How Did Colleges Get So Far Left?

Intercollegiate Studies Institute ^ | Nov. 30, 2004 | John Zmirak

[SteveH]

How Did Colleges Get So Far Left?

John Zmirak

ISI Staff

Intercollegiate Studies Institute

posted November 30, 2004 04:00 PM

In the wake of an election which turned on cultural issues, extra attention has been focused on the values questions which divide Americans—including those who either teach or study at universities.

Liberal writers once pretended that opinion on college campuses was not particularly skewed to the Left. That façade has fallen away. Too many people have heard too many horror stories about in-class indoctrination, speech-trampling speech codes, and censorship of dissenting opinion in ostensibly non-partisan campus newspapers, for that story to hold up. It might still work with parents who haven’t been to a mainstream college themselves. But the new generation of parents is young enough to have experienced the many fronts on which leftist opinion advances across the campus—from official “diversity” policies that virtually target whites for discrimination, to freshman orientation programs featuring explicit sex education, from entire departments devoted to single-issue politics such as women’s studies, to course offerings and syllabi which read like politically correct catechisms. It’s increasingly hard to peddle the notion that universities function as insulated havens for disinterested seekers after truth. (Indeed, if you made that claim on campus, chances are that your statement would run afoul of deconstructionists, feminist critics of science, and Marxist “new historicists.”) Such language is still used in promotional literature aimed at parents and pleas to legislators for funding, but few even pretend any more to believe it.

Which is tragic, of course, because that is what liberal arts universities ought to be—not indoctrination centers devoted to the tenets of any particular ideology, even a conservative one. But as our college guide demonstrates in sometimes depressing detail, that is what too many colleges have become.

And ever more media commentators are noticing this fact, and applying sophisticated analyses to understand why this has happened to American universities—so many of which were either begun by orthodox religious denominations or the governments of solidly conservative states. I mean, how much sense does it make that some Catholic universities, and state universities in the American South, have English departments dominated by anti-religious Marxists, feminists, and “queer theorists”? I know of one such department where a graduate student was given a zero—not an “F”, a zero—for using Thomas Aquinas and Dante as sources in a paper on critical theory. (I read the paper—it met the terms of the assignment, was brilliantly written, and subsequently was accepted at a national conference.) When she appealed the grade, faculty stuck together as they usually do, and administrators backed them up. Had she let this pass, she would have failed the (required) class, been expelled from the program, and lost her teaching job at another college—all because one professor had a grudge against his parents’ religion. She actually had to hire a lawyer and threaten a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the state university, compiling all his many verbal snipes against Christianity and Christians, and argue that these created a “hostile learning environment”—and therefore, sexual harassment! This admittedly cynical strategy worked—I wrote the brief, and recommend this strategy to others in similar plights—and the university backed down. But I wonder how many others have suffered their fates in silence….

Of course, one wouldn’t expect any university to blindly mirror the opinions of the average voter. But one might think that the respectable views of ordinary taxpayers could at least receive a tolerant hearing in the academic halls whose light bills they pay. Yet in too many schools a self-selecting elite, insulated from any outside accountability, employs the vast resources and prestige of the university to replicate a narrow set of political prejudices, and make disreputable (if not actually punishable) any intellectual dissent.

This week, in The New York Sun, commentator John Fund cited an upcoming study by Prof. Stanley Rothman of Smith College which examined the politics of more than 1,600 college teachers at almost 200 schools. Rothman found that in “all faculty departments, including business and engineering, academics were over five times as likely to be liberals as conservatives.” In fact, he determined that a leftist political viewpoint was almost as important a factor in hiring as tangible academic achievements, such as publications and awards. Rothman “used the same research tools long used in courts by liberal faculty members to prove race and sex bias at universities,” Fund reports.

How do liberals explain this imbalance? One candidly crass academic Fund cites is Robert Brandon, who teaches philosophy at Duke. Brandon said: “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. 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.”

Thanks, Professor Brandon. That really does help. Such narrow-minded smugness as you exhibit must pervade many hiring and tenure committees—and helps explain why so many promising conservative thinkers decide to pursue other professions.

How did things get this bad? We don’t have space here for a full-on history of the “tenured radicals” (I recommend Roger Kimball’s excellent book of that title), but Prof. Mark Bauerlein of Emory University recently offered some insights in The Chronicle of Higher Education which should provoke further thought. He notes that most leftist academics are probably not even conscious that they do dominate the university, or that they use their power to limit discourse, exclude unbelievers from the fold, and bias classroom discussion. Operating in an environment where their prejudices have so long been equated with simple decency, and dissent has been so thoroughly demonized, these teachers really do not understand the nature of the conservative complaint.

Bauerlein points to three interpersonal factors which explain how this works:

1)The Common Assumption. “The assumption is that all the strangers in the room at professional gatherings are liberals. Liberalism at humanities meetings serves the same purpose that scientific method does at science assemblies. It provides a base of accord…A fellowship is intimated, and members may speak their minds without worrying about justifying basic beliefs or curbing emotions.”

2)The False Consensus Effect. “That effect occurs when people think that the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. If the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way.” Bauerlein gives as an example Pauline Kael’s infamous statement, “I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won…I don’t know anybody who voted for him.” You can be sure much the same thing was said in departmental lounges across the “red states” last month. Impressionable, ambitious students are liable to absorb this attitude and replicate it.

3)The Law of Group Polarization. Bauerlein cites U. of Chicago political scientist Cass Sunstein who observed this phenomenon. Bauerlein summarizes it so: “When like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts toward extreme versions of their common beliefs.” In Old Left circles, this meant racing to embrace Stalin. Nowadays, it goads liberal-minded faculty to endorse not just tolerance for homosexuals, but gay “marriage” and Queer Theory. Conversely, “those involved lose all sense of the range of legitimate opinion.” So dissent begins to seem not just mistaken but obscene.

As a survivor of several left-dominated departments, I can testify that Bauerlein is on to something. I never sensed that conscious conspiracy, or a centrally-directed agenda lurked behind the monolithic wall of hostile opinion conservatives encountered. (Sometimes, such measures are necessary on the part of embattled conservatives!) It was enough that people pledged to free discourse and the untrammeled search for truth rarely encountered intelligent dissent, and were never forced by their institutions to take it seriously. That convinced these academics that their views were simple “decency,” much as similar factors once supported the consensus favoring segregation, Prohibition, and the internment of Japanese-Americans. To shatter such a consensus requires nerves of steel and some institutional support from foundations such as ISI and others.

[Brilliant]

This is what happens when you make academia beholden to government spending.

[blackeagle]

bump

[bahblahbah]

VOTE BY EDUCATION

BUSH

KERRY

NADER

TOTAL

2004

2000

2004

2004

No High School (4%)

49%

+10

50%

0%

H.S. Graduate (22%)

52%

+3

47%

0%

Some College (32%)

54%

+3

46%

0%

College Graduate (26%)

52%

+1

46%

1%

Postgrad Study (16%)

44%

+0

55%

1%

VOTE BY EDUCATION

BUSH

KERRY

NADER

TOTAL

2004

2000

2004

2004

No College Degree (58%)

53%

n/a

47%

0%

College Graduate (42%)

49%

n/a

49%

1%

[RKV]

So Yale and Stanford and Harvard are dependent on government spending? I think not. Their endowments yeild incomes that are larger than the federal monies the receive.

[Angry Republican]

It gets better. Click here for a great documentary about the attack on college Republicans.

[Cobra64]

Because few of the professors never found work in the real world.

[Billthedrill]

It happens that theory-heavy, jargon-laden Marxism and its related offshoots map well to the preferences for theory and jargon that have typified the "town vs. gown" dichotomy for as long as universities have existed. That's part of it. And part of it is many such elites are consciously self-selecting. Another part is the insecurity and resentment of a second-rate intellect faced with a first-rate intellect that disagrees with it. And, again, that there is always a tension between the insularity of a university campus and the worldly pretensions of its inhabitants.

Campuses are like wombs - you can make a baby there, but not an adult.

[swilhelm73]

I think the origin is in many ways Vietnam era deferments.

So, study for that PHD in English, and you don't get sent to Vietnam to shoot at your fellow communists.

Then what do you do with that PHD? Teach...

[Question_Assumptions]

Ping for later.

[Question_Assumptions]

I think people should keep in mind that points (1), (2), and (3) in this article can also apply to opinions on Free Republic and talk radio.

[lunarbicep]

bump

[x]

The idea developed that the intelligentsia -- the experts, technicians, specialists, and theorists -- could produce a better world, a very flattering idea to intellectuals. A lot of this goes back to the Enlightenment. The example of how technology transformed the world in the 19th century gave added momentum to the idea. The Progressives of the late 19th and early 20th century brought this idea into US politics, and Wilson and FDR put it in the mainstream.

With the expansion of the universities after WWII a class emerged that was wholly defined as "intellectuals" or "academics" in opposition to the older, established middle class or the commercial/managerial class. Postwar academics cut many of their ties with their commercial or professional peers or relatives to become a class of their own. Since then, the increased influence of the media and educational institutions have simply accelerated developments. And the liberal or progressive attitudes of the professoriat have spread through the college-educated professions.

If you get enough people who are really devoted to something and confident in their pursuit of some common goal, they'll eventually come to regard what they want as essential and try to reorganize society to achieve their purpose. And once you get enough people in such a group, the original aim may well fade or fall away, leaving only a faction committed to expanding its own position and influence over the wider public.

[Revolting cat!]

How? We wuzn't looking, that's how!

[Blue Screen of Death]

I think people should keep in mind that points (1), (2), and (3) in this article can also apply to opinions on Free Republic and talk radio.

I was thinking the exact same thing as I read the article.

[rocksblues]

By looking at this I have to laugh at how stupid/clueless/no common sense Postgrad Study people are/have.

[Cobra64]

I think we're on the same track. See my #7. I should have typed "Ever" not "Never." Sorry.

[speekinout]

Their endowments yeild incomes that are larger than the federal monies the receive.

I don't think you're counting all of the Pell grants, student loans, etc. that allow so many students to attend these expensive schools. They don't give scholarships to everyone who can't afford to pay outright.

[Starrgaizr]

Draft + Deferment + Vietnam

[LS]

But he avoids the real question---which I don't think Kimball's book answers either---and that is, how did they get so radical?

We offer the following theory in our forthcoming book, "A Patriot's History of the United States" (Penguin Sentinel, Dec. 29):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1595230017/qid=1092168718/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/103-2896973-9763812?v=glance&s=books

1) Part of it was backlash: the universities (many, willingly) excluded any leftists in the late 1940s and early 1950s out of fears of being tainted with communism. After the mid-1950s, the universities began to reverse their policies and to encourage leftists to apply.

2) Another factor was the massive expansion of colleges and universities as a result of the baby boom providing new customers and the $$$ provided by Uncle Sam in reaction to the Space Program.

3) Some of it was self-selection---those who can, do, those who can't . . . . which meant many conservatives went into the "real world." Conservatives on campus tended to go into business and engineering where there was more money.

Some of you laugh and say, "So what?" Well, that's very shortsighted. We are now reaping the harvest of allowing fruitloops to run our institutions of higher learning, in part, precisely because good conservatives would not take a pay cut to teach.

The quickly eroding position of existing conservatives was exacerbated by the fact that conservatives truly were "open minded" and could tolerate a liberal who happened to be a good scholar, but not vice versa. When liberals built up enough power to staff search committees, they would bring in no one but libs.

4) We lost the argument over what constituted "scholarship." Sometime in the 1960s, it no longer was sufficient to write a biography of a famous American or to research the military or business. Instead, "class, race, gender" became the mantra, and ANY "scholarship" not tied to that in some way was viewed as not worthy of attention. Professional organizations like the AHA and OAH started to feature increasingly leftist panels, and, as the author points out, conservatives started to feel not only left out, but under attack. I quit the AHA (which I had only stayed in to get the jobs listings) some 20 years ago, and I haven't been to an actual conference in 15---and then only because I had to go as a part of a search committee.

I have always been confident that in the marketplace, conservative ideas would win. I always knew in my heart that the leftist media would be, if not defeated, easily surpassed.

I have no such illusions about higher education. We can still control k-12 through private schools and home schooling, and even parental participation in public school boards; but trustees of universities are easily cowed and made to feel inferior by a bunch of puffed-up pansies, and I see NOTHING on the horizon that offers and hope for recapturing academia in the next 30 years.