In recent years, “ideological diversity” has become one of the principal demands made upon American academia, not only by the yahoo right but also by many moderate conservatives and centrists.
First, the cultural right (Rufo, the U. of Austin, etc.) have long lamented the dearth (indeed, they often argue, calculated exclusion) of “conservative” academics; but let us recall that for decades, law schools have had very moderate to conservative faculty (my experience at IU Law School, 1960-63) as well as vocal Federalist Societies, and in turn, these have had a significant influence on American law and jurisprudence—much more, I would argue, than CRT law professors.
Second: in my 34 years teaching (26 at Alabama in Tuscaloosa), my colleagues nearly always left their party affiliation at the door. They taught their subjects based on the best available scholarship. The History Department, itself was fairly conservative (e.g., Forrest McDonald, who was interestingly, a good friend of Eugene Genovese and his wife). The English Department was largely apolitical, even those who preached poststructuralism in the 1980s/90s. The College of Engineering, was conservative; Education, more liberal—particularly the younger members). Law, mixed (it had one of the two Marxists on campus; the other was in Sociology). Our students were always heavily Republican.
Third: Higher education had become infested with bloated middle management who value a smooth sailing ship. Students are deemed customers to be satisfied and placated with dazzling Rec Centers, etc. A mathematician friend at Kentucky told me a story five years ago: the Dean asked the Math Chair to curb the number of failing grades; Math responded by offering more remedial Math and tutoring; still, the Dean wasn’t satisfied, since students were unhappy; the Dean persisted and raised questions about future funding if a “better” curve wasn’t forthcoming. I grant that this is one instance, one Dean; but the proliferation of administrators is troublesome, particularly given the rise of adjunct teaching faculty.
In my experience and continued observation, your essay is spot on.
One issue I didn’t notice you addressing: in a democracy, academic institutions which depend on the public largesse cannot solely pursue nor be the sole arbiters of the “academic enterprise.”
In addition to the simple treatment of the academy’s trade as knowledge-production, the academy-in-a-democracy must also serve a variety of functions within a democratic state. It advises the government and political leaders, educates the next generation of citizens (in a broad sense), serves as a store of cultural knowledge, and (unintentionally or not) is a source of patronage.
The left’s obsession with “minority” representation is justified by many of these facts. While the quality of academic output is important, academic institutions which are totally unrepresentative of certain groups will fail to perform these other functions. Even underrepresentation or a perception thereof threatens some of those functions.
The issue which the left (and many liberal academics) seem blind to is that conservative ideological underrepresentation is just as much a threat to the academy’s democratic legitimacy as that of any minority group. Equally difficult to admit: persistent underrepresentation tends to result in deficiencies among the excluded groups. Doing so to conservatives, who are hardly a minority, is all the more dangerous and unjustified.
For instance: The very fact that these institutions are unrepresentative prevents them from serving as trusted reservoirs of expertise for the various unrepresented factions. The left focuses on how academia may ignore or neglect ideas resulting from the Black American experience. Equally so, Black Americans are more likely to have conspiratorial and intolerant worldviews which exposure to academia might reduce. The same, of course, is true of white conservatives. Trust requires a modicum of representation, but distrust of academia naturally leads to conspiracism.
The education of the next generation of citizens to be depressed (strongly correlated with university attendance and ideological progressivism), closeminded, and anti-American is a strong criticism of the broad liberal-left dominance of universities. It is equally an abdication of the universities’ role that a new generation of conservative leaders either did not attend university or views the experience as something akin to surviving a medieval heresy trial. Even if, as you point out, underrepresentation is a matter of self-selection, university humanities departments should consider whether they can meet their pedagogical requirement to educate the entire next generation of American leaders—not just those who fall within certain ideological bounds.
Similarly, the platonic ideal of the university should be a living embodiment of all aspects of the culture in which it exists. The lack of conservatives in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and philosophy is indicative of the death or near-death of major strands of American intellectual culture and history. Is it any wonder the new right looks abroad for intellectual inspiration, whether that’s Catholic integralists to neo-feudalists to European illiberal democracies? The universities should have taken a cue from Marcusian/Frankfurtish analyses of capitalism and remembered to co-opt rebellion and critique into the system.
Finally: patronage. While high-minded discussions of the purpose of the university are well and good, taken cynically, their most obvious function is as a distributor of patronage to students, professors, other employees, and college towns in general. It was extremely foolish, if not negligent, for academia to ask conservatives to continue distributing patronage to their political opponents every year (including during periods of increasing radicalism on campus) under the assumption that the positive societal benefits of the university would protect them from retaliation. This is all the more negligent because it assumed that Republicans would behave virtuously and in the long-term interest of the nation—something very few professors or administors would be willing to admit this past decade.
So while I agree with much of your point, and applaud your elegant suggestion for achieving ideological diversity through topic selection, I think you vastly underestimate the role of the academy, and thus the importance of it having broad legitimacy, and the enormity of the task required to regain it.
When I was working on my Ph.D. in the humanities the 1990s, I was a rock-ribbed conservative. The faculty impressed on me the importance of engaging with my ideological counterparts at a high level (which my dissertation advisor himself modeled). I learned that conservatives can have a place in the academy, even in the most prestigious programs, but they had to excel in their scholarship. When, therefore, I hear voices on the right outside the academy complain about the paucity of conservatives among university faculties, I have to respond that it’s because their scholarship often simply doesn’t measure up. Those conservatives who do make it are likely to be among the leaders in their fields (and, yes, I’ve known and known of a number of them).
The most important questions are: does a narrow political orthodoxy exist in academia? And is it harmful to free inquiry? Hard not to say: yes and yes.
Good, measured piece. Three points.
First, the cultural right (Rufo, the U. of Austin, etc.) have long lamented the dearth (indeed, they often argue, calculated exclusion) of “conservative” academics; but let us recall that for decades, law schools have had very moderate to conservative faculty (my experience at IU Law School, 1960-63) as well as vocal Federalist Societies, and in turn, these have had a significant influence on American law and jurisprudence—much more, I would argue, than CRT law professors.
Second: in my 34 years teaching (26 at Alabama in Tuscaloosa), my colleagues nearly always left their party affiliation at the door. They taught their subjects based on the best available scholarship. The History Department, itself was fairly conservative (e.g., Forrest McDonald, who was interestingly, a good friend of Eugene Genovese and his wife). The English Department was largely apolitical, even those who preached poststructuralism in the 1980s/90s. The College of Engineering, was conservative; Education, more liberal—particularly the younger members). Law, mixed (it had one of the two Marxists on campus; the other was in Sociology). Our students were always heavily Republican.
Third: Higher education had become infested with bloated middle management who value a smooth sailing ship. Students are deemed customers to be satisfied and placated with dazzling Rec Centers, etc. A mathematician friend at Kentucky told me a story five years ago: the Dean asked the Math Chair to curb the number of failing grades; Math responded by offering more remedial Math and tutoring; still, the Dean wasn’t satisfied, since students were unhappy; the Dean persisted and raised questions about future funding if a “better” curve wasn’t forthcoming. I grant that this is one instance, one Dean; but the proliferation of administrators is troublesome, particularly given the rise of adjunct teaching faculty.
In my experience and continued observation, your essay is spot on.
Thank you for this thoughtful response!
One issue I didn’t notice you addressing: in a democracy, academic institutions which depend on the public largesse cannot solely pursue nor be the sole arbiters of the “academic enterprise.”
In addition to the simple treatment of the academy’s trade as knowledge-production, the academy-in-a-democracy must also serve a variety of functions within a democratic state. It advises the government and political leaders, educates the next generation of citizens (in a broad sense), serves as a store of cultural knowledge, and (unintentionally or not) is a source of patronage.
The left’s obsession with “minority” representation is justified by many of these facts. While the quality of academic output is important, academic institutions which are totally unrepresentative of certain groups will fail to perform these other functions. Even underrepresentation or a perception thereof threatens some of those functions.
The issue which the left (and many liberal academics) seem blind to is that conservative ideological underrepresentation is just as much a threat to the academy’s democratic legitimacy as that of any minority group. Equally difficult to admit: persistent underrepresentation tends to result in deficiencies among the excluded groups. Doing so to conservatives, who are hardly a minority, is all the more dangerous and unjustified.
For instance: The very fact that these institutions are unrepresentative prevents them from serving as trusted reservoirs of expertise for the various unrepresented factions. The left focuses on how academia may ignore or neglect ideas resulting from the Black American experience. Equally so, Black Americans are more likely to have conspiratorial and intolerant worldviews which exposure to academia might reduce. The same, of course, is true of white conservatives. Trust requires a modicum of representation, but distrust of academia naturally leads to conspiracism.
The education of the next generation of citizens to be depressed (strongly correlated with university attendance and ideological progressivism), closeminded, and anti-American is a strong criticism of the broad liberal-left dominance of universities. It is equally an abdication of the universities’ role that a new generation of conservative leaders either did not attend university or views the experience as something akin to surviving a medieval heresy trial. Even if, as you point out, underrepresentation is a matter of self-selection, university humanities departments should consider whether they can meet their pedagogical requirement to educate the entire next generation of American leaders—not just those who fall within certain ideological bounds.
Similarly, the platonic ideal of the university should be a living embodiment of all aspects of the culture in which it exists. The lack of conservatives in disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and philosophy is indicative of the death or near-death of major strands of American intellectual culture and history. Is it any wonder the new right looks abroad for intellectual inspiration, whether that’s Catholic integralists to neo-feudalists to European illiberal democracies? The universities should have taken a cue from Marcusian/Frankfurtish analyses of capitalism and remembered to co-opt rebellion and critique into the system.
Finally: patronage. While high-minded discussions of the purpose of the university are well and good, taken cynically, their most obvious function is as a distributor of patronage to students, professors, other employees, and college towns in general. It was extremely foolish, if not negligent, for academia to ask conservatives to continue distributing patronage to their political opponents every year (including during periods of increasing radicalism on campus) under the assumption that the positive societal benefits of the university would protect them from retaliation. This is all the more negligent because it assumed that Republicans would behave virtuously and in the long-term interest of the nation—something very few professors or administors would be willing to admit this past decade.
So while I agree with much of your point, and applaud your elegant suggestion for achieving ideological diversity through topic selection, I think you vastly underestimate the role of the academy, and thus the importance of it having broad legitimacy, and the enormity of the task required to regain it.
When I was working on my Ph.D. in the humanities the 1990s, I was a rock-ribbed conservative. The faculty impressed on me the importance of engaging with my ideological counterparts at a high level (which my dissertation advisor himself modeled). I learned that conservatives can have a place in the academy, even in the most prestigious programs, but they had to excel in their scholarship. When, therefore, I hear voices on the right outside the academy complain about the paucity of conservatives among university faculties, I have to respond that it’s because their scholarship often simply doesn’t measure up. Those conservatives who do make it are likely to be among the leaders in their fields (and, yes, I’ve known and known of a number of them).
The most important questions are: does a narrow political orthodoxy exist in academia? And is it harmful to free inquiry? Hard not to say: yes and yes.