New at Reason

November 28, 2006

Cathy Young studies up on the latest chatter about intellectual diversity on college campuses.

Comments

|11.28.06 @ 8:11AM|#

When intellectual life is seen as a bastion of the left, conservatism devolves from intellectual giants like the late Milton Friedman to intellectual thugs like Ann Coulter -- with dangerous consequences for the political climate.

Good job. It's always nice when Cathy uses her deference and even-handedness to build a case for taking a firm stand on a position.

It's also always nice when someone points out that Ann Coulter is a pea-brain.

thoreau|11.28.06 @ 9:02AM|#

Yeah, this was a pretty decent column by Cathy Young. And madpad beat me to the punch on quoting that part about intellectual giants and intellectual thugs.

However, I'm not sure that academia is quite as liberal as people think. Granted, I come from the sciences, where views on, say, race and gender are things to discuss around the water cooler, but not the sort of things that might find their way into a research article. But, as a barometer, I offer the example of one of my best friends, a historian who is also one of the most conservative people I know. He started grad school feeling oppressed, as many campus conservatives do, but over time that feeling faded. In retrospect, I wonder if his mood in the beginning of grad school had more to do with the ritual misery that is the first year of grad school.

Also, while Harry Silvergate is correct to note that certain opinions will not go over terribly well on campuses, including opinions that would be considered normal but debatable elsewhere, most of the horror stories involve somebody who decides to be a jackass about those opinions. That's not to excuse the horror stories, just to observe that in academia, like anything else, people who go out of their way to piss off other people don't do terribly well for themselves.

I'm not here to defend the problems in academia, just to suggest that maybe it's somewhat exaggerated.

|11.28.06 @ 9:15AM|#

"...Johnson said that the problem was not so much retaliation against students with dissenting opinions as "one-sided instruction to students that don't have the educational or intellectual background to detect the bias and challenge a professor's viewpoint." "

This is one of my pet hobbyhorses; schools do not teach logic, critical thinking or analytical skills.

Students are taught to passively accept the "lesson" as incontrovertibly correct, and to sit quietly as the teacher runs the class, on the model of Mussolini's railroad, according to the lesson plan. What I see as healthy intellectual curiosity, and independent analysis, the overwhelming majority of teachers would charactereize as chaos and disrespect. Consequently, when the students are released into the world, they are unable to call "bullshit" when presented with spurious assertions by their so-called leaders.

You may provide your own examples of the above.

|11.28.06 @ 9:17AM|#

Atleast at the engineering school I went to, you didn't have to deal with liberal social science professors that often and when you did, they were unlikely to have tenure and so they were careful not to be seen as biased and try and rip up students conservative arguments. The nice thing about mechanics of materials is it doesn't matter whether the prof is conservative or liberal, the facts and numbers aren't up for debate. It certainly allows engineering students a great deal of freedom of expression, which usually involved throwing their books against walls and screaming profanities after studying for 12 hours straight and still failing the exam.

|11.28.06 @ 9:21AM|#

"charactereize"

good grief

|11.28.06 @ 9:33AM|#

"When intellectual life is seen as a bastion of the left, conservatism devolves from intellectual giants like the late Milton Friedman to intellectual thugs like Ann Coulter -- with dangerous consequences for the political climate."

The problem of course is that Young makes it sound like there are only intellectual thugs on the right. The angry mobs that confront and shout down conservative speakers on campuses could certainly be described as thuggish. The organized mobs of morons shouting "hey ho Western culture has got to go" and the routine stealing of entire press runs of campus newspapers for printing disagreeable opinions would be two more examples. Most disturbing of all is the constant enabling and excusing of radical Islam on campuses. Harvard will have the spiritual leader of Iran speak on campus as distinguished visitor. That of course in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if people like Nonie Darwish weren't considered beyond the pale at most university campus's. Compared to all of that, some screaming TV show clown like Colter seems pretty insignificant.

thoreau|11.28.06 @ 9:43AM|#

Students are taught to passively accept the "lesson" as incontrovertibly correct, and to sit quietly as the teacher runs the class

I had to pull teeth last night to get people to reason out what the solution to a problem must be. I could have written down the equations and used the standard techniques to solve them, but I wanted to figure out the solution without following the procedure.

I also had to explain to some students that I was asking them to do something sloppy rather than follow textbook procedures, because the data that we were analyzing was real data, not the neat, orderly stuff that you get in textbooks.

They said that they had been in school for too long, and they were right. These are second year grad students, and I'm trying to break them of bad habits that get good grades so they can do good research after my class is done.

|11.28.06 @ 9:45AM|#

Yes, John, an on-campus speech witnessed by dozens is much more significant than an on-camera appearance seen by millions.

|11.28.06 @ 9:47AM|#

Thoreau,

I think your problem is endemic to the academy and has been for years. There is the famous story in Feinman's "cargo cult science" speech about the psychology student who wanted to re-run the studies to check their accuracy rather than just take them as gospel and was told by her professor not to bother. That kind of thing is inherent when you livelyhood depends on the grades you get from someone.

|11.28.06 @ 10:15AM|#

"I had to pull teeth last night to get people to reason out what the solution to a problem must be."

You confused the poor things, Thoreau; they were expecting you to say, "Come on people, we have to get through this; we have a lot of material to cover in this class." And then write the answer on the board for them to copy in their notes.

|11.28.06 @ 11:35AM|#

What are they teaching in the business schools? So far it seems like a lot of social conservative bickering that universities don't instill the right values (though that should have been the parent's job at home). I agree that too much Women's Studies and not enough Military History can skew an education, but if Military History were so important, the market would react and people would demand such a class, right?

R C Dean|11.28.06 @ 11:44AM|#

Except, Lamar, that the "market" for university classes is deeply dysfunctional.

First, you have heavy state involvement in the form of funding, regulation, and outright ownership.

Second, the consumers are generally not the same people as the ones footing the bill, always a recipe for dysfunction.

Finally, the modern university is so insulated and inward-looking that what matters most to the people actually shaping it isn't what students want, its what faculty. Students come and go, but faculty is a pain in your ass every single day.

And faculty is bombarding students (and their parents) that Gender Studies is what's important. If nobody in the academy is teaching Military History, there's nobody to market it to any audience.

|11.28.06 @ 11:48AM|#

"What are they teaching in the business schools?"

They are teaching that business and the market are inherently evil. No kidding. Business ethics classes are a joke. They basically teach that all profit seeking is immoral. There is nothing conservative or even market friendly about most business school faculties or curriculums. I know that sounds crazy and I wouldn't have believed it myself had I not seen it in person and heard the same thing from people who attended various different business schools.

|11.28.06 @ 11:51AM|#

Lamar,

It is called Say's Law "supply creates demand". If the entire history profession is anti-military and not studying military history, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that their are no classes; no supply, no demand. As far as there being interest among the general public for those classes, look no further than your satellite TV selection; on any given night there will be at least four or five different shows on military history. Someone is watching those shows.

|11.28.06 @ 11:52AM|#

"you have heavy state involvement in the form of funding, regulation, and outright ownership"

While you have a point (all of your points are valid), there's always Liberty University and Cardozo School of Law.

To add to your second point, even if the students pay for themselves via loans, it is still "funny money" that is just as easily blown as Daddy's money.

As to your last point, are you sure you want to blame the "market" inefficiency of too many Gender Studies class on the marketing? That seems to nullify personal responsibility and would hurt a lot of your arguments in other posts. Ultimately, Women's Studies are important, just not in a 10-1 ratio.

|11.28.06 @ 11:53AM|#

BS, John. I went to college and the business school never ONCE said the market was evil. That's just out and out bullshit, and you should take it back. Seriously, you just made that crap up.

|11.28.06 @ 11:57AM|#

Oh really Lamar,

I have a masters in economics the school I went to was full of marxists. I have several friends who went to Warton and UVA for MBA's and they had the same experience. There not so much from the faculty but from what passed for business ethics courses. Newsflash Lamar, you don't know everything and you haven't been everywhere. Just because you don't agree with something doesn't mean people make shit up, you smug bastard.

|11.28.06 @ 11:59AM|#

Lamar,

I am not the only one who has noticed this. From an article on business ethics and the Enron scandal.

"The era in which Fastow and Skilling were students was one when business-bashing was rampant in academia, particularly in the Ivy League and especially in the Boston area where they studied. "The party line was ... I wouldn't go so far as to say Marxist or socialist, but it was certainly highly critical of capitalism," says Kenneth Goodpaster, who heads the business-ethics program at the University of St. Thomas College of Business in Minneapolis, and began teaching ethics at Harvard Business School in 1980, two years after Skilling was graduated. "The attitude of a lot of liberal-arts faculty toward business and toward business-professional education was a certain level of disdain, somewhat borne in a liberal mind-set." Goodpaster adds that anti-business sentiment was particularly strong in philosophy departments, where many business ethicists start their careers."

Unfortunately, academia's general suspicion of business quickly permeated business-ethics courses, critics say. Denis Collins, an associate professor of management at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, bashes American CEOs in his book, Ethical Dilemmas in Business, in a tone appropriate to, say, the left-wing Nation magazine. "Many CEOs must be communicating with morally deformed impartial spectators who provide daily rationalizations for the harms they cause many people," Collins wrote. "Or they drink just enough whiskey at night to strangle those inner voices." And in a more academic tone, there is the report of a conference on business ethics in the late 1980s that concluded "there would be no facile resolution between the values of a just society and the sharply opposing values of successful corporations."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_10_18/ai_84019092

Perhaps things have changed, but my experience in the early 90s fits this description perfectly.

thoreau|11.28.06 @ 11:59AM|#

OK, this thread is just turning into slaptacular fun!

|11.28.06 @ 12:00PM|#

No Lamar. I didn't make this shit up. I am not taking it back. Why don't you take your accusation back?

|11.28.06 @ 12:01PM|#

Thanks! And, of course, DITTO! I've had undergrad business classes at 5 different universities, and shacked up with an economics professor for a year or so. I'll take your "not so much from the faculty" as confirming my intended, though poorly stated, point, and sorry for making an overly broad statement. For the record, my parents were married.

|11.28.06 @ 12:02PM|#

Shameless plug:
http://www.intellectualtakeout.com/

|11.28.06 @ 12:05PM|#

And I wouldn't say being critical of capitalism is the same as saying the markets are evil. Given the success of our economy, I would say that the business schools instill a faith in the market.

Dan T.|11.28.06 @ 12:09PM|#

Conservatives, by their very nature, do not like to be exposed to new ideas or have their perspectives challenged. Higher education, by its very nature, exposes people to new ideas and challenges their perspectives.

So yes, it's little wonder why conservatives whine about how they're oppressed by academia.

Which makes me wonder: why are they there if it's so awful?

|11.28.06 @ 12:19PM|#

Though I'll admit to a smugness strain, I have to question the accuser who starts out with, "I have a masters in...." I just have to wonder why, if college enrollment is up and the colleges are so communist, is the country veering towards the right? And not even the rational, economic right, but the faith-based right. It just doesn't add up.

fyodor|11.28.06 @ 12:25PM|#

I just have to wonder why, if college enrollment is up and the colleges are so communist, is the country veering towards the right?

Because no one pays attention to wingnut professors anyway?

|11.28.06 @ 12:25PM|#

Dan,

Does the 'T' stand for "Troll" or are you just particularly fond of making statements that expose a lack of reflection?

ChrisO|11.28.06 @ 12:29PM|#

I think a lot of this is tempest-in-teapot. Most college students are there to polish their resumes so they can start in a slightly better entry-level job, and they could care less if the prof spouts a bunch of Marxist hoohaa. Politically inclined students, in my experience, are more likely to be lefties because they have not yet been mugged by reality and/or because they have leftie parents. Conservative students, of whatever ideological variety, seem less inclined to activism.

Ultimately, a better question is what benefit states get from having their publicly funded universities hire so many [fill in the blank] Studies professors. I guess it keeps a few grievance mongers off the streets.

|11.28.06 @ 12:35PM|#

Just a thought. Aren't the maajority of 18-22 year olds (underclassmen) liberal in outlook? It seems to me that youth and liberal idealism go togetther, just like age and cynicism.

|11.28.06 @ 12:43PM|#

I think the point is that universities claim that diversity is one of the most important functions, yet they don't have enough free market cheerleaders in the Arts & Sciences department, except for the science part.

thoreau|11.28.06 @ 12:50PM|#

Conservative students, of whatever ideological variety, seem less inclined to activism.

Yes, but the ones who are more than make up for the reticence of their peers when it comes to being tone-deaf and obnoxious.

"Hey, let's have a racially discriminatory bake sale! Who could possibly be offended by that?"

ChrisO|11.28.06 @ 1:17PM|#

Yes, but the ones who are more than make up for the reticence of their peers when it comes to being tone-deaf and obnoxious.

I think "tone-deaf and obnoxious" pretty much sums up student political activism of all stripes. The conservatives just stick out more because they defy the campus norm. Come to think of it, the campus activism I've seen makes a pretty good argument for raising the voting age to 21.

ChrisO|11.28.06 @ 1:19PM|#

I think the point is that universities claim that diversity is one of the most important functions, yet they don't have enough free market cheerleaders in the Arts & Sciences department, except for the science part.

True, and the ultimate question might be why Junior's parents continue to pay for this crap, whichever ideological direction it take.

Larry A|11.28.06 @ 1:20PM|#

When intellectual life is seen as a bastion of the left, conservatism devolves from intellectual giants like the late Milton Friedman to intellectual thugs like Ann Coulter -- with dangerous consequences for the political climate.

Didn't we just have a bunch of articles bitching because the liberal media labelled Milt "conservative?"

if Military History were so important, the market would react and people would demand such a class, right?

People haven't. And a comprehensive Military History class, including Vietnam, might have made folks a little more careful about signing on for Afghanistan and Iraq.

|11.28.06 @ 1:20PM|#

I'm not sure that academia is quite as liberal as people think.

I've noticed that where some teachers fall on the political spectrum has a lot to do with what they're teaching.

The overwhelming majority of my teachers appeared pretty ambivalent on politics. My science and math teachers certainly were. Accounting teachers were more free market (if they were anything). History teachers could go either way. Psychology teachers were usually more liberal (in addition to being nuts). All of my Computer Science classes were taught by adjunts already working in the field so no hardcore liberal ideology there. Teaching was a well-paying part-time paycheck.

As for my other business classes (I have a business minor) - economics, marketing, etc., I can't speak for John but I never had a problem. For the most part, business classes were practical affairs.

My econ professor was a basic supply-and-demand, big-picture guy. He had no discernable political leanings whatsoever. But he sure was a freaky fellow.

Even ones that had political leanings they bothered to discuss were hardly S.O.B.s about it. To most of them it was about a job.

The ones that weren't were folks who had bothered to turn their classes into political expressions...and fortunately I didn't see much of those.

The only one that was ever a problem was a speech teacher - a woman who in 1987 was still wearing an E.R.A. button on her jacket. She was an avowed feminist and males like myself were warned to avoid her. So I did.

I had plenty of freaks, geeks and weirdos conducting classes. Some were great, some were lousy and most were adequate. Almost none were openly political or expressly liberal.

Dan T.|11.28.06 @ 1:21PM|#

Dan,

Does the 'T' stand for "Troll" or are you just particularly fond of making statements that expose a lack of reflection?

What part of my statement do you disagree with?

I mean, if a conservative was open to new ideas and perspectives, he wouldn't be a conservative, would he?

ChrisO|11.28.06 @ 1:37PM|#

I had plenty of freaks, geeks and weirdos conducting classes. Some were great, some were lousy and most were adequate. Almost none were openly political or expressly liberal.

Neither did I, and I was in a liberal arts major unlike you. Heck, I went to Univ. of Oregon, which is a notorious activist hotbed, and didn't have that stuff pushed at me. However, you were in college around the same time I was (late '80s), and things seemed to have changed somewhat since then. Students at many univs. are now required to take a bunch of crapola 'diversity' courses, and the overall liberal arts curricula has become much more politicized. I'm sure upperclassmen in the science and business majors don't have to deal with it much.

thoreau|11.28.06 @ 1:40PM|#

Students at many univs. are now required to take a bunch of crapola 'diversity' courses

Yeah, but at least at some schools the list of diversity classes is quite large. I took a class on third world cities from a free-market economist.

Henry Cabot Lodge|11.28.06 @ 1:48PM|#

Yeah, but at least at some schools the list of diversity classes is quite large. I took a class on third world cities from a free-market economist.

That's pretty cool. Heck, learning anything beyond a professor's prepackaged ideology is cool. My most overtly political class was "History of Cities," which was taught by a prof with a hard-on for urban planning. Sorta like listening to joe for a semester. Even so, the class was actually quite informative.

thoreau|11.28.06 @ 1:55PM|#

I was an econ minor in college, and just about all of the profs were apolitical but with obviously strong sympathy for markets and skepticism of regulations. The prof for environmental economics was all about markets and property rights. The only exception was my macroeconomics prof who was a die-hard Keynsian and huge fan of Clinton-Gore. Because of him I only took one macro class, the rest was all microeconomics, statistics, or applied economics. (Minors could get away with skimping on the macro. Majors couldn't.)

Dan T.|11.28.06 @ 2:05PM|#

You know, many of the comments on this topic serve to prove my point. It appears that many people went to college expecting their existing political views to be validated and assume no other perspective is worth considering.

Larry A|11.28.06 @ 2:14PM|#

I mean, if a conservative was open to new ideas and perspectives, he wouldn't be a conservative, would he?

OTOH if liberals (as in Democrats) were "open to new ideas and perspectives" they'd have dumped gun control three elections ago.

It appears that many people went to college expecting their existing political views to be validated and assume no other perspective is worth considering.

When you're young and foolish... But what was the professor's excuse for the same attitude.

I did notice there were differences. Professors who had done something else, in the real world, seemed considerably more tolerant than those who went directly from grad school to teaching.

In ancient times (1973) I went from being a captain in the Army to taking freshman sociology classes. (Long story.) There was a bit of culture shock.

|11.28.06 @ 2:33PM|#

ChrisO, down here in Florida, we started having to take diversity classes when I was still in school...mostly social psych and lanuage requirements...still, I went back for programming classes in the mid-late 90s and not much had changed.

The biggest thing was that I was going to school with a lot more older folks and I was taking more of my classes at night.

ChrisO|11.28.06 @ 3:16PM|#

You know, many of the comments on this topic serve to prove my point. It appears that many people went to college expecting their existing political views to be validated and assume no other perspective is worth considering.

I went to college expecting to learn, not be indoctrinated. And I was not disappointed.

|11.28.06 @ 3:30PM|#

Larry A,

Democrats did drop gun control about three (or four) elections ago.

|11.28.06 @ 11:40PM|#

the ultimate question might be why Junior's parents continue to pay for this crap, whichever ideological direction it take.

For the same reason people keep voting for who they do -- it's what you find available on the market.

Most of my engineering profs leaned right if at all. Most of my liberal arts profs leaned strongly left (and yes I did have to be careful about disagreeing with them, for grade's sake).

My observation: professors who teach subject areas restricted to universities, tend to be the most left-leaning. Those who teach the "hard" professions (accounting, engineering) tend to lean right (but markedly less right, than the leftists lean left).

Professors in the hard sciences can go either way, my experience. But they are also more likely (than engineers) to be in specializations where their only livelihood will be in academia or a government lab.

Fact: government funded professions tend to be the most left-leaning professions.

The people who run universities are career buearacrats, which means they're in government funded professions.

So who's surprised at the end results?

|11.28.06 @ 11:44PM|#

the ultimate question might be why Junior's parents continue to pay for this crap, whichever ideological direction it take.

And btw, don't give me any "crap" about people being able to just up and choose something else.

I would rather not have voted for either Bush or Kerry, but those were the choices -- or else abstain.

When you'r talking about education and whether or not you're going to have a career, abstaining isn't so easy a choice. You need a job, whether you like the university liberal arts departments or not.

Larry A|11.29.06 @ 1:49PM|#

Democrats did drop gun control about three (or four) elections ago.

So they keep telling me.

Thomas.gov, 109th Congress:
Child Gun Safety and Gun Access Prevention Act of 2005 [H.R.246.IH]
Anti-Gun Trafficking Penalties Enhancement Act of 2006 [S.2629.IS]
Child Protection and Home Safety Act of 2005 [S.1598.IS]
Child Protection and Home Safety Act of 2005 [H.R.947.IH]
Assault Weapons Ban Reauthorization Act of 2005 [S.620.IS]
Crackdown on Deadbeat Dealers Act of 2005 [H.R.4390.IH]
Domestic Violence Victim Protection Act [H.R.3594.IH]
Foreign Felon Gun Prohibition Act [H.R.1931.IH]
To permit access to certain information in the Firearms Trace System database. [H.R.5033.IH]
To permit access to certain information in the Firearms Trace System database. [S.2460.IS]
50 Caliber Sniper Rifle Reduction Act [H.R.654.IH]
Fifty Caliber Sniper Weapons Regulation Act of 2005 [S.935.IS]
Gun Show Loophole Closing Act of 2005 [H.R.3540.IH]
To amend the Consumer Product Safety Act to confirm the Consumer Product Safety Commission's jurisdiction over child safety devices for handguns, and for other purposes. [H.R.2217.IH]

All these in a session when they had Republican majority opposition to getting gun control measures out of committee and stood no chance of passing them.

|11.29.06 @ 3:59PM|#

Larry A:

Instead of posting all those bills, why not actually look at them? Closing the gun show loophole and the "Child Protection and Home Safety Act" are both Republican-sponsored bills. WTF? Did you bother to even look at the stuff before you posted it? Or did you rely on gunnut.com?

I'm certainly not happy about the Democrats who have introduced some of the bills on your list, though we have Schumer from NY, Feinstein from CA, Rothman from NJ on two of the bills, McCarthy from NY. Aside from Moran from VA and Jackson-Lee from TX, you basically have Northeastern liberals who represent high population density areas.

The Deadbeat Dealers Act prohibits knowingly making false statements on federal forms and the like. The Foreign Felon act merely extends the current prohibition on gun ownership by a felon to those convicted overseas. I don't recall the GOP plan to repeal the ban on gun ownership by felons.

So, were you trying to be disigenuous, or did you just do really shoddy work?