire or in bad taste. If Lopez or Schlussel had made such an argument, there could have been a debate over the merits. Instead, they lied.

Second, if the situation happened with a conservative author, that would be stupid too. Unfortunately Reynolds isn’t giving an example of this occurring and is instead claiming victimhood. Though Mike Royko was a liberal (not lefty given that is a silly phrase), he certainly got blasted by Latino groups for his satire of Buchanan. That was stupid on the part of Latino groups. As is just about every whine about something Mark Twain ever wrote.

Third, it is entirely possible to argue the satire is unfunny or a poor satire when refuting it. This is different than misrepresenting it as not satire. Lopez, Schlussel and other morons argue that it wasn’t a satire. This is false.

Reynolds is trying to make a point that isn’t analogous to what actually occurred. He is making a PC point when the entire issue came up because Schlussel and Lopez were lying. If Reynolds wanted to make a case about a PC double standard, an example where it was occuring would be nice. Instead, he has tried to change the subject concerning an example of lying and obscure the point to being some screed about PC. Before accusing others of having their panties in a wad, he should untangle his own.

The normally well-spoken
Tom Spencer has 5 points subtracted for using the line ‘doesn’t get it.’ Only idiots like Sullivan are allowed to use rhetorical nonsense like that. Tom isn’t an idiot.

Update: Reynolds is still whining about a double standard.

UP
DATE: TAPPED has another post on this, and — even after a long and cordial series of emails with Armed Liberal, who shares TAPPED’s view — all I can say is "you guys just don’t get it." It’s not about Martha Burk. It never was about Martha Burk. (Though if you think that calling Burk’s piece "satire" changes the face of feminism you’re showing your ignorance.

Actually, the entire discussion has been about Burk. Reynolds tried to change the subject and still is. Burk did a satire Lopez, Schlussel and others tried to represent it as not a satire. That is a lie.

There are other writings by academic feminists calling for the elimination of men and similar absurdities in dead earnest, though at nearly midnight I’m not going to run them down. But as a guy who once edited Catharine MacKinnon, I know a bit about this stuff). It’s all about a double standard. Your "admit you were wrong about the satire" point is (1) utterly inconsistent with my original post; and (2) a conscious or unconscious effort to dodge the real issue,

No, lying was the real issue. An analogous case would be if a conservative white male wrote a satire and those criticizing him, pulled it out as evidence of his ‘wacky’ views. I don’t know of an example of this occurring, but it probably has somewhere in the history of humanity. If someone can pull up an example I’d be happy to say that dishonesty is wrong as well.

As to being wrong about the satire, he has refused to call out Lopez for misrepresenting the work despite a series of posts on the subject. Instead of admitting Lopez was wrong and then making a point about a separate problem, he has continued to whine about a double standard. A double standard doesn’t excuse Lopez, Schlussel or others for lying.

a double standard about speech that everyone knows exists, but that the left dare not admit — because its whole existence depends on both the double standard, and not admitting it.

Nice rhetorical trick, but it doesn’t address the situation as it occurred. Nor does it represent a fair representation of reality. Both Christopher Buckley and PJ O’Rourke do satire quite frequently and they are ‘allowed’. Do some have a double standard? Probably. And I’m happy to call them on it. I’m consistent and I think Reynolds ought to be. Reynolds confuses lying about whether something is satire and arguing over whether the satire is appropriate.

Update II: Instapundit Watch has
been revived by the issue.

CAFE Joke

ArchPundit November 20, 2002 No Comments

Reportedly the Bush Administration is going to try and raise the CAFE Standards for light trucks and SUVS by 1.5 mpg. The full story is at the WSJ. It should be at the Onion.