The University of Un-diversity

Even the Dragon wins, sometimes. The Right may have a point on college faculty diversity.

Out at a local watering hole recently, one whose denizens include the lovely Bush twins, I was trapped in a heated discussion that devolved from the lack of blue state representation to the lack of conservative professors at our universities. In fact, my fiery colleague insisted on the latter point, liberal professors outnumber conservative ones in the humanities 9:1. "Nine to one!" he exclaimed (citing a USA Today recent poll, which actually was 7:1). "That's a travesty of justice," he said.

Finally, I thought, a victory for the tree huggers and bleeding hearts of America. Boy, it's been too long, even Slick Willy was an elephant in donkey clothing. If we can't beat 'em in the electoral college, I proclaimed silently in my jaded mind, we'll surely undermine 'em at the state colleges. And maybe someday, in the not too distant future, if we haven't lost all our rights to an ever encroaching Big Brother, we'll take back 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the name of the late-great F.D.R! Comrades unite.

Now, hold on a minute. Screech that spinning vinyl. Maybe it's time that Mr. Reason check back in after taking the fall off to wallow in his November 2d inflicted sorrow. Is it really much of a victory to have such a disparity in our colleges? Or merely a pyrrhic one? I attempted to argue, unsuccessfully, to my friend that liberals are naturally inclined to gravitate toward a career in public service, to embrace scholastic endeavor seeking to mold the minds of tomorrow in idealistic pursuit. That is, in the end, a liberal tends to seek mind over currency.

The discussion escalated and we again decided to agree to disagree.

Looking back, I may be undergoing a change of heart (but obviously I'll never concede such to him). With the over-emphasis on racial diversity in student bodies of universities (encapsulated most recently in the Michigan affirmative action cases), conservatives might be right, it may be the faculties that now need refurbishing.

From a tremendous article in the Economist:

The Centre for Responsive Politics notes that this year two universities—the University of California and Harvard—occupied first and second place in the list of donations to the Kerry campaign by employee groups, ahead of Time Warner, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft et al. Employees at both universities gave 19 times as much to John Kerry as to George Bush. Meanwhile, a new national survey of more than 1,000 academics by Daniel Klein, of Santa Clara University, shows that Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. And things are likely to get less balanced, because younger professors are more liberal. For instance, at Berkeley and Stanford, where Democrats overall outnumber Republicans by a mere nine to one, the ratio rises above 30 to one among assistant and associate professors.

Is the disparity really a boon for liberals overall, or rather evidence of academia's diminishing influence on The Great Debate? The Economist notes:

This is profoundly unhealthy per se. Debating chambers are becoming echo chambers. Students hear only one side of the story on everything from abortion (good) to the rise of the West (bad). It is notable that the surveys show far more conservatives in the more rigorous disciplines such as economics than in the vaguer 1960s "ologies". Yet, as George Will pointed out in the Washington Post this week, this monotheism is also limiting universities' ability to influence the wider intellectual culture. In John Kennedy's day, there were so many profs in Washington that it was said the waters of the Charles flowed into the Potomac. These days, academia is marginalised in the capital—unless, of course, you count all the Straussian conservative intellectuals in think-tanks who left academia because they thought it was rigged against them.

(Reminds me of the proverbial sound of one hand clapping.)

While I may not be all for the proposals on possible reform (e.g., mandatory Right-wing quotas, or even proportional voting on hiring boards), it does appear slightly problematic that college lectures may be one-sided. In law school, however, the good professors were the ones who you didn't know what team they played for. A Criminal Justice professor took the conservative bent on every constitutional issue to such a degree that the entire class was convinced (appalled) that he was A. Scalia's spawn. At the end of the semester, though, his true identity was revealed: he once was a very successful public defender of Prince George's County, MD. From my experience, at least, not all professors perceive the lectern as the soap box.

But I do agree with the idea that studies should be conducted into possible faculty reform. Maybe the liberal reforms of the university system beginning in the late 60s had an equal and opposite effect on the system such that now we have too many from the Left. But let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater, Mr. Will and others. Let's see what the system has to say.

Universities now are put on notice that there may be a problem with their presentation. Diversity of thought not only is important to the marketplace of ideas from a student perspective but from that of the teachers. It's just as much a sad and depressing market for the universities when the market's entirely blue, than when the political scene is entirely red. Options are limited, differing opinions stifled, inefficiencies rife, and prices gouged during any period of monopoly.
(And we all know too well what you get if you lack competition in any arena, Starbucks, my friend, Starbucks!)

--Rudy