Reverse Snobbery
| By Ben Adler - Mar 24th, 2006 at 11:57 am EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Jon Chait hilariously skewers rightwing reverse snobbery in the latest TNR. He does, however, make one error when he writes, "You don't see... conservatives agonizing over their hemorrhaging support among intellectuals." Actually you do. David Brooks has devoted handwringing columns to how dangerously out-of-touch academia is becoming. Most recently, David Horowitz unleashed a compilation of factually-challenged ad hominem attacks on left-leaning professors in book form. And then there is his "academic freedom" campaign to force more conservative professors onto university faculties.
This does not, in any way, disprove Jon's point. In fact, it confirms it. While Karl Rove may be pleased that he can stereotype his political opponents as strictly people with PhDs, conservatives also struggle with not being able to find any credible scientists, or especially social scientists, to crank out their intellectual propaganda or serve on their presidential advisory boards. They won't say that in public. But they will say it endangers the republic to have a professorate that, in their estimation, lacks ideological diversity.
Of course they're wrong about that too. Academia has plenty of academic diversity, it's just that the spectrum is often from center-left to far-left (which is actually a much wider, and, to my mind, more interesting, gap than center-left to center-right). But the point is that on this subject, as with almost every other, conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too. They simultaneously revel in portraying their opponents as a club of despicable elitists while crying over being excluded from it.
This does not, in any way, disprove Jon's point. In fact, it confirms it. While Karl Rove may be pleased that he can stereotype his political opponents as strictly people with PhDs, conservatives also struggle with not being able to find any credible scientists, or especially social scientists, to crank out their intellectual propaganda or serve on their presidential advisory boards. They won't say that in public. But they will say it endangers the republic to have a professorate that, in their estimation, lacks ideological diversity.
Of course they're wrong about that too. Academia has plenty of academic diversity, it's just that the spectrum is often from center-left to far-left (which is actually a much wider, and, to my mind, more interesting, gap than center-left to center-right). But the point is that on this subject, as with almost every other, conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too. They simultaneously revel in portraying their opponents as a club of despicable elitists while crying over being excluded from it.
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I would like to see some research claiming political diversity to support the claim. My sense of it, as well as through friends and colleagues in other places is that there has been an enormous shift to the right, the far right over especially the more recent years.
For my part I found a progressively diminishing tolerance over the last several years, and a precipitous decline in tolerance over the last few years. along with a precipitous decline generally in the intellectual and emotional maturity of the students over especially recent years. Perhaps it was all my poor luck of the draw? I hope so. I entirely agree that diversity is essential.
I don't know you, but ask yourself honestly; is it possible you're just one of those people who defines everything to your right as "Republican-lite"?
Academic faculties are increasingly liberal. The study referenced in the news item above reported that 72% of college professors identify themselves as liberal and only 15% conservative. This is in amazing contrast to the American public at large, which identifies as 18% liberal and 33% conservative. The difference is even more pronounced among the most elite universities, where 87% (!) self-identify liberal.
Why is this? I don't know. What also puzzles me is the amount of change there has been over the past two decades. In a 1984 survey, only 39% of college professors identified themselves as liberal. Why the marked change?
One partial reason for that trend has to be the ideological conformity imposed by leftist intellectualism. Under the modern academic system, some topics and viewpoints have been made just flat-out taboo - and those who disagree are condemned, ostracized, and eventually forced out. Just look at that Larry Summers affair. The man dared to suggest that there might actually be neurological differences between men and women and in no time he was pronounced the sexist of the century. It's amazing how whole avenues of inquiry can just be ruled out of bounds by this PC-crazed mob mentality that rules at the nation's most elite universities. When some proposed explanations for observed phenomena made in the spirit academic inquiry are immediately and harshly denounced as inappropriate for discussion, it is the evidence that an ideological infestation has eroded the commitment to truly open-minded intellectualism.
What so much of the recent accusations against academics come down to is a belief that what they say is disagreable to the tenets of the Republican Party. A liberal arts education teaches methods of argument that require solid research, a thesis, and facts that prove it. This is not something that is required of the current conservative agitators like David Horowitz who claim colleges are unabashedly liberal. Though he may not know it, Horowitz's definition of liberal has nothing to do with politics but rather is directed against methods of thought that at times challenge right-wing conventional wisdom (and at other times, left-wing conventional wisdom). Based on the two political definitions of liberal--which I learned in school, no less--Horowitz and his ilk have hardly proven that the academy resolutely subscribers to actual liberal values, either the traditional liberalism or New Deal liberalism.
Obviously that couldn't account for all the growth, but it'd be a start at explaining it without resorting to obviously self-serving explanations such as "Conservatives aren't as smart as me".
Snobbery would certainly be the word for it.