Rightwing whining about "liberal" academia is nothing new. But I was particularly struck by this piece in Walker, Minnesota's Pilot Independent, which gripes about the fact that I was invited to speak at the University of Minnesota last October. My appearance is presented as stunning evidence of a liberal bias on campus. But the author fails to draw even the most elementary distinctions in order to support his argument. For example:
1. Invited campus speeches aren't the same thing as in-classroom teaching. Marked political bias in the former may simply reflect the political composition of a campus (and thus who is being invited to speak); marked political bias in the latter should be countered no matter the political composition of a campus.2. Either way, when it comes to invited speeches, anecdotal evidence (which is all that's provided in the Pilot Independent piece) is insufficient to demonstrate that a university's talks trend liberal. If we're being purely anecdotal, then I could cite this speech by Michael Behe at the University of Minnesota, which had a heck of a lot more people in attendance than my own talk did, as evidence of a conservative/pro "intelligent design" bias on campus. Of course, I wouldn't do so, because that wouldn't be intellectually serious--and neither is the Pilot Independent article.
3. Most annoyingly, this "liberal bias" whining always ignores the fact that some arguments, and some intellectual positions, have more merit than others. If university biology departments teach evolution and not "intelligent design," that doesn't make them "liberal" to my mind. It simply means that they practice quality control. When conservatives demand intellectual "balance" in education, however, what they're often talking about is the brainless sort of balance that treats all ideas as equal regardless of merit. And that's inimical to the very spirit of a university.
To be sure, I don't doubt that many university campuses do tilt very liberal. However, I'm also quite confident that distinguished, innovative, and serious conservative thinkers also find a place on such campuses--not for political reasons but because of the merit of their work. Conservatives don't need an affirmative action plan to get themselves better represented on campuses. They need to produce good research and scholarship.
But of course, that's much tougher than whining about "bias." So I think we should expect plenty more whining.
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I suppose we could elaborate on the name of the author of the piece in the Pilot Independent, but some fruit is too low-hanging even for the most sophomoric of us.
Yeah, let's not stoop so low, if we possibly can avoid it.
In a field like bio, I don't think conservatives have to worry about liberal leaning institutions sabotaging their careers. It's not something that's kept thisconservative up all night with worry. But do you really think the same can be said of the social sciences and liberal arts? Where political leanings, if not quite worn on your sleeve, are often easily ascertained?
But in general I think it's more an issue of the atmosphere provided to students than it is about intradepartmental warfare among tenure-track faculty. As a minarchist going to a school at a very liberal university, my reactions ranged from bemused to outraged at the monolithic front our campus put up politically.
The world's centers of learning, containing the world's smartest people, trend liberal.
Funny how, amid all the theories invoked to explain this fact, rarely does one hear the most obvious.
There's a reason why college campuses (unless you're talking about places such as BYU or Bob Jones University) tend to tilt liberal - higher education is an inherently liberal activity. The passing on of knowledge is a liberal act.
When you are in the business of disseminating knowledge, you are commiting a liberal act.
I might note that the UMN-Twin Cities student Republicans club met for their weekly meetings in the Physics department (at least they did a couple years ago when I was there), much to our (the physics grad students') dismay. Aside from their presence in the physics building, though, I never heard much out of them (though perhaps I wasn't listening in the right places).
"The passing on of knowledge is a liberal act."
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No. Even arch conservatives pass on bits of knowledge to their spawn.
It is the exploration of NEW ideas that is a liberal act.
Wow, about the only other place I can hear such dogged automatic repetition is at freerepublic.com
Mr. Roberts, I would in fact venture that institutions of higher learning don't necessarily contain the smartest people. And that what they in fact contain are only relatively intelligent, book-learned people who are insulated from the rigors of the real world. It's easy to come up wtih pie-in-the-sky ideas and theories about what 'should' be the case when you don't have to deal with the realities of the much messier world outside their ivory towers.
Just like ideal gases or fluids, or genes with 100% penetrance, many of the assumptions they make have already proven not to hold true in the real world.
By the way, Walker, MN is in upstate central Minnesota. I've been there a few times to visit Leech Lake. It's interesting that the rural core of Minnesota is so at odds with the liberalism that elected Walter Mondale and the late Paul Wellstone and the weirdness that elected Jesse Ventura.
Not relevant to your story, but something you should be aware of. Gerald Deutsch, the 24-yr old 'censor of NASA' has just resigned when it was discovered that he had lied about having a college degree. In fact, he left Texas A&M to work on the Bush campaign and never went back.
Put this where it belongs, please
Prup