An Academic Question
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 5, 2005
It's a fact, documented by two recent studies, that registered Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives make up only a small minority of professors at elite universities. But what should we conclude from that?
Conservatives see it as compelling evidence of liberal bias in university hiring and promotion. And they say that new 'academic freedom' laws will simply mitigate the effects of that bias, promoting a diversity of views. But a closer look both at the universities and at the motives of those who would police them suggests a quite different story.
[snip]
One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering.
But there's also, crucially, a values issue. In the 1970's, even Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan conceded that the Republican Party was the "party of ideas." Today, even Republicans like Representative Chris Shays concede that it has become the "party of theocracy."
[snip]
Scientific American may think that evolution is supported by mountains of evidence, but President Bush declares that "the jury is still out." Senator James Inhofe dismisses the vast body of research supporting the scientific consensus on climate change as a "gigantic hoax." And conservative pundits like George Will write approvingly about Michael Crichton's anti-environmentalist fantasies.
[snip]
Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they're seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses' content.
And it wouldn't just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don't give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits.
If it got that far, universities would probably find ways to cope - by, say, requiring that all entering students sign waivers. But political pressure will nonetheless have a chilling effect on scholarship. And that, of course, is its purpose.
Oh, man, this guy makes my head hurt.
First, in a spasm of oratorical onanism, he flatters himself by implying that academics, through a process of intellectual self-selection, today represent some sort of awesome-brained uber-species of hominid, much as knuckle-dragging Republicans have grunted and scratched their way into populating the ranks of the brutish military. Well, if one accepts this basic thesis, then perhaps Krugman stands as testimony to the dangers of inbreeding, for Mr. Enron Advisor stands prominently as perhaps the economist most associated with the longest and broadest train-wreck of a professional record. Where else could the likes of Krugman achieve gainful employment than in academia, where accountability is too often a foreign concept? Are this guy and the New York Times a match or what?
Then he delves into "values", citing no less than charter RINO Chris Shays in indicting the Republican Party as no longer a "party of ideas". Okay, Paul, in your own words or less, name some essential Democrat ideas of the past decade:
...waiting...
...waiting...
Aw, hell, let me help: there aren't any. Higher taxes, more dependency and a bigger nanny-state pretty much round out an idea-free agenda anchored on infanticide, buggery, dictator-licking and obstructionism for that faded Party, when they aren't claiming credit for Republican initiatives like welfare reform, that is.
Then, rapid-fire, he starts in with a lefty Clif's Notes version of claimed Republican pseudoscience. These, like his economics and his Enron advice, he gets rather wrong. Sure, Bush says the jury is still out on "evolution", because it is, especially regarding certain of the more ambitious aspects of the theory: One doesn't have to be a Young Earther to have difficulties with the many hoaxes that have crept into the fossil record, and one needn't be a fundamentalist to see striking parallels between Genesis and the Big Bang theory. Meanwhile, Inhofe and Crichton et fils don't necessarily deride the "vast body of research" supporting the "scientific consensus" on "climate change"... rather, they'll point out that the first two are not as monolithic as Krugman holds (and I note his expertise in atmospheric physics approaches that of his Enronomics), but mostly Inhofe and Crichton et fils focus their debunking not so much on "climate change" as on the Left's leap to judgment of human activity (and especially American activity) at its root.
And nice touch, Paul, in aligning Keynes vs. Hayek with "scientific consensus on climate change" vs. loony wild-eyed fundamentalist creationists. Did you counsel Enron on subtlety too?
Meanwhile, if any reader wants to see a "chilling effect on scholarship," try admitting you're a Republican on any major campus today.