Getting At Right-Wing Critique Of Higher Ed
| By Justin Elliott - Dec 11th, 2007 at 1:29 am EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
AEI held a conference last month, "Reforming the Politically Correct University," devoted to examining the alleged "leftward tilt of college and university faculty since the 1950s." The video of the conference is up on this page. Could be an interesting watch, if you have eight hours to spare.
Question: Has a left-leaning think tank ever organized a conference devoted to the university? Just wondering.
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CAP spares no expense to fund progressives on campus and thank God it does.
True, that has little to do with the whole "political correctness/academic freedom/liberal takeover of academia" mumbo jumbo, but why would a think tank dignify those attacks with a response.
Brookings, The Century Foundation (upstairs from CAP at 1333 H), EPI (also upstairs), New America Foundation and plenty of other center-left think tanks all have tons of higher ed policy fellows and thank God they do.
I'm not sure what the rhetorical value of your question was unless you actually were just wondering. Maybe i'm looking for too much sarcasm at this hour.
and zach marks, go to bed!
The purpose of the conservative groups you named, though, is to create misinformation and threats to academia--what purpose would a left-leaning conference serve? putting out fires started by people like Horowitz?
I'd like to think the reason we don't have to organize such conferences is because, to borrow a term from the (paleo)cons, we've got more 'cultural confidence'. We see universities as institutions that are largely on the right track, and so there's no need to stand athwart history yelling "Stop!". We tend to (rightly) view American culture as broadly heading in the right direction, whereas the Right (and some segments of the far left) pays their rent with a narrative of America's cultural decline.
Speaking more generally, my take is that everybody has their pet issue that they think 'should' be about 'more than money' for everyone, because it happens to be about more than money for them. For conservatives, it's some mythic ideal of the 'classical liberal education', as opposed to the pre-professional, expert-centered education most of us receive today. For liberals, it's some romanticized ideal of blue-collar work (usually being eagerly expounded on by someone who hasn't done a day of blue-collar work in their life). For others, it's sex. For still others, it's love. At the end of the day, it all boils down to the same very human tendency to gripe about other people not living the way you would if you were them.
I will say this, though -- it's generally good to have a cranky, noisy opposition waiting outside the gates, even if you wouldn't want them to actually come in and start redecorating the place. Conservatives were especially forceful in resisting the excesses of the Duke administration and faculty, for instance, when they prematurely judged and condemned the Duke lacrosse team during the false rape accusations. The fact that there are C-list also-rans of the conservative movement like Horowitz ready to pounce if actual discrimination against conservatives on campus occurred helps guard against that imagined discrimination becoming real.
And so on, and so forth. As with any other institution, checks and balances, even when messy and imperfect, tend to make intellectual life at universities better rather than worse.