Posted on 09/09/2004 7:10:28 AM PDT by Isara
Higher Education: Have you noticed how professors are getting quoted more in election stories? Maybe this is a good time to review where they're coming from.
In April 2003, when the streets of Baghdad were filled with Iraqis gleefully tearing down icons of Saddam Hussein following a war of liberation then backed by 76% of the American people, the Academic Senate at UCLA voted 180-7 to "condemn America's invasion of Iraq." The surprise is that the vote was that close.
At too many of our institutions of higher learning, academic freedom has become an oxymoron. Indoctrination has replaced education, and students are taught what to think rather than how to think.
The Center for the Study of Political Culture compared lists of tenured or tenure-track professors in 150 departments at 32 elite colleges to voter lists in the counties and states where the schools were situated. Of the professors registered locally, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 1,397 to 134 — or more than 10 to 1. And these professors don't just register as Democrats, they vote Democratic.
Twenty-two of the 32 schools surveyed did not have a single Republican or conservative commencement speaker in a 10-year period, during which time they invited 173 liberals and Democrats to address their graduating classes. Overall, the ratio of commencement speakers on the left and right was 226-to-15.
You'd think that schools that preach diversity and oppose censorship would be making an effort to be more representative of the nation at large. But this underrepresentation of conservative thought on college campuses is not the result of some random process.
Campus speech codes are a reflection of the thought control that passes for intellectual discourse these days. Students on many campuses are barred from uttering or writing terms that are deemed "offensive" to politically correct groups. It is estimated that as many as 90% of U.S. universities have speech codes in one form or another.
Student fees are distributed disproportionately to groups with left-wing agendas and to underwrite an army of radical campus speakers. Leftist journalism schools are the farm system for a liberal media. Conservative college newspapers are routinely seized and destroyed by college brownshirts before they can be read.
All this makes suspect the supposedly scholarly studies cited in the mainstream press on a whole host of volatile political issues. The studies are almost guaranteed to have a left-wing slant. But they inevitably find their way into editorials and congressional hearings.
It also should raise a red flag when you read election stories now so liberally sprinkled (pun intended) with comments from political science profs and others. As they say, consider the source.
Didn't a professor from Duke recently tell us that the reason conservatives are not represented at colleges is because they are stupid? I seem to recall this.
This is called 'being judgmental,' isn't it? Aren't they supposed not to be judgmental?
Our tax dollars hard at work ensuring that our children get a well-rounded indoctrination.
Money talks, Bullsh!t walks!
Only the scripture has changed.
I'm not sure he's wrong, either. Even at the most liberal colleges, such as Berkeley, the vast majority of students are simply too busy with academics, sports and social life to get involved in liberal (or conservative) causes.
Conservatives need not apply?
Robert Brandon, chair of the Duke University Philosophy Department, gives this explanation of why faculties at U.S. universities usually lean to the political left: "We try to hire the best, smartest people available. If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire." Professor Brandon, expounding on the 21st century implications of that 19th century British philosopher's observation: "Mill's analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican party in our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia. Players in the NBA tend to be taller than average. There is a good reason for this. Members of academia tend to be a bit smarter than average. There is a good reason for this too."
That scholarly perspective was reported in Tuesday's Duke Chronicle, the "independent daily" at the school. So were these statistics from a Duke Conservative Union study that cross-referenced the university's faculty list with North Carolina voter registration records: Of the faculty members and deans included in the survey, 128 are registered Democrats, 8 are registered Republicans and 28 are unaffiliated.
In political terms, that's a landslide.
In intellectual terms, Professor Brandon's smug thesis raises another question: If he's so bright, how could he be dim enough not only to believe such an absurd notion, but to hail it publicly?
Meanwhile, academics, like the rest of us, can be outstanding, mediocre or lousy at their jobs regardless of their political persuasions. Professors also aren't the only ones who advance interesting -- occasionally even persuasive -- theories on why conservatives are so rarely found on our nation's university faculties.
But no political party or ideology has a monopoly on intelligence -- or virtue. And that's a higher-education l
Bingo. I went to Swarthmore College. A little Ivy, liberal arts college. I went in conservative and came out hard core conservative.
I went to Michigan, in the People's Republic of Ann Arbor. Academically, it's a tough school, especially for students in the sciences. Sure, you would frequently see liberals protesting for this cause or that cause, but it was usually the same 100 or so people that lived in a couple of communes. Many of the protestors weren't even students.
These days, at a top-tier university, few people have the time or the inclination to be involved in political causes.
I heartily recommend to all C. Northcote Parkinson's 'Evolution of Political Thought', a marvellous tour d'horizon of man's political life, with an especially rich study of Communism manifesting as religion.
A must read!
Indeed, you recommended it a while back, fortunately a few days later it caught my eye in a used book store...
Thanks!
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