Should college faculties seek political diversity?

Great Debates
1

This editorial cites an article pointing out a breathtaking uniformity of political allegiance in major university faculties. (Unfortunately the article itself is not on the web, so I can’t link to it.)

From other readings, I believe that the imbalance is conciously maintained by the existing faculty. They purposely exclude conservatives today, just as they excluded women 40 years ago.

There are unfortunate consequences of the lack of diversity:

– Conservative scholars are driven out of academia
– Students don’t get a balanced education in their courses
– The campus community becomes unbalanced politically

**Questions for discussion:[ol][li]Is the alleged lack of political diversity real?[]Should colleges seek to attain political balance?[]If so, what steps should be taken?[/ol]**My answers would be:[/li]

  1. The lack of diversity is real
  2. Colleges should seek balance
  3. We need a temporary affirmative action program, to break the power of the “old liberal” network.
2

I suppose affirmative action for right wing academics is out of the question here ?

3

The link goes to a sign-up page for me BTW.

I wonder whether they visited the Economics departments at George Mason University or the University of Chicago.

  1. If so, what steps should be taken?** Pay academics wages comparable to the private sector!** This is, of course tongue in cheek (and self serving), but there’s a point there. If the study is true, it doesn’t necessarily mean that “Conservative scholars are driven out of academia”. It could be that potential conservative scholars are attracted to other jobs.

I’d need to be convinced

before starting to talk about cures.

4

I never thought december would be a “quota queen”.

I’m assuming your op is tongue-in-cheek. Or do you think that every political affiliation should be equally represented by the faculty?

5

Did the study also cover hard sciences and applied professions? I have to say that most of my engineering professors were either rightists or libertarians, and that seems fairly consistent across all the schools I’ve heard about. I’m currently in law school, and more of my professors are political conservatives than not (but that would probably vary wildly depending on where you went.)

If we set up a quota system, does that mean that we can require Bob Jones University to have a bunch of liberal professors start up a Women and Gender Studies Department there?

6

<<I’m assuming your op is tongue-in-cheek. Or do you think that every political affiliation should be equally represented by the faculty?>.

Good points, Mojo. The OP was essentially serious. I’m not saying that conservatives should be exactly 50% of the faculty. However, we ought to change the situation whereby job candidates are routinely disapproved for being conservative.

The affirmative action suggestion was a bit tongue-in- cheek. It’s like the Aesop Fable about belling the cat. The real challenge is how to get the university to commit to ending left-wing dominance of liberal arts departments. Only after that happens can we consider specific tactics.

hawthorne, I will try to find some cites. I’d also be interested in your perception of how things are in Australian universities.

One bit of evidence comes from a book by Judge Robert Bork. He was on the faculty of IIRC Harvard Law School, which, he says, was about 10 to 1 liberal. A collegue told Bork he was voting against a conservative job candidate, because hiring him would “destroy the balance.”

Here’s a cite.

MM, as I read the eidtorial, the study did not include hard sciences.

7

december: *However, we ought to change the situation whereby job candidates are routinely disapproved for being conservative. *

Fiddlesticks. First, you’re going to have to demonstrate that there is a “situation whereby job candidates are routinely disapproved for being conservative”. I have been directly or indirectly involved in conducting several academic candidate searches at a couple of “Most Selective” institutions in the American Northeast over the past twenty years as an undergraduate, graduate student, and faculty member, in departments ranging from Mathematics to History, and in none of them was anyone interested in what the candidate’s particular political affiliation was. I have never seen this information listed on a candidate’s curriculum vitae, nor has it ever come up in discussion of a candidate’s qualifications.

It’s one thing to say, which is perfectly true, that most humanities and social sciences faculty members at major American colleges and universities are on the liberal end of the political spectrum. It’s completely unjustified to assume from that fact that conservative “candidates are routinely disapproved” in hiring searches.

So what are some other explanations for the political imbalance? Seems to me that it’s primarily due to candidate self-selection, in two major areas:

  • As hawthorne said, money. Academics, particularly in the humanities, are notoriously the lowest-paid by far of all professionals for their level of educational attainment. There’s a high correlation between political conservatism and high-paying entrepreneurial/business/professional fields, which means there are comparatively fewer conservatives interested in spending five to seven years living on a grad student stipend, and/or accumulating massive levels of debt, in order to end up with a PhD and a starting salary usually less than $40K.

  • Ideological conflicts with institutional missions. Many high-ranking secular colleges and universities in the US are explicitly committed to certain educational goals that tend to sit better with liberals than with conservatives. For example, my own university outlines its basic educational goals as follows:

“Liberal education”, “differences”, “diversity”, “comparative religions”, “gender issues”, “evolution”: you can easily see why lots of right-wing types (esp. of the religious-fundamentalist/Biblical-literalist sort) would be turned off from serving in an institution with goals like these. Similarly, lots of left-wing types are turned off from applying for jobs at sectarian schools that affirm an institutional commitment to “traditional Christian values” or “testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ” or other ideals linked with religious/political conservatism.

Last time I checked, Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell were private institutions, just as much as Bob Jones University or Brigham Young University. If the latter two institutions have the right to proclaim an institutional mission that happens to repel many liberals, the former have a right to adopt one that happens to repel many conservatives.

The real challenge is how to get the university to commit to ending left-wing dominance of liberal arts departments.

Are you equally concerned about getting, e.g., business schools, law schools, and sectarian Christian colleges to commit to ending right-wing dominance of their faculties? Or do you expect concessions for political “balance” to come only from the liberal side?

8

Kimstu, it would seem to me that your two points are somewhat contradictory. Because if the very mission of the schools is liberal-oriented, then by definition a conservative is not going to be a good fit - not just by his own choice but by the hiring criteria as well. So even if the hirers do not explicitly ask if someone is a “conservative”, I can’t imagine that they don’t pay attention to whether the candidate’s goals are aligned with the school’s. So that if the candidate’s view on the importance of diversity (for example) diverges from the school’s, he might have a much harder time getting hired than someone more in line - I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t. So essentially, the phenomena is true, under another name.

Beyond this, I don’t think it is so significant that the lack of conservative representation is because the essence of these institutions (in the form of their goals) is at odds with conservative thought, as opposed to outright discrimination. There is nothing inherent about education that makes it condusive to liberal thought (AFAIK) - it would seem that the commitment to liberal ideas is just grafted on. (I’m interested in your thoughts on how it became this way - is it purely a financial issues?)

Note that I do agree with you about the merits (or lack thereof) of affirmative action for conservatives. In fact, I don’t have any particular suggestions to rectify the situation - seems like the free market at work, as far as I can see. Still, it does need to be kept in mind when assessing the educational system.

9

Is the alleged lack of political diversity real?

Is a 4 pound robin fat?
Should colleges seek to attain political balance?

Sure, but they won’t. It’s much easier to keep your “own kind” around, it makes indoctrinating the students much easier if it’s a team effort.
If so, what steps should be taken?

There will be no steps taken so the question is pointless.

10

Why should colleges seek to attain “political balance”? Shouldn’t the universities place more emphasis on job performance rather than their personal political beliefs?

11

Right, it shouldn’t just be assumed. I did provide two sources, Bork’s comment and the highlighted portion of the quote. I will look for more evidence.

Got any cites for these contentions?

The above quote essentially says, the courses represent good values, liberals represent good values, hence the courses appeal to liberals.

I could argue the exact opposite. I claim that liberals are opposed to diversity, wnat to ignore differences, and do not want truly liberal education. That’s what this thread is about. Furthermore, conservatives are more interested in religion than liberals. I will grant you that “gender issues” is pretty much a liberal shtick.

Absolutely. Until various non-discrimination laws were passed, they had the legal right to exclude from their faculties: women, Blacks, disabled, and gays. The still have the right to discriminate on certain grounds: baldness, height, athleticism, state of birth. But, being legal doesn’t make it right.

This sounds like aksing Martin Luther King whether he supports fighting discriimination against whites. Take another look at the ratios of liberal to conservative faculties in OP.

Since you asked, I would oppose right-wing dominance of business schools and law schools, if that were the case. However, from what I’ve read, most law schools are dominated by the left, just as humanities departments are. I don’t know about business schools. Got any cites?

I’m also interested in balance as it affects the subject matter at hand. Ppolitical orientation is important in, say, women’s studies, but technical fields havge their own dichotomies. E.g., a colleague of mine found himself excluded from an academic career in economics, because the approach he believed in and studied was out of favor. It’s important to Bayesian statisticians on a faculty, not just frequentists. Fortunately, Bayesians have found themselves more welcome in the last few decades – a victory for diversity that you may not have been aware of.

Finally, I must confess that there’s another source. We tend to pick up philosophy from the people around us. E.g., I was liberal in college; two friends of mine were (very rate) Goldwaterites. I went into the business world and became conservative. They went into academia (in math and statistics) and became liberal.

12

WVW: “Should colleges seek to attain political balance?” Sure, but they won’t.

I ask you what I asked december: do you think that all colleges should seek to attain “political balance”, or just the liberal ones? Should conservative Christian colleges hire a few gay-rights supporters and feminists in order to improve their “political balance”?

IR: *So that if the candidate’s view on the importance of diversity (for example) diverges from the school’s, he might have a much harder time getting hired than someone more in line - I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t. So essentially, the phenomena is true, under another name. *

I think you’re overstating things a bit here. Sure, a candidate who’s an outspoken white supremacist, for example, or openly disapproving of gays, is not going to fit very well with the school’s stated commitment to “tolerance and diversity”, so his chances are pretty slim. But how many of those people are really applying for jobs at elite liberal universities? Most of them wouldn’t be caught dead working at a place that openly promotes “tolerance and diversity”. AFAICT, the selection effect is almost entirely self-selection, not hiring discrimination.

As for other forms of conservatism that don’t directly conflict with the institution’s fundamental goals: as I said, I need to see actual evidence before I’ll believe that such candidates are actually discriminated against. I’ve got several conservative colleagues with right-of-center economics, sociological, or foreign-policy views, and they’re doing just fine in elite liberal institutions, thankyouverymuch—primarily, it seems, because irrespective of their politics, they are bloody damn smart and high-achieving in their fields.

*There is nothing inherent about education that makes it condusive to liberal thought (AFAIK) - it would seem that the commitment to liberal ideas is just grafted on. (I’m interested in your thoughts on how it became this way - is it purely a financial issues?) *

Very interesting question. I suppose the answer depends on whether you believe that higher education is fundamentally linked to openmindedness, and whether you believe that openmindedness is more a liberal quality than a conservative one. (I would strongly agree with the former, but I’m not sure whether I agree with the latter.) Personally, I tend to feel that the “liberal” in “liberal education” is not the same thing as the “liberal” in “liberal politics”, and that the goals of liberal education—openmindedness, critical thinking, appreciation of many different perspectives and traditions, deep and broad knowledge, caring about the truth, caring about others, detachment, integrity, etc.—are equally important to many people of many different political persuasions.

There’s little question, though, that modern liberal education, like social work and organized religion, is majority-political-liberal in terms of the people who work in it and the values it officially espouses. Why is that? I can’t claim to know, but I do think that it has something to do with the economics involved. For some reason, liberals just seem to be more willing to do things that don’t make money. Or perhaps, not to be biased here, conservatives just succeed better at the more desirable money-making fields and the liberals are left scraping the barrel for the rest? I don’t know. I do know that in my own case, I had a pretty lucrative post-college career track in a high-paying technical field, and I deliberately quit and took about an 80% pay cut to go to grad school in a very un-lucrative field that I happened to have fallen in love with, and I do think that that choice is somehow related to my political liberalism, but I’m not sure how.

13

december: *“It’s completely unjustified to assume from that fact [of liberal majorities] that conservative ‘candidates are routinely disapproved’ in hiring searches.”

Right, it shouldn’t just be assumed. I did provide two sources, Bork’s comment and the highlighted portion of the quote.*

No, you provided one source, the anecdote from Bork. The highlighted portion of the quote is evidence only that there is a strong liberal majority in a number of university departments, not that those majorities are the result of discrimination.

To illustrate the difference, recall that university faculties are still overwhelmingly white and male, even at the “elite liberal” institutions we’re talking about here. Is that simply a result of discrimination (and if so, then why do conservatives keep yapping about how minorities and women are unfairly favored by affirmative action policies at such institutions), or are there other reasons?

14

Unless you’re talking about the highlighted portion of the quote from Robert George, not the one in the OP, which goes on to say that “University policies reflect liberal ideological commitments”. That too does not imply that conservatives are discriminated against in hiring, just that institutional goals are more liberal than conservative, which is exactly what I said myself.

15

[hijack]Kimstu, if I can guess your real name, do I win something?[/hijack] :smiley:

As far as the OP goes . . . all I can say is that I read the same blogs december does. If he refuses to recognize that, for example, the Economics department at the University of Chicago is overwhelmingly right-wing, then there’s nothing you can do for him.

16

My hypothesis would be that the overwhelming majority of humanities professors at colleges are liberal because the overwhelming number of people with PhDs in the humanities are liberal. Now, maybe I am wrong on that and there are lots of conservative humanities PhDs who have gone into other fields because they can’t land a job in liberal academia…But color me skeptical.

So, I guess if we need an affirmative action program, we need it at the level of getting these conservatives to get PHDs in English.

[By the way, I do think that higher education and liberal values on social issues are strongly correlated. On economic issues, probably not, although my guess is that there is a division by fields with some fields being more liberal and some more conservative. [For example, in the sciences, I get the impression that chemists are more conservative than physicists (and probably than biologists too). I think engineers are the most conservative of all.]

17

Here are my thoughts on the subject, in no particular order:

  • I think it goes without saying that college campuses, their students, and their faculty, tend to be liberal.

  • I think it’s generally unfortunate, as it gives students a very narrow view of the world. It contributes to a lack of tolerance for other viewpoints, as well. (Witness the many occasions in which prominent conservatives on college campuses are the recipients of death threats, or just general harrassment. Conservative newspapers are stolen and destroyed, etc. Just plain sad.)

  • I believe the problem has a number of causes, including exclusion (whether conscious or unconscious) of conservative applicants by liberal hiring committees, and general lack of desire on the part of conservatives to become teachers. There may be other factors, as well. Exactly how much each factor contributes to the problem, I don’t know.

  • I find it ironic the colleges fall all over themselves to profess their commitments to diversity of superficial qualities such as race and gender, yet have no problem with a complete dearth of diversity of thought, opinion, and ideology.

  • Regardless of the nature of the problem, I would be opposed to any kind of affirmative action program for the same reason I’m opposed to race-based affirmative action. It leads to quotas, and people get hired based on fulfilling these quotas instead of actual merit. I would rather see the most liberal man in the world, who happens to be brilliant, get a position over a complete dumbass who happens to share my conservative ideology.

  • My Pepsi is flat. This has nothing to do with the topic at hand, just thought I’d share.

  • I would also be opposed to anti-discrimination laws wrt conservatives. Not discriminating against race or gender is one thing - you’re born that way, you can’t help it. Ideology is a conscious choice, and legislating against ideology-based discrimination opens the door to a whole slew of problems. How about anti-discrimination laws against ex-criminals? Against people who are just plain assholes? Don’t laugh - lawyers would have a field day with this.

  • With regards to Mojo’s questioning why political orientation should matter:

In general, it probably doesn’t. Learning math from a liberal or a conservative makes no difference. I have no idea whether my engineering professors were liberal or not (though in most cases I would guess not). However, if you’re taking class in history or economics or sociology, in which there exist contraversial issues that are subject to interpretation, it can be very important. If all you ever hear is the liberal interpretation, you may grow to be oblivious that an alternate viewpoint even exists.

  • Yes, I would be upset if the colleges were overwhelmingly conservative. It’s not about my ideology in particular, it’s about balance.
    Jeff
18

Do I agree that academia is tilted to the Left? Sure. That almost goes without saying.

Do I SERIOUSLY want some kind of affirmative action program to get more conservative, Christian, straight white males into, say, the Duke University English department? Of course not. But then, it’s not we right-wingers who are constantly singing the praises of “diversity.” I happen to think “diversity” is greatly overrated. I believe in hiring the best people for jobs, and admitting the best students to our top universities. If it turns out that 40% of Harvard Medical School’s best applicants are Jewish and another 40% are Asian, well, fine! Let the student body be 40% Jewish and 40% Asian. And if other ethnic groups don’t like it, tough- they can tell their kids to study harder!

So, it doesn’t bother me in the least if 95% of the professors in Yale’s Political Science department are Marxists (pssst… December, I made that up- it’s purely arguendo, so don’t use it as a cite). But it SHOULD bother THEM! THEY’RE the ones who go on and on about how much diversity improves the educational experience! If “diversity” is really as enriching as they claim, why wouldn’t THEY be insisting that their department “look (and vote) like America”?

Heck, a few years ago, Pat Buchanan asked (jokingly, but pointedly) why Harvard shouldn’t take religion into account when
admitting students. After all, we’ve often heard liberals argue that since America is a diverse nation, it can only HELP us to be exposed to people from all kinds of backgrounds! And if that means, as liberals often suggest, that Harvard’s student body should be 12% black (reflecting the black population in the US), why not require that the percentage of Catholics or Baptists at Harvard equal the percentage in the population at large?

Hey look, I’M not the one who said diversity was a virtue. That was the LEFT’s idea. Don’t blame me (or December or Pat Buchanan) for taking a stupid idea to its logical conclusion.

19

Why do you assume that if the professor’s a lefty, that all (s)he’s going to present is the lefty viewpoint? If you’ve got evidence that these “lefty” professors are slanting the course material, please present it.

If there’s a professor teaching a course on “religions of the world” who happens to be christian, do you assume that all they’re going to present is the christian viewpoint?

20

I’m curious about a couple of things. I always had the impression that for a lot of people who favor quotas a disparity of numbers was de factor proof of discrimination. I know this is not he legal definition but it seemed to me to be the way institutions who have taken affirmative action to heart have viewed it. Is this a mischaracterization.

Second Kimstu’s remark about ‘white supremacists’ implies that they are merely the extreme end of a spectrum with conservatives a few notches back. I don’t see it this way at all. White supremacists are at least as close to socialists, Maoists, and Kymer-Rouge type leftists. It’s true they usually want little government but they are also political idealists and utopians, diametrically opposed to my understanding of conservatism.
The Nazi’s, who are also usually regarded as the extreme right are a good example, they seem to me very close to Stalinists with nationalism and racialism thrown in. I always thought the reason they didn’t get on with each other is that they were selling two different brands of the same statist utopianism. Hitler is reported to have said that you could easily turn a Communist into a good Nazi but there was noting you could do with those classical liberals (i.e. 19th century liberals now known as conservatives).