The Objective and Practical Need Not Apply
The Powerline guys covered John Tierney's ruminating on why university faculties are overwhelmingly liberal. Tierney simply puts forth the arguments presented to him by various, presumably liberal, academians and allows them to fall flat of their own accord.
Well, as someone who has one foot in academia and one foot out (mostly out, thankfully), I feel there is a better, expository argument. To wit, conservatives are not attracted to environments that are not governed by principles of accountability, objective standards and the discipline of the marketplace – i.e. the university, where faulty scholarship can thrive and demonstrably failed theories can still retain enormous respect. Further, conservatives are generally not attracted to forums that address meaningless issues. The world does not need a new feminist interpretation of Beowulf, or a GLBT view of impressionist painting or some other such typical pursuit of the modern University, and a conservative would chafe at the thought of resources being spent on something of such negligible value.
Well, as someone who has one foot in academia and one foot out (mostly out, thankfully), I feel there is a better, expository argument. To wit, conservatives are not attracted to environments that are not governed by principles of accountability, objective standards and the discipline of the marketplace – i.e. the university, where faulty scholarship can thrive and demonstrably failed theories can still retain enormous respect. Further, conservatives are generally not attracted to forums that address meaningless issues. The world does not need a new feminist interpretation of Beowulf, or a GLBT view of impressionist painting or some other such typical pursuit of the modern University, and a conservative would chafe at the thought of resources being spent on something of such negligible value.
posted by Donny Baseball at 4:43 PM
2 Comments:
I'm not sure that university faculties are overwhelming liberal. The faculty at my current school is overwhelmingly conservative/libertarian. The faculty at Orel Roberts University is probably conservative as hell.
I think the distinction you make really deals with pragmatists, who tend to lean right. My father, for example, forbade my sister from majoring in drama, stating "I'm not paying $30k a year for four years so you can be a waitress." Now that she's majoring in economics, everyone is happy, including my sister.
People who are not pragmatic major in things they love, like French or Art History. When they graduate, they have limited job opportunities; many return to school for either a JD (i.e., they become pragmatic) or a PhD. Armed with a PhD in Medieval Literature, the non-pragmatist is still not highly marketable. The best employment opportunities are in academia, where they go on to create more unemployable people with PhD's in Impressionist Theory.
This is my explanation for the leftward slant in academia. I think it only applies to the Arts though. Physics professors can lean either way, but you'll never hear about their political views because they write about quantum theory, not politics. Also, there are plenty of conservative law professors, which no one seems to mention.
Of course it is a generalization, but I think a fair one. It is well-documented the liberal bias in terms of just numbers, but to me the real effect is in the degree. Where faculty are liberal, they are disproportionately extremely liberal. Where faculty are conservative, they are overwhelmingly mildly conservative, as in the conservo-libertarian bent that you mention. Where I work, the numbers aren't as bad as at, say, the Ivy League, but the liberals are totally deranged liberals and the concervatives are conservo-libertarian. There are zero extreme conservatives and close to zero, moderate liberals, what I call Moynihan liberals.
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