An especially pernicious common fallacy is the assumption that if a given group is overrepresented in some field, that must mean that they dominate it, and are using their supposed “domination” to promote the group’s interests. My better half quotes this example described by historian Paul Johnson in his book Modern Times:
Of course underlying and reinforcing the paranoia [of the Nazis about Jews] was the belief that Weimar culture was inspired and controlled by Jews. Indeed, was not the entire regime a Judenrepublik? There was very little basis for this last doxology, resting as it did on the contradictory theories that Jews dominated both Bolshevism and the international capitalist network.
In the 1920s, Jews were indeed overrepresented (relative to their percentage of the general population) among both Bolshevik leaders and international capitalists. At the same time, non-Jews still greatly outnumbered Jews in both groups. A closely related fallacy was the assumption that overrepresentation in a field proved that the Jews involved in it were using it to promote some specifically Jewish interest. In reality, Jewish capitalists tended to behave much like gentile ones, focusing primarily on maximizing their profits. Jewish communists such as Leon Trotsky were brutal totalitarians. But their gentile counterparts, such as Lenin and Stalin, were much the same. There was no real evidence that either Jewish capitalists or Jewish communists were promoting specifically Jewish interests in any systematic way. Indeed, Jewish communists in the USSR actually supported the regime’s suppression of Jewish culture and religion.
At this point, readers may be tempted to say that the crude errors of 1920s anti-Semites don’t have any relevance to us. After all, we are a lot smarter and more sophisticated than they were. Perhaps so. But similar fallacies in modern discourse aren’t hard to find, and are certainly not limited to a few anti-Semitic extremists. For example, some 25% of American gentiles believe that “the Jews” deserved at least “a moderate amount” of “blame” for the financial crisis. This view is likely based in large part on extrapolation from the overrepresentation of Jews among prominent bankers and financiers.
Similarly, as co-blogger David Bernstein points out, many people (including prominent scholars such as Mearsheimer and Walt), believe that neoconservatism is a Jewish movement that promotes specifically Jewish interests. As David explained, this belief is primarily based on fallacious deductions from the overrepresentation of Jews among neocon intellectuals. He correctly emphasizes that it ignores key facts: that the views of Jewish neoconservatives differ little from those of gentile ones, that neocon hawkishness on the Arab-Israeli conflict is just one facet of their hawkishness on other foreign policy issues unrelated to Israel (and therefore not likely to to be a specifically Jewish agenda), and that the overrepresentation of Jews among neocons is similar to that in many other intellectual movements (including plenty that were opposed to neoconservatism on most issues). As in Weimar Germany and early 20th century Russia, Jews tend to be overrepresented in numerous intellectual movements because a higher percentage of Jews than gentiles are intellectuals. It’s hard to find a major intellectual movement of the last 100 years where Jews were not overrepresented relative to their percentage of the general population, with the obvious exception of movements that were anti-Semitic or centered around a non-Jewish religion such as Catholicism. For similar reasons, Jews tend to be overrepresented in many occupations that require higher education and intellectual skills, which helps explain why they were and are overrepresented among finance capitalists.
In sum, the fact that Jews are overrepresented in a given field does not prove either that they dominate it or that they are using their supposed domination to advance specifically Jewish interests. No doubt, one can find similar examples involving groups other than Jews. The more general lesson is that such logical fallacies are not limited to Nazis and other long-discredited extremists, and that we should take more care to avoid them.
cls says:
That Jews are over-represented in certain fields is actually a testimony to Jewish culture and values. Jews do tend to be over-representated in fields related to ideas. An emphasis, for centuries, on education, reading, intellect, thinking means that all idea-dominated fields will see a heavier proportion of Jews in those field. This is precisely the case with libertarianism—need I mention, Rand, Mises, Friedman, Rothbard and many others. I didn’t even realize Randy Barnett was Jewish until he mentioned it recently—and I knew him decades ago in Chicago. I just didn’t know, not that it matters.
Cultures that emphasize thinking will have stronger representation in intellectual fields, across the board. The attack of anti-semites often rested on the under-representation of Jews in manual fields like farming (this was more true in Germany than in Russia). But that is just the reverse of their first claim. If a group is over-represented in one field they will clearly be under-represented in others. So what!
And clearly there are legal reasons that Jews were clustered in Europe in certain fields—the laws often restricted their occupations thus forcing them into specific fields. Even if not forced into a field by law, widespread prejudice may also force groups to cluster in particular fields. Entry is easier when others already there are able to to help you. So groups that are discriminated against may cluster as the natural need to have others help them in establishing a career.
We see immigrants doing that as well. If Indian (as in India) immigrants migrate and open a franchise hotel, they may well help other Indian immigrants do the same thing. The knowledge is passed through their circle of family and friends and the success of one is passed on to many. This emulation of success tends to concentrate the immigrants in that field for a generation or two, until future generations begin spreading out.
All in all this clustering seems to be a win-win situation for everyone. Of course the Marxists didn’t think so and neither did the Nazis who copied their exploitation theory and Marx’s blaming “exploitation” on Jews.
January 3, 2010, 3:58 amSoronel Haetir says:
Your theory even works for Jewish mobsters. Meyer Lansky had pretty much the same interests and operations that his confederate non-Jewish mobsters held to.
Although he did claim to have crashed (with other gangsters) a meeting of the German-American Bund before ww2.
January 3, 2010, 4:04 amIlya Somin says:
Your theory even works for Jewish mobsters. Meyer Lansky had pretty much the same interests and operations that his confederate non-Jewish mobsters held to.
I’m sure it does. Meyer Lansky no more pursued specifically Jewish interests than Al Capone pursued specifically Italian ones.
January 3, 2010, 4:27 amBruce Hayden says:
I think that one of the more notable cases here is over-representation in the (U.S.) Congress, esp. the Senate, and their support for Israel. We are talking what, maybe, a dozen Jewish Senators, in a country that is a percent or two Jewish.
This doesn’t bother me, because I am in favor of strong support for Israel, but I do know several who do are much more sympathetic esp. of Palestinian interests who point to this over-representation in Congress as one of the causes of their problems.
January 3, 2010, 6:04 amsteve s says:
Well said. My Jewish fellow physicians practice the same kind of medicine as we gentiles. Going back a bit, Jews used to be over represented in basketball. Hard to see that as some sort of Jewish conspiracy.
January 3, 2010, 7:03 amArkady says:
Unless, of course, they’re liberal and Hollywood filmmakers.
January 3, 2010, 7:33 amRicardo says:
A possibly telling anecdote about “Jewish bankers” concerns the old Goldman Sachs banker Henry Goldman. This son of German-Jewish immigrants did indeed have “dual loyalties”: when WWI broke out he was an outspoken supporter of the Kaiser. He was forced to leave Goldman once the U.S. joined the war and his pro-German sentiments embarrassed the firm and interfered with its ability to act as a sales agent of Liberty Bonds.
He even returned to Germany and continued to stay there after Hitler rose to power. He only left Germany in 1936 when it became clear to him that his prior history of German nationalism was not going to exempt him from persecution.
January 3, 2010, 8:01 ampublic_defender says:
You might have added one other area in which Jews are over-represented, if not dominant–thoughtful criticism of Israel. As the comments to Bernstein’s posts unfortunately show, a lot of anti-Israel sentiment is unfair, based on antisemitism, or both. If you read a thoughtful criticism of Israel (or thoughtful sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians), chances are that it was written by someone who is Jewish.
January 3, 2010, 8:45 amMithras says:
What Arkady said, but throw in liberals in academia and journalism, too. Usually, the argument Ilya is making is one that conservatives reject.
Anyway, Ilya is setting up a strawman. The critique is that neoconservativism is dominated by people who favor Israel. Those people include Jews who have some level of nationalistic feeling for Israel, Jews and non-Jews who believe Israel is indispensible to U.S. foreign policy in the region, and some evangelical Christians who believe that they are helping bring on the millennium. The legitimate interest is one of priorities, not religion. This isn’t the same at all as, say, blaming the financial crisis on “the Jews”.
Speaking of strawmen, the poll that he cites was an online one and Prof. Margalit, the principal author, himself says the results show “there is an issue here, but I wouldn’t take the number 24 [percent] literally.” Okay, then.
January 3, 2010, 9:07 amLaird Wilcox says:
Perhaps it might be a good idea when approaching an issue such as this to establish what “over-represented” means – a definition that’s fair-minded and reasonably objective. For example, at what point would a group be over-represented? I think a slight over-representation would be meaningless whereas an over-representation of 3 or 4 times their percentage of the general population might be significant, and 6 or 7 times would be remarkable and probably needs to be explained. Bear in mind that to the extent an over-representation of one category exists, an under-representation of another category also exists.
For purposes of determining discrimination, claims of over-representation (or under-representation) have been used to establish racial and gender bias. If women are 50% of the population, a psychology department should have approximately 50% women, the argument goes. If African-Americans are 12% of the population, what should their percentage be? If Jews are 2% of the population, what percentage of Jews should that department have?
If any kind of special pleading, exceptions or mitigating circumstances are used in answering this, it seems to be that a good explanation would need to be given for why they’re necessary for an explanation.
Finally, this has nothing to do with conspiracies. It’s simply a straightforward question. It’s also not necessarily true that the group with the largest over-representation necessarily dominates as coalitions of other less-represented groups may prove stronger.
Any ideas on this?
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January 3, 2010, 10:01 amlgm says:
Having lived in America for a long time, I continue to believe that the greatest dangers facing American Jews today come from conservative Christians. The greatest of these is government sanctioned proselytizing of Jewish children — aka “prayer in school”.
There is no doubt that “Jews” made more than our share of contributions to the financial crisis, as we make more than our share of contributions to most things American (Nobel prize winning science to ponzi schemes). It is impossible to tell whether those answering the poll you linked to blamed specific people who are Jewish or “the Jews” as an abstract evil entity. I prefer to think most of those answering “yes” ignored the “the” in “the Jews”. Maybe there could be a poll asking people whether “the Jews” contributed to American greatness.
You get Mearsheimer and Walt wrong, probably deliberately. Criticizing Israel is not antisemitism, as neocons often say. The Likud-neocon (not only the Jewish neocons) bond is too obvious to deny.
January 3, 2010, 10:01 amsteve s says:
“You might have added one other area in which Jews are over-represented, if not dominant–thoughtful criticism of Israel.”
Moreso in Israeli publications. Much less in American writings.
January 3, 2010, 10:36 amRandy says:
What everyone else said.
There is plenty to criticize in what a person says or writes without having to get into their ethnicity, race, sexual orientation or gender. (Plenty to praise, for that matter). I have a crazy uncle who blames the world economy crisis on ‘the jews’ who seem to control every aspect of life, and I’ve had enough of that.
January 3, 2010, 10:37 amHans says:
“An especially pernicious common fallacy is the assumption that if a given group is overrepresented in some field, that must mean that they dominate it, and are using their supposed “domination” to promote the group’s interests.”
This fallacy is also the basis for many affirmative-action proposals: the assumption that any greater percentage of white males in any given workforce than in the general population must be proof of discrimination against women and minorities.
The Supreme Court rejected this assumption in the late 1980s, but it continues to be standard fare among liberal academics and lawyers.
(In a ruling by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the Supreme Court said that it is “completely unrealistic” to argue that women and minorities should be represented in each field or activity “in lockstep proportion to their representation in the local population.” (See Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. (1989)). In an earlier ruling, Justice O’Connor noted that it is “unrealistic to assume that unlawful discrimination is the sole cause of people failing to gravitate to jobs and employers in accord with the laws of chance.” (See Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust Co. (1988))).
January 3, 2010, 10:43 amliamascorcaigh says:
What’s contradictory about that? Capitalistically inclined Jews dominated capitalism, radical socialistic Jews dominated Bolshevism (and Menshevism). If you got enough Jews to go around, what’s the problem, unless you’re proposing a fatuous Elders of Zion centralized world Jewish conspiracy and even then infiltrating both camps doesn’t seem such a bad strategy. In any event, though we can argue about the meaning of “dominate”, Jews historically disproportionately occupied positions of great power and influence in both capitalist structures in the West and revolutionary Leftist organizations throughout Europe, not only those in Russia.
Anyway, Professor Somin’s argument is facile. Being outnumbered by gentiles is irrelevant. The Bolsheviks per se were vastly outnumbered by non-Bolsheviks, for instance, but that, despite even Lenin’s initial misgivings, didn’t stop them. Equally irrelevant is the fact that Jews had common interests with gentiles; that’s a tautology. The first question is the positions of power which Jews occupied and the influence that they wielded; this is particularly true in the kind of hierarchical organizations we’re talking about. The other is what interests Jews shared with fellow Jews which by definition they could not have in common with Gentiles. Indeed the very existence of the concept of goyim, among so much else, illustrates that an exclusionary Jewishness is very much part of Jewish identity. The state of Israel is the ultimate reification of this but no more so than all the other Jewish states of old. This of course was the de facto norm (mutatis mutandis) in many Gentile states the world over up to the mid-20th century, and still prevails in much of the non-Western world.
I can understand Professor Somin’s anxieties. He’s had his bellyful of pogroms, of being the Sinister Other. Blood Libels under any and all guises he can do without. So can we all. However, the “Hey, goys, we’re just like you, what’s a Standard Deviation between friends?” approach is both ahistorical and condescending. All this strategic humility, coupled with the ostentatious disavowal of one of the most rigorously maintained religio-ethnic identities in history, is unsettling. Contrary to its obvious intent – aand paradoxically because of it – it tends to give rise to the suspicion that if there is a cover-up there must be something that needs hiding.
January 3, 2010, 11:34 amRichard Atwood says:
I agree that Mearsheimer’s views are being caricatured here. He was critical of the neocons on key points of strategy before that book came out. And he was proven right.
“They believe democracy is the most powerful political ideology,” he said in 2004 after the Iraq invasion had started to go bad. “You go in and remove the regime and this democratic impulse that’s hard-wired into every individual would manifest itself and Iraq would become a democracy.”
He said the real impulse that’s hard-wired into people is nationalism and that would make any occupations disastrous. As for the role of American Jews, he saw it as just another nationalistic urge in the mix, which can hardly be denied.
January 3, 2010, 11:38 amArthurKirkland says:
Hard, but not impossible. Mr. Zimmerman single-handedly creates a pause, but rock ‘n’ roll strikes me as an exception.
(Bruce Springsteen isn’t Jewish, despite the opinion of Adam Sandler’s mother.)
January 3, 2010, 11:46 amNowMDJD says:
Yes. There’s Latinos in baseball, African-Americans in football, and South Asians in the hospitality industry (even an Italian restaurant in the same square as the Fenice opera house in Venice is managed by a South Aian). It would be fatuous to conclude that those ethnic groups “control” their respective fields.
January 3, 2010, 11:53 amgenes says:
On the question of “overrepresentation,” Nicholas Wade’s excellent book ‘Before the Dawn‘ contains a fascinating hypothesis: since centuries of European discrimination banned Jews from such trades as farming, but allowed them to enter intellectually demanding fields such as finance, over the centuries Ashkenazi Jews evolved to produce children of high intelligence. This gave them an advantage. This is by no means conclusive, of course, but there is reason in DNA studies to suspect it is true, together with the fact that the same mutations are not observed in Jews whose ancestry comes from elsewhere.
So the “overrepresentation” in intellectually important endeavors could simply be a consequence of evolution, spurred as it happens by centuries of discrimination.
January 3, 2010, 11:54 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
This is a very nice compliment to America. In other countries, the greatest dangers facing Jews have including being rounded up and murdered and/or their property being confiscated. Here, it’s the danger of being seduced away from their religion by generic “lead, guide, and protect us” prayers in school, that aren’t even done anymore b/c they’re illegal. Whatacountry.
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January 3, 2010, 12:03 pmTwirip says:
Barney Frank bears a “moderate amount” of the blame for the financial crises. And Frank is Jewish.
But this just shows the difficulty of extrapolating from an individual to a group. Murray Rothbard and Milton Friedman were Jewish also, and had a very different take on economics from Frank.
January 3, 2010, 12:08 pmTwirip says:
Luckily for you, you are free to leave at any time you wish. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later, considering that you think that it is a “greatest danger” for Jews to be exposed to other peoples ideas, aka “proselytizing”.
January 3, 2010, 12:12 pmDave N. says:
It is a fallacy to assume that over-representation is the same as domination. However, massive over-representation can lead to domination.
For example, while Meyer Lansky may have been a part of the Mafia, the Sicilians were massively over-represented and ultimtely dominated it to the exclusion of others.
The fallacy in your respective snarks has to do not with over-representation in the targeted organization relative to its size in the general population, but rather, over-representation by a subset of the population relative to its size within an organization.
In the case of Hollywood, the news media, and academia, liberals are over-represented within the respective target organizations. It is NOT that Jews make up 5% of the population and 25% of the Hollywood elite, which is Ilya’s argument. Rather, that liberals make up 25% of the population (approximately) and make up 90%+ of the selected organizations (Hollywood, academia, the MSM).
January 3, 2010, 12:15 pmTwirip says:
That particular fallacy is one which Jews have done much to foster. Affirmative action was and still is strongly supported by Jews, especially as long as it’s aimed at white Christians and not at themselves.
January 3, 2010, 12:16 pmArthurKirkland says:
America’s white Christians did not always object to affirmative action. To the contrary, they engaged in it — affirmatively enslaving blacks, affirmatively discriminating against other minority groups, affirmatively shouting down agnostics and atheists through government and private action, affirmatively promoting Christianity in all manner of legislation, affirmatively rigging law enforcement, schools and the military to benefit themselves — for many decades.
Some people would have objected to affirmative action pointed in the other direction in 1965, or 1955, or 1945. Our country is fortunate that it overcame those voices. Perhaps a “rough justice” calculation of when affirmative action has outlived its usefulness would be when no living American possesses a first-hand recollection of a lynching.
January 3, 2010, 12:51 pmJK says:
I wonder how the bloggers and commenters here would respond to a similar post about continuing stereotyped views of black people? I thought the conservative line was that all real discrimination ended a generation ago, and any claims the contrary was just a liberal ploy to oppress the majority?
January 3, 2010, 1:47 pmJaden Kraptaur says:
What’s there to worry about if too many Jews in the soup when we don’t know they are in it? What’s more interesting today are the effects of modern American television programming techniques and it’s influence driving the American conscious.
Compared to modern television programming techniques historical references are not needed anymore to influence citizens to feel guilt one way or the other: we have Madison avenue commercials, Hollywood television production facilities for hire, and the American way of monetary influence to guide us to the politically correct notions American citizens need to accept. Television probably has about as much influence today on the next generation as family structure, and its influence will becomes greater as technology advances.
Just turn on the television to see the suggested mix of male, female, minority, and associated stereotypes the next generation is learning to accept.
January 3, 2010, 1:51 pmDavid Sucher says:
“Hard, but not impossible. Mr. Zimmerman single-handedly creates a pause, but rock ‘n’ roll strikes me as an exception.”
No Jews in rock’n'roll?
You might want to double-check that.
And you might start with Elvis, who was part-Jewish. (Maternal grand-mother.)
(I am otherwise sorry to have to contribute to a “Who is Jewish?” discussion but the rock’n'roll comments seems to me to be so inaccurate.
January 3, 2010, 2:00 pmStrict says:
“Your theory even works for Jewish mobsters. Meyer Lansky had pretty much the same interests and operations that his confederate non-Jewish mobsters held to.
I’m sure it does. Meyer Lansky no more pursued specifically Jewish interests than Al Capone pursued specifically Italian ones.”
What about Bugsy Siegel? Like Lansky, he is rumored to have infiltrated a Nazi group. Siegel, a professional killer, was at a party in pre-war Fascist Italy with Goering, Goebbels, and other top Nazis, and supposedly he was this close to killing all those bastards.
Not for money, or for gang turf. But specifically because he was a Jew who hated Jew-hating Nazis.
January 3, 2010, 2:04 pmArthurKirkland says:
Dylan alone — and emphatically — refutes that point.
But overrepresented (the original point)? I don’t see it.
Willing to be educated, though.
January 3, 2010, 2:13 pmMalvolio says:
“A long time” as in “it’s been a long time since I had lunch”? Conservative Christians generally love Israel and respect Jews (one Baptist friend of mine was in a congregation that held a Passover seder, on the logic that Jesus did it, so should they. Grape juice instead of wine, of course.) Christians outnumber Jews 40 to 1 in this country. If they were a “great danger” to us, we’d be toast. With a schmeer.
And proselytizing is not a danger. It’s free speech.
“Except for Dylan”? Isn’t that something like “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the theater?”
And except for Phil Specter, Alan Freed, Geddy Lee (Weinrib, from Rush), Joe Cocker, Donald Fagan, Billy Joel, and others.
January 3, 2010, 2:19 pmStrict says:
““Except for Dylan”? Isn’t that something like “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the theater?””
No, because
1. The majority of Dylan’s work is not rock ‘n’ roll.
2. The most salient thing about rock is not Bob Dylan.
There’s a lot of Jewish people in rock music. And most of the white people involved in rap music are Jewish.
January 3, 2010, 2:37 pmMDJD2B says:
Carole King and Ellie Greenwich also come to mind. But the large majority of rock stars and song writers aren’t Jewish.
January 3, 2010, 2:41 pmAJK says:
I think he may be right that Jews aren’t over-represented in rock and roll, at least on the performance end. Whether such constitutes a “major intellectual movement” is another question, of course.
January 3, 2010, 2:49 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
Indeed. As you imply, assimilation accelerated greatly after prayer was removed from schools, so this may not prove what the previous poster thinks it proves.
January 3, 2010, 3:09 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Every time I start thinking I am a conservative, some helpful person explains that I am not.
January 3, 2010, 3:10 pmGW says:
The real issue of dominance here comes not from the real or imagined religious or ethnic identities of the neoconservatives themselves, but from the neoconservative dominance over public discourse in certain policy areas; in many cases, they effectively define what is acceptable or not.
I am a Jewish person who cares deeply about the survival of the State of Israel, but who disagrees deeply with neoconservatives about how that it achieved: indeed, I cannot recognize in neoconservative policy ideas any strategy that would assist the long-term survival of Israel as a viable state within the Middle East.
Unfortunately, in the state of discourse today, with a de facto monopoly by the neoconservatives on what is or isn’t “acceptable” Middle East policy, it is virtually impossible to disagree publicly with neoconservatives without immediately being branded as anti-Semitic. The tiniest overlap in ideas or most tenuous of connections to authentically anti-Semitic positions is enough to receive this label.
This is ridiculous, especially when I fear that the present policy directions cannot be good for Israel (and, ultimately, for my own person) but unfortunately, such automatic invocations of anti-Semitism make it all but impossible to participate meaningfully in public discussion.
January 3, 2010, 3:11 pmSW says:
This does seem to be their oft deployed weapon in US’ discourse.
January 3, 2010, 3:43 pmorca says:
A large majority of the kids attending the classical music school down the street from me used to be Jewish American kids. Now 99% of its customers are Chinese American.
And my doctor’s from India.
Are we discussing faded glory here?
January 3, 2010, 3:45 pmdevoman says:
Sorry, but I simply have to disagree with this statement:
“The majority of Dylan’s work is not rock ‘n’ roll.”
I’m not sure how you would categorize the majority of Mr. Dylan’s work, but there is no question he is a giant of rock ‘n roll. Simply look at his entry on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website. Or have a look at nearly anyone’s list of the 100 greatest rock ‘n roll songs and you will see his work represented multiple times.
Finally, his songs are covered by more rock ‘n roll artists than anyone else I can think of. Is “All Along the Watchtower” covered by Jimi Hendrix rock ‘n roll? Any of a dozen rock ‘n roll artists covering “Like a Rolling Stone”.
If there is a category other than rock ‘n roll that the majority of Dylan’s work falls into, surely this is a distinction without meaning, at least in the context of this discussion.
January 3, 2010, 3:48 pmmideast says:
GW, the present administration has displeased the neocons with some of its Israeli positions; nobody of any credibility has dared to call this anti-semitic.
Jewish neocons “effectively define what is acceptable or not?” Sorry but I think that’s laughable. Lots of people have publicly disagreed with the neocons, and lots of people have taken the position that Iraq discredited them; few of those people are anti-semitic, or regarded that way.
The “neocon” movement was indeed anchored by a group of intellectuals, mostly Jewish, who are strong Israel supporters. But their arguments found resonance, not because they cast magic spells over politicians, but because the American public generally, pols in particular, have for many decades been extremely supportive of Israel. In a democracy, things sometimes happen this way: an argument that “by taking X action, you are both helping America’s friend, and advancing America’s interest” is a calculation performed every single day.
The US suffered when Reagan resisted South Africa sanctions in the ’80s, to appease Britain. Nobody imagined the British had a magical control of Reagan, they just thought he was making a big mistake out of loyalty to a close ally. Why are pro-Israel stances looked at differently?
January 3, 2010, 4:00 pmStrict says:
Devoman,
My point was that the majority of Dylan’s work is not rock. It just isn’t. I didn’t say he wasn’t extremely influential in the rock world, or anything like that.
“Simply look at his entry on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website.”
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and the Bee Gees and Bob Marley and Woodie Guthrie and Madonna are also in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Covers aren’t very meaningful either – I’ve heard more rock covers of Beethoven and Grieg than klezmer covers of Beethoven and Grieg, but that doesn’t mean that Beethoven and Grieg are rock.
January 3, 2010, 4:14 pmRichard Riley says:
This may not be quite what Ilya had in mind, but one reason I enjoy being a Democrat is the over-representation of Jews among our Democratic elected officials, writers, publicists, consultants, and party activists generally. This annoys the hell out of conservative Jews (Norman Podhoretz just wrote a whole book about it), but most Jews remain Democrats. Jews in the Democratic Party tend to keep us aligned with Israel and, I think, generally more hawkish and level-headed than center-left parties in other countries.
Ilya, David B – come on over and join the party that loves you the best!
January 3, 2010, 4:16 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Ooh, a klezmer cover of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” – I’d like to hear that!
January 3, 2010, 4:27 pmDavid Sucher says:
Kirkland’s point — over-representation in proportion to numbers — may well be true though the critical question is the denominator. I am assuming rock ‘n’ roll (RR) very broadly defined and including a lot of stuff from Nashville and Detroit etc etc — maybe better to say “pop music?”
Suppose we say that there have been 10,000 rock-’n'-rollers (including arrangers, studio backup players but not people on the business side agents, managers etc etc) over the past 50 years. (could it really be that long? yes).
Taking 2% (of USA population) times 10,000 that would be 200. I am sure that there at least 200 Jews who have been important in RR. But are there 1,000? That would be ten percent and might be where “over-representation” could be thought to start. I would doubt it if for no other reason that so much great RR is soul and R&B has been done by blacks.
Now if you measure against world population (and American RR has had global reach so maybe it’s not too much of a reach) where Jews are .25% of the population you get different story. Of course it probably is a stretch to start including population of China and India and Latin America which I believe have their own very rich popular music.
So maybe, after all, Kirkland’s not far off.
January 3, 2010, 4:33 pmMike says:
Isn’t Ilya always going on about overrepresentation of liberals in the legal academy? Oh, he’ll throw in some anecdotes about anti-conservative bias; but the goyim can do that, too.
I’m reminded of E.V.’s brilliantly entitled “test suite.” If we applied the logic of Ily’s post to common conservative complaint (liberal media bias and bias in the academy), what result?
January 3, 2010, 4:35 pmStrict says:
Laura, me too! :)
Richard Riley, what’s so enjoyable about annoying “the other side”?
January 3, 2010, 4:36 pmHarry Eagar says:
So, everybody on this thread is anti anti-Semitism. Good, although that makes them an unrepresentative slice of American society. This needs looking into by the authorities.
Overrepresentation is in the eye of the beholder. The most common calling followed by Jews in Germany in the ’20s and ’30s was tailoring. In America, places were found for refugee Jewish scientists, doctors and writers — at least a few — but nobody knocked themselves out to find places for German Jewish tailors, who were, consequently, overrepresented and then some in the death camps.
(genes, I have not read that book by Nicolas Wade, but I have read others. If your summary is accurate, it only reinforces my long-held belief that he is the most disgraceful representative in this generation of my calling, newspapering. Ugh.)
January 3, 2010, 4:38 pmgenes says:
Well I don’t know much about Wade but here he was only summarizing the views of scientists, and did note the tentative nature of the hypothesis:
http://books.google.com/books?id=qBbwGczaWqEC&pg=RA1-PA156&dq=DNA+jewish+ashkenazi+intelligence+%22before+the+dawn%22&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
January 3, 2010, 4:46 pmlgm says:
Jewish rock star: Madonna (lol).
Proselytizing to Jewish children is not harmless. Think about how you feel about your elementary school’s LGBT club recruiting your kids to the “gay lifestyle”. Proselytizing is worse because religion, unlike sexual orientation, really is a choice.
Twirip brings up a good point. One of the things American Jews can be proud of is our contribution to the civil rights movement. There was more than self interest involved. Twirip reminds us that conservative Christians, who were largely on the wrong side of that argument, have not forgotten.
January 3, 2010, 5:06 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I am trying to understand your point. Please define “recruiting” in this context.
January 3, 2010, 5:13 pmInstapundit » Blog Archive » CONFUSING overrepresentation with domination…. says:
[...] CONFUSING overrepresentation with domination. [...]
January 3, 2010, 5:21 pmArthurKirkland says:
When considering the over-representation issue, I considered not only the number of contributors but also the importance of the contribution.
In my method (not the only one available) the deities — Townshend, Berry, Richards, Little Richard, Springsteen, Jagger, Lennon, Wilson, Cropper, McCartney, Fogerty, Dylan, Hendrix, Bowie, Brown and others — bring greatly disproportionate weight to the scale. The minor deities — Al Jackson, Entwistle, Watts, Van Zandt, Van Zandt, Henley and the like — count less than some, more than most.
I like Jackson Browne, Billy Gibbons and Chrissie Hynde, but the importance of each, in my calculation, approximates that of a Keith Richards finger or an Al Jackson foot.
Even if we humor Adam Sandler’s mother, I still do not see over-representation.
I could be wrong.
January 3, 2010, 5:39 pmNowMDJD says:
That should be “Oy, a klezmer covr…”
January 3, 2010, 5:41 pmLarryA says:
The flip side fallacy, of course, is “If more blacks/females are added to the workface they will ‘act black/female’ and serve their groups’ interests.”
I find most ironic the theory that the Jews who somehow have so much control and succeed so well in running everything that they need to be handicapped before they take over the world, come from an inferior race.
January 3, 2010, 5:43 pmMike K says:
This was also a belief of early settlers of Israel who were determined to demonstrate Jewish farmers in the kibbutz. Not an unusual adoption of the thinking of one’s enemies also seen in the “acting white” issues with black kids trying to do well in school. Of course, most countries banned Jewish ownership of land so farming would be under represented.
Igm, my Catholic school in Chicago (in the 1940s and 50s) had a number of Jewish kids sent there by their parents to avoid the public schools. I suppose their parents must have been neocons or something.
January 3, 2010, 5:44 pmVader says:
Laura(southernxyl),
That *was* an interesting slip of the tongue on the part of lgm, wasn’t it? If sexual orientation isn’t really a choice, then why would the LGB clubs be recruiting?
January 3, 2010, 5:44 pmJay Guevara says:
Any statement from the NAACP regarding this hypothesis?
January 3, 2010, 5:57 pmGreg F says:
This seems to me to be a fallacy that is far more dangerous.
January 3, 2010, 6:02 pmMattsky says:
Twirip please explain how affirmative action that effects white Christians doesn’t effect white Jews.
January 3, 2010, 6:21 pmLeo Marvin says:
No, we’re discussing what it would take to add a 13th and 14th tribe.
January 3, 2010, 6:33 pmorca says:
How about a ukulele cover of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3gp7B8WC4Q
January 3, 2010, 6:35 pmDavid Nieporent says:
I know there’s at least some element of joke in there, but just to be clear, Madonna is as Jewish as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is. Studying — if you can call it that — kabbalah doesn’t make someone Jewish any more than studying French makes me Jacques Chirac.
School prayer is not “proselytizing,” and as noted, a lot more Jews seemed to ‘choose’ Judaism when said prayers were going on.
January 3, 2010, 6:43 pmDavid Bernstein says:
Don’t forget Gene Simmons. And Neil Sedaka. And Joey Ramone. And Lou Reed. And I think Mick Jones of The Clash. Among others.
January 3, 2010, 6:48 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
All right, Orca, that was fun.
January 3, 2010, 6:49 pmDavid Bernstein says:
There’s another difference between the liberal example and the Jewish examples. Liberals, by definition, are united ideologically by common goals. Jews, by contrast, aren’t united even on whether they are obligated to aid fellow Jews, and, for those who do feel that obligation, they differ wildly on what is in the “Jewish interest.”
January 3, 2010, 6:50 pmLeo Marvin says:
And what evidence do you have for this libelous accusation that Jews are self-servingly dishonest? Despite past notorious examples, I reject the notion that conservative Christians today are especially anti-Semitic. But if your response to lgm means you count yourself among their number… well I guess there are exceptions to every rule.
January 3, 2010, 6:53 pmLeo Marvin says:
Thanks. Every time I think I’m about to, someone like you or Terri Gross comes along and reminds me.
January 3, 2010, 6:57 pmjcm says:
Gene Simmons is jew too and its R&R
As i understand jews were required to read the Tora since their youth.
Catholic were forbidden to their own interpretation of the Bible. So, even today some priest forbid then to read the Bible.So they dont need to read. Beside that for the Catholic elites army and church were the only jobs not conducing to lost of class (Derogance). The former would die to often without offsprings and the latter were supposed not to have( of course they will have them out of the wedlock and expose them) . So the smartest among catholics were out of the gene pool. 3 or 4 centuries of that kind of behavior they gave a huge advantage to non christians. Only the Reform changed that only to waste the advance in religion wars
Thats mean that liberal profession were open only to jews and they were the only with the tools to succeed
Conservative Christian see the Jews as the chosen people and they support Israel on that base
January 3, 2010, 7:08 pmJay Guevara says:
I think his point was the intellectual dishonesty implicit in arguing that a demographic deficit in one group is prima facie evidence for discrimination against that group that must be rectified, while at the same time arguing that a demographic surfeit in another simply reflects that group’s merit.
Either one plays the demographics or the merit game consistently; switching between them as dictated by expediency is dishonest.
If people do not differ in ability and effort, their success in, e.g., higher education, should reflect their proportion in the population. In that case under-representation of blacks should be corrected by affirmative action, and over-representation of Jews should be corrected by quotas, who presumably (in this rather repellent line of reasoning) were disproportionately the beneficiaries of the discrimation. (This assumes, for the sake of argument, that blacks were under-represented, Jews over-represented, and white Gentiles represented in proportion – a typical circumstance – to their population.)
If, on the other hand, success in higher education reflects merit, then there’s no basis for considering ethnic demographics at all. If a graduating class is half Jewish and half Asian, then so be it. Everyone else needs to pull up their socks. Call this the “NBA scenario.” No one pushes for affirmative action for whites and Asians in the NBA; merit rules.
But it’s dishonest to argue demographic disparity in some cases, but merit in others. It’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” type of argument.
I believe that that was Twirip’s point. Twirip forgive me if I have misstated your position, or otherwise put words in your mouth.
January 3, 2010, 7:28 pmJay Guevara says:
As an afterthought, this is rather like the situation with women and insurance. Women used to be paid less by an annuity than men because actuaries figured women would live longer. Same sum, more years, less per month. Simple. Women protested against this, and I believe that this no longer is the case.
At the same time, women resisted efforts to make auto insurance gender-blind, saying that would mean they were subsidizing the wild driving habits of young males. So sex-based auto insurance premiums remain the case.
The fundamental issue was: “is gender a valid segmentation variable for actuarial calculations of insurance premiums?” The answer should be either “yes” or “no.” If “yes,” then men pay more for auto insurance, but women get less per month from an annuity. If “no,” then women get the same monthly sum from an annuity as a man, but they pay more for auto insurance.
But to mix and match, and say sex is relevant to one but not the other, is and was intellectually dishonest.
January 3, 2010, 7:37 pmMithras says:
If you believe that, clearly you have been asleep since the 2008 Democratic presidential primary until today.
January 3, 2010, 7:44 pmMike says:
Rights. Jews are overrepresented in Hollywood. Yet we don’t hear the line that overrepresentation is prima facie evidence of discrimination.
Most of those same Hollywood Jews are very liberal on issues like affirmative action. Affirmative action is based on the idea that too many whites in any location is based on racism. Well, is the overrepresentation of Jews in Hollywood based on pro-Semitism?
Similarly, Ilya has blogged repeatedly on the overrepresentation of liberals in academia. Well…Maybe liberals are just smarter; harder working; better people; etc. Instead, conservatives tend to rely on a disparate impact theory for discrimination.
Yes, those same conservatives (in, e.g., employment discrimination context) are opposed to disparate impact.
People are (shocker) self-serving and intellectually dishonest – especially when it comes to their in-groups. Indeed, one test of intellectual integrity is seeing whether a person’s arguments would be applied in other contexts. Let’s look at Iyla.
Iyla is a libertarian Jew. The same arguments Iyla would use to argue that liberals discriminate against libertarians (his in-group) in academia, he’d reject when used to argue that Jews (his in-group) discriminate against goyim.
My own take is that most people discriminate in favor of their own group. It’s basic tribalism, and is hard-wired into us. It’s not morally good. It should be fought. But first, we must admit that they (and often us) discriminate in favor of our in-groups.
January 3, 2010, 8:17 pmArthurKirkland says:
I wouldn’t forget Gene Simmons. He’s worth an Entwistle toenail.
School prayer is nothing other than proseltyizing.
January 3, 2010, 8:32 pmHejde says:
Too many lawyers on this thread -
There are several explanations, most of them lousy. Jusst to set the record straight, I am a gentile – whatever that means in the great scheme of life.
1) People are tribal in nature, that is we take our values from parents and family – and we identify with those, that look like us, behave like us and speaks like us.
2) We need to be taught, that looking or speaking different is not inherently worth any value judgements. That is called civilizing.
3) If your parents were farmers (or whatever) you look at that as desirable, unless there were serious problems. No sane person want to grow up a slave etc.
4) If 3) is not available you look for ways to fit in with whatever is the dominant culture. (which explains the otherwise unexplainable, why would any jew want to be a marxist, fascist etc. if not for short-sighted self preservation).
5) If you are prevented from owning real estate or become a public employee, which was the prevailing situation in Europe for centuries, – and if you were always waiting for the next progrom when the economy went sour or the sovereign needed a prügel knabe, you tended to get a transportable wealth. In the old case either an education or economics (university, banking etc.). Under those circumstances your tribe would tend to overrepresented in those groups. Your parents and family would push for that.
6) There is no real difference between the jews and later immigrants like the chinese, koreans or indians in this respect. It is not that these groups are inherently smarter, they just were selected by instinct for survival and family pressure. Just look at the “problems” asian kids have in college admissions. The rest of us just did not have that pressure.
7) Those of us who grew up in traditional academic families had the same inclination, just not the life-or-death pressure. After all we were just doing, what the family had always done.
When all that is said, I just don’t get it, when a comparatively large number of people of jewish descent seem to have a “death wish” and are actively promoting points of view, that are deathly to their group. (Chomsky, Trotsky etc.) It is as if they think by being more catholic than the pope, they can somehow protect themselves.
In this respect affirmative and other “well meaning” actions are the worst affliction this country has suffered since its inception. It keeps the people, who need it most down as a permanent underclass, which is downright “un american”, the dumbing down of our schools – and the stupidifying of our colleges and universities are close seconds.
I have this naive hope, that sooner or later people will revolt and demand, that every kid will be pushed to their personal best and discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, colour or creed will be outlawed.
But – wait – isn’t it already? Silly me.
Instead of discussing the number of angels able to fit on the tip of a pin, perhaps we should all – especially the “academically enlightened” – start to do something in this regard.
What about starting to teach hard facts and knowledge and actually demand that our students know something. Look for for challenges to the assumed wisdom.
Then we might avoid the scandals higher education has become as well as “scientists” faking the numbers (Global Warming numbers anyone?).
just my 2 cents,
peace
Hejde
January 3, 2010, 9:18 pmDavid Nieporent says:
They do? I thought they tend to rely on a disparate treatment theory.
January 3, 2010, 9:33 pmDavid Nieporent says:
I don’t think that word means what you think it means. School prayer is… prayer. A communication directed to G-d, loosely speaking. Proseltyzing is a communication directed to other people in an attempt to convert them to one’s religion.
January 3, 2010, 9:37 pmKen Arromdee says:
I think there’s a difference between “overrepresented” and “so overrepresented that they make up the vast majority even though they’re a minority of the general population”.
Also, it’s a lot more likely for a group which is defined by the ideas one holds (liberals) to be biased, than for the Jews (Jews aren’t actually required to have a whole lot of specific ideas related to public policy and government).
January 3, 2010, 9:38 pmJay Guevara says:
As a conservative former academic, I disparage both the disparate treatment and disparate impact arguments. Despite earning a tenured position, I ultimately left because of the hostile environment, in the sense that swimming alone against any and all tides gets old after a while. Of course, an offer from industry to quadruple my salary facilitated the decision…
January 3, 2010, 9:49 pmJay Guevara says:
Not required, perhaps, but generally do. Which would you rather bet on: the politics of a Lutheran, or those of a Jew?
January 3, 2010, 9:53 pmlumpy says:
None. It’s comparing strawberries and strawberry Poptarts. Being Jewish is genetic, while being liberal is intellectual / emotional. Broadly speaking, the Jews don’t have a unified agenda, while liberals do; if one doesn’t buy in to a significant portion of that agenda, one is not a liberal.
January 3, 2010, 10:10 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Arthur, I grew up in a little town where “religous diversity” meant having a Baptist, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, AND a Catholic church. Who exactly were our lead-guide-and-direct-us prayers, which we had every day, proselytizing? And the football game prayers, for good sportmanship, no injuries, fun, and a safe ride home – whose religious rights did those trample on?
January 3, 2010, 10:11 pmJay Guevara says:
Straw man alert.
January 3, 2010, 10:19 pmHarryEagar says:
‘Proseltyzing is a communication directed to other people in an attempt to convert them to one’s religion.’
Yes, that’s exactly what school prayer advocates are trying to do. Since prayer is not forbidden in school, it is impossible to think of any other justification for forcing children to participate in public prayer in school.
It cannot possibly be a communication with god if some of them do not think there are gods.
January 3, 2010, 10:27 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Harry, when I was growing up we had prayers and they were not for the purpose of proselytizing. It was assumed that everyone wanted to participate. No one ever complained, I knew because my mother worked for the schools and she would have known. (My mother wasn’t terribly gung-ho on school prayer, but she didn’t see a great harm in it.) The purpose was to start the school day with a positive thought, a quiet moment, and a reminder to the kids that we were to be good, and to actually ask God to look over all of us that day. You’re imputing motives that just weren’t there.
You can say that it was a failure of imagination on the part of the people who thought all of the kids were on the same page. But I can say it’s a failure of imagination for people to say that the only purpose of school prayer is proselytizing.
January 3, 2010, 10:31 pmRicardo says:
William F. Buckley as recently as the 1990s is known to have rejected the idea that a Jew should be editor of National Review on the ground that the leaders of the American conservative movement should be believing Christians only. Billy Graham was caught on tape sycophantically agreeing with and back-slapping Nixon during one of his anti-Semitic tirades about the supposedly Jewish-dominated media. Jerry Falwell was an active promoter of the idea that the anti-Christ was alive today in the form of a man who was “of course” Jewish.
I agree with you that many if not most conservative Christians are not active anti-Semites. It seems common in the evangelical community for people to think that Christians have some obligations to act as protectors of the Jewish people. That may be love but it can also come across as a bit patronizing or condescending. It is not to be confused with respect.
January 3, 2010, 10:52 pmorca says:
“What would have been controversial is if — somehow — Cameron had made a movie in which the good guys accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts.”
- Jonah Goldberg, aspiring Christian and National Review editor wannabe, reviewing Avatar.
January 3, 2010, 10:57 pmMike says:
All people who identify with a group have an agenda – namely, the propagation of that group. Irish Americans are always talking about how “Irish” they are. They want to forward Irish values in America. Silly and trivial people, for sure; but many folks are.
Jewish Americans are often very pro-Semitic. Try getting a job in talent management in Hollywood as a goyim. You’ll hear a lot of anti-goyim jokes. You’ll see resumes tossed in the trash. None of this is new stuff or controversial stuff to those of us who have worked with Jewish people. Guess what: White non-Jews do it, too. Blacks do it. Women do it (often to other women, since women – unlike most other groups – tend to hate on each other).
People are tribalist. That is banal. What is to argue? You claim people are not tribal, and do not tend to prefer members of their own group to outsiders of their group? Please start citing the research proving that point. You won’t find anything valuable, but have at it.
You want to say that Jews, unlike pretty much every other racial and ethnic group, doesn’t discriminate in favor of members of said group? That argument has as much intellectually content as a strawberry pop tart.
January 3, 2010, 11:21 pmMike says:
Typo. Here’s what I meant. The same conservative will say:
1. Disparate impact is not proof of racism in the workforce.
2. Look at all the liberals in the academia/the mainstream media. There’s a liberal bias!
1 & 2 are not intellectually consistent.
Now some will say, “But I have anecdotes of conservatives not getting jobs because of their conservatism!” Well, sure. So an anecdote plus disparate impact proves bias? If so, we can surely find anecdotes for racism in the workforce, too.
Iyla fell into the same illogical thinking.
One day he’ll post about overrepresentation of liberals in the academy. Proof of bias in favor of other liberals. Yet overrepresentation of Jews in certain industries is not proof of pro-Semitic bias.
Those two positions are intellectually inconsistent, and obviously results-based. He wants to prove that liberals discrimiante; and that Jews do not discriminate. The two positions are inconsistent.
January 3, 2010, 11:26 pmJFP says:
“America’s white Christians did not always object to affirmative action. To the contrary, they engaged in it — affirmatively enslaving blacks, affirmatively discriminating against other minority groups, affirmatively shouting down agnostics and atheists through government and private action, affirmatively promoting Christianity in all manner of legislation, affirmatively rigging law enforcement, schools and the military to benefit themselves — for many decades.”
What an offensive comment. My parents were white Christians, and they did none of these things. Most of the things listed were done by rich white Christians, and we were lower-middle class and didn’t have a lot of power to do much of anything that hurt other people.
And speaking of affirmative action, I filled out quite a few affirmative-action forms when applying for academic jobs. Not once was I allowed to mention my class background. So, Arthur Kirkland, are you willing to demand affirmative action for those of us who have the wrong class background? Because in academia, most of the people who got jobs seem to either come from wealthy backgrounds (like Martha Nussbaum, Bill Ayers and his wife), or else were lucky enough to get into an elite school. Either way, they look down on people like me.
January 3, 2010, 11:35 pmRicardo says:
Not true. Talk to some of the older professors at your university. Milton Friedman and former Princeton professor Ben Bernanke came from working-class Jewish immigrant families. It is increasingly not “luck” at all that gets people into elite schools and most academics I know are better described as coming from middle- or upper-middle class backgrounds. Even if you go to a an average university as an undergrad, if you work hard you can go to an elite school as a graduate student and can even get funding. That’s what I did.
It is the case that the elite universities imposed quotas on Jews in the early 20th century. As a result, there was something of a golden age at City University of New York in the 1920s where all the New York Jews who couldn’t go to Harvard or Yale because of their background went (for free, as I recall) and many had amazingly successful careers afterward. There were a couple of Nobel Prize winners in this batch of students.
January 4, 2010, 12:17 amPerseus says:
White middle/upper-middle class women seem to benefit disproportionately from affirmative action in academia.
That’s an empirical question. One could think of various reasons why academics might be more apt to discriminate in an employment situation than Jews.
January 4, 2010, 1:08 amRicardo says:
If it is an empirical question, then it is to be answered with empirical data rather than conjuring up a prioi reasons why liberals are more likely to discriminate. The fact that liberals tend to be overrepresented in the hard sciences (as are Jews) suggests there is more at work than crude blackballing. Conservatives tend to have the best representation at business schools. And they are probably well-represented among college football coaches, too. Economics departments on average tend to be centrist by mainstream American standards with a slight libertarian bent. For every Krugman, there is a Robert Barro, Ed Prescott, Milton Friedman or Eugene Fama on the other side.
January 4, 2010, 1:38 amPerseus says:
I don’t deny that there’s more at work than crude blackballing. I suspect that it varies by field with the harder sciences–because of their particular methodology–being less prone to ideological bias than the social sciences and humanities (e.g., my field of political science is by its very nature political and there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that my fellow Straussians are generally not welcomed with open arms).
Neoclassical economists (economics being the hardest of the social sciences due to its current methodology) are indeed relatively well-represented (though your list is biased towards macro-finance), but there is hardly anything approaching an even ratio.
January 4, 2010, 2:19 amRicardo says:
As far as liberals in Hollywood go, can anyone name any liberal action film stars? I can’t think of any off hand. Of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson (ok, maybe a stretch on this one), Chuck Norris and Clint Eastwood all except the last I’m quite sure are Republicans. Eastwood has identified as a moderate libertarian so I’m not sure how he votes.
All this goes to show that certain kinds of people cluster in certain occupations for reasons that don’t necessarily have anything to do with ideology.
January 4, 2010, 2:22 amRicardo says:
Who said anything about ratios? My main claim is that certain kinds of people cluster in certain occupations for reasons that don’t necessarily have anything to do with discrimination. As one example, I pointed to economics where if you survey economists on substantive policy issues like taxation, welfare, minimum wage, unionization, free trade, regulation, etc., they tend to look relatively centrist with a distinct libertarian bent on things like free trade and rent control.
A head-count of self-identified liberals v. conservatives or Republican v. Democrats is much less interesting to me than actual substantive policy and ideological beliefs. Self-identified political labels tell you much less about what someone actually believes and are more about some kind of tribal identity than anything else.
I offered up the Krugman example as a sidebar because a) macro is one of my fields and b) macro people tend to talk politics a lot more than, say, theorists or econometricians.
January 4, 2010, 2:40 amPerseus says:
I took your statement–”for every Krugman, there is a Robert Barro,” etc.–to imply some sort of balance. My mistake.
I beg to differ. The labels may be relatively crude, but at least among academics (who are generally more familiar with them) you can usually get a decent first order approximation of their ideological beliefs (except perhaps for libertarians).
My main claim is that certain kinds of people cluster in certain occupations for reasons that don’t necessarily have anything to do with discrimination.
I don’t deny that either, but I can’t imagine that you think that that factor can explain all of the differences.
January 4, 2010, 4:58 amRicardo says:
In fact, I do think there is a rough balance among prominent macro-finance economists. You claimed that this is somehow a biased sample. Maybe it is. It’s also irrelevant to the broader argument.
There are three problems with this statement. First, well, it’s wrong. Read Harvey Mansfield’s article about defining American conservatism. He doesn’t come up with any clear definition and I have never seen a group of highly educated conservatives or academics able to agree on just what conservatism is. Which makes it a relatively useless exercise to ask other highly educated people whether they define themselves as conservative or not. Second, why should we rely on “a decent first order approximation” when we actually have much more accurate data about specific ideological beliefs like the AEA’s survey of academic economists on contemporary public policy issues? Third, since the issue is under-representation of conservatives in academia relative to the general population, even if academics are using the “true” definitions of liberal and conservative when answering surveys, non-academics are probably not. Indeed, while more Americans seem to be self-identifying as conservative they also seem more likely to support traditionally liberal causes like marijuana legalization or same-sex marriage.
As you yourself said, it is an empirical question. Absent any empirical data, I will embrace Occam’s Razor on this one and say there is no more evidence for ideological discrimination within academia than there is for pro-Semitic discrimination in academia. Because, well, there isn’t unless you have some evidence that you have been withholding.
January 4, 2010, 6:49 amTwirip says:
.
Eighty percent of Jews voted for Obama. So “broadly speaking” we can say that Jews are liberal.
January 4, 2010, 8:17 amTwirip says:
Dylan was, and is, a folk singer.
A darn good folk singer too.
January 4, 2010, 8:21 amTwirip says:
David M. Nieporent says:
No, I think it’s pretty obvious that assimilation has gone into reverse since prayer was removed from schools.
I doubt that prayer in schools itself was the deciding factor – several other cultural changes occured around the same time. But Jews, among others, have de-assimilated over the last forty years.
January 4, 2010, 8:29 amTwirip says:
Strange. I know some Americans of Irish ancestry, and none of them are “always talking” about how “Irish” they are. They certainly display zero evidence of even knowing what “Irish values” are (drinking? Catholicism? hurley?) let alone of wanting to advance these things on America.
The group which most Americans identify with are Americans. This used to be the case with Jews also. Why WWII caused American Jews to turn away from America is a mystery, but it is what happened.
January 4, 2010, 8:37 amJFP says:
Ricardo, I’m not talking about academia as it existed when Milton Friedman got his start. I’m talking about academia today (and in fact ever since about 1971 when the job market turned sour). I thought I’d be judged on the quality of my ideas and instead I was judged on where I had gone to grad school.
I keep waiting for even one liberal or leftist who is willing to demand affirmative action based on class background. I want to be able to check off “Lower-middle class background” on one of those affirmative-action forms.
January 4, 2010, 9:47 amMattsky says:
That is simply is not true Twirip. I identify my self as an American first. The other Jews I know do as well. Where does your contention come from?
January 4, 2010, 11:07 amDavid Nieporent says:
I think it’s pretty obvious that you’re deeply confused on this subject, and don’t actually know any Jews and/or know what assimilation means.
January 4, 2010, 11:15 amMark Field says:
Assuming your parents are old enough, they almost certainly voted for people who did do such things, and your parents benefited from them along with all other whites.
January 4, 2010, 12:19 pmMark Field says:
I agree with Harry that state sponsored prayer in school was intended to proselytize. That certainly was how it got started (such prayer has a long history in US schools). The Catholic Church certainly thought it was, since that’s why it formed its own school system.
January 4, 2010, 12:21 pmDavid Nieporent says:
Only if the economy is zero-sum, which it isn’t.
January 4, 2010, 12:32 pmPerseus says:
But if they were ‘rational’ as the public choice folks define it, they wouldn’t have wasted their time voting.
January 4, 2010, 12:50 pmArkady says:
Matt Damon.
January 4, 2010, 1:08 pmArkady says:
You got that right! Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, self-described as as couple of Jewish boys who thought they were black.
January 4, 2010, 1:18 pmMark Field says:
Heh.
This is not even wrong.
January 4, 2010, 1:36 pmJFP says:
Mark Field, my parents never voted for anyone who enslaved people. They aren’t that old. Nor did any of my more distant ancestors because they mostly came to America after slavery ended, or else lived in the North.
Anyway, I’m more interested in your answer to this question: Are you willing to demand that affirmative action apply to class background as well as race and gender? I bet not.
January 4, 2010, 2:22 pmMark Field says:
Bad bet. I do favor giving “bonus points” to those who’ve overcome hardship and poverty. AFAIK, most colleges today do that.
It never occurred to me that they had, that being biologically impossible at this point. But there’s a very good chance they did vote for someone who supported segregation, and an even better one that they (and therefore you) benefited from segregation even if they didn’t vote for it.
January 4, 2010, 3:33 pmDon Rodrigo says:
Steve S:
Going back a bit, Jews used to be over represented in basketball. Hard to see that as some sort of Jewish conspiracy.
And in Olympic-style weightlifting, especially the smaller weight classes, back in the early post WWII years. Both sports were well-suited to the urban environment in which Jews and other ethnics grew up.
January 4, 2010, 5:22 pmJFP says:
“I do favor giving ‘bonus points’ to those who’ve overcome hardship and poverty. AFAIK, most colleges today do that.”
I don’t know of any college that does that. I think you’re talking about student admissions and not the hiring of professors. As I said, I filled out many affirmative-action forms when applying for academic jobs, and not one had a box I could check off for my class background.
January 4, 2010, 8:17 pmMark Field says:
Yes, I was.
Even if there’s no such box, I’d think it would be easy to convey that background. And I expect that people in charge of hiring would be impressed by that. I would be.
January 4, 2010, 10:31 pmLeo Marvin says:
I’m always surprised when conservatives are surprised we’re sympathetic to this. Wouldn’t they expect it to be part of our Soro-Marxist, tax-and-spend, redistributionist agenda?
January 5, 2010, 2:38 amPerseus says:
Indeed I do think it is, especially when you arbitrarily get to decide who is prominent.
Actually Mansfield does provide a loose definition in that article. Moreover, he describes the various types of American conservatives in “Pride v. Interest in American Conservatism,” and in another article refers to “the values of the sixties” (particularly relevant to the baby boomers who dominate academia today) as: “the Third World, human rights, liberation, freedom of choice, equal rights for women, freedom for irreligion, rights of defendants, gay rights, consumerism, school desegregation, affirmative action, free expression, and welfare rights. To those who oppose them, they are, respectively: lack of patriotism, abandoning one’s friends, lack of self-restraint, easy abortion, interchangeability of the sexes, atheism in schools, increased rights for criminals, respectability for homosexuals, contempt for producers, forced busing, reverse discrimination, license to pornographers, and living off others. Although one might want to pick and choose among these items, they seem to make a package.” In other words, the liberal versus conservative divide.
January 5, 2010, 3:21 amPerseus says:
Even if they are not, there’s little reason to think that the numbers are wildly inaccurate, particularly when you have things like the Pew survey, which surveys specific issues.
Absent any better empirical data on your part, I will embrace Mansfield’s claim that “Most of the Straussians in Washington went there because they could not find jobs in universities. For some time, American universities have been increasingly politicized…”
January 5, 2010, 3:35 amJFP says:
Leo Marvin, I’m not a conservative, so I’ll let the conservatives answer you about their expectations. I’m a leftist and when I got my Ph.D., I was a socialist. Being on the margins of academia taught me a lot about the left, though I’m pretty sure what it taught me wasn’t what leftists wanted me to learn. Basically, I learned that the other leftists talk a great deal about how they’re for the poor, but their actions show otherwise. Tenured professors pay no attention to the fact that there is a huge problem in academia these days with unemployment and underemployment. Has Noam Chomsky ever addressed this problem? Or any other prominent leftist professor? Not that I’m aware of. It doesn’t mean anything to them. All these people who say they hate the phrase “the magic of the marketplace” in fact let the marketplace deal with the unemployment problem anyway.
I’m not a socialist anymore. The socialists of academia did nothing for those of us at the bottom. They didn’t care at all. I’m still on the left, but I have my own sort of leftism that you probably wouldn’t like.
Mark Field, you know nothing about academia. Maybe at community colleges they’d be impressed by a working-class background. Or maybe at Berea College in Kentucky. Every other place they wouldn’t want it.
Here’s a story to illustrate what I mean. My wife is lucky enough to have become a tenured professor. She was asked to be on the hiring committee for another department. What sort of person did they want, she asked. “Someone from a good school.” First, this answer entailed that they were likely to get someone from a wealthy background. Second, my wife did not go to a good school herself, so this answer is similar to a white telling a black “We want a white” or a man telling a woman “We want a man.” And this answer was given by a liberal, but one who (as so many liberals are these days) completely clueless about class issues.
This sort of thinking pervades much of academia. The result is that we now have diversity in terms of race and gender, but not class background.
January 5, 2010, 9:16 amleo marvin says:
JFP, I can’t speak to your case or to academia generally. I was just pointing out what I believe is a fairly common recognition by liberals that economic deprivation tends to impede achievement, and should be considered as such in admission and hiring. At least that’s been my approach in my own little corner of the world. The President has also said as much, and he’s a pretty influential source on such matters.
January 5, 2010, 12:58 pmSandy MacHoots says:
Someday I really want to see a good left-wing tenured prof take a pay hit to help a secretary who’s raising three kids as a single mom, let alone the underemployed Ph.D. making $2K a semester as an adjunct. It might have happened somewhere, maybe, but I’d like to hear about it. (No, I haven’t heard right-wing folks offering to take a bullet, but they’re not the ones congratulating themselves on how sensitive they are to the poor.)
Sure they are. The workplace, like the NBA, is a market, in which we have some reason to believe that merit gets rewarded. Academia is a cartel — or a kind of private club — in which new faculty are hired by co-workers who have vastly less interest in their competence or productivity. An owner or supervisor who hires a less qualified employee based on his political views will pay a price in lower performance. But a faculty member who votes for a less qualified but more politically congenial colleague will not.
I agree about the media, however. Based on comparative LSAT scores, journalism majors are pretty much average in their inteligence. They’re above average in their ability to write. Given that a good writer with average inteligence can make more money in industry, I’d suspect that the pool of aspiring journalists would skew heavily liberal. Also, prolonged work as a journalist, covering people who almost always make a lot more money than you do, tends to breed envy, which is a necessary component of liberal thought.
Actually, they’re not, unless you’re a good leftist. If you’re a conservative with a great up-from-poverty adversity story, you’re just Joe the Plumber with a degree. Contrast, in this regard, Justice Thomas and President Obama.
January 5, 2010, 4:04 pmleo marvin says:
Sandy MacHoots, wouldn’t it have been easier to say “people who disagree with me are petty, selfish hypocrites?”
January 5, 2010, 5:14 pmSandy MacHoots says:
Wouldn’t it have been more accurate, Leo, to say “I have no response to Sandy’s post since I know absolutely nothing about it, but I’m a smart-ass liberal and I’ve got to say something because that’s what smart-ass liberals do so that we can keep feeling superior”?
To answer on the merits, though, the answer is no. As a Catholic whose Church does a lot of that “social justice” thing, I actually know quite a few left-wingers who consistently put themselves out for the poor and downtrodden. I know a few conservatives who do it, as well. I just don’t see many of then in law schools. Maybe you’ve got some good examples to contradict my points. No? Thought not.
January 5, 2010, 10:21 pmleo marvin says:
Pointing out that your comment oozes smug superiority means I’m feeling superior? Nice logic. Your follow up is more of the same, and both of them are so wrong they give “wrong” a bad name. I won’t credit either with a substantive response, so draw any conclusion you want. I’m happy to let anyone else who reads them do the same.
January 6, 2010, 6:22 amYankev says:
Agreed. But of course lgm is also confusing cause with effect. Even direct proseletyzing has little effect on Jews who are knowledgable about and committed to Jewish religion and traditions. The proseletyzers have their greatest success with Jews who grew up with little in the way of Torah education and Jewish commitment. Those who grew up with little are easier prey for the frauds like Jeez for Jewsus. Some grow up with little in the way of religious values of any kind, and have no idea that Judaism teaches religious and moral values.
So I differ with lgm. The threat to American Jews is not from prayer in schools. The threat to American Jews is from ignorance of Jewish religion and values. While I am thankful for the relative lack of discrimination in America, Jews have survived severe discrimination indeed. Without it, we disappear in even (and particularly in) the least disriminatory surroundings, until the unthinkable happens and we are reminded again about who we are and why we exist.
January 6, 2010, 10:12 amYankev says:
What makes you think lgm is Jewish?
January 6, 2010, 10:14 amYankev says:
Do they miss you much over at Storm Front?
January 6, 2010, 10:15 amYankev says:
Including quotas limiting the number of Jews in universities and professional schools, to prevent against overrepresentation. Which, despite what
January 6, 2010, 10:20 amStorm FrontTwirip thinks, many Jews who otherwise support civil rights laws have always opposed compensatory discrimination, whether called affirmative action or something else. FWIW, it was a Jew, Alan Bakke, whose challenge in the Supreme Court led to the weakening of the entire affirmative action system.Yankev says:
We weren’t discussing large majorities. We were discussing overrepresentqation in realtion to percentages of the general population.
January 6, 2010, 10:22 amYankev says:
As ” a goyim”? Siamese twins, perhaps? Or a pregnant woman? As Alan Sherman observed, one hippopotami cannot get on a bus.
Other than that, nothing in your post merits a response.
January 6, 2010, 10:34 amjukeboxgrad says:
twirip, provoking negative reactions from yankev, nieporent and me (in various different threads) is quite an accomplishment. I think it’s probably never happened before (j aldridge has managed to get nieporent and me onto the same side, but I don’t think yankev was ever involved). Your unique achievement deserves recognition. Keep up the good work. I don’t know how we got along without you for so long. I’m glad you finally appeared.
January 6, 2010, 11:31 amYankev says:
If we can get neurodoc to weigh in, we’ll have a clean sweep.
January 6, 2010, 5:17 pmleo marvin says:
jbg, yankev, et al, such cosmic alignments can be as brief as they are rare, so enjoy it while you can. The over-under on twirip’s VC life expectancy is dropping with each new comment.
January 6, 2010, 6:30 pmYankev says:
I browsed through a book called Born to Kvetch the other day and came upon the wonderful phrase “A sheyne reine kaporah” — it seems to fit.
January 7, 2010, 9:43 amjukeboxgrad says:
Out of a sense of rachmones for our goyishe friends I will provide a link for that.
January 7, 2010, 10:28 amleo marvin says:
yankeve and jbg, thanks for reminding me I loaned my copy out and never got it back. A replacement is en route from Amazon.
January 8, 2010, 3:08 pmChuck says:
“An especially pernicious common fallacy is the assumption that if a given group is overrepresented in some field, that must mean that they dominate it, and are using their supposed “domination” to promote the group’s interests”
You are clumping two points: 1) over-representation means domination and 2) over-represented (or domination) means promoting one’s group’s interest.
Regardless, few people argue the above. Rather they argue that 1) Market dominant minorities are over-represented enough to promote their interests “too much*” because 2) they are intelligent, 3) they work in a relatively tight-nit group, 4) and they have a group interest to promote. (Ie they act as an ethnic-lobby). They argue this because 5) they become suspicious. And suspicion is 6) elicited by the ubiquitous presence of some people, when things are going bad. It’s 7) reinforced if those people are experienced as being rather group-centric. The only thing potentially fallacious here, as opposed to erroneous or irrational, is 6). But it’s only fallacious if one assumes the logic is deductive, not inductive.
The more pernicious common fallacy is to conclude that people just think x, because, when asked, they just give x as a reason.
*I suspect people have a rather lose definition of dominate, which is why the ADL uses “too much.”
4) Jews have too much power in the US
January 8, 2010, 10:38 pm7) Jews have too much control in Finance
Chuck says:
“Wouldn’t they expect it to be part of our Soro-Marxist, tax-and-spend, redistributionist agenda?”
Depends. There are those Leftist who are actually leftists and there are 1) those that just play the white-moral status game. As for the leftists some are 2) classical Marxists and some are the Post-Gramscian Marxists. The former agitated on the basis of class conflict/oppression, 3) the later (often called ‘progressives), seeing the former did not accomplish what was desired, agitate on the basis of cultural/ethnic hegemony.
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/essays/westernmarxismfinal.pdf Then of course there are others, 4) some of whom are really just ethnic interests parading as leftists and 5) other who are not.
So not from 1) and 4). And not any time some from 3).
January 8, 2010, 11:26 pmCaptainchaos says:
(cough, cough) Funny that, in 1985 the Anti-Defamation League bestowed upon Jewish gangster Mo Dalitz its “Torch of Liberty” award. As it turns out Dalitz was the right-hand man of, you guessed it, Meyer Lansky. Now, just why would that be if Dalitz did not act in the interest of Jews to the satisfaction of the ADL? To ask the question is to answer it. And if it’s good enough for the ADL it’s good enough for me.
January 9, 2010, 4:47 amCaptainchaos says:
And how could I forget about bootlegger Samuel Bronfman who was president of the Canadian Jewish Congress (the very same organization to which we owe so much for helping to criminalize “hate speech” in Canada) from 1939 to 1962. His son, Edgar Bronfman took over the family business following his father’s death in 1971 and in 1981 was elected president of the World Jewish Congress (but of course that had nothing to do with the confluence of organized crime, big money and Jewish ethnic interests!).
January 9, 2010, 5:44 amYankev says:
You forgot race mixing. And Bronfman’s secret interest in blood banks linked to matzo bakeries. And don’t forget the Jewish doctors who invented AIDS.
January 12, 2010, 7:47 pm