Republican anti-intellectualism

How exactly does the observation that “Republicans cultivate anti-intellectualism” imply that the observer believes that Republicans are stupid? This is a complete non-sequitur, …

They sure are nuts but they may very well be stupid too.

Did I mention that they are nuts?

Gee all those Republican scholars and they still can’t figure what bush is all about. Yeah, that’s real intelect for ya.

It might be worth extending your response to look at some of the “policy wonks working for AEI and Heritage”, of whom John Lott is an archetypal, though of course extreme, example. I think it’s clear that, in addition to standard populist anti-intellectualism, there’s also a betrayal of intellectual values by Republicans employed in intellectual work.

Sorry, Henry, I didn’t mean to annoy anyone, I’m just surprised that you’re missing this fundamental fact in all these recent discussions. This must be one of those cases where smarter more educated people see nuances that I can’t. Please delete my comments.

Cheers.

If the Republicans cultivate anti-intellectualism… then who do they cultivate it in?

Just wondering…

I mean, here we have this wonderful agricultural metaphor, with a fresh spring crop of anti-intellectual attitude as its object… but where is the field?

“intellectual values” ah the v word as an explanation for another phenomena!

I’ve raised this point before (and since no one responded so I presume I’m nuts) but I don’t see why anti intellectualism is thought to be so dangerous to academia. There’s a passage in Martin Johnson’s bio where he says something along the lines that the greatest obstacles to winning the world cup was the Springboks – since they were England’s only challengers for the title of most hated team in the world. The point may be slightly trite, but there is a lot of truth in the adage that adversity develops ability and in the case, hostile away teams were good for the team development.

So I don’t see academics are so scared of a government whose first reaction to their opinions is “oh yeah”. Surely that sort of opinion spurs you to sharpen your argument.

The only other line I see is that perhaps anti intellectualism is code for will impose smaller research grants. But again if that’s accepted wisdom, in effect you are saying that everyone in academia must subscribes to certain endogenous growth model, which seems wierd if your talking about philosophers. But empirically the link between education, growth and third tier research is patchy at best so that seems a strange consensus to hold.

Bainbridge isn’t trying to be slick, to move the goalposts, to mislead. Rather, he is flailing away madly, a sure sign that Chait struck a nerve. If Bainbridge were trying to pull a fast one, he would have done a better job of it. But his post is so bad, it’s self-refuting.

As I also pointed out in my TCS column

lol

Maybe I should go look up the expression, because in this context I am uncortable with it. I remember being castigated in comments for claiming the Luther and Calvin were anti-intellectual, in discussing some differences in method between Sunni and Shia jurisprudence.

I am fans of both Nietzsche and Kierkeggaard, who may be called non-rationalists but not anti-intellectual.

And it seems to me that the difference with Republicans and conservatives is not a contempt for intelligence or reason or analysis, but a belief that the scientific method has its limits, the reason has an instrumental justification in service of other irreducible values and stuff like that. Not “anti-intellectual.”

Rob, Brad DeLong had a post a couple of years back noting the decline of AEI.

I think this was before Lott’s arrival there. Although Lott is the most egregious example, Karl Zinsmeister has probably been a more important instance of the process.

I don’t think Bainbridge misinterpreted Chait’s column at all. Read it again. Chait says:

After all, these studies show that some of the best-educated, most-informed people in the country overwhelmingly reject the GOP. Why is this seen as an indictment of academia, rather than as an indictment of the Republican Party?

How is this anything but a suggestion that Democrats are better educated and better informed than Republicans?

The article ends:

In fact, the GOP is just being rejected by those who not only prefer their leaders to think complexly but are complex thinkers themselves. There’s a problem with this picture, all right, but it doesn’t lie with academia.

Chait just said that complex thinkers reject the GOP. Again, it’s an attack on the sophistication and brainpower of GOP voters.

You pretend that Chait’s only attack on Republicans is his statement that “Republicans cultivate anti-intellectualism.” I’m sure that there’s a technical term for this sort of rhetorical manoeuvre, but I don’t know what it is.

The Economist on the political situation on campus …

Patterico quotes: “some of the best-educated, most-informed people in the country overwhelmingly reject the GOP” and asks: “How is this anything but a suggestion that Democrats are better educated and better informed than Republicans?”

As you yourself say: “read it again.” Now, having done so (carefully please) consider the following case: a majority of academics rejects the GOP. However, in the population at large, many moderately well-educated people vote GOP while many poorly-educated people vote Democrat.

Patterico, can you now see that the first statement does not imply the second?

Oh, good grief this is ridiculous. After all Republicans have done to discriminate against others and as opposed as they are to anti-discriminatory regulation, I don’t see why the hell they are whining about this. If they want jobs in academia, they can certainly apply for them and be accepted, or not, based on their QUALIFICATIONS. To whine that they are discriminated against is ludicrous. They simply don’t want to be in a relatively low-paying job.

Kevin,

You didn’t address the other quote, about “complex thinkers.”

You seem not to take issue with Bainbridge’s data that Republicans are, on average, better educated than Democrats. Correct?

If I read you correctly, your argument appears to be that the smartest and best-educated folks tend to be Dems, but because so many poorly educated people also vote Dem, it lowers the average.

Is that your argument?

If so, do you have data to support it? Or is your assumption that the representation of Dems in the academic fields is a proxy for the representation of Dems among the best-educated? Because part of the point of Bainbridge’s post is to challenge that very assumption.

I know some very bright right-of-center folks who are forswearing a career academia because they figure they wouldn’t get tenure. To suggest this is hypocritical because they should go on QUALIFICATIONS assumes that QUALIFICATIONS are the most important variable in deciding who gets tenure. If only that were true . . .

Funny, but not really, since no Republican actually supports anything like that.

Coming in late here. Henry, I see the non sequitur in the Bainbridge post, but I see a couple of other problems here. First, your own original post conflates “conservatives” (“conservative academics”) with “Republicans.” If the idea is that conservatives in academia choose not to register as Republicans (the recent studies involved party registration info, not self-description as “liberal,” “conservative,” whatever) on the grounds that the Republican party (the party, mind you, not “conservatism”) is “anti-intellectual,” then obviously the data are useless and we have to start over with surveys that capture something more to the point than party affiliation.

And following up on that, the idea that “conservatism” as such is opposed to the life of the mind as such is not only strange but flat-out unbelievable given the facts on the ground. Who is always trying to get tougher school standards? Who is bitching all the time about kids that graduate high school but can’t actually read the local paper or add up the items on a grocery-store receipt, let alone place the American Civil War in the correct half-century? If someone argues for a small seminar program of close study of selected historical literary texts for college undergraduates, do you assume at once that those liberals are at it again? When a teacher argues for preserving one of the dwindling Latin programs in the American public (or for that matter, private) high schools, do you immediately think, “Now, there’s someone who really cares about the life of the mind; obviously a liberal”?

Look, Mortimer Adler (who, even on the most casual reading, was no conservative) got pegged as one merely for arguing strenuously that every child could and should get a thorough grounding in literature, arts, history, and science before adulthood. God only knows why this isn’t thought of as a liberal position, but the fact is that at present it is not, and hasn’t been for a long time.

Seems to me we may not have defined our terms very well here. Intellectual and intelligence are related but not the same. I take it that a true intellectual pursues the truth through a rigorous exercise that requires intelligence, a great deal of fortitude, and honesty.

Arguments about IQ levels seems besides the point.

I think perhaps we have not defined our terms very well here. Being an intellectual and intelligent are usually related but not the same.

Above all, one must rigorously and scientifically pursue the truth, come what may.

Discussions about relative IQ levels seem beside the point.

At the national political leval, at least, intellectual, scientific inquiry does not seem welcome. Fanciful notions about AIDS, abortion, and birth control, and how to ease the pain of menstruation seem the order of the day. This does not speak well for the notion that conservatives would make ideal academicians.

Actually, Bainbridge’s data show that there is truth to the idea that Republicans tend to be more educated. Did you miss that?

No, I got that. I should be more clear. On average, Republicans are more educated than Democrats. However, the highly educated tend to be Democrats. Some evidence: 55% of people with advanced degrees voted for Kerry.

Also, look at the undergraduate student body of any Ivy League and you will probably find that Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least two to one. The student body of Princeton, which has a conservative reputation, tilts Democrat by a two to one margin.

Funny I’m not sure that anyone wants quotas I think its more the question of self awareness.

If I ever found myself in a work situation where 95% of people shared the same political views as me I’d think that I must be in an asylum. What’s amusing is that until the reports came out no one in these departments seemed to think that there was anything weird about their political composition (and this is where they differ from JQ’ executives – I think most of them would be aware that they were a biased sample).

Rather the question goes to one of efficiency and influence. As someone remarked some are simply inevitably likely to heavily sample folk from one side of the spectrum and it can only be efficient if most Marxist economics professors are at least a little to the left of centre. The problem then is that, as the left2right, is that if most of your socializing takes place with work colleagues, you end up in a situation where you have no experience (and judging from the posts) no idea how to talk in a meaningful way to people from the other side of the street. So you’re efficient at generating research but inefficient at presenting that research in a way that is likely to have any effect in the outside world.

Matt
I think academics would be quite rational to worry about anti-intellectuals in government cutting funding to universities
Not necessarily – there’s a difference between being anti intellectual and anti education – and Bush seems to me to be highly pro education. So in this anti intellectual climate you might see the level of funding for research drop while the funding for teaching rises. Does that hamstring research? Well directly yes, but indirectly it may help some fields – if there’s less funding for research, less bad research gets done which increases the signal to noise ratio which then assists the production of useful research. And if funding is mainly concentrated in teaching not research surely that liberates more the research from government “control”.

So anti intellectual doesn’t equal anti education and this attitude may represent an opportunity.

Lord.

You’re not controlling for age, *or* for the effect of the prevalence of liberals in academia.

I don’t see what any of this proves anyway. Playing off Chait’s comment, I could just as accurately say:

Some of the poorest-educated, worst-informed people in the country overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Is this not an indictment of the Democratic Party?

And if you want to respond that they’re voting based on economics, then the same argument could apply to academics, who don’t make as much as their CEO counterparts.

You guys need to get over yourselves. The Democratic party is not the exclusive home of smart or educated people.

Scaramouche, it seems to me that you have cut through the Gordian knot: “If there was more money to be made in academia, all those greedy worshippers of the ‘Invisible Hand’ would vie for those positions.”

More concretely, this is a sociological problem with two parts: more Republicans have degrees, and less republicans teach in colleges.

Now, call this obvious, but perhaps the reason more Republicans have degrees is because the group with degrees overlaps with the group that has a higher income.

That isn’t true with the group with the highest degree — PH.Ds.

So here is a hypothesis: Republicans don’t teach as much because the incentive to teach, which requires a considerable and uncertain sacrifice of one’s earning years, is not compensated to the degree that doing other things with those years — like becoming a stockbroker – is. In fact, this is the conservative self image, no? Conservatives are out there working, not lounging around libraries reading Chomsky. Are they out there working for charity? No, they are out there working to make money.

Nothing wrong with that, but those people who are willing to trade a higher income for … well, lounging around a library, and eventually around a faculty lounge, are probably not going to be conservatives. The term, as any Burkean can tell you, refers to a temperament more than an ideology.

Solution to the problem, then, is easy: make the sacrifice worthwhile. Conservatives should be on the horn to their state legislators, demanding that professorial salaries match, say, what you can make in investment banking. I’m thinking, your first year at your average Alabama U. school, teaching history, you should be making 100, 110.

My solution is perfect. Conservatives will flood in.

I’m eager to see the spearcarriers of the right pitch in. Limbaugh, for instance, can suggest 200, 210 in the California system.

It is only right. We need more diversity in our universities.

THREE murder suspects who flew abroad after the brutal killing of a Scottish schoolboy will be brought back to Britain “within weeks”, sources close to the investigation revealed last night.
Abducted, stabbed and set on fire for being white

DAANISH Zahid, an Asian shopkeeper who helped in the abduction and murder of schoolboy Kriss Donald, was found guilty yesterday of Scotland’s first race murder where the victim was white.
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=137&id=1331862004&20041212014206

Aye theres been a bit of race war up in Scotland too.

I have to agree with Walt Pohl here…to find the humanities dominated by leftists is not unexpected. However, I disagree with his lack of concern.

Humanities and certain social sciences are not like the hard sciences. In the hard sciences, you have the scientific method and the ethos of naturalism enforcing some objectivity to the fields. (Try to find a biologist that buys into Lamarckian evolution.)

In contrast, the humanities (and certain social sciences) have no similar source of objectivity. Many of the same issues have been rehashed again and again for centuries. Here, the real risk comes when everyone is on the same side of the issue. Too many inside and outside of academia will assume that the question has been settled.

The old saying goes, “those who can go out and do, the rest become teachers”. Most professors I have met are completely full of themselves and also full of shit.

Wow, Republicans are bad intellectuals because they don’t buck the status quo, but also antiintellectual because they don’t agree with established liberal orthodoxies like the goods of anti-discrimination laws.

All those who say its the money that keeps Republicans out of academia, thats only a small part of it. Its a combination. Many conservatives and libertarians’ favorite job would be in academia even with the little money it pays. But because there is a perception that the liberal orthodoxy among academia would make getting a job, advancement, and ability tho choose what to study much more difficult, the balance tips the other way. Law and business becomes more attractive for bright conservatives. More $, less hassle, and more like-minded folks. If academia was not perceived to be hostile to those with conservative or libertarian viewpoints, many more conservatives would go through the time-intensive efforts and take the pay cut to try to make it into academia.

Also, I think there is the factor that conservatives emphasize family and children more. The extra 5-7 years working with little income as a grad student, and the very little control over where to work plays a large make it more difficult to support a family. Lawyers and businessmen can get a professional degree in 2-3 years and choose what area of the country to live and whether it will be urban or rural.

Why doesn’t Prof. Bainbridge believe that market forces will fix the situation? There are conservative universities and the superior results they no doubt produce will no doubt drive increased success.

Or, is the large endowment and higher social status of the liberal academic establishment an insurmountable obstacle that needs to be fixed by state intervention and a redistribution of jobs?

I’ve read most of the comments on this thread and I haven’t seen this one anywhere…so my apologies if I am replicating an earlier remark.

Another more fundamental problem in this argument is that numbers of years of education = better educated = intellectual. Wrong.

There’s a massive difference in the “education” one receives with a Bachelor’s in Business or an M.B.A. versus a Bachelor’s and Master’s in a Humanities field or a social science field.

You can certainly find narrow humanities folks and narrow social scientists, but in my experience, on the average, you have a much greater probability of finding that narrow person holding a B.A. in Business.

It’s my contention that you can have people with tons of years of education in a non-intellectual vocational discipline (business, education, music) and people with tons of years of education in an intellectual vocational discipline (thesis and dissertation track folks in social sciences and hard sciences who seek the job market in academia and a life of research and teaching) all lumped into one category. Those two groups are two fundamentally different types of education, however. They cannot be compared for intellectual content.

Without accounting for the content of a degree program it’s misleading to simply run with the argument that more years of education = better educated = intellectual, even though it does make lots of people who have no reason to feel better about themselves and their degrees.

Barry and Williestyle,

Since you both read into my post what you wanted to read into it, let me clarify. My basic point was that the humanities (and certain social sciences) being dominated by one political ideology is more of a concern than the hard sciences. (Now, try reading my post.)

Barry, I also take exception to you using extremist caricatures to represent your opponents. (Is Michael Moore a Left-wing intellectual?) Moreover, my post was about the dominance of LEFTISTS in the humanities…not Democrats. There are departments in the country were a moderate Democrat ideologies are chastised.

How many of us in the humanities or social sciences have good empirical data that suggests people are discriminated against for their political views? I have zero. I have never seen or experienced anything close to such discrimination — with one exception, that of conservative Christian colleges and universities such as Liberty.

Frankly, I just don’t know what a commitment to ideological balance would even mean. That we should hire people because of the results they get? I can see the arguments in sociology: “oh, no, we’ve got someone whose data shows that virginity pledges usually wind-up having delayed premarital sex! Quick, let’s get someone who disagrees!” Or in international relations, “we’ve got two advocates of the principle that democracies don’t fight one another! We need someone who takes the opposite stance!”

Look, there is a problem here. The fact that you can walk into a room with your colleagues and assume that everyone voted for Kerry and thinks Bush is an idiot does impact the atmosphere at departments, But, in the social sciences at least, research that is driven by ideology is usually bad research, and demonstrably so. It is very hard to listen to a lot of these complaints and not assume that *some* conservatives don’t like having *some* of their claims subjected to rigorous scrutiny.

I think Walt is right above. Academia is just more of a desirable occupation for those on the left rather than those on the right. I am sure there is no political litmis test in the hard sciences.

The competition for teaching positions in the humanities ironically would make it relatively easy to institute balancing political quotas if anybody wanted to. If you get 100 qualified applicants for each position, it wouldn’t be that hard to find a qualified conservative.

Patrick,

I don’t know whether you or anyone will read this on a more or less moribund thread, but —

It’s my contention that you can have people with tons of years of education in a non-intellectual vocational discipline (business, education, music) and people with tons of years of education in an intellectual vocational discipline (thesis and dissertation track folks in social sciences and hard sciences who seek the job market in academia and a life of research and teaching) all lumped into one category. Those two groups are two fundamentally different types of education, however. They cannot be compared for intellectual content.

Of course they can be “compared for intellectual content”; what you mean is that the comparison won’t end in their being judged equal. But never mind that. What puzzles me is your leaving the humanities entirely out of court. If the university consisted entirely of science students (soft or hard) and “non-intellectual vocational” students, I imagine even the scientists and the “NIVs” would feel that it was, um, missing something.

Is the study (as opposed to practice) of literature, art, music more like the “NIV” education you describe, or more like the sciences? I’m asking in all seriousness, because I know a lot of highly-skilled scientists (beginning with my parents, accomplished and successful biochemists) who aren’t particularly aware of or indeed interested in most of the arts, and who know or care little of history before their own lifetimes. I also know a lot of practicing musicians (to take one of your “non-intellectual vocational” categories) who do know a lot, not only about music but about the other arts and about history, partly because these are things that classical musicians need to know, partly because the mind interested in classical music is likely to be curious also about these other things.

Which, I wonder, has the richer intellectual education? (I think I can ask fairly, having been on both sides — first as a mechanical engineering student, then as a violinist and violist, among other things. I know what my answer would be.)

A surprising theme running through this entire discussion — a theme thus far completely unacknowledged — is the ridiculous assumption that “truth” is just a matter of counting heads. (“Truth,” in this instance: what is right morally-politically).

But why can’t it just as easily be the other way around? Surely it could just as easily be the case that the paltry number of conservatives ensconsed in elite academia is reflective of “conservatism’s” possible superiority, no? Truth, after all, might really be a province of the few; and in this case of the even fewer! (Rough metaphor: Harvey Mansfield is a far more profound, original scholar than, say, Brian Leiter).

Besides, if liberals are going to argue (which Chait’s column meretirciously does) that academia is the arbiter of right (justice) — i.e. academica constitutes the exclusive summit atop a descending heirarchy — then liberals should at least go the whole-hog and be consistent. They might stop to consider this: There are six conservatives on the entire Harvard faculty — this, out of a faculty of approximately 500. Should thus a person be considered insane or stupid to think these six conservatives as possibly the wisest (both in practical and theoretical wisdom*) of the whole lot?

—–

* A distinction I find often totally lost on most liberals (i.e. “progressives” and socialists) — which actually may bespeak their stupidity more than anything “liberals” might adduce for/about conservatives.

A comment from http://dissectleft.blogspot.com

The famously Bush-hating Jonathan Chait has an article in which he defends the overwhelming Leftist bias in academe. He rejects the notion that underrepresentation implies bias, though he realizes that Leftists like himself normally make the opposite argument where blacks are concerned. That does rather highlight the difficulties that the dishonesty of Leftists gets them into. Chait in fact is forced to admit that conservatives are right and that lack of proportionality does not imply bias! A major backdown for a Leftist, it seems to me. He also has a point in saying that academe is not a natural career choice for a conservative, though I disagree with his reasons. Academe is a stuffy bureaucracy and conservatives prefer the more free-wheeling and wide-open business world. I was in academe for many years and I am in no doubt that most of my colleagues would not last 5 minutes in business. My own combination of actual success in both academe and business is certainly extremely rare. There are however many conservatives with academic ambitions and Chait ignores what almost every one of those people could tell him — that you virtually cease to exist in academe once your conservative views are known. Like most conservatives who do make it into academe, I got an academic job before my political views were known but once they were known, the roadblocks put up to my further progress in academe were almost amusing in their compulsiveness and violation of academic principles. Chait is just not acknowledging the facts, which is what I expect from Leftists. I have more on the Leftist nature of academe here