Stanley Fish has a thoughtful post on these and related issues.
I agree with Fish that “affirmative action” for conservatives or some such would be an inappropriate response to the gross ideological imbalance in American academia. (On the other had, a little, okay, a lot, more self-consciousness by left academics regarding whether they are improperly implicitly or explicitly smuggling ideological considerations into hiring–I was once grilled by telephone, after the official interviews, by a senior professor regarding my views on affirmative action when being considered for a lateral chair, with the explicit premise that if I didn’t pass the quiz, the professor would vote against me and rally her allies against me–would be welcome).
And for reasons Fish discusses, even a completely ideologically neutral hiring process would likely perpetuate the one-sidedness of the American academy. I think this is a problem, not because the conservative side is somehow “entitled” to “fair” representation within the academy, but because liberal students are currently not being well-served educationally by their professors.
In particular, studies show that approximately 40% of American adults consider themselves to be conservatives. I would therefore posit that a well-educated American college graduate should have some idea of what mainstream conservatives think, and why they think it.
Yet the late controversy over Rush Limbaugh and the Rams suggests that many well-educated liberals don’t know the first thing about American conservatism. In particular, I found it extremely troubling that so many columnists, bloggers, political figures, and so on, were gullible/ignorant enough to believe that a mainstream figure like Limbaugh publicly praised the assassination of MLK, or stated that “slavery had its merits,” without any apparent controversy at the times these alleged remarks were made, with no diminishing of his 20 million strong audience, and with no harm to his political standing among conservatives and within GOP circles.
I’m a libertarian, not a conservative, and I’ve probably listened to a total of less then ten hours of Limbaugh in my life, but it was obvious to me that these alleged statements were phony. I would have hoped that they would have at least raised eyebrows among liberal commentators, such that they would have demanded a firm source before attributing them to Limbaugh. But no, apparently a significant fraction of well-educated American liberals, the products of our best universities, thought it unexceptional, indeed, completely congruous, that a mainstream conservative figure would praise slavery and James Earl Ray.
I’m not sure what the solution to this problem is, but I do think it’s clear that many product liberal-leaning institutions, starting with the universities, are sufficiently engaged in groupthink that they lack the most basic curiosity about or knowledge of what their ideological adversaries believe, and are instead inclined to dismiss them entirely as mere evil reactionaries. [And they are sufficiently isolated from contact with conservatives that they don't have personal experiences to suggest otherwise; it's easy enough, for example, to go to a top university, on to a major journalism school, and from there to the New York Times or MSNBC or The Huffington Post without every having had a serious intellectual discussion with a conservative colleague or mentor.] That’s not good for the universities, it’s not good for liberals themselves (isn’t easier to defeat one’s enemies if one first understands them?), and it’s not good for America.
UPDATE: In response to some of the comments, I’m hardly suggesting that liberal students be required to study Rush Limbaugh. What I am suggesting is that if the elite academy wasn’t so ideologically one-sided, both with regard to the faculty and the student body, graduates of these universities would have more contact with conservative ideas and conservative individuals (assumedly some thoughtful ones) and would therefore be less likely to adopt an uninformed, stereotypical view of conservatives and conservatism. Undoubtedly, there are some self-identified conservatives who fit liberal stereotypes, just as there are some self-identified liberals who fit conservative stereotypes. But a conservative would be hard-pressed to, say, attend an Ivy League school and not be confronted with people and ideas that defy these stereotypes. By contrast, I think that many liberals who arrive at such a school with stereotypes of conservative people and ideas will not only not find themselves challenged, but will find those stereotypes reinforced by the general intellectual climate, such that they could become an educated adult blogger, staffer at MSNBC, and so forth, and believe just about any nonsense said about any prominent conservative like Limbaugh.
FURTHER UPDATE: This seems like a good place to reprint an anecdote I published once before:
Senior year of college, I took a political economy class from a very left-wing, but very fair-minded, Sociology professor. One of the books he assigned was David Stockman’s The Triumph of Politics. Stockman was a libertarian Republican who served as Reagan’s first budget director. At the beginning of the book, he provided a concise summary of why he thought limited government was beneficial to the American people. When the class discussed the book, one of my fellow seniors exclaimed, “This was very interesting to me! He seems like a good guy… I didn’t know that any conservatives actually cared about people!.” Kudos to this professor for enlightening my classmate, but how does someone get to her senior year of college without being exposed to the radical idea that not all conservatives are innately evil?
I’d add that it’s hardly good for American democracy and public discourse that many students graduate without such enlightenment.
...Max... says:
’m not sure what the solution to this problem is
Shift the bulk of the federal educational assistance to hard sciences, engineering and medicine?
December 1, 2009, 11:40 amtrotsky says:
Listening to my drive-time dose of Limbaugh, I’ve learned that “conservatives” believe global-warming is a hoax ginned up so climatologists and Al Gore can enrich themselves and destroy capitalism, and that Barack Obama is a Marxist-fascist radical also bent on destroying capitalism.
These are the “ideas” to which universities should be exposing students? Seriously?
December 1, 2009, 11:40 amThe Truth Is Out There HAHA says:
I trend liberal but I have plenty of conservative friends. I am well-informed. I read the and watch the news (both the NYT and Fox News, believe that!) because I really like to know what’s going on. I read this blog (and like it!). Most relevant to this post, I believe that I understand where “mainstream conservatives” stand.
The fact are these: It’s totally believable that Limbaugh would make these outrageous statements attributed to him. Limbaugh says outrageous things.
(As a side note: If you don’t like Limbaugh, you may think of the outrageous things he says as ugly and/or really-just-lightly-veiled-wink-wink racist and/or intellectually dishonest. If you like Limbaugh, you think of the outrageous things he says as “thought-provoking” or just “cutting through the PC crap and telling it like it is.”)
December 1, 2009, 11:42 amHouston Lawyer says:
It appears that trotsky is on his second glass of coolaid.
December 1, 2009, 11:45 amDavid Bernstein says:
Limbaugh talks for several hours a day, and is undoubtedly sometimes deliberately provocative to keep his audience engaged/amused. But granting all that, it’s still not believable that (a) he would praise MLK’s assassination and/or slavery; (b) such praise would have attracted no notice/controversy/condemnation from his millions of listeners at the time; and (c) he could make such statements and still be considered “mainstream”.
December 1, 2009, 11:47 amRichard Aubrey says:
ref Limbaugh.
December 1, 2009, 11:52 amAmong other things, the quotes are actually false.
If a group can easily believe that which is false, it would seem the group ought to be rethinking its premises.
But they don’t have to. When you know, you really know, and any further exertion is unnecessary.
byomtov says:
I give you credit for recognizing that Limbaugh is indeed a prominent, mainstream, conservative spokesman.
Now consider some of the things he does say – that Obama’s trip to Hawaii to visit his dying grandmother was really an effort to cover up some birth certificate shenanigans to take one of many examples – and you will come to understand why it’s often difficult to take conservative thought seriously.
December 1, 2009, 11:55 amwm13 says:
Well, my personal solution is to throw those fund-raising solicitations from Messrs. Levin and Edley in the garbage, and to be as rude to any university professor I meet as I can muster the energy for (which often isn’t that much, to be sure). As a crypto-libertarian myself, I certainly wouldn’t be interested in any sort of collective solution.
December 1, 2009, 11:56 amricky says:
I think it’s pretty fair the way it is. If we didn’t force every kid to sit through 13-17 years of Leftist indoctrination, there wouldn’t be many Leftists to argue with.
December 1, 2009, 11:56 amAppalled says:
In other words, they were fake but accurate!
December 1, 2009, 11:59 amRPT says:
The purpose of having more conservatives in academia is so that students can better understand and/or defend Rush Limbaugh?
December 1, 2009, 12:00 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Prominent and mainstream, yes. But who elected/appointed him “spokesman?”
Assuming Limbaugh did say that it’s one thing to entertain nutty political conspiracy theories that are not per se ideological (like birtherism), and another to suggest that Limbaugh praised slavery, or James Earl Ray, without causing any ripples. People often get overly worked up about the purported evils of their political enemies–conservatives did it with Clinton, liberals with W, and now conservatives again with Obama–such that one becomes credulous. But that’s a far different accusation than that Limgaugh makes outrageous and overt racist comments that any idiot would recognize are well outside the accepted bounds of public discourse to the general praise or indifference of the conservative masses.
December 1, 2009, 12:05 pmjpe says:
Limbaugh’s raison d’etre is to cause ripples, so it certainly wouldn’t have surprised me if he had claimed that slavery had merit in the past (I thought such a claim was plausible when I first heard it on the assumption that the claim would’ve been re: some conservative book that claimed as much a few years ago)
December 1, 2009, 12:10 pmp.d. says:
“Yet the late controversy over Rush Limbaugh and the Rams suggests that many well-educated liberals don’t know the first thing about American conservatism.”
David, I think you took the wrong tack on referencing Limbaugh here. He’s conservative, to be sure, but his radio show features conservative commentary and criticism of current events more than a coherent statement of “American conservatism.” A better example would be the liberal reaction to Obama’s opposition over the past several months. A number of liberals can’t fathom why conservatives would be so vehemently opposed to Obama’s policy proposals and are willing to dismiss them as racist rather than guided by conservative ideological opposition to expanding the welfare state. I think this is a better example of the academy’s failure to explain the intellectual underpinnings of conservative thought–if seemingly well educated liberals think small government conservatism boils down to thinly veiled racism, then their teachers probably failed them along the way.
I think the only thing we can learn from the Limbaugh incident, as evidenced by the posters here and the public reaction generally, is that Limbaugh’s public persona is tainted enough that people with only minimal exposure to his show are willing to believe he’s made overtly racist comments in the past. It’s an unfair assumption, but I think it has more to do with non-conservatives misunderstanding Limbaugh than it does with the academy.
December 1, 2009, 12:18 pmgab says:
While in the grip of acute oxycontin intoxication, the guy could have said anything. How could you possibly think otherwise?
December 1, 2009, 12:21 pmWidmerpool says:
Trotsky–was your comment meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek? Or do you read only the New York Times and do not realize how silly your global warming examples have become in the last week or so? I’m not saying that global warming does not exist, but the so-called scientific “consensus” is now in grave doubt–a doubt that would have come sooner if other voices had been heard in the academy.
December 1, 2009, 12:21 pmDavid Bernstein says:
P.D., I might have conflated two separate but related issues. One is whether liberals understand the intellectual underpinnings of conservatism. The other is whether liberals are familiar enough with people who are conservative to understand that they generally have reasons for their views that go beyond the stereotypes of them being religious fundamentalists, racists, or both. The Limbaugh example really goes to the latter more than the former.
December 1, 2009, 12:23 pmGordo says:
p.d. (and Professor Bernstein): If evidence of the mis-education of liberal students is their gullibility over Rush Limbaugh’s non-statements:
Then a large plurality, if not majority, of Republicans today have been similarly miseducated:
See, e.g.:
“Obama is not an American citizen.”
December 1, 2009, 12:24 pm“Obama is a Muslim.”
“The health care bill includes death panels.”
“The health care bill penalizes gun owners.”
“Get the government away from my medicare.”
Bill says:
I have never really believed Fish’s sudden turn to an advocate of academic freedom. He has never fessed up to the old Duke Memogate where a peer-to-peer memo (to the Provost) calling to ban NAS pedagogic (not political) conservatives from serving on key committees was leaked to the Chronicle and campus community. His claim that it was to spark campus discussion is false on the face of it (private emails don’t spark discussions, they stink of backroom “whispering campaigns”). Similarly some of his more recent statements on speech codes and due process gaffs on students are no-long-term-harm, therefore no-foul similarly, beggar belief.
But at least he IS honest that the self-selection of “liberals” in the academy would not be solved by affirmative action. These positions would be seen as “token” conservatives (political and pedagogical — the same people he tried to blackball) or dare I say a “house” conservative. I believe this was done at UC-Boulder with an endowed position. IIRC, it was not well received.
December 1, 2009, 12:24 pmrunape says:
I’m curious, David: do you consider Don Imus a mainstream conservative?
December 1, 2009, 12:25 pmyankee says:
When I went to college, I didn’t learn the first thing about what the liberal equivalents of Rush Limbaugh think. When I broke away from things like Maxwell’s laws and the Fundamental Theorem of Economics, I learned about what various theorists thought. When the subject was politics, we read people like John Rawls, not popular commentators like Al Franken, even though Franken (being more widely read and more accessible) has a lot more influence on “mainstream liberals” than Rawls does.
Would students really be well-served by making them read Liberal Fascism and Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism? Should it be rounded out with a dose of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right? I think not. The only reason to make students read that sort of tripe is in a sociology or political science course on political rhetoric. Same goes for Limbaugh.
December 1, 2009, 12:26 pmpireader says:
“I’m not sure what the solution to this problem is …”
If a solution does occur to you, then let’s apply it to the left-leaning press corps too. And to the right-leaning military officers corps, the right-leaning CEOS of the Fortune 500, the right-leaning Catholic episcopate, etc.
These groups all suffer from ideological ‘group-think’ too, and they’re far more influential in our communal life than academics. So let’s go after the highest-priority targets first … we’ll get to the academics sometime after 2050
December 1, 2009, 12:26 pmLarryA says:
Absolutely. University students should also study socialism and communism and their histories so they recognize when a leader is repackaging these failed ideologies as fresh ideas.
In modern academia “conservative” is defined as “not liberal.” As a result students put together surveys (like the Smith one we recently saw here) where they ask, “Are you very liberal, liberal, neutral, conservative, or very conservative,” never realizing many of us don’t fit anywhere along that scale. There was also a question about where the participant stood on three unrelated issues. I couldn’t really answer it because as a libertarian I don’t follow either the liberal or conservative pattern they expected. I’ve had students and professors who, when they discover I’m a firearm instructor, assume they know where I stand on all kinds of unrelated issues, from gay rights to capital punishment.
Once you start studying all the alternative political philosophies out there, you might even learn that Rush doesn’t speak for all conservatives.
December 1, 2009, 12:31 pmlatinist says:
“A number of liberals can’t fathom why conservatives would be so vehemently opposed to Obama’s policy proposals and are willing to dismiss them as racist rather than guided by conservative ideological opposition to expanding the welfare state.”
I don’t think this is quite fair. It’s not always a question of “can’t fathom”; there’s nothing contradictory about saying “of course, there are all these ideological arguments, but the real motivation for accepting them is something much nastier.” And most people are prone to believe that those who disagree with them have base ulterior motivations (which, of course, they generally do) whereas those who agree with them have rational arguments for their positions (which they often do too). It’s less comfortable to admit that it also works the other way, or that there’s not as much clear distinction between ideology and interest as we like to pretend.
December 1, 2009, 12:31 pmLarryA says:
ROTFLMAO
Who gives to the Democratic Party? Who just got bailed out? Who supports taking private property to give to developers?
December 1, 2009, 12:42 pmKilo says:
Interesting post, and I agree its a problem, for several reasons.
For conservatives who pay some attention to what appears to be going on in the academic world, we see:
- routine harassment of conservative speakers – really anyone who does not conform to the liberal line
- routine suppression of free speech via speech code (see FIRE)
- repeated reports of organized indoctrination of students (U Delaware)
- reports of profession of political orthodoxy as a degree requirement (ed schools)
The ongoing ClimateGate fiasco is a good example of the sort of trouble that can arise when “everybody knows X is true” become orthodoxy and can’t be challenged.
I perceive a growing gap between Main Street and the Academy. I think this is bad for both sides.
Main Street is increasingly reluctant to fund the Academy, particularly the more obnoxious parts. And since funding in fungible, the last incremental dollar goes to the worst, least productive, department or activity.
For this reason, I stopped contributing to my University several years ago.
What can be done?
Be serious about actually recruiting an intellectually diverse faculty. “Diversity” does not = racial quotas.
Recruit some retired military officers (many have graduate degrees) to teach history and other courses.
Balance the speakers brought to campus.
At the Ivies and other “elite” schools, bring back ROTC.
Recruit more mid-career faculty to teaching slots from the private sector. These might be long term (say 7 year) teaching contracts rather than tenure track. Even law schools could do this.
Create some “visiting scholar” slots – 2 year terms, for business people in economics, other real world people in other departments.
If the University really wanted to do this (prevent a heterogeneous set of opinions, etc.) I don’t really think it would be hard to figure out set of things to do.
December 1, 2009, 12:49 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I can’t say I’m an expert, and don’t see Imus as a significant political figure, but I’d say that anyone who voted for John Kerry in 2004 and has had an ongoing love affair with John McCain is probably not a good representative of mainstream conservatism. (And I’m not sure of the relevance, because as I recall when Imus made some outrageous comment, there was a huge backlash, whereas apparently no one was supposed to have noticed when Limbaugh praised James Earl Ray.)
December 1, 2009, 12:51 pmtheobromophile says:
On a legal, not a political, blog, I would hope that people would understand that there’s more to conservatism (and liberalism) than political punditry. To say that Limbaugh or Imus or anyone else is the epitome of conservative scholarship is ridiculous; those people are conservatives, yes, and opine, yes, but they are not engaged in scholarship. Conservatism also goes beyond politics: that’s why the Federalist Society was founded.
Prof. Bernstein’s point, I think, was that liberal schools only teach their students liberal ideas. Students aren’t going to read Thomas Sowell; Women’s Studies classes aren’t going to be assigned Christina Hoff Summers (except, perhaps, to criticise her); and sociology courses aren’t going to discuss the downside to affirmative action, the war on poverty, or any other liberal ideal. Students are then left with the idea – perpetrated by commenters above – that conservatives and libertarians lack thoughtful, rational responses to liberal ideas.
That’s not an education.
December 1, 2009, 1:05 pmtheobromophile says:
Prof. Bernstein: if my memory is correct, you’ve pointed out that “affirmative action” once meant that schools would try to encourage more minority or poor students to apply; some of the problem (which still persists) is that those students didn’t think of college as an appropriate avenue for them. (If this was someone else, mea culpa!)
That said, an old-fashioned “affirmative action” for conservatives and libertarians in academia would be appropriate – and seems to be what you are suggesting. A lot of conservatives, IMHO, look at what goes on in academia and simply do not want to be a part of it, even though they have the brainpower and expertise to contribute. It’s not that these people need to be given a leg up or that quotas need to be established (and, frankly, I’m hard-pressed to find anything more patronising than a dedicated “conservative seat” in hiring); they just need to be encouraged to go into academia.
December 1, 2009, 1:11 pmricky says:
Good documentary on the subject
December 1, 2009, 1:11 pmJRL says:
Maybe academia needs a Rooney Rule.
December 1, 2009, 1:13 pmCJColucci says:
Yankee beat me to it. Colleges are educational institutions. Outside of some kinds of sociology or media or popular culture courses, Rush, et al., have nothing to do with anything that is any proper business of colleges. “Correcting” people’s “erroneous” impressions of these people is no proper business of colleges, unless you think that their proper business is instilling politically correct attitudes. What intellectually worthwhile courses might be taught that aren’t? (History of Conservative Thought in the West would qualify, though I don’t know too many History of Liberal Thought in the West courses that need to be balanced.) What intellectually-important authors are neglected? (Burke and Tocqueville certainly are well represented. The scarier continental conservatives like DeMasitre and Gobineau don’t usually merit inclusion in general courses.)
December 1, 2009, 1:28 pmJoe T. Guest says:
I really don’t give a crap about what liberals think any more. One of the fun things about living in a very liberal east coast 90%+ Democratic registered voter city, is that I’ve been told in no uncertain terms by a fair number of staunch liberals about all the ghastly, stupid and evil traits inherent in conservatives. My silence is always assumed to be assent, and generally most of the folks I experience this with (mouthy lawyers, as a rule) aren’t aware of the possibility that anybody in their right mind could possibly think differently. Their bias is a good thing because it relieves me of the burden to engage them on any level. I’d just as soon not waste my energy being neighborly / chatty / sincere with somebody who has written me off as subhuman without ever having known anything about my beliefs or biography. On the rare occasion when I open my mouth and explain that I disagree, that inevitably produces a moment of silence, followed by this really clumsy backpedaling that is very amusing to see – “oh, you’re different from *them*, you know what I mean, blah blah blah.” This is usually about the point at which I feign mild indignation and wander off to get another drink, and enjoy having helped somebody feel for a moment the social discomfort I used to feel pretty much constantly.
December 1, 2009, 1:28 pmThat Guy says:
Did you study anything in opposition to Keynesian economics? Take an American History class that didn’t portray Hoover as an advocate of free markets and blame both for the depression? Have a Poli Sci professor that thought maybe the idea of a “living constitution” was bunk? Because didn’t, and if you were in their class and disagreed with the dogma they pushed you failed. Their opinion was the “correct” one, because any reasonable person must, of course, hold the same views.
December 1, 2009, 1:29 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Did you actually bother to read the whole post, including the update? You know, the part where I explicitly confrim that I’m NOT advocating that schools teach Limbaugh?
I’d bet you a lot of money that Karl Marx, J.J. Rousseau, and many others get assigned many times more often than does Adam Smith; that college students are far more likely to encounter Foucault or Fanon than Hayek; and so forth and so on.
December 1, 2009, 1:32 pmEarly Bird says:
“Women’s Studies classes aren’t going to be assigned Christina Hoff Summers”
Actually, she came and spoke at my college, where I was minoring in Women’s Studies, and it was in my Women’s History class that I was told of the event and encouraged to attend. While most of the people in the department disagreed with her, many of us attended and debated with her.
“The other is whether liberals are familiar enough with people who are conservative to understand that they generally have reasons for their views that go beyond the stereotypes of them being religious fundamentalists, racists, or both.”
I’m a liberal who grew up in the South (East Tennessee, to be exact). Every conservative I ever met, which, when living there meant approximately two of every three people, was either a religious fundamentalist, a racist, or both.
December 1, 2009, 1:33 pmFace it, that’s what conservatism is in contemporary America.
Assistant Village Idiot says:
Jonathan Haidt out of UVA has interesting experimental data showing that liberals simply do not understand conservative reasoning (are unable to predict responses and reasons), while conservatives score very well understanding liberal reasoning. Haidt spins it in a pro-liberal way, suggesting that conservatives add a lot of unnecessary factors into their moral reasoning which throw liberals off, but the data remain the same. Liberals think they understand conservative arguments, but they do not. The comments here illustrate this wonderfully. Time and again, I find that liberals are simply unable to summarize conservative arguments accurately.
This is part of why I am drawn to the conclusion that the escape from liberalism is not merely an intellectual exercise, but seems to always involve personal struggles with self-honesty as well. That is a harsh thing to say, but you guys are earning it earlier in the thread, aren’t you? What sort of person continues to insist he understands another in the face of repeated protests that “No, you have not understood what I (Limbaugh, Coulter, Buckley, Burke) said. You are misrepresenting it.”
I understand liberal thinking well, having been a young socialist. I am postliberal now.
December 1, 2009, 1:37 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I agree with this, but I don’t think it would make a significant dent in the imbalance. Conservative students don’t seem especially inclined to turn down offers from Harvard etc yet the student bodies of these schools are still overwhelmingly liberal. The demography of the academic elite skews heavily Jewish, secular/very liberal Protestant, urban, and coastal, and these are all highly liberal consituencies.
December 1, 2009, 1:40 pmtheobromophile says:
Early Bird: if one were to grow up in certain areas within the Mississippi Delta or an inner city, two out of three people might be raging liberals, and would be liberals because they all want government hand outs, welfare for their babies that they had at age 16, and restitution for slavery.
Have I just proved that modern liberalism is all about welfare for crack whores and wealth redistribution? Or is it more plausible that in a country with 300 million people who are evenly divided amongst two political ideologies, each ideology will encompass a great many people and, dare I say it, a diversity of thought?
(Incidentally, you’ve just proved Prof. Bernstein’s point about not knowing what conservatives think or why we think it.)
December 1, 2009, 1:42 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Well, there you have it. And liberals wonder why they don’t win elections.
December 1, 2009, 1:43 pmJoe T. Guest says:
There ya go, Early Bird. That’s why I don’t even bother any more. Many of the liberals I’ve known had that attitude when I was in undergrad, then in law school, and now more than ever I hear the same thing all the time out of the mouths of liberals just going on about whatever random issue is in their mind, as if “racist conservative” and similar epithets were the refrains to odd little religious songs. I’m happy not to associate with people who think this way. It’s really not even worth discussing things with you. To the extent my undergrad profs were a little biased, and my law school profs were very biased, I’m happy that this was the case; it made me grow up a lot and grow comfortable with the fact that a lot of liberals were going to make sticking to my beliefs (such as in low marginal tax rates, the importance of the nuclear family, etc) as socially uncomfortable as possible.
So, as my kid would say, “whatever.”
December 1, 2009, 1:43 pmtheobromophile says:
Mea culpa! I should have been more clear; I meant in academic hiring for professorships.
December 1, 2009, 1:45 pmLarryA says:
I would quibble that students are then left with the idea that conservatives lack thoughtful, rational responses to liberal ideas.
Few college students know that libertarians exist.
See?
A semester course in how to fill out your income tax, including all of the arcane deductions each and every one of which is guaranteed to benefit the “little people,” would leave a lot of students frothing at the mouth. Follow that up with a semester on government regulations pertinent to running a small business.
December 1, 2009, 1:59 pmMartinned says:
I have no dog in this fight, since none of this even vaguely resonates with the way academia works on this side of the Atlantic. (Or how media and politics work.) Still, I have to ask: Say What?
December 1, 2009, 2:02 pmtheobromophile says:
Martinned: for the first time in 30 years, a Democrat won the majority of the popular vote, and he ran as an open Christian on a budget-neutral, no-new-taxes for most Americans platform. Wow. One in three decades. That one ran as a Republican Lite. Wow. Congrats. Clearly, hard-core liberalism is sweeping the nation.
December 1, 2009, 2:06 pmgeokstr says:
Mr. Bernstein, you need to qualify that statement, as the last election proved.
Liberals don’t win elections in this center-right nation if they tell the truth about what they really believe and want to do if elected. They do just fine when they dissemble, spin, lie about what their real plans are, and run far to the right of their real beliefs.
December 1, 2009, 2:12 pmHouston Lawyer says:
If you take away from liberals the belief that all conservatives are racist fundamentalists and that the government will save us from all evil, they have nothing left to believe in. So they don’t only believe that Rush applauded the killing of MLK, they need to believe it. Liberalism has become nothing more than a pose that allows the poser to feel good about himself for being liberal.
December 1, 2009, 2:12 pmRyan Waxx says:
Ah, another DB post. You can tell which posts they are without even looking at the author. How? They’re the ones where the author had to add notes at the end dispelling strawmen at the end.
Tells you a lot about the quality of the man’s critics, it does.
December 1, 2009, 2:13 pmCJColucci says:
Did you study anything in opposition to Keynesian economics? Take an American History class that didn’t portray Hoover as an advocate of free markets and blame both for the depression? Have a Poli Sci professor that thought maybe the idea of a “living constitution” was bunk?
1. Yes
December 1, 2009, 2:15 pm2. Yes
3. Not applicable
CJColucci says:
I’d bet you a lot of money that Karl Marx, J.J. Rousseau, and many others get assigned many times more often than does Adam Smith; that college students are far more likely to encounter Foucault or Fanon than Hayek; and so forth and so on.
Well, sure. For one thing, there are a lot more courses in which Marx, Rousseau, Foucault, and Fanon are relevant than Smith (whose ideas are usually covered in the very popular Economics 101 course, taken by many students who will never be exposed, as I was not, to F&F) or Hayek, though it’s certainly not hard to find either of the latter covered somewhere in the curriculum.
December 1, 2009, 2:22 pmRyan Waxx says:
That might actually be all that’s needed. Only a total fool would base his career plans on a position where you have to hope you can hide your personal beliefs well enough to get past a pack of gatekeepers who’re looking for heretics to burn. Being encouraged might give the person in question hope that he might get past that gauntlet.
December 1, 2009, 2:30 pmJK says:
So the moral of the story is that liberals are a homogeneous group of dimwits with the shared fault of believing that conservatives are a homogeneous group of dimwits?
December 1, 2009, 2:32 pmgeokstr says:
The only course that Marx should be taught in is:
Why Believing in Anything This Nitwit Ever Said Inevitably Leads to Mass Slaughter 101
December 1, 2009, 2:33 pmCountDuckula says:
Hayek, and the Austrian School generally, is not considered part of “mainstream” economics. If conservative thought should be taught in universities because it’s mainstream, how do you figure that fringe economic thought should be taught? I understand that it may be your own preferred ideology. Not surprisingly, George Mason is one of the few universities with a significant Austrian contingent in their economics department.
Similarly, Marx is not taught in economics departments. Insofar as Marx IS taught, it’s in literature / sociology / history / critical theory / etc. If you can show me some body of Adam Smith-centric literary criticism, I will concede that it should be taught in literature programs.
December 1, 2009, 2:33 pmbyomtov says:
Prominent and mainstream, yes. But who elected/appointed him “spokesman?”
The huge numbers of conservatives who listen and take him as gospel and repeat his points endlessly.
The Republican politicians, all the way up to Cheney, who:
1. Appear on his program.
2. After disagreeing with something he said or criticizing him in some way are obliged to issue humble apologies. Can’t disagree with Rush, you know.
In short, the market for conservative thinking elected him.
Assuming Limbaugh did say that it’s one thing to entertain nutty political conspiracy theories that are not per se ideological (like birtherism) , and another to suggest that Limbaugh praised slavery, or James Earl Ray, without causing any ripples.
But it’s fair to draw the conclusion that this prominent, mainstream conservative, deeply respected in right-wing circles, is a nut case with highly dubious judgment and integrity.
The fact is that if conservatives want their arguments taken seriously, they need to find people who can advance them seriously. No one is doing that. Worthwhile conservative ideas are being drowned out not by liberals but by the loud and stupid branch of the conservative movement.
December 1, 2009, 2:42 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Early Bird,
Every conservative I ever met, which, when living there [East Tennessee] meant approximately two of every three people, was either a religious fundamentalist, a racist, or both.
Well, on your own showing, you’ve met Christina Hoff Sommers, so she must be
(a) a “religious fundamentalist”;
(b) a “racist”;
(c) both; or
(d) not “conservative.”
Which is it? I can’t be the only one here who’s curious. (Or is it only “conservatives” in East Tennessee who are always one or the other?)
December 1, 2009, 2:47 pmCJColucci says:
The only course that Marx should be taught in is:
Why Believing in Anything This Nitwit Ever Said Inevitably Leads to Mass Slaughter 101
How about 19th Century European Intellectual History? Modern Political Thought? History of Economic Thought?
This is political correctness run amok.
December 1, 2009, 2:54 pmEric Rasmusen says:
A commentor brought up the following paper, which is indeed interesting. Here’s citation info on it:
When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral
Intuitions that Liberals may not Recognize.
Haidt, Jonathan haidt@virginia.edu
Graham, Jesse1
Social Justice Research; Mar2007, Vol. 20 Issue 1, p98-116,
http://www.eca.com.ve/hsclassweb/rsonnet/TOK/Assignments
/AoK%20Ethics/haidt.graham.2007.when-morality-opposes-
justice.pdf
Researchers in moral psychology and social justice have agreed
December 1, 2009, 2:59 pmthat morality is about matters of harm, rights, and justice. On this
definition of morality, conservative opposition to social justice
programs appears to be immoral, and has been explained as a
product of various non-moral processes such as system
justification or social dominance orientation. In this article we
argue that, from an anthropological perspective, the moral domain
is usually much broader, encompassing many more aspects of
social life and valuing institutions as much or more than
individuals. We present theoretical and empirical reasons for
believing that there are five psychological systems that provide the
foundations for the world’s many moralities. The five foundations
are psychological preparations for detecting and reacting
emotionally to issues related to harm/care, fairness/reciprocity,
ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Political
liberals have moral intuitions primarily based upon the first two
foundations, and therefore misunderstand the moral motivations
of political conservatives, who generally rely upon all five
foundations. [
Eric Rasmusen says:
Going back to Prof. Bernstein’s personal example. Suppose someone emailed and said he was going to veto Bernstein’s hiring at the state university because Bernstein opposed affirmative action. Is that legal?
If he said he was opposing Bernstein because Bernstein voted Republican (assume B did), that would be illegal, as I understand it. But affirmative action is a university policy issue. Thus, is one’s view on it a legit basis for hiring?
December 1, 2009, 3:02 pmDavid Bernstein says:
I don’t mean to be too obscure here, but these quotes themselves suggest that y’all should actually have had to read Smith and Hayek (one hint: Hayek spent the last 40+ years of his career writing about topics other than economics…)
December 1, 2009, 3:03 pmrarango says:
JK neatly summarizes the state of American political discourse!
December 1, 2009, 3:05 pm(I always thought Edmund Burke had something to do with conservatism, and not Rush Limbaugh–must have gotten that wrong)
sk says:
“Yet the late controversy over Rush Limbaugh and the Rams suggests that many well-educated liberals don’t know the first thing about American conservatism. In particular, I found it extremely troubling that so many columnists, bloggers, political figures, and so on, were gullible/ignorant enough to believe that a mainstream figure like Limbaugh publicly praised the assassination of MLK, or stated that “slavery had its merits,” without any apparent controversy at the times these alleged remarks were made, with no diminishing of his 20 million strong audience, and with no harm to his political standing among conservatives and within GOP circles.”
I think you are starting from an incorrect premise: that the things that columnists write (about conservatives in this instance) are actually things that those columnists believe themselves. I don’t believe public debate in our society works that way. Rather, both sides make arguments that are believable-whether they are correct or not.
On occasion, those arguments can be proven to be right or wrong, and thus accepted or rejected into conventional wisdom. But for the most part, arguments aren’t addressed after they are made; they are used to shape the subconscious conventional wisdom.
Thus, the two sides tend not to address each other, so much as make parallel arguments shaping that subconscious zeitgeist.
In the Rush Limbaugh Rams case, the two arguments were 1) Rush is a racist that praised slavery, and 2) no he’s not, and conservatism shouldn’t be a black flag for an NFL owner, and, well, 1) won.
First, because it would be hard to disprove: you’d have to review twenty years of hours of radio broadcasts per day to disprove it. And second, its a sexy argument: Rush is Racist is sexier than Conservatism should be allowed to own NFL franchises.
This isn’t unique to the Rush/Rams situation: its basically endemic to the way our society makes arguments. When George Will makes an argument, he is rarely rebutted point by point by a liberal correspondent (say, Molly Ivans). He simply makes an argument, Molly makes an argument from the other side, and nobody cross checks anybody. With several hundred, or several thousand, conservative correspondents making arguments every day, and the same number of liberals making arguments every day, and I as a reader reading perhaps a total of 5 of them, it is very unlikely that I will actually read a structured debate (side A makes points, side B rebuts those points, etc).
Which is why arguments don’t have to be believed: they merely have to be believable. Nobody is likely to check anyway.
This is also why spokesmen making statements have no motivation to actually say anything. They are simply adding to the noise: nobody is going to pay attention to whether they actually answered a particular question on CNN last night, so they might as well just answer with sugar-coated pablum.
Sk
December 1, 2009, 3:07 pmDavid Bernstein says:
And what do you say about the fact that Al Sharpton was treated by all the Democratic candidates as a perfectly reasonable and respectable candidate for president? And who exactly is the great intellectual liberal hero of today? Michael Moore? Al Gore?
My point is not that Rush Limbaugh is an intellectual giant,or that he never says anything questionable. Rather, it’s that one would have to be have an ignorant and stereotypical view of modern conservatism and conservatives to believe that someone could both be in his position of prominence and also do things like praise James Earl Ray for assassinating MLK. To believe the latter, you would have to think that not only is Limbaugh a racist, but that he’s also a fool too stupid to recognize that he would be marginalizing himself from any influence among non-avowed racists with such comments, and that his fans are overwhelmingly racists and fools as well who wouldn’t find such rhetoric offputting or marginalizing.
December 1, 2009, 3:11 pmCJColucci says:
Unlike most acolytes of Smith, I’ve actually read The Wealth of Nations cover-to-cover. A marvelous, if somewhat dull, book. Its survey-course-level abridgment, however, is rather brief and simple, and almost everyone who goes to college at all gets exposed to it. Not to mention that the ideas often percolate through without attribution. Economics has been accused of physics envy, and physics doesn’t usually teach Galileo, Newton, or the like, but just plain physics. Much of Smith is taught not as Smith but as just plain Economics. As for Hayek, I’ve never read his strictly economic work, and I doubt many non-specialists have. I have read non-economic stuff, like The Road to Serfdom, another marvelous book, and one which I, like John Maynard Keynes, find largely agreeable. I suspect that many people who think they know what Hayek says would find much of its content surprising. Still, there aren’t many courses, except for highly-specialized ones, where one would expect it to be assigned.
December 1, 2009, 3:13 pmCountDuckula says:
But Hayek is clearly most famous for his work in Economics… I seem to recall he won some sort of prize or something, no?
Even as to Hayek’s political writings, I have to reiterate my first question: if we want conservative thought to be better represented in universities because it is “mainstream” (eg “40% of adult Americans are conservative”), why do we want Hayek taught? He is not a conservative. I believe he might have written an essay about this, no?
At some point this argument stopped being “we should have ideological balance in universities” and became “we should have more of David Bernstein’s personal beliefs taught in universities”.
December 1, 2009, 3:16 pmConnie says:
Uh, you are overlooking the popular vote in 2000.
December 1, 2009, 3:18 pmAssistant Village Idiot says:
byomtov – you found Buckley persuasive, then? Friedman, or hey, Churchill? The folks at NRO, Commentary, AEI, Manhattan Institute, City Journal, Hudson Inst…?
I thought not. You called for intelligent exposition, but…oh dear. Perhaps simple issues of self-honesty are indeed at issue, as above.
Thank you for giving further evidence for my point at #37.
December 1, 2009, 3:20 pmMark Field says:
And here I was believing all the commenters here who have vehemently assured me that Obama is an extreme leftist (or fascist; or maybe both).
December 1, 2009, 3:24 pmCountDuckula says:
If you actually read the paper you see that the things liberals “do not understand” are (1) group loyalty, (2) concern with purity/contamination, and (3) deferral to authority.
However, both groups are able to understand (4) harm and (5) fairness/reciprocity.
So yeah. Conservatives can keep 1, 2, and 3, thanks.
December 1, 2009, 3:24 pmgeokstr says:
This is simply untrue. Groups like the Orwellian-named FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) and Media Matters, both of which are far left, have been recording and pouring over Limbaugh’s radio and TV shows, his books, columns and speeches since at least the early 1990s, and the left still had to make up the “quotes” about Ray and racism out of whole cloth.
I recall an article by FAIR maybe 10 years ago that “proved” Limbaugh was a liar, because they had found 10 things after all that research that Limbaugh had gotten “wrong”. All ten turned out to be matters of opinion, or urban myths that had been accepted by the media as true, but heavily disputed by the right.
December 1, 2009, 3:27 pmCountDuckula says:
No, in 2000 Gore won a plurality of the popular vote, despite losing in the electoral college.
December 1, 2009, 3:30 pmgeokstr says:
And after the last election, and even looking at the comments right here on this site, leftists are not just as prone to 1, 2, and 3?
Riiiiiiiggggghhhhtt.
I’m still looking to unload that full sized airport with three passengers a week in Murtha’s district – cheap – if you’re interested.
December 1, 2009, 3:31 pmED Maven says:
To say that these folks are “smuggling” ideology into hiring decisions is like saying that Sherman smuggled cavalry into Georgia.
December 1, 2009, 3:34 pmgeokstr says:
But, Mr. Bernstein, you realize that you have just perfectly summarized the left’s actual views of Limbaugh and his fan base, don’t you?
The leftist commenters here are going – huh? Bernstein obviously knows the truth too, so why is he being so disagreeable?
December 1, 2009, 3:43 pmCountDuckula says:
According to Haidt’s work, no. I’m not well-enough read in that area to comment. Regardless, it seems that you and the Assistant Village Idiot have something to discuss. Do liberals or do liberal not use all 5 of the domains in assessing morality? What are the normative implications of doing so or not doing so?
December 1, 2009, 3:47 pmCDU says:
Al Gore only won 48.4% of the popular vote in 2000, a plurality, but not a majority.
December 1, 2009, 3:48 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Hayek is most influential for his social thought, though he did win an economics Nobel.
The original question was, “What intellectually-important authors are neglected?” Hayek is important, and he’s neglected. Whether or not he considered himself a conservative, he’s among the most influential intellectuals among conservatives, and is neglected in part because he’s deemed to be conservative.
But again, it’s not like most liberals, or most conservatives, necessarily have a completely coherent worldview based on the specific writings of specific authors. It’s that one can easily be an allegedly well-educated graduate of an elite university, and not have any understanding at an academic or practical level of what around 40% of your fellow Americans think and why. I’ve yet to see anyone defend this as a good thing. The best I’ve gotten is “liberals don’t need to understand anything about conservatives, because conservatives are, in fact, either simply racists or simply fundamentalists or simply both.” Even that perspective, if true, would beg the question of why the obviously superior liberal perspective can’t get more than 20% or so the public to adopt it.
December 1, 2009, 3:50 pmHutz says:
I don’t disagree about the value of ideological balance in academia, BUT here is the difficulty that I think your story of the grilling on affirmative action illustrates:
Members of a faculty do more than just teach. They also have input in how the department is run and often on who gets hired. If a faculty member believes that affirmative action on the basis of race is important to hiring (rightly or wrongly), isn’t it natural that he would want to avoid bringing in new faculty members likely to vote against that practice?
The difficulty is that views on how a department should be run often tend to correlate with ideology, especially in fields where ideology matters most to how the subject is taught.
Even someone with a genuine commitment to ideological balance in teaching might reasonably oppose such balance in department policy making (just as I support the free speech rights of those with whom I disagree, but would not vote for them to become my political representatives). How would you get around this?
December 1, 2009, 3:51 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Hutz, you raise a very good, and not easily answered question. It’s not just departmental policy. If you’re used to hanging around the history dept. lounge swapping jokes about evil Christian evangelicals, commiserating or celebrating with your like-minded colleagues after the elections, and so forth, the idea of introducing a colleague who will upset this comfortable equilibrium is undoubtedly disconcerting.
At least in law schools and at least anecdotally, I think for this reason the hardest thing is to get the first non-liberal in. After that, it’s okay to have several, because the unanimity has already been broken. But after several, they begin to potentially have significant influence on policy matters, at which time implicit or explicit resistance to hiring any more arrives.
This almost means that non-liberals who seem to be the go-along to get-along types with strong “political” instincts will have an easier time of it than those who seem more committed to their perspective, although it’s the latter who will likely be making more interesting and less conventional academic contributions. (And, FWIW, people on the far left complain about exactly the same dynamics vis a vis the typical mainstream liberal-left faculty).
December 1, 2009, 4:05 pmNunzio says:
I remember reading Daniel P. Moynihan’s 1965 report about the black family back in college in the early 1990s.
Moynihan was a very thoughtful liberal, and there are certainly a number of them, as well as a number of thoughtful conservatives that I read in college.
I suppose I lean more to conservatism because it seems to take a realistic view of how people do act and that behavior is very hard to change. I agree with liberal ideals, but do not think they can be achieved.
December 1, 2009, 4:15 pmStrict says:
Could the disparity (more liberal than conservative professors) have to do with the teaching profession itself?
Is there something inherently liberal about teaching? (Or about taking a teaching job that pays half of what you could earn elsewhere?)
December 1, 2009, 4:17 pmJasmindad says:
Limbaugh didn’t say what he was alleged to have said about MLK assassination, but is his recent encouragement of military coup by suggesting that the West Point cadets should detain Obama when he goes there to give tonight’s talk any better? Is that to be considered a part of the legitimate view spectrum in the country?
Earlier DB asked if Michael Moore isn’t more of a liberal icon than Al Gore. Hardly. I think most liberals are embarrassed by Moore’s stunts. He was a lot of fun in the beginning with his harassing of Roger Smith of GM — it provided a nice counterpoint to the 90′s consensus of globalization doing “God’s work.” Fahrenheit 911 had moments of brilliance but many more moments of cringe, as when he presented Saddam’s Baghdad as this little bit of Eden. His health care movie presented Cuba as heaven — most liberals may not think that Castro is worth the enmity we heap on him, but they also don’t think he is any kind of model. So, no, it is nowhere near the case that Liberals think more highly of Michael Moore than of Al Gore.
December 1, 2009, 4:30 pmgeokstr says:
Well said, and why I am conservative as well. I think if you took a reasonably objectively worded survey of conservatives, not many would disagree with liberal goals. The whole problem is in how you get there, and how fast, given human nature. The liberal, unfortunately, believes that human nature is readily and infinitely malleable, and when that just won’t seem to happen, realizes that, well, hey, some eggs just have to be broken.
December 1, 2009, 4:32 pmbyomtov says:
And what do you say about the fact that Al Sharpton was treated by all the Democratic candidates as a perfectly reasonable and respectable candidate for president?
I say that comparing the popularity and status of Sharpton, whom I despise, among liberals, to that of Limbaugh among conservatives is ridiculous.
you found Buckley persuasive, then? Friedman, or hey, Churchill? The folks at NRO, Commentary, AEI, Manhattan Institute, City Journal, Hudson Inst…?
I thought not. You called for intelligent exposition, but…oh dear. Perhaps simple issues of self-honesty are indeed at issue, as above.
Since I’m not a conservative it’s obvious that I don’t find these people, broadly speaking, persuasive. Do you maintain that it is dishonest to disagree with them? That’s bizarre.
I have read varying amounts, in some cases nothing, of the material you list.
I found that Buckley sometimes, not always, made reasonable arguments, though of course I generally disagreed. Friedman was certainly a brilliant economist, to say the least, and I view his political arguments similar to the way I view Buckley’s. He got a bit carried away with some things, but at least recognized the need for facts and logic. I’m not much familiar with Churchill’s opinions on domestic policy matters.
As for NRO, the less said the better. As DeLong as repeatedly pointed out, their economic commentary is brainless, and some of their other writers – Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Lopez – are often worse. I remember reading a piece by someone there arguing that Bill Ayers had ghost-written Obama’s books. Serious exposition? Enough said.
I don’t read very much that comes out of the various conservative “think tanks.” What I have read hasn’t usually been impressive, though again it far surpasses Limbaugh in tone. No doubt some of the writers are better than others. My impression is that they are much more driven by ideology than by scholarship. That AEI lists John Yoo as one of its scholars does not make me view it favorably.
December 1, 2009, 4:37 pmPerseus says:
That begs the question as to what thinkers are viewed as “relevant” to the course and why there are so many courses where those thinkers are relevant.
December 1, 2009, 4:38 pmRyan Waxx says:
Oh come on. Do you actually think Obama is going to be detained, or are just mouthing the latest talking point from your local ninny who listens to Rush with grinding teeth so the moment he hears something that sounds bad he can rush to his blog and Inform America Of His Evil?
Come back to reality, then we’ll talk.
December 1, 2009, 4:49 pmRyan Waxx says:
Fine. Which election was Limbaugh a candidate for president in?
December 1, 2009, 4:50 pmgeokstr says:
This is nuts.
I just went and read the transcript and it’s obvious he’s just making a joke. Do liberals have no sense of humor, or is it only that they have a blind spot for laughing when it comes at one or their own? Even I can laugh when I watch the Daily Show or SNL, even though it’s almost uniformly directed at the right. Hell, even SirCastro’s digs at the right are sometimes humorous.
After reading this and many of the recent threads on (supposed) AGW and other topics, I remain even more firmly convinced that the worldviews and mindsets of liberals and conservatives are now so far divorced from each other that compromise is impossible, and that liberals hate us so much that there will never be an understanding either. It looks like violence is inevitable. When and how bad it will be are the only questions left.
December 1, 2009, 4:50 pmCJColucci says:
For one thing, there are a lot more courses in which Marx, Rousseau, Foucault, and Fanon are relevant than Smith
December 1, 2009, 4:58 pmThat begs the question as to what thinkers are viewed as “relevant” to the course and why there are so many courses where those thinkers are relevant.
Would you think that a course in 19th Century European Intellectual History is an appropriate course to offer? Or that Marx is relevant to such a course? Or that Modern Political Thought is an appropriate course, or that Marx is relevant to such a course? Or that History of Economic Thought is an appropriate course to offer, or that several lectures on Marx would be relevant? How about History of Communism–offered by a professor who is very much against it? It isn’t begging the question unless there’s an actual question to beg. We offer courses, and assign thinkers, not because they are “right,” or agree with us, but because they are interesting or consequential. I learned most of what I know about Plato from someone who thought Plato was full of shit. Lots of people think Plato is full of shit, but we teach him because he is interesting and important — perhaps most interesting and most important to people inclined to think he’s full of shit. Same with Marx, who– sorry if this offends anyone — is much more interesting and consequential than Hayek, whose main virtue is that he was correct.
LN says:
Do you actually think Obama is going to be detained… Come back to reality, then we’ll talk.
So Limbaugh is out of touch with reality. Even the dittohead says so.
December 1, 2009, 5:01 pmloki13 says:
One quick comment- I hate cherrypicked statistics. For example, the whole canard about “winning the popular vote” for Presidents so as to exclude the two Clinton presidencies when there was a significant third party. But just as an FYI, here’s the total number of “majority popular vote elections won” for president, by party, since the Kennedy administration (when neither Kennedy nor Nixon received a majority):
Democrats: Three elections (LBJ, Carter, Obama)
GOP: Five elections (Nixon, RR*2, GHWB, GWB)
Big whoopin’ deal. The significance, either way? Nada.
Source
December 1, 2009, 5:05 pmwooga says:
I think this whole thread could have been shortened to: Go read Allan Bloom’s “Closing of the American Mind.” The guy already identified this rising problem over 20 years ago.
And seriously, anybody who claims to teach in the humanities should be required to read that book.
December 1, 2009, 5:11 pmgeokstr says:
You are absolutely correct, of course. Marx was definitely more consequential. I think that an honest accounting will show that the writings and philosophies of Hayek were responsible for, oh, I dunno, maybe a hundred million less deaths than Marx’.
December 1, 2009, 5:13 pmEarly Bird says:
I never met Christina Hoff Summers, I attended a lecture she gave, a lecture that had nothing to do with either race or religion, and everything to do with gender, so I don’t know Ms. Summers views on either race or religion.
My larger point was that Mr. Bernstein finds it inconceivable that racism or religion have any sway in the modern conservative movement. From my vantage point, those are the lodestars of the movement. That vantage point, I might add, is from actually knowing and talking to real live conservatives, in private, not listening to their public statements on the radio or reading their op eds in the WSJ. And it was a very large number of conservatives, as I thought I made clear, not “I know a guy who voted for Bush, and he’s a racist/religionist/etc.” No, it was a broad cross section of the electorate in Knox, Sevier, and Blount Counties over a fifteen-year period. You can think that these folks aren’t representative of the broader conservative movement, but remember, this is just about the only region of the country that has reliably voted republican recently.
And Theo, very funny comparing East Tennessee to the Mississippi Delta. As they say back home, them’s fightin’ words!
December 1, 2009, 5:22 pmGuest14 says:
I get my views on conservative thought, such as it is, from Volokh Conspiracy comments. As far as I can tell, it consists primarily of anti-intellectualism, unfounded moral arrogance, racism, homophobia, sexism, and just general unpleasantness.
December 1, 2009, 5:46 pmRyan Waxx says:
So to believe what you say here, we’d have have to believe that you knowingly and voluntarily associated with a large number of racists, palling around with them to the extent that they revealed their secret thoughts to you.
*cough*cough**bullshit**cough*.
More likely, you asked some of your distant associates what they thought of illegal immigration or affirmative action and any ‘wrong’ answers meant they were racists.
Your viewpoint is so far out of the mainstream that it’s almost certain the observer is the problem, not the observed. Not that this revelation will benefit you in any way, since someone who’s that far gone is hardly likely to come back.
December 1, 2009, 5:46 pmRyan Waxx says:
Are you planning to troll every thread I’m in?
December 1, 2009, 5:49 pmJohn Moore says:
Early Bird:
Thread win!
December 1, 2009, 5:56 pmNunzio says:
Early Bird,
I think DB is talking about the type of conservative intellectual writing that would be presented in college courses, as opposed to the political coalition that makes up the Republican party.
As for racism and religion, I’ll defer to your experiences in the greater Yoknapatawpha County area.
December 1, 2009, 5:59 pmJohn Moore says:
I once spent an enjoyable two week road trip where my companions in the vehicle were strongly liberal. After many discussions, one of them turned to me and said “I didn’t realize there were conservatives you could have an intelligent conversation with!” I was too amazed to respond.
Now, combine that with a certain SCOTUS ruling allowing racial discrimination to provide diversity of ethnic experience at a Michigan Law School, and…
How about discrimination to provide a diversity of outlook experience at our universities? It looks like the logic applies pretty well, and its clear (also from posters to this blog) that our students are deprived of necessary experience of diversity of outlook (conservative/liberal in the US define more than just political leanings in most cases).
We need to have Chancellors of Outlook Diversity, and Conservative Studies departments. We need quotas (of at least the hidden variety). We need outreach programs.
Seriously… the overwhelming lack of conservatives in humanities sections of Universities is a scandal and a disaster.
December 1, 2009, 6:02 pmegd says:
Even assuming that conservative/libertarian theories are invalid and racist/sexist/homophobic (although I must admit, I’ve never met someone who was afraid of homosexuals), shouldn’t college students at least be made aware of the arguments and the foundation of the arguments?
BA degrees, if they are of any value, should at least teach students how to think critically, evaluate arguments, and be able to intelligently respond to dissenting opinions. Winning people over to your way of thinking should include more intellectual depth than shouting “RACIST!” every time your opponent opens his mouth.
The lack of Conservative teaching in academia is even more proof of the failures of our educational system to educate individuals.
December 1, 2009, 6:20 pmluagha says:
I do not want to be in a lifeboat with you. (1,2,3)
December 1, 2009, 6:29 pmI do not want to serve on a jury with you. (1,2,3)
I think you would be a terrible coworker at any place of employment. (1,3 mostly)
SuperSkeptic says:
It seems “conservatives” just aren’t made out for teaching, just like blacks just aren’t made out to be firefighters. It’s not like there’s an inside culture in either profession dissuading the outside group in any way – it’s all a meritocracy.
All the conspirators are like black firefighters.
Mr. Fish is correct when he notes, in turn-the-other-cheek fashion: “The answer is that it would be better if all sides acknowledged that “diversity” is a word that has lost whatever usefulness it may have had and has become an umbrella rationale for importing political criteria into the process of academic decision-making. We should be done with it.”
I wonder what MLK Jr. would do if he were a “conservative” and his goal was tenure at X University?
December 1, 2009, 6:36 pmYankev says:
I first encountered former military officers (some retired, some reservists, some honorably dishcharged) as classmates in law school, and it opened my eyes to how much nonsense about them I had assumed as an undergrad.
I like Heinlein’s idea: no high school diploma unless you complete a non-credit course in Moral Philosophy, taught by a retired military officer.
December 1, 2009, 6:37 pmKilo says:
I’m curious about the claims way up-thread that conservatives are just naturally not attracted to the academic world.
Prior to the 60′s, say, when I understand the current admittedly liberal professors began working, what was the political orientation of the universities, vs. the general population? The orientation of the 60′s and later cohort is often described as a change, which seems to imply that faculty was more conservative before that time.
Anyone know how faculty compared to general population for say 1900, 1920, 1940?
December 1, 2009, 6:38 pmYankev says:
Which is why DB took pains to say that is not his goal. But the business of colleges should include turning out people with sufficient intellectual curiousity and knowledge to recognize when an accusation is so incredible as to be absurd, rather than lazily assuming that the accusation must be true because it confirms their silly stereotype of
December 1, 2009, 6:41 pmscary evilconservativebogey-menbogey-personsA. Criminal says:
Here’s what liberals mean when they say:
anti-intellectualism
Disagreeing with a liberal. Pragmatism.
unfounded moral arrogance
Disagreeing with a liberal.
racism
Being against the blatant racism known as ‘affirmative action’. Also, disagreeing with a liberal.
homophobia
Being against homosexual marriage or special rights based on sexuality.
sexism
Being against the blatant sexism known as ‘affirmative action’.
general unpleasantness
December 1, 2009, 7:03 pmDisagreeing with a liberal.
Perseus says:
Interesting to whom? As an academic, I know full well that professors are prone to define “interesting” as what happens to interest them, who, by and large, aren’t much interested in “conservative” thought despite the fact that it is no less consequential (if it weren’t, they wouldn’t be complaining about conservatives so much).
Or that Modern Political Thought is an appropriate course, or that Marx is relevant to such a course?
As someone who teaches that very course, I don’t find the thought of Marx to be very deep or interesting (particularly as compared to Hegel), so he doesn’t make the cut (though he does make the cut in Contemporary Ideologies). But because all too many academics think that people like Marx and Fanon are deep and interesting, students are far more likely to be exposed to them (several times over) than to be exposed to someone like Burke (or, as the late Allan Bloom noted, even John Locke at some institutions).
December 1, 2009, 7:03 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
I need a clarification of the argument here. Is it that not only did Limbaugh not say (or did say, but in a significantly different context) not only the allegedly inaccurate quotes here, but moreover he didn’t say any of the other disgusting things that he really did say? (Cue Limbaugh’s take on Michael J. Fox.) Or is it that the conservative movement should be defined by its (mostly dead) intellectuals and not by Limbaugh, nor the Republican politicians who have to crawl on their knees to Canossa every time they criticize him, nor the brain-dead Birthers and other fringes?
You want to know what’s happened to conservatism? Ask Kathleen Parker.
I wish we could have some sort of intellectual conservative movement in this country; I wouldn’t mind if it won a few times. But you can’t argue with ignoramuses who want to keep Government hands off their Medicare, nor with anyone who panders to them.
December 1, 2009, 7:10 pmCountDuckula says:
Your failure to understand this topic is so vast I don’t even know where to begin. I suggest you begin by reading the paper cited above, then coming back with some examples that would actually relate to the topic.
December 1, 2009, 7:26 pmBen P says:
And what southern state do you live in?
I wouldn’t agree with the scope of Early Bird’s comments in that I wouldn’t ever say “all” of any political party are like that, but you’re clearly mocking what you don’t understand.
I grew up and presently live in Arkansas, I’ve also lived in Oklahoma and Georgia. I have to say that nothing about what Early Bird said struck me as that outlandish, it’s a plain fact in some parts that racist and or evangelical attitudes aren’t just “secret thoughts” that get expressed only when trust is gained. It’s the person who starts telling a joke at a party that one wouldn’t tell in front of a different crowd, or the guy next to you at the bar that casually drops the N-word, or the people that start talking about the rapture as part of casual conversation. The same people are often those who would say that Obama’s not a citizen, or is a muslim or whatever.
Joe T Guest posted a comment earlier that’s exactly on point, except he was talking about loud mouthed liberals in a very liberal area. When enough people in an area believe in something they aren’t shy about saying it and silence is assumed to be agreement. That’s a universal human phenomenon.
I think it’s wrong to connect this to these people being republicans in any way. It’s true that many of these people are also republicans, but it’s also true that 40 years ago nearly all of these people were dixie-crats. The fact that there are Racists and evangelicals in the south proves nothing except that there’s racists and evangelicals in the south.
December 1, 2009, 7:37 pmbyomtov says:
Ryan Waxx,
Fine. Which election was Limbaugh a candidate for president in?
Do you think this is some killer point? That there was some giant swell of Democratic support for Sharpton while Limbaugh’s presidential ambitions were shot down because he has no appeal to Republicans? That’s not correct.
So what if Sharpton managed to get enough signatures together to get on a few ballots. He hardly got any votes, even doing poorly among black voters.
Limbaugh has not run because he’s chosen not to. Again, so what? If he did try for the Republican nomination I bet he would do a lot better than Sharpton.
December 1, 2009, 7:37 pmTwirlip says:
It’s not in the least bit believable, except to liberals who are pre-disposed to believe anything bad about Limbaugh. Your “fact” is an artifact of your own prejudice. And you still don’t even see it.
December 1, 2009, 7:41 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Conservatives, Political Correctness and the Academy -- Topsy.com says:
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December 1, 2009, 7:42 pmMike K says:
What would you think of an American History class at a large state U that assigned this book as the only text ? The rest were handouts. In another class, my daughter learned that Ronald Reagan was an actor who read only what was written for him. That was a 30 minute rant in lieu of the class review that was supposed to take place that day. She also learned that the pioneers survived on the frontier by learning to live as the Native Americans did. Some merit there but what about agriculture and wheels, neither of which the Plains Indians had ? She learned that the “silent majority” of the 1960s were those who rejected the civil rights movement and longed for the era of laissez faire. She was a college freshman but was wise enough to know this was bs from the start.
In fact, I have read some estimates, plus from my own five kids, that young people are rejecting liberal ideas due to the ridiculous extremes they see in instructors.
Her English Composition class had, as its final project, an essay on how a white male abused or raped a woman or minority. That was 60% of her grade. I helped her with a topic and we wrote it on William Kennedy Smith. The instructor, who had given the Reagan rant, apparently missed the irony and she got a 90.
Students don’t need to be given positive images of Rush Limbaugh but some basic true history would be helpful. And “whiteness studies” do not help writing skills.
December 1, 2009, 7:43 pmTwirlip says:
I’m nor sure what your attempted point is here. Limbaugh, like him or not, is not remotely as odious a figure as Sharpton. Among other things, he has never incited a riot which resulted in any deaths. In fact, he’s never incited a riot at all.
It’s fascinating to see the liberals on this thread confirming the central point of the post about liberal ignorance of conservatives.
December 1, 2009, 7:45 pmEarly Bird says:
Mr. Waxx,
When you grow up surrounded by conservative Southern Baptists, go to school with them, play on basketball and soccer teams with them, in general, are surrounded by few other people, you don’t have to wait very long to hear about their religion. In fact, they tend to be more than willing to tell you about it, since they feel it’s their ticket into heaven. Also, when almost everyone around is a Republican, people aren’t too shy about telling you about their political beliefs.
People tend to be a bit more circumspect about their racial beliefs, but when I was in high school, Knox County was ordered desegregated by Bill Clinton’s OCR. That’s when people really let you know how they felt about race! I remember walking around the track with one of the PE teachers in tenth grade and being advised, along with several other white students, to watch out now that our school was about to be invaded by black people (and he didn’t say black people).
You can discount my observations all you want, but they were voluminous! And I understand that conservatism isn’t necessarily synonymous with the Republican party, but Bernstein was talking about how educated liberals aren’t exposed to teh views of conservatives, and I’m saying that this educated liberal was overexposed to the views of conservatives. They may not be intellectuals, but they certainly are movers and shakers in the modern conservative movement. Just because Robert George and Ross Douthut arent racists (AFAIK, though both are certainly religious) doesn’t mean that the movement they’re associated with doesn’t have an oversupply of racists.
December 1, 2009, 7:45 pmMike K says:
Does this mean that you are unaware of the fact that Fox has since confirmed that Limbaugh was correct that Fox had manipulated the dosage of his medication before testifying before Congress ?
December 1, 2009, 7:48 pmTwirlip says:
Some people seem to be going to great effort to miss the point here. DB was not saying that college students should be given classes on Rush Limbaugh, and it takes some seriously warped glasses to take this away from his words. He pointed out that many liberals are almost comically ignorant of what a large slice of the country actually believes.
And the liberals commenting here seem to be anxious to prove his point.
December 1, 2009, 7:50 pmTwirlip says:
That’s just idiotic. If you’d grown up in Brooklyn or the Bronx you could just as easily have arrived at the conclusion that the Democratic parties supporters are oversupplied with racists. You’re proving the point here. You don’t even know what you don’t know.
December 1, 2009, 7:54 pmTwirlip says:
I consider him to be a mainstream liberal, which is also what Imus considers himself to be.
December 1, 2009, 7:57 pmWondertrev says:
Well, since you put it that way…Yes.
December 1, 2009, 7:58 pmCountDuckula says:
I just don’t see how Hayek’s political writings are more influential than his Nobel-prize winning work. You seem to be deciding a priori that Hayek’s political writings are “important”, but that they’re for some reason “neglected” because he’s “deemed conservative”. What does that mean? That liberal academics misunderstand the distinction between “conservative” and “libertarian”? Perhaps some people are influenced by Hayek’s non-economic writings, but it doesn’t seem to be many, by your own admission – he isn’t given much attention. Which naturally raises the question: why is he important, again?
Certainly Hayek was an influence on some people were important themselves – Popper and Friedman, for example. But I don’t see the argument for how Hayek’s non-economic writings have had a large and important impact.
This just seems like an obvious straw man to me. The idea that there’s no conservative or libertarian thought in college is just ridiculous to begin with. My friend’s daughter was just reading Rawls, yes, but along with Nozick. The idea that people somehow go through college and leave without “any understanding at an academic” level of conservative thought is demonstrably false. And the idea that they leave without a practical understanding of conservative thought is just inane. These people work part-time jobs, go to church, read the news, meet other people, read books, and generally act like regular human beings.
Finally, the parting shot about 20% of Americans self-identifying as liberals is ridiculous since the fashion of labels like that seems to have no bearing on actual policy positions. Maybe only 20% of Americans call themselves “liberal”, but that’s clearly not how they vote. You can’t find a presidential election since World War II where a Democrat got less than 40% of the popular vote, except McGovern in 1972.
And what percentage of the public reads Hayek and self-identifies as libertarian, anyway? Irrelevant, I would think, but you brought it up.
December 1, 2009, 7:59 pmTwirlip says:
I notice you include no actual cite to support that claim. What a surprise.
December 1, 2009, 7:59 pmCountDuckula says:
Maybe he figured you were capable of using Google yourself. If you had you would have found this pretty quickly. Quoth Limbaugh:
December 1, 2009, 8:03 pmTwirlip says:
Good grief! He’s one of the most influential politicial philosophers of the last hundred years. You are confusing “nobody I know has read him” with “nobody has read him”.
They are “important” because they are important. They are “neglected” because they are not covered with any frequency in higher education. Feel free to offer your explanation as to why that is.
December 1, 2009, 8:04 pmTwirlip says:
Yes, the cite is not quite the same as the precis of it he initially offered.
December 1, 2009, 8:07 pmBenP says:
I would say that this goes both ways.
I think the vast majority of people come to their political opinions viscerally, intellectual justification tends to be after the fact. Very few do the reverse. (although more intellectual people is what’s drawn me toward libertarian thinking I think)
Moreover, people are very quick to accept that anyone who agrees with them is doing so for the same reasons they are.
December 1, 2009, 8:07 pmBubba Fett says:
To a liberal there is no real difference between a Libertarian and a Right Wing Extremist.
December 1, 2009, 8:10 pmClaude Hopper says:
If you are drawing unemployment, you will probably have to periodically satisfy a requirement that you have searched for and/or applied for work. If you are a typical slacker living in a university town, you can fill the requirement by interviewing for any job posted by the university. But to avoid having to take the job, just tell the interviewer that you love Sarah Palin. This will automatically preserve your slacker status and the unemployment checks will continue rolling in.
December 1, 2009, 8:12 pmCountDuckula says:
Influential upon whom? This is the problem with the internet: it allows people who read some relatively marginal work to band together with others who read the same relatively marginal work and provide the illusion that they are the vanguard of a silent majority. Hayek’s importance pales in comparison to Rawls, the post-structuralists, the Frankfurt school, and even other libertarians like Berlin and Nozick.
How do we know they’re more influential? When their scholarly peers read them, they are more affected by them and then go on to research and teach them more. Hayek’s non-economic work is “neglected” because it has failed to take hold among many people in comparison to other works, whether supporting his views or not.
Your circular argument is circular because it is circular!
December 1, 2009, 8:13 pmTwirlip says:
Of course, there is a liberal culture inside acadamia discouraging conservative outsiders from joining. That would seem like a rather meaningful distinction to some people.
December 1, 2009, 8:13 pmDB mentioned an instance of this, and none of the liberals here have even managed a pro-forma “Of course that was wrong” before progressing on to exactly the sort of ignorant nonsense they claim to be incapable of. The sheer unrelenting hypocrisy of it all gets tiresome.
Owen H. says:
ROFL.
I think it far more pointful to say that most conservatives don’t have a clue about how most liberals actually think. Especially when they can come up with statements like this. I guess last fal didn’t really happen.
December 1, 2009, 8:16 pmCountDuckula says:
Um… ok. Let’s try this again.
Ok, so Limbaugh has just said that he doesn’t think Obama is really going to visit his grandmother because she is ill. Limbaugh things it is about “something else”?
“Something else”? What “something else” might that be? Let’s read the next sentences together:
Oh! The fact that something is wrong with Obama’s birth certificate. So Obama has an ulterior motive in visiting his grandmother: fixing his birth certificate.
See, reading comprehension isn’t so hard.
December 1, 2009, 8:17 pmGuy says:
What about Eugene Volokh’s initial perception that Ruth Bader Ginsburg wanted to lower the age of consent to 12 (see the link in my name). Eugene’s a pretty bright and well-educated man, and I’m sure he’s familiar with liberals, but that doesn’t change the fact that people simply have a tendency to believe bad things about people they disagree with, I’m not sure the beliefs about Rush Limbaugh are the result of lack of exposure to conservatives.
December 1, 2009, 8:20 pmTwirlip says:
Well, I’m debating some person who calls himself “Count Duckula”. You expect mathamatical proofs?
Influential upon influental people. Influential upon public policy. You’ve heard of Thatcher? Reagan? Milton Friedman? I don’t expect you to like these people, but don’t sit there and try to tell me that nobody has ever heard of this “Hayek” character except a few cranks on the internet.
Because unlike you, my dear Count, some of us possess at least a passing familiarity with the history of the last sixty years. That is how we know.
December 1, 2009, 8:21 pmBCKane says:
EarlyBird,
Using your scientific method and logic, i can factually state that Liberals are the most racist, blood thirsty, profits driven, anti-intellectual, ignorant and power hungry individuals in the US. Obviously my experiences at Political Fundraisers, Law Firm funded Galas, and Ivy League Clubs, over the last decade, in New York City proves precisely how ALL Liberals think. Right?
December 1, 2009, 8:22 pmOwen H. says:
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_102308/content/01125106.guest.html
Thanks for playing.
December 1, 2009, 8:22 pmTwirlip says:
True enough. It may well be down to liberals inherent intolerant bigotry towards any different opinions.
December 1, 2009, 8:24 pmTwirlip says:
Thanks for playing yourself, idiot. I correctly noted that no actual cite was provided. Then I noted that the actual cite, when provided, was somewhat different from the inital claim made about it. And you’re sitting there slapping yourself on the back.
Incidentally, when IS the media going to ask some questions about Obama?
December 1, 2009, 8:27 pmLN says:
Twirlip thinks it’s a slur to say that someone thinks Obama was born in Kenya… but you know, he wouldn’t be surprised if Obama WAS born in Kenya.
December 1, 2009, 8:31 pmspasticblue says:
Some here are proving that “liberals [sic]inherent intolerant bigotry towards any different opinions” is not in fact exclusive to liberals.
December 1, 2009, 8:32 pmTwirlip says:
You think those ideas are wrong? You’ll have to do more to disprove them than to say “Seriously?”.
Climate warming science IS a hoax. That’s been confirmed to any open minded person at this point.
December 1, 2009, 8:35 pmTwirlip says:
Twirlip said neither one of those things, sparky. But thanks for the demonstration of liberal reading (in)ablity.
December 1, 2009, 8:37 pmTwirlip says:
Sure, but you already KNEW that conservatives were intolerant bigots, didn’t you? I’m sure you have that information encoded at the DNA level. What’s big breaking news to you people is that liberals are intolerant bigots.
December 1, 2009, 8:42 pmGuy says:
Yes, that is a feature unique to liberals, not shared by conservatives at all.
December 1, 2009, 8:42 pmspasticblue says:
To speak for myself, no–I do not know nor believe that all conservaties are intolerant of different opinions. But I’m beginning to learn you are.
December 1, 2009, 8:50 pmYankev says:
Oh, oh, oh yeah?!! Well, Sean Hannity!!! Fox News!! So there! Um, um, and George Bush and Saudi Arabians and the AIPAC Likdunik Neocon Christian Right!!!!
December 1, 2009, 9:08 pmJestak says:
Actually, very few economics courses today would teach undiluted Keynesianism. Virtually all undergraduate texts in economics these days, even “Keynesian” ones like the McConnell text, give plenty of attention to non-Keynesian views. As for Hoover, while I teach econ, not history, I am constantly using History class teaching materials when I introduce students to the Great Depression, and you won’t find any today that fail to recognize the interventionist policies which Hoover pursued.
December 1, 2009, 9:14 pmYankev says:
At least he didn’t say it was actually Twirlip who praised slavery and James Earl Ray because, after all, a person who would defend EL Rushbo must hold the same racist beliefs that El Rushbo holds.
December 1, 2009, 9:16 pmbyomtov says:
Twirlip,
I was responding to Ryan Waxx, who seemed to think it was some kind of big deal that Sharpton had run for President and Limbaugh hadn’t.
I don’t really see how my comment confirms “liberal ignorance of conservatives,” but let me say that I agree with your assessment of the relative odiousness of Limbaugh and Sharpton as individuals (Sharpton – 100, Limbaugh – 99). But I also think that, because he is vastly more influential, Limbaugh’s effect on American politics is much more destructive than Sharpton’s.
December 1, 2009, 9:18 pmKevin P. says:
LOL, thanks for proving the point.
December 1, 2009, 9:21 pmJestak says:
To the extent that this is true, one big, non-ideological reason is that economics education, at least in American universities, doesn’t really emphasize learning the history of the subject these days. David Colander’s series of interviews with graduate students in economics (can’t remember the title of his book right off) shows that very few prospective economists read any of the classics of economics “literature,” be it Adam Smith or John Maynard Keynes.
But while economics students may not directly read much Adam Smith, they will definitely be exposed to his important ideas. You can hardly teach an introductory economics sequence without drawing repeatedly on Smithian concepts like the division of labor or the invisible hand. As several comments have noted, Hayek is hard to pigeonhole, discipline-wise, but even though a lot of his work is more philosophy than economics, his work on the coordination function of prices and markets is definitely a part of mainstream economics, and, again, econ students will learn about it, even if they don’t actually read Hayek’s essays on that issue.
December 1, 2009, 9:27 pmAriel says:
One point that hasn’t been brought up in this thread is that liberal students are not served well by ideological uniformity. As a non-liberal, in law school, when I read Ely, I’m thinking about why he’s wrong and how his ideas are not practical. I get to test my thoughts against one of the top thinkers on the other side. If a liberal professor favors his own ideology, a liberal student won’t have his ideas tested, won’t learn how to defend them. Which of us ends up with the better education? Who ends up being more aware of the thinking behind his views?
Maybe the liberal gets to smugly think that all of the smart people agree with him, and that makes him feel good about himself. But the non-liberal has to actually think, consider the ideas, and then decide why he thinks he’s right. The liberal will feel good, the non-liberal will learn well. Which would you rather be?
December 1, 2009, 9:43 pmnice strategy says:
First of all, I think Bernstein’s evidence of misunderstanding is exceedingly weak and I do not believe that well-educated liberals are incapable of describing the intellectually best arguments of conservative thinkers. Actually, I suspect conservatives would have a harder time articulating a respectable liberal point of view than the other way around. Certainly there are a few VC commenters (but thankfully less than last year) who can only see liberals as caricatures. Even well-educated conservatives, like those who write for the NRO et. al., seem incapable of addressing basic points about interdependence, soft power, and externalities without accusing liberals of socialism, pacicism, and selling out to terrorists. I avoid DailyKos etc. but one reason I read VC is that there seems to be so few intellectually honest conservative-ish sites out there as compared to intellectually honest liberal ones. I can read good analysis from a variety of liberal viewpoints; with conservatives it gets thin past Daniel Larison, VC, and a few others. Most of the rest are anti-intellectual ideologues (which there are plenty of on the left as well, but their competition is healthier). Compare the criticism Obama gets from the left today to that Bush/Cheney got from anywhere on the Right from 2001-2006. The quality of debate is more robust on one side than the other, which further contributes to groupthink and feeling superior.
Rush Limbaugh offers umpteen examples of an anti-intellectual attitude that has permeated the populist Right. (See also: Sarah Palin.) One thing that I think is happening on the Left is that the serious conservative arguments are given short shrift because many supposedly serious conservative outlets (think tanks, the WSJ editorial page) were or are willing to spout off all sorts of disingenuous and flimsy arguments. FNC doesn’t help; they could put on actual conservative thinkers, but they don’t, they mostly put on ideologues and propagandists. No, they don’t really speak for who they claim to speak for, but the effect of their constant attack-mode politics is to drown out thoughtful analysis from all points of view.
I do think more conservative thought ought to be assigned in HS and college and that PC is a problem. I do not think intelligent liberal students are unaware of the context they live in or unaware of the basic outlines of conservative thought.
Demonizing liberals has been a long-running tactic of the Right. One effect of this is that many liberals no longer bother to distinguish between the conservatives who treat them with disdain and conservatives who can respectfully listen and engage in debate. This is a shame, but unsurprising, and the breakdown in civility and respect no doubt pollutes the intellectual climate as well as the political one.
December 1, 2009, 9:55 pmLN says:
Jestak: exactly. I believe that one of the most popular majors in America today is economics, but economists believe that the subject is best learned ahistorically. So people who learn about the invisible hand don’t read Adam Smith; they read that brilliant stylist Greg Mankiw instead.
Of course the aggrieved conservatives here have conflicted feelings about economics, which on one hand is closely linked to some important conservative ideas, but on the other hand is, well, an academic subject taught in universities by college professors. Yuck. Hence, Barack Obama is economically illiterate (because he’s not a conservative) even if he listens to Larry Summers all day long.
I find this caricature of liberals as living in insulated bubbles to be somewhat ridiculous. First off, all the “close-minded” liberals who pollute these comment threads are reading the god-damned Volokh Conspiracy; why it’s as if they’ve never made the slightest attempt to engage with conservatives and try to figure out how conservatives think! Second, interactions between liberals and conservatives are by definition two-way affairs. A liberal who never encounters conservatives is basically a liberal whom conservatives have never encountered. Of course the appeal of DB’s narrative is that these liberals still bombard conservatives, from their powerful positions as members of the media. There is no such thing as a poor liberal, or a liberal who lives near a conservative megachurch in Colorado, or a liberal whose family members are conservative, or a liberal who does not work for the New York Times, or a liberal did not go to an Ivy League school.
I have spent a lot of time trying to understand how conservatives think. I’ve studied Adam Smith and Hayek and libertarian philosophy. And you know what? The #1 defining characteristic of conservativism, as expressed on the comment section to this blog, is a sense of grievance. The New York Times, college professors, climate scientists, people who oppose the war, liberals in general — they’re all OPPRESSING conservatives. They are dominant, they are in charge, they control the media and the popular culture and the universities and they put Barack Obama in the White House — but they are not “us” and there is something wrong with them. They just don’t get “it.” They are morally decadent, they will not take a tough enough stance against our enemies, they are (ironically) intolerant, they don’t know anything about business, they don’t respect free speech and gun rights. They are inherently suspect. Oh, and they delight in destroying unborn life (a frequently-made claim here that David Bernstein’s BS detector surely finds immensely plausible).
I know there’s more to conservativism than these comment sections, and I know that comments on liberal political blogs are also very largely based on a sense of grievance. But sometimes it just gets ridiculous. The Swiss population passes a constitutional amendment banning minarets — and while David Kopel is a little bit sad about it, he tells us where we can really direct our blame (Islamonazis, feckless Swiss elites, and feminists). Eugene Volokh posts a silly entry on a pie chart that showed up on a local FOX affiliate, and a commenter rushes to its defense, digging up definitions of pie charts from all over the web, pointing out that news stations have the “right” to use whatever charts they want, and then delighting in a completely unrelated story about CNN.
In short there are two tribes and while most people think for themselves and are not tied to a particular party line, the best way to generate a long comment thread is to pit the two tribes against each other and watch the sparks fly. Oh well.
December 1, 2009, 10:16 pmuberVU - social comments says:
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December 1, 2009, 10:18 pmDjango says:
Liberals need a hated enemy just like the Inquisition needed witches. They could no more give up their fantastical delusions and vilification of conservatives than they could give up breathing air. And so, here we have a very mild – indeed, even timid – “can’t we all just get along” essay by Bernstein receiving the rote liberal blowtorch response, i.e., “all conservatives are racist, stupid, evil, etc.”
What chance is there that liberal universities will seek and create true diversity of thought on campus? There is absolutely NO chance at all of that happening, unfortunately, and the lib responses here confirm that. The various racist and sexist grievance studies programs – womens’ studies, black studies, etc. – exist solely to point out the “right” people for students to hate. The people who live off of these programs are not going to cancel their meal ticket under any circumstances, certainly not out of some phlegmatic desire to “improve society” or some such extra-personal abstraction. They keep their fine honed edge of hate, anger and resentment or their purpose is gone and they fade away. They’re acutely aware of this.
Liberals don’t give the tiniest damn whether Limbaugh said those things or not. They’re just the kickoff point for another liberal epistle on the demonic nature of their hated enemy. The faith itself is what is supremely important, not the truth. The liberal mind is like a bank safe where the door has not just been locked but welded shut.
December 1, 2009, 10:23 pmBrother J says:
It’s “Koolaid.” and he’s taking it intravenously.
December 1, 2009, 10:26 pmBenP says:
oh the irony
December 1, 2009, 10:34 pmDjango says:
You’ll have to do better than that, Einstein.
December 1, 2009, 10:44 pmnice strategy says:
You must know a lot of liberals who really, really hate you. Perhaps it is because you label people and put words in their mouths?
Or maybe you mistake political blogs and TV shows for reality?
The liberal commenters on VC run the gamut, but surely there are enough reasonable ones to disprove your assertion.
Or maybe you are kind of clueless and not worth the effort.
December 1, 2009, 10:46 pmfactis says:
Liberal elites believe and teach their impressionable followers that western civilization is bad. Especially repugnant in their view is the United States of America. How can those liberal elitists believe the good ole U.S.A. is evil? Despite their myriad flaws and faults, the citizens of the United States have produced more wealth and Liberty for more people than any other nation ever to exist in the history of the world. But the liberal elites always look at the worst not the best; they hate and bite the hand that feeds them and they teach their students to do the same. Liberal elite leaders and followers are, IMO, the human equivalent of hive insects. In the brave new world of the liberal elitist, independent thought is not allowed.
December 1, 2009, 10:55 pmCornellian says:
Presumably the conservative solution to this problem is to let the free market take care of it. People who want to get exposed to conservative ideal are free to get their college eduction at Regent or Bob Jones University or some such places where the faculty is not filled with liberals. No one’s forcing you to go to an Ivy, so what’s the problem?
December 1, 2009, 11:04 pmDG says:
And it says much that you cannot understand why 1, 2,and 3 might have value or importance.
December 1, 2009, 11:09 pmLN says:
I’m not sure what the solution to this problem is, but I do think it’s clear that many … are sufficiently engaged in groupthink that they lack the most basic curiosity about or knowledge of what their ideological adversaries believe, and are instead inclined to dismiss them entirely as mere evil reactionaries.
December 1, 2009, 11:23 pmrpt says:
Here’s a question that hasn’t yet arisen. Should the Bible be taught in universities; if so, in what department? Philosophy? History? Comparative Religions?
Followup: Is anyone her familiar with, or a fan of, Dallas Willard who teaches philosophy at USC?
December 1, 2009, 11:25 pmtheobromophile says:
Mark Field: I seem to be disappointing you a lot these days. Mea culpa.
To be serious: in elections, perception is reality (or at least influences reality at the ballot box). Most people believed that Obama would be tax-neutral or cut taxes for 95% of Americans; in fact, his claim to that was used by factcheck.org to rebut conservative claims that his policies would result in tax hikes. That a substantial minority of us had never believed that he would (or even could, given the economic climate, the policies he proposed, and his past, albeit limited, voting record) actually govern the way he ran in no way changes the fact that a majority of Americans believed him and voted for him because of that.
To be fair to both sides: conservatives have long had the same issue with Supreme Court nominees, who often appear to be staunch conservatives but then drift leftward once appointed to the bench in D.C.. The policies which they espouse later in their careers are hardly the ones that got them their appointments.
December 1, 2009, 11:31 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
Let’s make it clear what “manipulated” means here. Fox faces a constant tradeoff between alertness and muscle spasms. Testifying before Congress, he chose to be more alert, and more jerky. Limbaugh’s importance to the conservative cause can, at least in your case, be measured by your approval of Limbaugh’s ridiculing a man with a crippling disease.
Wins the thread. At this point, I suspect half of the Americans whose views truly are informed by the previous generation of conservatives vote as centrist-to-right Democrats. As to the ones in this thread, they seem to take seriously the Tom Lehrer crack:
December 1, 2009, 11:31 pmBenP says:
Going back to what I said earlier about politics being more visceral than intellectual.
If you accept the basic premise of something like this political attitudes quiz (and not everyone does) I think it provides at least a partial explanation for that. People just have different intrinsic ways of looking at things. Even given the exact same facts, people will come to different conclusions because their internal compasses work a little bit differently.
At the risk of drawing the ire of people who hold the issue dear, I think gay marriage is about as close as you can come to a perfect litmus test on this sort of an issue in the real world. Most people who are in favor of marriage rights (generally liberals) believe that because they think its the “fair” thing to do. Whereas most people who are against marriage rights (generally conservatives)are against it because they think it’s promoting something that’s “wrong,” ie homosexuality. Both sides intellectual justifications tend to assume those conclusions, and consequently no one ever gets convinced that the other side is correct through logical argument, the people are just not thinking the same way.
December 1, 2009, 11:35 pmtheobromophile says:
Cornellian: I think that you are misunderstanding the conservative vision of the free market. :)
What Prof. Bernstein proposed is a free-market solution: it relies upon individuals and private institutions, not government action, to effect change. The free market is hardly limited to buyers of a good (here, students); producers are also welcome to change their goods to better compete – or even just because they feel that providing a better product or service is worth the effort. What you seem to be doing is requiring only buyer-side pressure. Now, I haven’t finished reading “Wealth of Nations,” but I’m pretty sure that such a concept is not found therein.
December 1, 2009, 11:37 pmvic says:
I am not sure what I am defined as: libertarian/ anarcho-capitalist -whatever! I spent a few years early in my career as faculty at a major university, and left. I couldn’t take the incessant BS any more- as in much ado about nothing. Not the idealogical differences. My guess is that the same logic applies often, the more entrepreneuerial libertarian types just have no patience to stick out with the petty politics and general crap that is part of day to day life in academia. I think to some extent the lack of conservative voices in our elite universities may have much to do with self selection.
On another note, I too have followed the debates about the CFU hack and climategate etc at this and other blogs etc. Perhaps it is just a reflection of my conformational bias (and we are all guilty of that sin) but I came away with a distinct flavor viz. the arguments on both sides. while there was no dearth of stupid commentary on either side. On the skeptical side there were at least arguments that on surface appealed to both logic and an attempt at rational interpretation of numeric and statistical data. The best the AGW side could essentially come up with was “settled science”. What in the world did they mean by that, not just here but in any scientific endeavor…. science by its very nature has to be unsettling and skeptical. Deification of any idea or concept is anathema to science. science is a method, not an enumeration of factoids. I am assuming that most of the commentators in the blogs I visited had college degrees. I am sorry to say, that from the venality and sheer banality of the commentary, their rather expensive liberal education failed them. To some extent, like science, education at some level needs to instill in the educated the ability to take information, howsoever foreign it might be to ones experience, and to be able to make some meaningful analysis. To call anyone and everyone who dared to question prevailing dogma,a denier or in the pocket of big oil, does not qualify as educated opinion.
Perhaps the problem may be not one of our educational system per se, but that we seem to have made it part of our national fabric that a college education is an essential accoutrement, irrespective of whether the individual in question has the necessary intelligence, analytical skills and motivation to get anything from it.
Sorry for a somewhat long rambling marginally incoherent post
December 2, 2009, 12:02 amLN says:
vic, I don’t think this has anything to do with our educational system. Part of the problem is that you are looking at a debate about scientific issues conducted by non-scientists — 99.9% of the people on the internet can’t discuss this issue intelligently. That leaves skeptics with platitudes about Galileo and free thought, and the AGW side with platitudes about “settled science.”
There isn’t much content there to analyze. But contrary to what you claim, science does not have to be unsettling and skeptical. Science does not have to seriously engage with the possibility that the moon is made of cheese, or that the earth is 6,000 years old. Now it’s true that science is theoretically open to these possibilities, and maybe one day in the future radical discoveries will be made that turn our worldview completely upside down. But if you wanted to know the age of the earth, and somebody said 4 or 5 billion years and justified it because that’s the “settled science,” would you smell a rat?
Science has to be open to new ideas, and it relies on empirical verification (rather than appeals to authority) to settle claims. The real world is slightly messier; authority does play an important role in science (important people have more credibility), and scientists tend to be committed to particular ideas. But the ideal of science still holds, and the system is generally set up to reward intellectual honesty and successful debunking of the conventional wisdom.
The question is, does some apparently unethical behavior on the part of some climate scientists undermine the case for AGW? My impression is no, it really doesn’t. But because I am ignorant of the science here, I am still relying on the general climate science community. And my impression is that there is a wide range of empirical support for AGW, and that this can’t be overturned by some leaked emails. Once again, I am trusting the general climate science community. I don’t think this reflects educational failure; rather, I cannot on my own assess the current state of knowledge (after the leaked emails). Neither can most of the skeptics. This difference boils down to different appeals to science; I am saying defer to the (admittedly human) scientists, while you are saying that science equals skepticism. To be honest, I think this is a bit of a rhetorical trick — skepticism is a key part of science but is not synonymous with it; you have to look at the entire body of evidence, which we are not qualified to do.
What is interesting is that there is a considerable body of sociological work on the social construction of science; it does a good job exploring how the personal interests of scientists affects the work they produce, without descending into meaningless relativism. But I suspect most conservatives here would consider it hopelessly left-wing.
December 2, 2009, 12:42 amwlpeak says:
And that’s just the democrats….
December 2, 2009, 12:46 amtrashhauler says:
Kilo wrote: “Recruit some retired military officers (many have graduate degrees) to teach history and other courses.”
Just a minor correction. By the time they retire, most military officers have graduate degrees. Many have more than one graduate degree and many have Ph.Ds.
This military education bubble was created by a rigorous Up-or-out military promotion system. It doesn’t mean the best are always promoted, but it does mean the promoted have all taken steps to add to their credentials.
December 2, 2009, 12:53 amPerseus says:
Since even basic knowledge of the Bible cannot be assumed these days (the morning paper/tv show/blog having long since replaced the morning prayer), it should–and really must–be taught in all of them because virtually all of those subjects (plus literature and my own field of political philosophy) require knowledge of it to fully understand the subject and the texts.
December 2, 2009, 1:00 amBrian K says:
This is an excellent and really shows why DB and most of the conservative commenters on this site are full of it. In a post deploring why liberals can’t seem to understand conservative thought and what to do about it, DB demonstrates that his concept of a liberal is nothing more than a hackish parody. and believe it or not DB is one of the better ones.
I can’t be the only one that finds this cognitive dissonance absolutely hilarious!
and let’s not forget that the post can be boiled down to “kids aren’t being taught what i think they should be taught” but is dressed up with meaningless, and self serving, ideology and conservative-as-victim propaganda.
December 2, 2009, 2:12 amRicardo says:
Conservatives have the same issue with Republican presidents. Under a similarly strict definition of conservative, possibly the only truly conservative president in the past 40 years was Reagan. Nixon famously embraced many aspects of left-wing economic policy like wage and price controls, new government social programs, etc., Bush Sr. promised no new taxes and then broke his promise, and Bush Jr. got elected by embracing “compassionate conservative” policies like promising senior citizens a Medicare prescription drug benefit and pushing for No Child Left Behind (also supported by Teddy Kennedy). And don’t forget that during the Republican primary that many conservatives thought McCain was far too liberal for them — yet he was the one who clenched the nomination.
The median voter in the U.S. is almost by definition a centrist and both parties have to cater to that during elections. If Obama is proof that liberals cannot win elections, one might as well say conservatives don’t win elections either. Pandering centrists do.
December 2, 2009, 2:54 amRicardo says:
That’s true to understand the history or evolution of thought. To understand modern philosophy, you do not need to know very much about the Bible (or the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita or the Torah, etc). You do not need to understand the Christian Bible to follow the arguments of Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Decartes, Mill, Nozick, Kripke, Kant, Singer, etc. The methodology of modern philosophy is to to build up basic knowledge about the world by making as few assumptions as possible about reality, experience or logic. The concept of religious faith simply does not fit into that methodology at all. The Bible is more appropriate for religion or theology departments.
December 2, 2009, 3:08 amGuy says:
Is it worth noting that the lists of inflammatory quotes being sent around were a mixture of actual and made-up quotes about Rush, and that the actual ones don’t really seem any more or less inflammatory than the made up ones, on the whole?
December 2, 2009, 6:06 amCountDuckula says:
Oh, I understand perfectly well why they might have value or importance: so statists, liberal and conservative alike, can justify their power and authority in tribal hierarchies. In-group bias is mere tribalism, and writ large, nationalism and I reject it. Respect for tradition is wholly irrational: if traditions have a sound basis in policy, then they should be continued for that reason, not for tradition’s sake. I can understand how these values are very adaptive, in that a population of individuals who are willing to submit their will to the group ideology would find it easier to conquer an enslave a group that doesn’t.
And actually, as to #2 (purity), I do think liberals are actually very concerned by it: hence environmentalism, foodies, concern with animal products like fur, vegetarianism, veganism, etc.
December 2, 2009, 6:56 amCountDuckula says:
Aha, see. Now you are naming people that are ACTUALLY influential. Go back to Bernstein’s original argument: 40% of Americans are self-labeled “conservatives”, so we should know how they think. Do you think they’re all running around quoting Hayek? No. Hardly any of them have heard of Hayek. What they do know, of course, is Reagan/Thatcher, Friedman, Buckley, the Bible, etc.
Not reading one of Bernstein’s favorite LIBERTARIAN authors is not a reason to argue that people do not understand MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVES. Libertarians are not mainstream conservatives.
As I said earlier, at some point Bernstein started conflating the two.
December 2, 2009, 7:03 amAssistant Village Idiot says:
Count, you are still here! Thank you, as I was late getting back.
I agree with your summary of the other facets of morality as noted by Haidt. My point would be that liberals do indeed use factors 1, 2, and 3 but pretend they don’t. You correctly note environmentalism in the purity category. While there are many good reasons for being an environmentalist, I find that most folks who are such smuggle in aesthetic reasons they believe are actually moral reasons.
Stick with me here, because there is a parallel process between this and your point about mainstream conservatives. Yes, most mainstream conservatives have a watered-down and sometimes inaccurate picture of conservative thought as expounded by its better proponents. Environmentalists, union members, Buddhists, Catholics – the mainstream members of all of these associations are not as clear as the proponents. This is annoying to each of their opponents, but it is simply human abilities being unequal. There is only a significant problem in any realm when the oversimplified versions and caricatures get too far from the reality, and start working their way back up among the movers and shakers. It is a matter of degree. Bernsteins’s point (I think) and mine (I know) are that the popular oversimplifications and caricatures of conservatives are not merely put forth by liberal popularisers, but by the academy as well.
As a data point, my brother is a theater professor who believes all the basest conservative stereotypes, yet assures me that among his colleagues he is actually a defender of some conservatives among a group much more liberal than he is. That would suggest that a significant bias.
December 2, 2009, 9:02 amDavid Bernstein says:
No, it demonstrates that you are confusing an undoubtedly true statement–that like-minded people, including liberal academics, enjoy being able to hang out with each other and discuss common goals and deplore common enemies–with a general “concept of a liberal.” Libertarians like to get together and grouse about evil statists, but that’s not “my concept of a libetarian.” Get a grip.
December 2, 2009, 9:54 amDavid Bernstein says:
If you are going to be persnickity about whether Hayek is a conservative, then he’s not a libertarian, either, given that among other things he supported the draft and a fairly extensive welfare state.
December 2, 2009, 9:55 amCountDuckula says:
Ok. So perhaps we agree that ideological labels aren’t that useful? Either way – I don’t see how “40% of Americans self-identify as conservative” leads to “we should teach more Hayek in university courses”. It seems to me that whether or not Hayek is conservative or libertarian, most of the people he has influenced are of a libertarian bent.
December 2, 2009, 10:04 amCountDuckula says:
I think I mostly agree with you – I mostly fault Bernstein for his ridiculous caricatures, like suggesting that new college graduates have “no academic or practical understanding of conservatism”. Statements like that make it hard to take him seriously at all.
December 2, 2009, 10:06 amDavid Bernstein says:
What actually happened was that commenter Colucci asked “what intellectually-important authors are neglected” because of the academy’s ideological one-sidedness, an issue I hadn’t previously raised. I mentioned Hayek and Adam Smith. How this turned into “DB says that problem with academic ideological one-sidedness is primarily that liberal students are not studying the conservative great books” I don’t know.
December 2, 2009, 10:09 amDavid Bernstein says:
(Surely you would acknowledge that if various relevant departments were, say, 2-1 liberal to conservative, rather than 10-1, Hayek would be assigned more often, and surely Hayek is intellectually important. So my very limited point is self-evidently correct, not sure why anyone is making a big deal of it.)
December 2, 2009, 10:11 amGypsy Boots says:
I took a class on 19th-century intellectual history in which (liberal) the professor began by saying, “The first thing to understand is that in the 19th century (West), the term ‘liberal’ was used to mean everything that we mean by ‘conservative’ today.” (Limited government, free markets, free trade, avoidance of unnecessary war and peace by international agreements, a moderate belief in progress, anti-utopianism, low taxes, promotion of business under the rule of law, social responsibility, etc.).
Some conservatives even today prefer to call themselves “classical liberals” to emphasize that contemporary liberalism has strayed from its roots.
Anti-intellectualism can be found on both left and right. Certainly the Climategate scientists were not promoting free intellectual activity, dspite their arrogation of the “scientific” mantle to themselves.
Liberals who like to cite Douglas Hofstadter’s book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (a fair study) often forget that one chapter is devoted to American teachers’ unions–then as now an overwhelmingly leftist institution.
The leftist groupthink begins in middle school, and is usually taught unthinkingly by teachers who are often (in my experience) taken aback and receptive to objections when intelligently challenged. (“I’ve never heard that before!”)
Still, it takes more effort to swim against the current than to drift with it. That’s part of human nature and always will be. Most people are followers and will “go along” with whatever social ideology seems to be dominant, without thinking too much about it as they focus on earning a living and raising families. Dissenters (of whatever stripe) have to be smarter, better educated and more savvy than the unthinking establishment. (The goal of all ideologies is to control what most people’s “first thoughts”–what they believe WITHOUT or before their thinking about it.)
For decades, liberals deliberately targeted the “commanding heights” of all kinds of institutions where they could influence or control opinions from the top down. They proved much more willing than many conservatives to do boring administrative work in institutions like state education accreditation bodies. That explains a lot.
December 2, 2009, 10:30 amCountDuckula says:
I would read your “FURTHER UPDATE” to suggest otherwise:
The relevant attribute seems to be fair-mindedness, not political orientation. Nor am I convinced that the 10-1 balance is true of “the relevant departments”. Certainly it is in literature/critical theory/ethnography/whatever departments (perhaps aptly called the “irrelevant departments”, here and otherwise).
But 10-1 seems like a gross exaggeration. Most college graduates in America come from large state schools where the balance in “the relevant departments” is nothing like that. The list of libertarian and conservative professors in law, political science, economics, etc is quite long.
December 2, 2009, 10:37 am11-B/2O.B4 says:
Re: education. I’ve got a close up view here, as I’m still in school (or rather, back in school).
Yes, the vast majority of professors are liberal. No, that usually doesn’t drive them to be unfair to opposing viewpoints, but it can slant the material. Imagine my surprise when a history prof, instead of the usual “worked on paper, but was poorly implemented” line on Communism, simply said that any ideology that produced that kind of body count had something wrong with it. Seems there’s one or two conservative leaning ones out there after all. That said, Marx should be studied, but so should Mill, Keynes should be studied, but Hayek and Freidman as well. And quite frankly, if the establishment remains liberal, I couldn’t care less. Some view it as hindering conservative leaning students, I view it as winnowing the chaff (to use the biblical metaphor). You just can’t survive as a public conservative in acadamia unless you are seriously bright and dedicated. The quality produced by adversity is preferable to the sort of insipid morons my school is cranking out by the bucketful. I have to not only keep up with my studies (which rest assured, I do very well), but research a raft of other matters for my in-class debates with the faculty. Global warming vs a Psychology prof? Check, and bagged it. Social Darwinism and society vs a history prof? Check, and we’ll call it a draw. Second Amendment in an English class? Dropped the ball the first time, he quoted Bellisiles on me, got him in round two. Being a libertarian in a university has sharpened my debating skills, made me a voracious reader and researcher. Liberals, you can have your overwhelming majority. The opposition can still win on quality.
December 2, 2009, 10:37 amMike says:
As an in the closet libertarian Assistant Professor at a major land grant university, I can assure that DB provided a description of the faculty that exactly mimics my situation. Faculty routinely are dismissive towards conservative thought, Christians, and Republicans. Many wore Obama buttons while teaching and actively campaigned for him while on the job.
December 2, 2009, 10:52 amAssistant Village Idiot says:
Count, point taken. Let me add some pushback, however. I work in the very liberal field of social work, at a teaching hospital. The students in psychology, medicine/psychiatry, nursing, social work, and various rehab specialties are one of my main contacts with the academy. (The other contacts are relatives who teach at colleges and my own keeping up with controversies in historical linguistics and prehistory, but that is less relevant here.) In those fields, the assigned reading has a decidely liberal slant, thugh there is definitely a range in that generalization. The students – mostly graduate students – mouth liberal platitudes they have picked up from various courses. Correlation is not causation, but I still think the effect is there. It is not so much the bias of the individual professors, but an entire culture which leaps to and reinforces liberal pieties as “the views of educated people” and opposing views as “the views of people who are unthinking.” I was in the uber liberal arts studies of theater, medieval lit, and anthropology in my own undergraduate career forty years ago. So…my sample is certainly biased. All this taken together is a pretty fair percentage of what subjects are taught at college, however. Bernstein’s across-the-board characterization may go over the top, but a Nader-voting brother, who insists he was regarded as a reactionary dinosaur at Smith, would be a fair indicator that the generalization of a liberal professorate was more exaggerated than untrue.
December 2, 2009, 11:05 amNate says:
The massive levels of disaffection and disenchantment from the academic world shown by people like Bernstein or Horowitz (as well as their incessant whining) will undoubtedly continue far into the future. The simple reason is that intelligent people interested in scholarly pursuits generally are not and will never become “conservative” in the political sense of the word. Fortunately, that is one of the greatest attributes about academia because it means that some semblance of truth and reason and logic and nuance and complexity in thought (as well the scientific method) will survive into the future and continue to flourish.
As a side-note, I applaud discrimination against political or pundit-style conservatives in any sphere of life (and especially the academy) and hope for more of it. I would hope that our recent college graduates do not have to suffer through an introduction to superficial conservative thought (aside from the non-political, scholarly conservatives we all read in philosophy, history, economic, sociology and poly sci courses).
December 2, 2009, 11:23 amMike K says:
Well, we know that you don’t teach “American History Since 1877″ at the University of Arizona. My daughter took that class a year ago and I was appalled at what I saw in her assigned materials, mostly handouts. I gave some examples in a previous comment.
December 2, 2009, 11:37 amMike K says:
The University of Arizona had huge TV screens showing Obama campaign materials on campus before the election. Lots of them.
December 2, 2009, 11:41 amDavid Bernstein says:
There are plenty of law schools where the ratio is worse than 10-1– U. Mich., Georgetown, Stanford, and Duke easily come to mind, along with many less high-profile schools. And law has a much better representation of non-”progressives” than history, political science, English, anthropology, sociology, etc.
I think students who go to large state universities, especially at satellite campuses do typically get exposed to conservative people and ideas, which is why I specifically referenced the “elite academy.”
And I agree that a fair-minded liberal professor, and I had quite a few in college, will ensure that his students are exposed to alternative perspectives, and will treat his ideological adversaries with respect. That’s a good thing, much to be applauded, and certainly don’t have any quarrel with you on that.
December 2, 2009, 12:07 pmBrian K says:
So I’m supposed to accept your (likely untrue and highly biased) description of liberals on your say so? yet others descriptions of conservatives as racist homophobic bigots above, based on exactly the same level of evidence, are straight up lies to be strongly contested?
I worked for a physician that constantly complained about the laziness and inferiority of black people, mocked liberals and any time he saw a mentally challenged person said “that’s the kind of guy who voted for obama”. you tell me what conclusions i should draw about conservatives based on this and then explain why i shouldn’t do what you’re doing.
December 2, 2009, 12:30 pmMike K says:
You could read left wing web sites like Washington Monthly and read the comments (where I was blocked from commenting) and see what they say to each other. That is supposed to be more mainstream than DailyKos yet the place gives one the impression what the political left thinks. It isn’t pretty. I don’t use the term liberal because I consider myself liberal.
Then draw your conclusions having seen a bit of what we see.
December 2, 2009, 1:02 pmJohn Moore says:
They might among their fellow students, but not among the professoriat. There are a couple of professors (in hard science) in my close family who are at those institutions, and while they are somewhat conservative, they report an extremely high percentage of liberals among their colleagues. Even in hard science, the voting roles show professors are 5:1 or more Democrat vs Republican.
December 2, 2009, 1:13 pmNate says:
How much more meaningless analysis and filler must we listen to about the dearth of conservatives in academia and the sciences? The truth is that scholars like Hayek et al., are the exception to the rule that highly intelligent people tend not to be conservative or, certainly, vote Republican.
December 2, 2009, 1:23 pmCJColucci says:
So Smith and Hayek are the poster children for neglected, intellectually-important conservative authors?
Smith, as many people have noted, gets taught all the time, though not usually as Smith, but rather as economics itself.
As for Hayek, I’m still trying to picture the course — other than a course (an entirely worthwhile course, I might add, but not a standard offering) devoted specifically to him, or to 20th-century conservative or libertarian thought, or to alternatives to mainstream economics — in which Hayek is a no-brainer inclusion. And I like Hayek.
December 2, 2009, 1:28 pmBrian K says:
so i’ll assume from this answer that you have absolutely no problem with me characterizing conservatives as racist fear-mongering homophobic lying hypocritical mentally retarded bigots who are utterly lacking critical thinking and basic reading skills based on the comments on this blog and my personal experiences? it’s good to know that next time someone calls me out for using that characterization i can point to this post as proof of its truth.
December 2, 2009, 1:46 pmDan says:
Berstein: Close to 40% of Americans believe in creationism too. Do you advocate teaching creationism because it adds “balance” to teaching evolution? How about teaching holocaust denialism because it adds “balance” to teaching the true history of the holocaust?
“Balance” in academia is a B.S. consideration. Maybe most of academia is liberal because, as the two examples above show — and to quote Colbert — “Truth has a well known liberal bias.”
December 2, 2009, 1:54 pmbyomtov says:
…everything that we mean by ‘conservative’ today.” (Limited government, free markets, free trade, avoidance of unnecessary war and peace by international agreements,…
Conservatives believe in “avoidance of unnecessary war and peace by international agreements?”
No. They don’t. They hate international agreements and organizations, and are ever ready to resort to military force.
December 2, 2009, 2:15 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
Except, one of the points of this thread is what is conservative thought? I don’t believe faculty are dismissive of Smith, Friedman, Hayek; nor of Winston Churchill or (these days, when they look so good by comparison) even Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley. Too bad for conservatism, the aforementioned are all dead.
Are the professors dismissive towards that conservative, Christian, Republican dogma of Creationism? I damn well hope so. Limbaugh, the nasty, self-indulgent mountebank? Worthy of dismissal. The Tea Partiers who want government hands of their Medicare? You should be grateful if this incoherent, brain-dead demagoguery that masquerades as conservative thought is merely dismissed. Part of me thinks it should be Exhibit A for re-opening large mental asylums.
Incidentally, have you noticed how many Republicans were willing to serve in Obama’s cabinet?
December 2, 2009, 2:27 pmYankev says:
Thirty-one years ago as a smug liberal starting law school, I found my liberal assumptions roundly challenged by my liberal law profs as well as the conservative profs; all of them considered testing assumptions to be an important part of their job. This came as quite a change from my undergrad years, when echoing shared smug assumptions was a sure way to a good grade. It also made me a better lawyer and a smarter person.
I hope that law profs, at least, still challenge students’ assumptions.
December 2, 2009, 2:35 pmRich Rostrom says:
See this post by Charles Murray. He analyzed data from the General Social Survey (which has been collected over the last 40 years or so). He found that forty years ago, all segments of the population were roughly evenly divided betwen liberal and conservative, that since then, all segments but one have shifted slightly to the right, but one segment (Intellectual Upper) has moved far out to the left.
This has created a deep division between intellectuals and conservatives. Assistant Village Idiot noted
“an entire culture which leaps to and reinforces liberal pieties as ‘the views of educated people’ and opposing views as ‘the views of people who are unthinking.’”
Contrariwise, conservatives have developed a deep distrust of intellectuality. There are few conservative intellectual leaders, and the “rank-and-file” associate intellectuality with reflexive leftism.
It’s an ugly situation. Many liberals now seem their role is to impose their enlightened ideas on the ignorant masses, bypassing the inconveniences of democracy. Many conservatives are attracted to simple-minded populist measures. In Europe, the grip of liberal political correctness on the elite is so strong that no one will address certain important issues except overt outlaws, such as the racists of the British National Party.
As for “free market solutions”: The K-12 system is staffed by the graduates of state education schools, where Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed is common required reading. Most college students attend public unversities, where everyone’s money supports the “teaching” of radicals like William Ayers or Ward Churchill. Dissenters can create their own institutions, but does anyone think that Ave Maria University, even with the support of Domino’s Pizza billionaire Tom Monaghan, can compete with the established position and enormous endowments of the Ivies? As for trying to loosen the left’s grip on elite private colleges: look what happened at Dartmouth.
There are no easy ways out.
December 2, 2009, 2:46 pmAri8 says:
Right. Don’t flatter yourself.
Holding education constant, I wonder who more likely to agree with the following false statements, liberals or conservatives:
The vast majority of the behavoral differences between men and women are a result of social forces, not biological differences.
Adoptive parents and step-parents are just as likely to treat their children well as natural parents.
Organic food is much better for you than food treated with pesticides.
Statistics show that the level of labor union membership in the U.S. is historically correlated with wage growth.
It’s been proven that there are no differences in intelligence between different groups.
Nuclear power is much more dangerous than coal.
I could go on.
Liberals are especially reluctant to acknowledge that human behavior, and human differences, have any roots in evolution and biology. This is their version of Creationism. The conservative version worries about undermining god. The liberal version, egalitarianism. With the same closed-minded results.
December 2, 2009, 3:02 pmAri8 says:
“The truth is that scholars like Hayek et al., are the exception to the rule that highly intelligent people tend not to be conservative or, certainly, vote Republican.”
The truth is that the dumbest, poorest, least-educated people in the United States trend heavily liberal Democrat. Look at any study of voting patterns for low-income, low education Americans. Liberals get the intellectuals who work at foundations, universities, government jobs, etc. who are attracted to these positions because they can’t negotiate the real world, and instead try to create and live in a world that fits their ideology. They also get the dumbest and most ignorant people. Conservatives get the middle, including your average person with a college degree. Congratulations, liberals, this shows you are superior!
December 2, 2009, 3:06 pmAri8 says:
“Close to 40% of Americans believe in creationism too.” More than that believe in astrology. Want to bet whether such conservatives are more or less likely than liberals to believe in astrology?
December 2, 2009, 3:09 pmAri8 says:
“Smith, as many people have noted, gets taught all the time, though not usually as Smith, but rather as economics itself.”
As silly as saying that Marx gets taught every time a professor refers to the “working class” or socialism, or redistribution of income, or exploitation.
December 2, 2009, 3:12 pmMike K says:
You have to decide how you wish to appear to others. The subject of the thread, and my issue, has to do with what is taught college students. If you read these comments and draw that conclusion, I have doubts about your judgment and reading comprehension but you can draw any conclusion you wish. I just don’t want your ill-informed opinions coloring what students are taught. I have had enough of that with my daughter’s instructors. She is sensible enough to see what fools they are making of themselves most of the time but she didn’t, for example, know what to make of the instructor’s definition of “The Silent Majority.” No mention was made of the war in that context. I showed her the Wikipedia definition. Ironically, the instructors won’t let students use Wikipedia as a bibliography reference but use it all the time in handout materials. She saw that it wasn’t just my opinion.
I suspect your remarks are sarcastic but the problem is real and very frustrating for parents who pay for this foolishness. The time is coming soon when they will refuse to pay for it. I wanted her to go to junior college for a year or two to get her study skills sharpened and there she would avoid most of the ideologues. She chose to go away but will probably come home in the spring as she sees the amount of tuition we are paying and the value of what she is getting there.
Her older sister went to junior college, then transferred to UCLA and is now in graduate school at UCLA. Another sister is quite a bit older and college was much less contaminated by politics in the 80s.
December 2, 2009, 3:26 pmCrafty Hunter says:
What ticks me off especially about liberals is the constant lying. They don’t seem able to utter any non-trivial statement without working into it some sort of distortion, usually a huge whopper, and covering up with a snowstorm of obfuscation and innuendo and outright insult. The implication is that only liberals are “real people” and anyone else is some sort of sick dream.
This is why I am convinced that there will be a large showdown somewhere down the road, possibly devolving into widespread armed conflict. The States have had one civil war already; there’s no reason to suppose another can’t happen. The last one was quite bloody, and liberals seem even more full of hatred against non-liberals than the Northerners held against Southerners in 1860. I still have hopes of a peaceful realignment, but it looks bad. The looters simply will not accept the concept that it’s not their money, and it’s not their country.
December 2, 2009, 3:40 pmAssistant Village Idiot says:
Regarding liberals, conservatives, and amount of education. While it is sometimes noted that Republicans (a mediocre proxy for conservatives, but it will have to do) have a slight advantage in years of education, it is considered significant that they have somewhat fewer with graduate degrees.
However, if you take advanced degrees in Education out of the mix – and I can think of several good reasons for doing so – Republicans regain their voting advantage among every group with a HS diploma or more. Liberals dominate not in overall achievement or thought, but in certain professions (teaching), and in gravitating to certain fields.
Nate, you may be surprised to learn that the High-IQ societies (the ones beyond Mensa), are not predominantly liberal, but quite mixed. Troublesome data.
December 2, 2009, 5:04 pmNate says:
Crafty Hunter:
Hilarious. The conservative southerners that lost the Civil War have morphed into today’s Republican party, at least in the south. You want to lose again? Want to be regarded as fighting for morally repugnant beliefs yet again? Be my guest. History is by far the greatest judge of conservatism and it has not looked kindly on all of the racism, sexism, homophobia and bigotry it has wrought.
December 2, 2009, 5:57 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Nate. Conservatives and sexism. See Robin of Berkley on the wilding of Sarah Palin.
December 2, 2009, 7:50 pmNo conservatives there.
Oh, yeah. Then there’s you or my lying eyes.
Mike K says:
It must be a bit depressing to see the NY Senate vote down gay marriage today. All those homophobic conservatives.
Oh, those were Democrats ?
December 2, 2009, 7:59 pmnice strategy says:
Ah yes, poor people have SO many good reasons to vote Republican. Especially since a disproportionate number of them are people of color, and Republicans are clearly favor policies that will further their economic and personal interests. Ahem.
There has been a gradual shift in the self-reported ideology and voting behavior of well educated Americans from right to left. It is actually quite a jumble; try this for a primer, although slightly dated:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56905-2001Mar25?language=printer
December 2, 2009, 8:39 pmMike K says:
Yes, they have a good reason to vote Democrat if they plan to remain poor; or have been convinced that they can never be anything else.
Republicans appeal to those who have hopes of success. I suspect this is perceived as a threat to Democrats.
December 2, 2009, 11:15 pmMike K says:
Yes, they have a good reason to vote Democrat if they plan to remain poor; or have been convinced that they can never be anything else.
Republicans appeal to those who have hopes of success. I suspect this is perceived as a threat to Democrats. They certainly are working to eliminate the threat of the poor becoming middle class voters.
December 2, 2009, 11:16 pmAssistant Village Idiot says:
No, Mike K, many Democrats really do believe they are helping the poor, and Republicans hurting them. They’re just wrong.
Nate, could you use shorter words? We stupid people are having trouble following your complex arguments.
December 3, 2009, 12:42 amRicardo says:
Since you brought it up, the vote by party was as follows:
Republican For: 0
Republican Against: 30
Democrat For: 24
Democrat Against: 8
So it got 75% support from the Democrats and 0% from the Republicans and you are blaming the failure of the measure on Democrats. Did you bother to do even basic research before commenting?
December 3, 2009, 4:23 amDG says:
OK.. I’ll give you number two to a degree, but it seems you’re really trying to prove my point. You quibble about seeing a “value” by the technical definition instead of in the presented context of it being a positive thing.
Again, proving that no, you simply cannot comprehend that in this day and age, there are reasonable circumstances where having those traits would be a positive thing. But then discounting these traits – loyalty, honor, etc. has long been a cultural meme the left has promulgated.
Sad, given that the proof of positive value starts with situations as basic as having kids – and do you want them to instantly stop when you tell them to if they are starting into something dangerous like running into traffic unawares.
December 3, 2009, 9:51 amDG says:
Stereotype much?
December 3, 2009, 9:57 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
If you can explain how a university scientist is going to fall behind Sarah Creationist Palin, I’m all ears. Palin isn’t a stereotype; she’s probably the front-runner for the GOP nomination. The problem, I reiterate, is that what passes for conservative thought at this moment is neither.
December 3, 2009, 10:53 amMike K says:
So I was wrong and gay marriage did pass ?
The answer to your snotty question is yes. I even read the speech by Senator Diaz (D Bronx) about saving traditional marriage.
You can barely control your antipathy to differing opinions, can you. Typical.
December 3, 2009, 1:35 pmMike K says:
The whole thread was about the inability of left wingers to understand what conservatives are thinking. You have demonstrated that nicely. Thank you. Among other things you think that aren’t true, she is not a “creationist” if by that you mean someone who tries to inject it into science education. In fact, her father is a science teacher and she seems to be sort of an Intelligent Design type in her own philosophy. I wouldn’t write her a recommendation to medical school on that but she does hold the views of the majority of the population. She did not attempt to change school curriculum as mayor or governor. There are a lot of religious fundamentalists in Alaska and allowing some discussion of the religious view of creation is a common compromise.
I think you know very little about conservative thought but, as Reagan said, “It isn’t what they know that is the problem; it is what they know that isn’t so.”
December 3, 2009, 6:56 pmNate says:
Even though I know quite a few intelligent conservatives (who, by the way, would never describe themselves as Republicans), I love to watch DB illustrate the victimization complex that is so common amongst conservatives. It just warms my heart.
December 4, 2009, 1:28 amJim says:
The answer to left leaning education is simple. End government monopoly of the education system. It will drift right toward the individual almost immediately. It’s largely a systemic issue.
It would be an interesting exercise for a sociological or anthropological study: how government employed academics predominantly support big government. Or, the study of how one’s physical environment affects one’s intellectual thought.
December 4, 2009, 5:46 amGlobal warming’s new clothes | Lux Libertas - Light and Liberty says:
[...] AGW? Certainly the scientists at CRU/IPCC, but they had a great deal of help. For decades now appalling orthodoxy has been ossifying many academic disciplines. As a result students are never exposed to competing ideas and [...]
December 4, 2009, 10:35 am