"Conservatives just aren't cut out for academia"

[wicket]

Great article, read the whole thing, and pass it along to any right-wingers you know :evilgrin:

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/10415702.htm

But the rise of fashionable left-wing scholarship can be blamed for only a tiny part of the GOP's problem. The studies showing that academics prefer Democrats to Republicans also show that this preference holds in hard sciences as well as social sciences. Are we to believe that higher education has fallen prey to trendy multiculturalist engineering, or that physics departments everywhere suppress conservative quantum theorists?

The main causes of the partisan disparity on campus have little to do with anything so nefarious as discrimination. First, Republicans don't particularly want to be professors. To go into academia - a highly competitive field that does not offer great riches - you have to believe that living the life of the mind is more valuable than making a Wall Street salary. On most issues that offer a choice between having more money in your pocket and having something else - a cleaner environment, universal health insurance, etc. - conservatives tend to prefer the money and liberals tend to prefer the something else. It's not so surprising that the same thinking would extend to career choices.

Second, professors don't particularly want to be Republicans. In recent years, and especially under George W. Bush, Republicans have cultivated anti-intellectualism. Remember how Bush in 2000 ridiculed Al Gore for using all them big numbers?

That's not just a campaign ploy. It's how Republicans govern these days. Last summer, my colleague Frank Foer wrote a cover story in the New Republic detailing the way the Bush administration had disdained the advice of experts. And not liberal experts, either. These were Republican-appointed wonks whose know-how on topics such as global warming, the national debt and occupying Iraq were systematically ignored. Bush prefers to follow his gut.

[TaleWgnDg]

1. I enjoy breaking it down into more simplistic words:

The more education one achieves the more prone one is to become a Democrat than a Republican.


**************************
"As people do better, they start
voting like Republicans ... unless
they have too much education and
vote Democratic, which proves there
can be too much of a good thing."
- Karl Rove (GWBush's chief
political strategist)
**************************

[Sara Beverley]

2. Their low IQs keep them out of academia. But you knew that?

You have got to have brains to be tolerant and kind. Otherwise your own ignorance makes you fear and hate.

However, some fools have slipped through because they look and sound the part of an intelligent person.

[wickerwoman]

3. Conservative academic is an oxymoron.

By definition, academia is about the exploration of NEW ideas and the vigorous testing of received truths. Conservatives, by definition, are interested in neither.

[IrateCitizen]

4. Academia runs counter to the "me, my, mine" philosophy...

According to Republicans, the ultimate motivating force in people is the desire for profit. However, academia has long demonstrated that people are not motivated for profit alone. Many are motivated by the desire to help others, the desire to acquire knowledge, and so forth.

Academia is an environment in which thought is not propietary, therefore it is not profitable. Academics realize that they make discoveries piggybacking off of prior research, therefore it is completely counterproductive to make research proprietary, because it will only serve to stifle theories and innovations down the line.

Perhaps most alarming in this is the way that private industry is squeezing into the university research game due to reduced public funding. For instance, pharmaceutical companies are now funding university research projects, but they force all researchers to sign documents making their research the sole property of the company, and therefore making the researchers unable to share their findings with others. While this is currently working out famously for Big Pharma, it will ultimately backfire because it will reduce innovation.

We've come a long way from the days that Dr. Salk invented the polio vaccine and outright REFUSED to receive any royalties for it, holding true to the academic code that his finding was instead public knowledge and should stay there.

[NJCher]

5. in my entire time in academia

I can only think of one conservative.

One time, in an departmental meeting, a male professor asked if we shouldn't include some conservative essays in the readings for the course. He said it seemed like the essays in the book leaned left.

I was sitting in the back of the room. As his message became apparent, I saw all the other professors leaning away from him--in fact, they were literally "leaning left."


Cher

oh and p.s. we did order a book that had one conservative essay in it.

[cattleman22]

10. Isn't that sad though?

No matter how much liberals disagree with a particular political philosophy, the students are done a major disservice by having few or no conservative teachers/advisors/mentors.

[Ms. Clio]

14. Being a good teacher or mentor has nothing to do with politics

I know several conservative students who seem to be doing just fine.

[htuttle]

15. When Conservatives stopped living in the 'reality-based community'

(Roves words, not mine), they stopped being qualified to teach our children.

If they based their 'theories' on actual facts, it would be one thing, but they don't. It's all hype and politics nowdays and is not appropriate for an academic environment.

[One_Life_To_Give]

26. Why does it mean that He was Conservative?

Asking students to examine all sides of issues is a Liberal Value.

[secedeeconomically]

6. I agree completely

Conservatives aren’t interested in bridging gaps in ideas or perspectives. Which is the foundation of academia or of higher learning. If you look back in history can anyone come up with 5 true conservative scientists? And I define conservative as not the guy who wants lower taxes, but rather the individual who believes the earth is no older than 5000 years old or that the Ten Commandments should be plastered everywhere. Conservatives as we know them today just aren’t able to analyze issue objectively. With that said, the sad truth is that America is going towards the more conservative way rather than the more intellectual route.

[SharonAnn]

30. Many conservatives have their minds closed. 'Nuff said.

[Iris]

7. I've always thought the notion that there are conservatives lining

up at the proverbial door to be professors was ludicrous.

To be honest, I can't say for sure what the politics of my professors were - at least not from anything they TAUGHT me. Certainly from a comment here or there, I could get some notion of where they might be on the political spectrum, but I basically learned to read critically and think for myself in college and as a result became MORE liberal after I left school.

[kodi]

8. conservatives are usually greedheads, & there's no money in academia

the dominant thread of anti-intellectualism found in the US is a tool for the wealthy to trick the workering class into thinking that intellectuals and knowledge in general are not working towards their best interest.

the myth of the "common man" and the accutrements of grace thru ignorance has been one instilled in the american cultural pysche for hundreds of years.

[gorbal]

13. MOST of the working class know what is going on

If you look at the polls, the working class voted for Kerry over Bush even in the red states. he middle and upper classes sealed the deal for Bush. "Intellectuals" are NOT just in the middle and upper classes.

[Iris]

17. Actually, the unthinking can make it into the middle and upper classes

these days. What's to stop them? Bad grammar?

So, yeah, you're right. The middle & upper classes are NOT bastions of intellectualism.

[Royal Observer]

20. You really can't call yourself an intellectual

unless you can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.
Maybe I date myself.

[Iris]

24. Hee! hee! Good point!

I saw the reruns when I was a kid in the 70s.

[xchrom]

9. a conservative by his/her inclination

isn't going going to be intellectually curious -- they can only defend tradition without reason or a status quo without reason.

[Tansy_Gold]

11. exactly. Intellectual curiosity implies a quest for change, for

the new, the different. A conservative who is happy either with the way things are or the way they used to be isn't going to be looking for anything new.

By definition, then, conservative = non-academic/anti-academic.

I did have one right-wing prof, and he taught a poli sci class. He pissed me off so bad with his open favoritism to the pukes and rudenss to the rest of us -- to me in particular -- that I accused him of it in class and stormed out. I learned later that he was terrified I would report his thoroughly inappropriate behavior to the powers that were. Had I known, I'd have done it.

I believe that the conservatives in academia are only there to stifle intellectual curiosity, not cultivate it.

But what do I know?

:evilgrin:

Tansy Gold

[American Renaissance]

12. where were all the liberals when I was in college?

When I was in college I had a history professor who said slaves were not mistreated, and actually brought in an old CHILDRENS BOOK called "Christmas in the Masters House" as evidence of it. A CHILDRENS BOOK.

I had a political science professor who I swore got off on talking about Margie Thatcher, that was just disturbing. Especially since she was old enough to be his grandmother.

I had an economics professor who tried to get away with flunking all the girls in the class, because women had no place in higher education.

I had another professor who was actively involved with the contras, needless to say his course of political ideologies set the standard to objectivity.

There are lots of conservatives in academia, this is just one of those popular myths of the "liberal" media.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Yikes, where did you go to school, Bob Jones?

I spent several years as an Ivy League grad student and eleven years teaching at mid-level colleges and universities, and the only conservatives I knew were in the business departments. For all the conservatives' talk about "upholding standards," the academic standards in the business departments were the lowest of any in the entire school.

[sonicx]

16. sounds like they want affirmative action for RW professors...

i don't think i had any conservative profs, but i did have a 'libertarian' journalism prof who *loved* to attack clinton and the 'liberal media'. Also loved to talk about rush limballs, even tho he said he didn't agree with him. :eyes:

[Lenape85]

23. Who cares, schools are better off without RW professors

In fact, I am an environmental studies major, and if some RW profs were even allowed to teach it, we'd be reading Limbaugh in our classroom.

I'd also be worried because one of our core courses is called
"Social Issues", and I would hate it if we had to read Pat Buchanan in that class.

[WMliberal]

19. i had a decent mix at W&M

However, when it comes to humanities and social sciences, the balance was even more in our favor.
Most of the conservatives I knew were into business, math, or something that meant money after college. They saw college as a resume padder and nothing more.
There were conservative students in Governmant and History- my majors- but they weren't interested in new ideas. They never tried to push the envelope, if you get my drift. Most of the conservatives were prone to writing predictable papers with trite lines of reasoning. In discussion, most didn't seem to be able to add much that hasn't been said already.

[tishaLA]

21. Large portions of that article are incredibly condescending, IMHO

as someone who does work in what is called literary cultural studies (with an emphasis on studies of gender and sexuality), I found his dismissive accounts of the intellectual basis of "cultural studies" absurdly reductionist. I am also confused somewhat by his terminology: he at one point demonizes "radical multiculturalist theory - which sees white male oppression as the key to everything," yet, despite years in the academy, I don't know what constitutes "radical multiculturalism" nor have I ever heard a "radical multiculturalist," if I have met one, say that white male oppression is the "key" to everything. That simply sounds like a hackneyed characterization from the early years of second wave feminism and it has nothing to do with the claims made in academia today.

Does a radical multiculturalist make his or her students read writings by Chicano, Native American, LGBT, women, and African American writers? The horror!

Finally, a note to Mr. Chait's liberal historian friend who is deeply disappointed that people are more interested in "buggery in the British navy" than in "traditional"--i.e., non-gay?--research: suck it up. Lots of research still happens in traditional fields of interest. But now it happens in areas that had been marginalized, too. Just because research on the effects of Locke on educational models in post-1832 England is not a hot topic, it doesn't really make your audience that much smaller. There used to be 4500 people interested in it; now there are 4000.

[Lenape85]

22. My school has a shitload of conservatives

They have this thing where business students are the only people who do not have to take Social Issues, a core for everybody else.

I'm guessing this is because most of the business students are conservative republicans and they don't want to know who they are screwing over. This lobby is pretty powerful here and it makes me sick.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. In one of the colleges I taught in, a new business professor came in

Her field was human resources, and she started presenting all this information about how treating one's employees decently is not only the ethical thing to do but also improves loyalty and productivity.

She was frozen out by her colleagues and lasted only one year. Not only that, the proto-freeperish students didn't like all her material on workplace diversity. "Why should I have to hire Hispanics if I don't want to?" that sort of thing.

At another school, the business department actually circumvented the general education requirements by specifying that their majors had to meet them with certain courses. Granted, the requirements were structured rather loosely, but the business department's specifications forced majors to meet their communication and literature requirement with public speaking, their philosophy requirement with symbolic logic, and their social science requirement with economics. God forbid the students should take any courses that allowed creativity or ambiguity.

[Royal Observer]

28. I like creativity but

I'm ambivalent about ambiguity.

[NuttyFluffers]

32. how's the quality of the business students there?

i have my suspicions that they aren't up to snuff. those who cannot handle debating issues, social or not, and formulating coherent and capable essays on said topics, would be thoroughly inadequate leaders in a business. but that's just my suspicions. am i correct?

[ChairOne]

27. See the intelligent design thread....

for more conservative thought and anti-intellectualism...

[wicket]

29. kick

:kick:

[PROGRESSIVE1]

31. kick