This post is pure response to a long critical comment by Michael Blowhard to my liberal groupthink post. I’ve clipped his comment, cut it up, responded point by point. There are many good comments to my post, which I will not respond to just right now, but Michael’s seemed to merit complete coverage. Still, this post will only be interesting to the truly excessively interested.
I like Michael Blowhard and read his blog, but I think he has gone and straightforwardly misread me in ways I am actually getting quite used to being misread. So his comment will be the convenient occasion to correct these misreadings. Although I will be lengthy-lengthy, I’m not going to be picky-picky because it was just a damn comment and he confesses, in a subsequent comment, to over-caffeination. I shall make allowances for his state of mind. There are indeed substantive points of dispute between us, but I’ll just start by mentioning that the simple misreadings seems to have two causes: 1) my strategy is to focus on problem cases, while ignoring obvious ones that are obviously easy to handle. This produces the erroneous impression that I am missing the obvious. I believe I am not. 2) my strategy is to assert things that are, in my opinion, trivial (but which I think have consequences.) Readers tend to look at these trivialities and wonder what substantive point I could be making.They infer some odious elitism, when actually I’m just saying that unless you think some opinions are better and some worse, you can’t possibly see the point of education. Stuff like that. Trivial stuff. On we go.
Good to see you grappling with all of this, as well as going to the trouble of reading Kirk. I find him amazingly boring to read myself, if awfully smart.
How odd. I find him fun to read but surprisingly light in the ideas department (given his heavyweight reputation.)
But I fear you’re coming dreadfully close to saying something like, “Since the academic elite are Truly Smart People, they all agree on all the major points, because Truly Smart People must!And hey, in a practical sense, that means they’re all lefties! So why shouldn’t the left own academia?”
A thousand times no. I am saying nothing near this. I am sorry to be so emphatic but I get this every time I write these posts. First, I’m talking about how things should be, not how they necessarily are. Ideally, academics should be smart rather than dumb. Yes? But more on this below. A separate point first. Throughout the post I address the perspective of the lefty academic, who thinks conservatives are dumb, who therefore doesn’t at present see why he should be be obliged, as a point of academic decency, to promote conservatives. You wrongly infer that this is my perspective. No, no, no. It is merely the only perspective that matters for purposes of the present debate. Why? Because conservatives don’t see any problem hiring conservatives, so I don’t bother addressing the conundrum ‘why would a conservative ever think it was alright to hire a conservative?’ And lefties who see great merit in conservative positions don’t have any problem hiring conservatives, so this puzzler is likewise uninteresting: ‘why would a lefty who sees great merit in someone’s conservative positions ever think it was alright to hire them?’ These are not post-worthy questions, yet their omission may make it seem I am missing the obvious. No, I’m just not stating it. (Post long enough without.) The challenge is to explain to a lefty why despite the fact that he thinks conservative positions really have little intellectual merit, as he well may, he is still under some obligation not just to tolerate them but to work for their promotion. You may say: but this is an unreasonable thing to think. Yes, it may be. You could, then, try to reason the lefty into seeing the intellectual merit, thereby turning him into one of those lefties (see above) who see great merit in conservative positions. But I take it the strategy under present consideration – the Millian strategy (see Bauerlein) – is in fact to try to convince the lefty that, even if he continues to personally see no intellectual merit in conservative positions, he is still under some obligation to promote these ideas by assuring that they are represented in the academic ecosystem. You may think this is a boring or futile strategy. But then your criticism should be that my post is boring and futile, not that I am a bad sort of elitist. And, of course, by the end of the post I turn to consider the right who is intolerant of lefties. Same problem in reverse.
A few points?
First, if you think George Will is stupid or unschooled, let alone unfamiliar with lefties and leftie arguments, you’re kidding yourself. I’m no fan, I’m happy to make fun of his arguments when they deserve it, and he may often be wrong. But — sorry — he’s brilliant, he’s tough, and he’s worldly. I’d try to slyly suggest that your airy dismissal of Will is yet more evidence of the kind of arrogance that helps give academia a bad name, only I know you’d catch me out on that one.
My point wasn’t that Will is stupid; he’s not; merely that he is – as per his habitat – extremely narrow. The TV punditocracy exhibits an incredibly narrow range of political opinions, giving all their debates a potted quality. The range of opinions you can have, and be a talking head on TV, is a fraction of a sliver of the range of opinions you can have and be an academic. I could probably have skipped the Ghostbusters crack, particularly since I confused Murray and Ackroyd. Will would do fine in academia, but he would initially suffer agoraphobia and have to loosen his intellectual style, because the range of opinions tolerated in academia is much wider than any environment he is used to.
Second, you seem to be saying that what gets someone hired as a prof is that he/she is “unusually smart.” Trust me, that may not be how it looks from the outside. (What it tends to look like from the outside is that what gets one hired as a prof is that the person is able to play the academic game effectively. Which admittedly takes some smarts. But more smarts than it takes to play … oh, say, the media game that Will plays? As for whether a given applicant has some spare thoughts and some real depth after he/she is done playing his/her field’s game — well, that always remains to be seen, no?)
No no no. We are talking about IDEALS here, not reality. I take it our IDEAL is that the professoriate shall be unusually smart, or learned, or educated, or what have you. Suppose someone asks you, ‘Ideally, should a professor be smart, or just have animal cunning?’ I take it you would answer ‘smart is better than animal cunning, ideally’. If so, we are in complete agreement. But why are we talking about ideals, not reality? Well, because the question is about what SHOULD be the case. (We can also argue about what IS the case. Very fair thing to argue about. Just not the subject of the post, for the most part. Can’t talk about everything.) In short, the way it looks from outside is irrelevant. Because that’s a view of how it is, not how it should be. Taking about how things should be is not, per se, a species of unrealism, I’m sure you agree.
Your assertion could also be taken — though certainly not by me! — as further evidence that academics really do think they’re smarter than everyone else.
Fair enough.
Third, even accepting the “unusually smart” thing, which I’m loathe to do, if you combine it with your “elitist” thing, it seems like the conclusion has to be that you think there’s only one way to be smart.
First, the ‘unusually smart’ thing is trivial not controversial. See above. I am just trying to thumbnail the intellectual virtues – cash them as you like – that make someone ideally qualified to be a professor. The alternative to saying professors should be smart is Harrison Bergeron equalitarianism. Every man a professor (on the model of ‘every man a king’, I guess.) I know you don’t think that, so we agree. OK, the elitist thing is trivial. You don’t deny it. Why should the conjunction of these two trivialities – which you obviously agree with – entail that there is only one way to be smart? Do YOU think there is only one way to be smart? (Why do I even seem to be hinting there is only one sort of smart? I’m honestly at a loss as to what could be sending you this false signal from my post. After all, you can easily lodge ‘many different types of intelligence’ under those reasons for thinking diversity is good. Which I list. And which I obviously approve in some way, since I say diversity is good and these are the reasons it would be.)
What world are you living in?
Emphatically this one.
One where smart people can’t disagree?
What in my post makes it sound like I think smart people can’t disagree? The only thing I can think is this this is that first confusion, see above, coming round again. Of course lefties can disagree with righties and think they are smart. Happens all the time. But this really isn’t an interesting question: why you would ever hire someone you think is smart? The answer is: because they seem smart. Again, I didn’t talk much about this. It seems too obvious. The interesting question is: why would you ever promote (as opposed to barely tolerating, i.e. not sending to the re-education camp) someone you think is sort of dumb? And again – I’ve said it six times already – I don’t think righties are dumb. But some lefties think conservatives are dim bulbs. You can either try to convince them they are not, on the merits; or – the present project – convince them that commitment to healthy diversity should oblige them to hire folks they really don’t think are all otherwise all that intellectually worthy.
So, you’ve never been to the movies with smart friends, who had different reactions to the movie? Lordy, that’s not a world (or a set of friends) I’d want any part of.
Yes of course. See above.
Fourth, you seem to be assuming that any person worthy of taking part in an academic elite would necessarily be preoccupied with advancing the interests of his own political team. Why should this be so? (And, forgive me for saying this, but this tendency to automatically conclude that, since politics is inevitable, then let’s play it and play it hard seems to me to be far more widespread on the left than among conservatives, many of whom just wish politics would go away.)
No. But the politically neutral cases aren’t really interesting. But why am I not interested in the possiblity of non-politically preoccupied people, you ask? Am I such a fanatic that I am bored with all non-fanatics? No. I’m just focusing on the problematic cases, which involve politically preocupied people. Not clear? Turn it around. Just consider the sort of question that is implicit in the possibility you raise. For example: why would a person who didn’t care about politics think that a given job candidate – who happened to be smart but also conservative – deserves the job. Well, ex hypothesi, because the candidate seems smart. On the assumption that the person doesn’t care that the candidate is conservative, the candidate’s conservatism is no obstacle. Ah, but suppose the candidate seems dumb but conservative? What then? Well, then they don’t get it because they seem dumb, not because they are conservative. In general, once you stipulate (what is of course often the case) that the people in the ivory tower don’t care about politics the problem evaporates on its own, no? (Am I missing something?) And again ‘smart’ and ‘dumb’ are just flagrantly inadeuate shorthand for whatever basket of intellectual goods qualify (or disqualify) you to be a prof. And not in the real world. In an ideal world. We’re talking how things should be. Not how they are. So long as you think it makes sense to discuss how things should be, as opposed to are, you should be willing to follow me in all this.
There are people who aren’t primarily political, for one thing.
Of course. See above.
For another: why shouldn’t it be permissable for, say, a departmental chair to have this kind of attitude towards his/her job: “Well, we’ll have a radical, and a stuffy old traditionalist, and someone who’s really good at teaching the basics, and someone who’s fabulous at the new ideas, even if he’s a bit flakey, and we’ll keep the visiting profs from other cultures circulating just to bring some fresh stuff in from overseas …”
Why should it seem that I am saying it isn’t permissible? I would have thought it was fairly clear that I’m saying it should be obligatory, since I emphatically agree with Bauerlein, from which permissibility should flow. (Why shouldn’t obligation at least tend to entain permission? Am I missing something?) But I am inquiring – purely in a Socratic spirit – into the roots of the obligation. Is that it? You think the thing is so obvious that you infer that I must actually be a secret skeptic about the obligation? Why do these roots need examining (you may be wondering?) Well, because everyone agrees there should be breadth, but there is a disagreement about how wide the breadth net actually needs to be cast. The way to figure that out is to examine further the reasons for favoring diversity. Come up with a fuller account of its utility. Which my post is an invitation to do.
Such an attitude would reflect a conviction on such a person’s part that maybe it’s through nurturing that kind of open-ended jumble and diversity that a department, a field, and maybe even students are most likely to flourish. It could also be taken to reflect a sub-conviction that looking out for the wellbeing of your field and the interests of your students is more important than playing politics.
Yes, obviously this is exactly my view. The only question is what ‘well-being’ and ‘playing politics’ mean. Everyone is in favor of ‘well-being’, but there is some disagreement about what constitutes it. Likewise, ‘playing politics’ is bad, but expressing authentic intellectual convictions – which may include the authentic conviction that other people’s equally authentic political convictions are wrong – may also be good. It’s not the case that there is no room for serious trouble here. (And again, the trouble may not arise. But it may. The trouble cases are more analytically interestintg.)
Fifth: and I may be misunderstanding you here, and if so, apologies. But you seem to be asking conservatives to demonstrate some consistent way to deduce their way from their own principles to the conclusion that faculties ought to be more diverse. Happy to be corrected here (as everywhere) if I’m understanding wrong. But if I’m understanding you right, I think you’ve gone off the rails a bit in your understanding of conservatism. The whole deducing-your-way-to-policies-from-abstract-principles thing? … That’s not, or not often anyway, conservative.
This is fair enough. Conservatives may just decide to say that the inexpressible mystery of it shows that they are right. This can’t be turned into a principle, without entangling the conservatives in endless self-contradictions, probably. But that’s just part of the inexpressible mystery. Ergo, lefties should hop to it and hire some conservatives. I take it the problem with this is obvious. The conservatives may be happy. But why should the lefty accept this sort of ‘I am the great and powerful inexpressible mystery of Oz’ sort of non-reason giving reason-giving structure? The temptation to draw back the curtain and see whether there is anything there is naturally very strong.
There is a deeper problem, too. In that old Timothy Burke post, he identifies academic structures as sometimes – well, (Edmund) Burkean, in their love of intertia and their reflexive drawing back from innovation and openness. They are rather hidebound. Hence Bauerlein’s attempt to flay their hides with some Mill. Now: it is well and good for a Burkean to say that there is a certain mystery to his ways. But there are likely limits to our capacity to crucify our intellects by way of following along. If an avowed Burkean says that the trouble with the academy is that it is too Burkean (intolerably hidebound and intolerant) hence in need of a radical transformation into something more Burkean (wisely cow-like in its stolid prejudices), it doesn’t take a Milllian to see there is some potential for conceptual embarrassment.
After all, it’s part of the conservative critique of liberalism and leftism that leftists and liberals are forever deducing conclusions and actions from abstract principles and then imposing them on a life that, reasonably, often reacts badly.
Of course, this presupposes that conservatism is right. Which conservatives may do. But they can hardly hope to convince liberals that liberals should be willing to presuppose that what liberals are doing are doing is fundamentally unreasonable. Conservatives really ought to try to come up with some reasons that they might hope liberals would accept. ‘Liberals are mostly wrong’ is not a plausible first premise for a liberal. But I think you see this. Moving along.
I suspect that a genuinely conservative response to your question would be to half-dodge it, and say something like, “Well, why wouldn’t you want a more intellectually diverse faculty, especially in the softer fields? It’ll promote vitality and health. It’ll probably serve the students better too.”
I take it the answer would be: because you might be a conservative who doesn’t strongly believe in the value of intellectual diversity. Obviously everyone except the Borg collective believes in a certain amount of diversity, but one of the pillars of, say, Kirkianism, is that Millian openness – turning all prejudices into question marks by letting people question them – is bad; at best, a necessary evil of our modern world. it doesn’t promote health. It promotes libertinism and Jacobinism. The conservative can say: but I’m not like Kirk that way. I’m really a liberal about this stuff. Well, then, we’re all liberals now. Fine by me.
Where are the principles? Where’s the deduction? There’s a general feeling expressed in such a statement that vitality and health beat non-health and non-vitality, and there’s a feeling that one has a sense of obligation to the people whose interests you’re presumably employed to serve. And if you’re determined to, you could make some abstract program out of it. (And wouldn’t that be just like a lefty to do such a thing?) But why would you? Why not leave it a little rickety and open-ended instead?
But why shouldn’t this be consistent with letting things stay the same? (The conservative needs to say something that implies that it should change, you see.) The thing we’ve is a little intellectually rickety, after all. I guess maybe you are saying we do need to go the constituent service way. I do think that makes a certain sense. But it’s unclear how far it really carries you. Because it’s at odds with the generally understood mission of the university as a place of free inquiry. To what extent, IDEALLY, ought the university to think it has an obligation to ornament popular public beliefs with professors, merely because the beliefs are popular (not because they have been deemed sound by an academic elite.) Possibly the answer is: to some extent.
In any case, I suspect that a conservative response to your question would be a raise of the eyebrows, followed by a quick sidestep, all the while thinking something like: “Oh, there he goes, trying to reason his way to action again. Not that we don’t need to check in with reason from time to time. But, lordy, these academic lefties sure are overly infatuated with their reasoning skills, aren’t they? Not reliable, not reliable …”
If it’s better to be unreasonable, I fail to see what the problem is supposed to be – in principle – with lefties in the academy being infatuated with lots of fashionable irrationalist nonsense. Of course, conservatives might say it is just part of the mystery and proliferating diversity of it all that their unreasonableness is better than than the academically ascendant flavor. But I have a suspicion the irrationalist lefties might return the compliment, with a lot of mysterious and proliferating jawbreaking jargon just to make sure it’s extra special good on top. Stand-off.
Thus, when you ask, “Do conservatives have any account of why, if they were in the academic catbird’s seat, they would be obliged to promote a smattering of liberals just to brighten the place up – even though they think liberals are wrong-headed?”, I just think you’re off. I think the conservative answer might be something like “Why wouldn’t any responsible person want to do what seems best for the health of their field?”
Everyone wants to do what is best for the health of their field. But there is serious dispute about what constitutes being best for the health of fields. More seriously, I am quite sure that David Horowitz – for example – doesn’t think it would be better for the health of the fields he cares about that there should be lefties in them. He used to sell T-shirts, maybe still does, that say ‘you can’t get an education if you’ve only heard half the story’, or something like that. But who thinks Horowitz thinks there are two sides to the stories he cares about? There’s the right side. (In both senses.) And the wrong side. I don’t think he thinks the left has wisdom to offer, so why should they get to be profs, by his lights? Maybe I’m too uncharitable. But there is a serious problem asking liberals to accept conservatives into a properly constituted liberal marketplace of ideas, if the not unreasonable suspicion is that (some) conservatives don’t buy the liberal song and dance about diversity and pluralism. This is thought to be just wishy-washy relativism, maybe. You may say this is a nonsense worry. Conservatives are not tyrants. Well, then conservatives can allay this silly worry by explaining, by their lights, what they think should be done. If diversity and pluralism is the way to go, why do they think that? It is presumptively in conflict with much classic conservative thought, after all.
To conclude by returning to George F. Will and his "smelly little orthodoxies". This is – I know and love it – an Orwell tag from his essay, "Charles Dickens". Dickens is described as being of "a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxoies which are now contending for our souls." What type is that? "A nineteenth century liberal, a free intelligence". But Russell Kirk (just to stick with our example) dislikes nineteenth century liberals, and free thinkers, because he thinks they are Jacobins and libertins waiting to happen. So if we follow Kirk, against Dickens (and Mill, and so on and so forth) we will plausibly do so because there is some little orthodoxy we thinks smells sweetly. The burden is on conservatives to show this is NOT the case.
{ 87 comments }
Sebastian Holsclaw 12.10.04 at 8:03 am
I don’t think I mistook your the point of your original post, but your current post raises some questions for me.
Here and elsewhere you dismiss the question of the lefty who thinks that the conservative is smart, and nevertheless chooses not to hire him. Do you think that case is highly unlikely?
As for Horowitz, I don’t understand how you could think that he believes that wisdom can only come from one side. He came from the left. He was a Communist–not an I don’t like him so I call him a Communist, but an actual Communist. (And in more uncharitable moments I suspect that he has failed to abandon some of the intellectually stifling techniques that he acquired in his formative years on the far left).
Also I was under the distinct (but I will admit unstudied) opinion that the right ruled the US universities in the early 1900s. I know for a fact that the left was not a majority in even in the mid-1900s. Does anyone know of a book or study of how that came to change so dramatically?
Allegedly John Diggins (who would have classified himself as a liberal in his own parlance but certainly could fall under the rubric of conservative under the terms of this discussion) said: “When my generation of liberals was in control of university faculties in the Sixties, we opened the doors to the hiring of radicals in the name of diversity. We thought you would do the same. But you didn’t. You closed the doors behind you.”
Does anyone else know the history of that statement? I would love to see its context. (And yes I already tried a simple google search.)
Badtux 12.10.04 at 8:28 am
I think there is a more fundamental problem here, which is that conservative positions often are anti-intellectual on their face, which in turn is not going to make them prized by those who pride themselves on their intellect, such as college professors. An example is, for biology professors, the theory of evolution. There is a ton of evidence that species evolve, and really no argument about it in the field of biological science (as vs. the field of biological faith). Someone who comes in with a notion of “creation science”, saying “all that evidence you’re looking at is no good, because some ‘Holy Scripture’ that reads like bad science fiction says otherwise” is the equivalent of saying “the scientific method is wrong, you’re wrong, all you need is faith.” People who have devoted their lives to science naturally aren’t pleased with the notion that science should play second fiddle to a bad science fiction novel supposedly dictated by an invisible sky spirit to some dude with a lice-filled beard on a mountain top.
When someone apples for a full-time professorship who says “Oh, by the way, all you intellectual eggheads are wrong”, well, it’s as if I go into my boss’s office and tell him “You’re a piss-pot doody-head who doesn’t know anything at all.” My next destination will be the door, with his foot rushing me out it as I proceed to the unemployment office. It’s an insult, and if I insult people, it’s only right that I not get the job (or stay employed in the job, if I’m a part-time professor trying to get a full-time professorship). Similarly, if someone comes in and insults a bunch of biology professors on the hiring committee, the notion that he should be hired as a biology professor is ludicrous on its very face. It reminds me of a (former) friend who can’t hold a job because he always gets into a fight with his boss. It’s just plain *STUPID*. You don’t insult the people who are interviewing you. And if you do, you deserve what you get.
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
jholbo 12.10.04 at 9:57 am
Sebastian, I do think it is quite unlikely that lefties would genuinely believe in the intellectual power of the righty, yet refuse to hire him (or her). You are right that I don’t talk about this, and I don’t think about it. And that does says something about what I think. It’s an implausible scenario. Do you disagree?
I think Horowitz’ former communism fills him with a horror of what he once was. I don’t think he thinks he had any wisdom when he was a communist, so: no, I don’t see him thinking that wisdom comes from both sides. I think the most he would be willing to say for leftism is that it is a dangerous and seductive pathology, to which young people are especially susceptible. So leftism is more forgivable in the young. But it is not, therefore, intellectually tolerable. Am I wrong about Horowitz?
nic 12.10.04 at 10:02 am
As for Horowitz, I don’t understand how you could think that he believes that wisdom can only come from one side. He came from the left.
Sebastian, you really don’t want to use that argument. I won’t name the most infamous historical example of someone who also “came from the left”. That’d be too easy and a cheap shot. Let’s name a more recent instance, if controversial, but less so. Pim Fortuyn was also a communist. Does that mean he always maintained that there was wisdom from the left? (besides, the left is not equal to communism) Or, further down the scale of controversy, Hitchens. That’s the worst possible instances of people open to different ideas.
What you say about intellectually stifling techniques. I think it’s more to do with individual character, by what attitudes the specific individual in question shows. When people with a certain character move to different ideas, they can do so in ways that are equally extreme as the ways they embraced their first ideological love. Whatever ideology they embrace, there’s Horowitz and Hitchens types everywhere in Europe too, people for whom communism was appealing in the most bombastic way, and who later turned to the right wing for the very same kind of appeal, even if the ideas were different. That’s why they retain the intellectually stifling attitude. It’s their own. They’re not paradigms of the left, or the right, in their broadest sense. They’re just highly inflammable egos who moved from to a different outlet for their own preference for ideological extremes and heavy rhetoric. (I’m being generous. Could have just said they’re jerks.)
Saying Horowitz can’t be possibly so devastatingly biased against the left only because he “came from it” is so disingenous it’s not even funny. You have to see that yourself.
(It reminds me a bit of the argument that some people make against same sex marriage, that there is no discrimination at all in the current state of affairs, because gays can indeed marry. What they mean is, a gay man can marry a straight woman and a gay woman can marry a straight man. Ah well then…)
Sorry, this is just a tangential matter, I don’t have much to add to the more general topic of John’s post.
James Jones 12.10.04 at 10:12 am
Well, I’m a just computer scientist … I’m in a field where ideas are at least sometimes directly provable.. and thus most ideas are sort of semi-agreed on.
So I can’t really say that much about a subject that I haven’t studied greatly outside my specific involvement (nor am I even an incredible expert on the subject within my own involvement), but there seems to be an extreme belief among physicsts and mathematicians that string theory is the absolute golden truth, and many physicists and mathematicians have been studying it for 20+ years with, to be charitble, lacklustre results…
But people speaking out against those opinions have been sort of marginalised, and at least out of the “mainstream” (are any phys/maths people “mainstream” except, maybe Brian Greene?).
So, if (dare I say it?) string theory turns out to be rubbish (I hope not, for the sake of all of those who have worked on it, myself included) … does that mean that intectual heterodoxy does not exist within phys/maths?
Absolutely not! The disagreements have even become popular.
I think that if liberal thinking, or any other dissent-stiffling thought, is weak it will shown as such…
nic 12.10.04 at 10:12 am
I think Horowitz’ former communism fills him with a horror of what he once was.
That’s another typical trait of the Horowitz type indeed. They become the most fanatical scourges of the entire left because they project their own mentality on it.
joel turnipseed 12.10.04 at 10:32 am
Quickly: I knew a lot of fairly ideological professors in my long and varied college life & I can honestly say I never once heard one make an overtly political statement–in class. What I did hear a lot was argument, discussion, etcetera, much of it all over the map and all of it, on reflection, giving the lie to simplicity of talking heads. In fact, the most invigorating class I ever took was one jointly-taught by (morally) conservative philosopher and liberal political scientist on topic of “Who or What has Moral Rights?” For that matter, doesn’t every good Philosophy/Classics department have at least one or two (not necessarily conspicuously) conservative Catholics?
Which is why it’s rather odd that we’re mixing talk of politics in academe with positions/opinions of goofballs like Will, Kirk, Horowitz, etcetera. Would you invite Michael Moore, Molly Ivins, and Tom Tomorrow to teach in your department? Compared to, say, Sandel, Nozick, Rawls, Sen, Epstein, Dworkin, Walzer–not to mention: Kant, Hobbes, Locke, Mill (all of whom I was assigned as undergrad), these people are mere feuilletonists–sometimes great fun to read, but not worth the discussion w/r/t actual thinking. Honestly, can you imagine assigning, in Pol Sci or Phil seminar or survey, any of these guys? Even conservative reading would be, e.g., Hobbes, Burke, Oakeshott–and, though he disowned it, Nozick on libertarianism.
I wonder: was I just lucky?
aj 12.10.04 at 10:34 am
On Sebastian’s question of left and right in the early 1900s – do you really think we can reduce these terms to such static categories that a straight-up comparison with the past makes sense in today’s spectrum? In asking about a shift of this type you have to ask: how did the university change? AND how has the right/conservatism changed? AND how has the left changed? AND how has liberalism changed?
How about this, also tentative, answer as to who ruled in the early 1900s: on a scale from Marxism/socialism/Henry George-style American radicalism (left) to old-style 19th century Liberalism (right) the academy was probably more to the right in the early 1900s. (I believe one of the first academic freedom cases surrounded a sociologist who held socialist views, among other controversial positions.)
But though leaders were on the “right” (for the time period) they called it “liberal education.” [Does anyone study the “conservative arts”?] I really don’t know where the identifiable conservatism stood at the time. By the 1912 election the major parties were all claiming to uphold some kind of Progressivism in national politics (thereby creating no end of confusion for historians trying to define Progressivism as a movement). But what this meant for conservatives in the academy I don’t know.
Something tells me that Dorothy Ross’ work on the origins of the social sciences is worth reading, as is Thomas Haskell’s, but as I have not read them I can only make the suggestion. The early chapters of Daniel Rodgers’ _Atlantic Crossings_ also talks about the growing attack on pure laissez-faire both within and outside of the academy on both sides of the Atlantic. But I don’t think any of these books go past the 1950s so maybe that’s not what you’re looking for.
abb1 12.10.04 at 12:19 pm
I don’t think righties are dumb. But some lefties think conservatives are dim bulbs.
You don’t think righties are dumb? They may or may not be dumb, but they sure are nuts. Screwed up, fucked up, delusional; either clinically insane or retarded. Vast majority of them are. It’s a proven fact:
Don’t be silly, this is very simple: they are nuts.
baa 12.10.04 at 1:01 pm
Your response to Michael B is fine as far as it goes, John, but if he misreads you, I think you similarly misunderstand the “right critique†of the academy. And it’s this misunderstanding that gets your posts on the topic slammed in (now) predictable ways.
A group of academicians that believe X will only have a reason to support the hiring of anti-Xers insofar as a) they think anti-X positions are plausible, and b) they have a commitment to something like Millian principles (they believe that dissent/diversity contributes to the field). As you and T. Burke point out, ideology isn’t usually the right axis to measure this. In moral philosophy, a cognitivist department with a commitment to diversity might hire a non-cognitivist, even though they think he holds an incorrect view. They won’t hire an objectivist, however, because they think he holds a stupid view. And politics will not be the issue here.
So far, fine. For X to hire an anti-Xian, he must have Millian principles. Here’s the point. The conservative critique isn’t about justifying why you should hire people with transparently wrong views, or even justifying, generally, why Xers should hire anti-Xians. Rather, it’s a straightforward critique of an institution, alleging bias and corruption. Claim number one is that the people who are defining “acceptable views†(which we all admit should happen) are doing it poorly, and in bad faith. This criticism, II should note, applies exclusively to the humanities and the social sciences. No one outside a fringe makes the same claim about the natural sciences.
Claim number two (linked, but, I think distinct) is that the academy has become a hostile working environment for people on the right. Even where the process isn’t corrupt, people get pushed out because, really, who needs the aggravation.
Your responses aren’t incorrect, but they are off point. That’s why you get consistently misread, and that’s why guys like Tom Smith get pissed off reading your stuff.
[[Also, the idea that subscribing to Millian principles at the level you describe makes someone “liberal” is kind of a land grab. Most conservatives believe in competition between ideas and products]]
jholbo 12.10.04 at 1:46 pm
baa, thanks. I suppose I am being a bit too coy about all this. I suppose I should just come out more and say that – what do I think? – literary studies is a tedious mess, and this is very much tangled up with an absurd political narrowness. Philosophy actually seems to me in pretty good shape. I don’t think there’s really any significant problem with philosophy departments, along the lines we’ve been discussing. Conservatives do OK in philosophy. (There aren’t so many of them, but there aren’t in the natural sciences either. It isn’t because they are drummed out, I believe.) But it does bother me that, so it seems to me, conservatives can’t really articulate positive reasons why the status quo is bad. Take groupthink. Russell Kirk thinks groupthink is a good thing. (He doesn’t call it that, of course.) So conservatives who denounce groupthink are not sincere, or else they aren’t Kirkians. But then I’d like to hear them say what they are. You say they may be Millians. Well, the libertarians surely are. And there is a (somewhat confused) tradition of calling libertarians conservative. Fair enough. But true conservatives can’t be Millians. If they are in favor of free markets, but they are not in favor of free markets in cultural and social arrangements, they are just hypocrites, I think. (There is no reason why people should be trusted to make good economic decisions but not good social and cultural decisions.) Basically, I want conservatives to pay a toll of personal philosophical improvement if they want to earn the right to criticize the sorry state of much of the humanities and soft social sciences. I want the carrot of getting to take the stick to some silly academic groupthink be what gets the conservative groupthinkers out of their cocoon, so I can take a stick to them. Everyone gets hammered but the Millians. But that’s how it should be. I could have been clearer about that from the start, now that I think about it.
BenA 12.10.04 at 2:08 pm
Sebastian, I do think it is quite unlikely that lefties would genuinely believe in the intellectual power of the righty, yet refuse to hire him (or her). You are right that I don’t talk about this, and I don’t think about it. And that does says something about what I think. It’s an implausible scenario. Do you disagree?
Obviously, I can’t answer for Sebastian, but I actually think there are people on the left and the right who believe that there are views that are both smart _and_ pernicious. There is also a subset of such people — again on both the left and the right — who might sign on to the notion that truly pernicious views (e.g. views that — from the left’s perspective — encourage vicious intolerance, or — from the right’s perspective — lead to social, cultural, or political decay) should be (partly or wholly) excluded from the academy not because they are stupid, but because they are socially dangerous.
Let me add that I subscribe to neither of these views (I guess I am a Millian in that sense), but that the existence of such views makes the smartness of conservatives only one of the potential issues for the reluctant leftist on whom John is focusing.
BenA 12.10.04 at 2:18 pm
Another book to add to the academic ideologies reading list: Edward Purcell’s The Crisis of Democratic Theory. Though this still doesn’t get us past the mid-20th century.
Though only focused on the historical profession Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream does take its story into the early 1980s.
Both are well worth a read (and I’m sure historians here have encountered the Novick).
BenA 12.10.04 at 2:26 pm
Another book that engages the ideological history of American academia: Ellen Schrecker’s No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities.
bq 12.10.04 at 2:54 pm
there seems to be an extreme belief among physicsts and mathematicians that string theory is the absolute golden truth, and many physicists and mathematicians have been studying it for 20+ years with, to be charitble, lacklustre results…
Despite the popularity of string theory in the media and in popular science, the number of researchers working on string theory has always been very small compared to particle physicists who work with the Standard Model (and that group is still a small fraction of all physics researchers.) For much of the last 20 years (especially the first half of that period), there was almost no string theory research outside of New Jersey.
While I don’t what the general consensus on string theory is among physicists, in my subfield (particle phenomenology), it’s regarded as beautiful mathematics but not actually physics yet, due to the complete absence of supporting experimental evidence. I suspect the overall consensus among physicists is closer to my view than to the popular media view.
dave heasman 12.10.04 at 3:01 pm
“Although I will be lengthy-lengthy, I’m not going to be picky-picky because ..”
the Des von Bladet rays are overcoming you?
bob mcmanus 12.10.04 at 3:43 pm
Inarticulate with frustration here.
I just spent hours studying (via Yglesias) Marc Gerecht’s Islamic Paradox about the history, especially recent history, of the Shia in Iraq/Iran.
And the Ayatollah Sistani’s recent earthquake fatwa saying that political and moral wisdom does not necessarily have be received wisdom.
There really is such a thing as “conservatism” that is not liberalism or libertarianism;that is kinda relevant both in the Islamic world and in the United States; that has a respectable history going back, oh, like millenia; that is the major part of the political philosophy of possibly billions of humans.
Conservatism says, or should say to make any sense, that some or most moral and political values are received values not subject to logical or empirical test, and not improved by competition.
Having a passionate love of the Western (and other) Canon and a way too open mind about the Ancient World (were the Egyptians and Greeks total idiots? I doubt it) and an appreciation of Nietzsche (who was honest about values and their origins) lefties who have contempt for real conservatism trouble me.
“Liberals” and libertarians who call themselves “conservatives” disgust and enrage me.
baa 12.10.04 at 3:52 pm
John,
I think philosophy is fine too. No overt discrimination, certainly. I suspect a hostile environment exists in some programs – academics don’t seem to take to heart Dale Carnegie advice on avoiding matters of public controversy in the workplace.
As to what conservatives can and can’t articulate, I think you’re restricting the scope of ‘conservative’ argument unfairly. Maybe true conservatives can’t be Millians, but they can be anti-corruption. If you think literary studies (to say nothing of women’s studies and afro am) represent a ideological set-aside program, and an intellectually suspect one to boot, you are probably in agreement with the most important right-wing critique of the academy. Here’s profoundly conservative critique: “the academy should be about truth and scholarship, not about politicized crap and ideological set asides.†Now, you can go all Terry Eagleton and say that 1930s literary criticism was so politicized, ‘cause T.S. Elliott enforced the dominant paradigm, or whatever. I don’t buy this. I think there’s a substantial elevation in the level of purely partisan content in the humanities. Give me a time machine, and I’ll show a comparison between a Women’s Studies seminar in 2004 and a literature seminar at Harvard in 1914 that will chill your blood.
So, even the “true conservatives†have a place to stand. It’s probably useful to note, in addition, that this true conservative type is a rare breed. America is Mill country. Most members of the American right – let’s call them “Republicans†– approve of competition, dislike monopoly, dislike discrimination, dislike barriers to entry, and have just as much justification as the mainstream left to advance arguments on these grounds.
Last point. You say “There is no reason why people should be trusted to make good economic decisions but not good social and cultural decisions.†That’s a strong statement! Question: does the principle run the other way? Is there no reason why people should be trusted to make good social and cultural decisions but not good economic decisions? Is choosing to work below the minimum wage, for example, a real choice, or a good decision? I pose this because you seem a bit reluctant to recognize the (many, many) ways in which the left, as well as the right, deviates from a non-interventionist norm. (whether this norm can be adequately described as “Millian†is a topic for another time) Only a small fraction of the left and right are committed to thoroughgoing or consistent non-interventionism. Does the economic/social distinction even help to differentiate left and right on topics like drugs, pornography, affirmative action, and freedom of association issues?
bob mcmanus 12.10.04 at 3:59 pm
Holbo makes much the same point in his 1:46 comment.
Why is it relevant? Because there is, for instance, a large portion of the American political spectrum who believe teaching “sexual abstinence outside of marriage” is an indisputable value not subject to demographic, empirical, or factual test.
And Holbo asks on what grounds a liberal sociology dept should accept these people for the faculty.
bob mcmanus 12.10.04 at 4:07 pm
“It’s probably useful to note, in addition, that this true conservative type is a rare breed. America is Mill country.”
When did the Southern Baptists leave the Party? I did not notice.
eudoxis 12.10.04 at 4:14 pm
Academic canalization would be unsupported and unsustained without Timothy Burke’s context, or structure of the department, and Kieran Healy’s self-selection in the academic job market. The situation as it is, (and you were right, John, the first time, that this is a phenomenon that we can’t say is happening in the natural sciences) doesn’t call for extant reasons; the marble simply settled in this local minima many years ago, and the wider public is rebelling, portending the end of a very comfortable situation.
bob mcmanus 12.10.04 at 4:21 pm
I will leave with this, for I rant and waste space. Paul Cella and I have a unbridgeable gulf in values, but I like to think we both respect integrity. And Paul Cella is attracted to Chesterton’s “Distributism” (or at least links approvingly) precisely because he understands the logical and ethical disconnect between conservative social and political values and libertarian or liberal economic values.
It is a most unholy and unsupportable alliance.
jholbo 12.10.04 at 4:32 pm
baa, I think ‘corruption’ is much, much, MUCH too strong. If you are just using it loosely to mean ‘things are really really a mess’, well, you might consider using a different word. If you mean to imply that people are wilfully making things worse, then I deny it categorically. I think you should retract it. Academics may be afflicted with groupthink, but they aren’t malicious. They bear no ill-will to the life of the mind. (Really, where would be the profit in it?) Of course there are nasty petty people in academia, but no more so than outside academia. So I think it really isn’t convincing in the least to say that conservatives can get leverage at all just by being anti-corruption.
What I just gave isn’t an argument. But it is a strong belief. And the whole ‘politicized crap and ideological set asides’ is also not something you can just assert as tolerably self-evident. Severe things deserve to be said, but this goes too far and it is much more effective to not go too far. (Yes, this is just a comment box. So you are indeed entitled to the excuse that you are getting a bit hot under the collar and firing off.) Things got in this mess not because people said, ‘hey, good work is hard, let’s just do crap instead.’ If things have turned out crappy, it has been an unfortunate and unintended collective accident that needs rather delicate and painstaking correction. Corruption suggests the contrary. Of course, corruption can also denote the biological falling apart of an organism that can no longer hold together. If you want to say you meant it in that sense, that the humanities is a decaying organism, fine. It the implication of malice I reject.
I see that Eudoxis just weighed in about how, without Burke and Healey, we’re lost here. I agree entirely.
Lawrence White 12.10.04 at 4:34 pm
Give me a time machine, and I’ll show a comparison between a Women’s Studies seminar in 2004 and a literature seminar at Harvard in 1914 that will chill your blood.
One possible difference: one seminar will have women sitting in it, & the other won\’t. Which one is chilling?
Sebastian Holsclaw 12.10.04 at 4:47 pm
I think it happens somewhat less than the case where the mind is so closed as to be unable to identify the possibility of a smart conservative but I don’t find it implausible at all. Perhaps I feel that way because my personal experiences are with literary studies (which you suggest is one of the uglier disciplines with respect to this discussion) and sociology in one of the more politicized universities (U of California). I think there was a recent (12-18months ago) case in the New York system, but I’m going to have to research a bit to find it again. But the short version is that I think it wrong to ignore the possibility of recognizing a conservative as smart and still managing to avoid hiring him when analyzing this.
enthymeme 12.10.04 at 5:02 pm
But, sadly, academic work in much of the humanities and soft social sciences (that’s all we’re really sure we’re talking about here) is often afflicted by what Timothy Burke has well described as “a certain quality of conformist excellence within the heuristic constraints of what is considered appropriate disciplinarity.”
Haha possibly. But do you have any concrete examples? I have a mild suspicion that some of this is just (relatively) overblown. The polarization of scholarly agendas along partisan lines is hardly a new phenomenon: there have always been such things as intellectual fashions; and at times some of these paradigms have been pervasive. Ordinary language philosophy was fashionable once, and philosophy was the worse for the wear for it, but what is one to do? Except to perhaps fight it, and cleave to the old standards of intellectual and philosophical merit.
But yes, what if the new agenda sets the standards?? is the question here – and again: one has to wonder if politics is not a trifle remote from the merits of one’s work in “the humanities and the soft social sciences” (history? sociology? middle eastern studies? law? political science?).
The point is that sometimes movements – such as neopragmatism in law – have no particular political valence, even if the movement is dominated by scholars of left-wing persuasion. The fact that they take certain liberal pieties for granted is no more astonishing than the fact that they take the pieties of any other paradigm for granted.
We can hardly be expected to fashion institutional safeguards against fashion. (Conservative thinktanks have a function then?)
In art the situation is not dissimilar: a banner is raised we are all for or against the revolution.
The art historian Ernst Gombrich once said something to the effect that the classicists enamoured of the classical dogma in poetry – those who had been conditioned to respond to Vergil, Racine and Poussin – never did bothered with “Ossian’s” poems; and had the self-congratulatory satisfaction of not falling for the Ossian fraud. True. But they might have paid for it in not appreciating Shakespeare either.
BenA 12.10.04 at 5:06 pm
re: the diversity of philosophy departments…
As a total outsider to the field, my understanding of the ideological diversity problem in philosophy, if there is one, is that it is along the analytic / Continental divide, not simply along the left / right political divide that we’re discussing here. But my understanding is also that many analytic types simply don’t think Continental philosophy is philosophy at all.
Without rehashing this debate within philosophy, might it be suggested that this is actually the most common form in which resistance to other modes of thought in humanistic (and social scientific) disciplines takes place: the dominant group simply refuses to accept that what the heterodox are doing belongs in their department. Thus one, for ostensibly disciplinary purposes, can effectively exclude points of view without in any sense signing on to a general principal of exclusion, saying in effect “that’s fine so far as it goes, but it’s not philosophy (or history, or economics or whatever).”
I also wonder whether anyone (especially on the left/liberal end of the spectrum) will step forward and say “my discipline is part of the problem.” As an historian, I honestly think mine isn’t partiuclarly bad. Every department I’ve been involved in has had a wide range of political views (though that range is significantly shifted leftward from the general population), and each has included a number of conservatives. It’s certainly easier to beat up on other people’s fields (there’s always English…;-) ).
jholbo 12.10.04 at 5:12 pm
Yes, Enthymeme, I do have examples. Dozens. Hundreds. I’ve written extensively on the subject, attempted to map the situation laboriously. But only within literary studies. My big fat dialogue. My Zizek article. I admit to personal ignorance of the state of the soft social science, except I’ll take Timothy Burke’s word for it. I do agree with you that hinting a few reforms might bring an end to groupthink is silly. Because that’s what we monkeys do.
aeon skoble 12.10.04 at 5:24 pm
Some philosophy departments are better than others. But here’s something: look through the job listings. If the ad calls for an AOS in “political phil,” my charitable guess is that they would be most concerned with merit issues: good teacher? good scholar? But if the ad calls for AOS or AOC in obviously politicized sub-fields (e.g. post-colonial phil, race/gender theory, liberation ethics, peace/justice studies) you can be sure that no conservative or libertarian need apply.
Marc 12.10.04 at 5:49 pm
Aeon: My guess is that if a job ads calls for evolutionary biologists then creationists need not apply. By your creative logic, if a given field does not interest reactionaries then it should not exist, since they can’t get a job in the field.
Marc
aeon skoble 12.10.04 at 5:58 pm
Marc, that’s not a good analogy. Philosophy is supposed to be about offering reasons for a position. Smith might be a Rawlsian and Jones a Sandelian, but their jobs qua political philosophers don’t presuppose one view or the other. A job in post-colonialism, OTOH, does presuppose a particular view. You equate “denial of the fundamental tenets of post-colonialism” with a scientist’s abandoning scientific method. And that’s a handy illustration of what Bauerlein was saying: as far as the left is concerned, non-leftists might as well be flat-earthers.
Matt McGrattan 12.10.04 at 6:10 pm
“A job in post-colonialism, OTOH, does presuppose a particular view. You equate “denial of the fundamental tenets of post-colonialism†with a scientist’s abandoning scientific method. And that’s a handy illustration of what Bauerlein was saying: as far as the left is concerned, non-leftists might as well be flat-earthers.”
It’s hardly fair to characterize the ‘left’ as buying into or being part of the problems that may afflict some narrow areas of the humanities.
I’d describe myself as being of the political left but that doesn’t stop me from thinking that much work in gender studies or in the sociology of deviance (both of which overlap with areas of my own philosophical research) is deeply confused and rests on fundamental (and sometimes rudimentary) philosophical mistakes.
Furthermore, I could accept that there are certain very narrowly defined subject areas which presuppose, more or less as a a condition of entry, that one buy into a range of views which may be contentious or wrong-headed.
I could do all that while remaining of the ‘left’.
It’s a gross mischaracterising of the ‘left’ in general to point to the sins of one tiny area of the humanities and then say that those sins infect academia in general or that the ‘left’ automatically condones those sins.
Michael Blowhards 12.10.04 at 6:25 pm
John — Thanks for taking the time to go over all these points, and apologies once again for the over-caffeinated quality of my comment on your previous posting. I was delighted to see you wrestling with these questions, I was admiring your daring and brains, and I certainly wasn’t making any of that clear enough.
I’m also not sure that we’re going to find any way to stop talking at what looks more and more like cross purposes. You think I didn’t get the point of your previous posting. I’m pretty sure I did. I suspect from your response that you didn’t get the point of my comment. I’d guess that you’re pretty sure you did.
But what the heck, I’m enjoying the tennis game aspect of all this, and hope you are too. So I’ll try a further response and look forward to your next shot.
1. Kirk.
Glad to hear you’re enjoying the Kirk reading experience. Boy, do I find him stuffy and boring. A few pages, and I’m KO’d. I’ll recuse myself from debates about his virtues or deficits, because, though I’ve enjoyed wrestling with various accounts of his thinking, I’ve never been able to stay awake through an entire Kirk book.
2. Whether or not you’re saying conservatives are stupid and lefties deserve to own the academy.
I know you aren’t saying that, and I can tell you’re making a point of not saying it. You do seem to be expressing some attitudes that suggest that you feel, or semi-feel, that way, though, quite possibly without knowing it. Evidence? As far as I can tell, you simply don’t get conservatism, yet feel completely free to criticize it. It seems to drive you a little nuts, for example, that the conservative thing is to bail from the “keep coming up with better reasons” discussion at a certain point. You don’t get why they do that, or (as far as I can tell) why any smart person would ever choose to do such a thing at certain moments. You keep trying to drag the conversation back to “come up with better reasons.” In other words, you’re defining what the “smart” thing is, without being open to the possibility that “shifting gears at a certain moment in one of these conversations” might in fact be a smart thing — if a different kind of smart thing — to do.
3. George Will, academia, and narrowness.
What on earth makes you think George Will is narrow, that his habitat is narrow, or that his intellectual range is narrow? Do you know him personally? Have you spent time in his environs? Oh, you probably mean that the kind of thing he and his ilk wind up saying on TV is restricted. Why not say then that the kinds of discussions and the range of things that can be said on TV is often pretty narrow?
As for the range of things that gets said in academia not being narrow? You’ve got much more experience of the scene from within, obviously, so I’m happy to defer. On the other hand, I’ve spent some time in school, I’ve got a few prof friends, and I move in some other circles too. FWIW, and speaking of my experience only, academics seem to love priding themselves on being freewheeling, edgy, and daring thinkers. Amazing how fast many of them can take offense, though, and how easy it is to piss them off. In most of the rest of the world, this kind of vanity and touchiness isn’t taken to be an indication of easygoing, open-ended, searching, broad-mindedness.
4. Smart or not.
I do get that you’re talking about ideals. Why don’t you get that my dragging the conversation away from ideals and back to reality isn’t me not getting you, but instead my chosen response to you talking ideals? BTW, there is a larger point to me doing so: I’m giving a demo of the way a conservative might respond to your question; he might yank the conversation away from such a single-minded focus on ideals and try to get it to address a few particulars. It’s often the conservative thing to tip their hats to ideals, then spend the real energy on particulars. Might have something to do with a suspicion of excessive focus on ideals. As well as a few other things.
5. “Unusually smart” and being a professor.
I get that you’re trying to specify what might make an ideal professor. I’m trying to both be realistic, and take issue with that. You seem to think it’s a trivial thing to assert that profs ought to be “unusually smart.” I don’t think it’s trivial at all. I’d select someone for my staff who’s adequately smart, yet solid, helpful, open, responsive, firm, respectful, and a good teacher over someone whose main virtue is being “unusually smart.” I know I’m not alone in thinking that an excessive focus on “unusually smart” sometimes breeds freaks. And I find that lit studies and film studies (the two fields I know a bit) have both become freakish.
As for why I think you seem to be saying that there’s only one kind of smart … It’s because you’re placing restrictions on what’s smart: in your view, smart people always seem happy to offer lots of hyperexplicit reasons for things. But it’s this assumption (as well as others) that conservatives quarrel with. One reason so many academics (OK, lit academics, the ones I know best) seem to outsiders to be marching in intellectual lockstep (even while congratulating each other on how diverse they are) is because they all agree that offering hyperexplicit reasons for everything they do is a good thing. But what if it’s not? They’ve worked a whole cosmology out. It’s vast and intricate, which is why I suppose they feel so “diverse.” But it’s based on the idea that further reasons are everywhere and always a good thing, and the more explicit the better. It may be vast as a cosmos, in other words, but it’s balanced on a pin. A conservative response is to take a swat at the pin.
Before you nail me for not taking part in the discussion you proposed, let me point out that you were asking for conservatives to respond to your question. What I’m doing is giving a (not the, but a) conservative response to your question, and doing so in a way (not the way, but a way) that’s consistent with a kind of conservatism — in this case, as Baa noticed, the Oakeshott variety. I’m not not-responding to your posting; I’m responding to your focus on explicit reasons and deducing-from-ideals by sidestepping, throwing a little gravel in the gears, and pulling things down off pedestals. That’s deliberate. I’m responding to your question in a way that that an Oakeshottian conservative might well respond. Why an Oakeshottian conservative might respond to your posting in this way … Well, you’re the one who’s good with reasons, after all.
5. Advancing your own political team’s political agenda.
I’m not quite sure why you’re putting such an emphasis on “interesting” cases, or taking it for granted that focusing on “interesting” and “problematic” cases is automatically enlightening or even useful. Perhaps it’s merely interesting, and perhaps especially to people of a certain frame of mind. And perhaps focusing on what’s interesting and problematic can be overdone.
I suspect you aren’t going to get the conservative thing until you let go of your attachment to what you deem “interesting.” For one thing, you might register that there’s something a little, I dunno, domineering about it: after all, who exactly is defining what’s interesting? You. Who exacty is trying to get everyone else focused on what you’ve defined as interesting? You.
As for all those uninteresting apolitical people … Well, as a practical matter, are you going to go to these apolitical people and tell them that their cases aren’t interesting? That’s a little … I don’t know what. Disrespectful, no?
A personal note: I might well have gone into academia as a lit prof back in the late ’70s. (The world didn’t lose a great teacher, so no tears please.) But I could see the political people on the advance in the couple of departments I was familiar with. I was anything but a stuffy old fart in my view of the arts. On the other hand, I didn’t want to commit my life to lit studies and wind up spend my professional life arguing with political people (all of them rabid lefties, of course) instead. So I bailed out of academia and went into the artier end of the media instead. (Where people are, sigh, plenty political too. But they’re at least semi-practical about the media and the arts, and they’ve got actual experience in producing culture. So there’s that to be thankful for, at least.) OK with me if you find my story uninteresting. But why not find it symptomatic of something? Namely, that the politicization of lit studies probably drove a number of people out of the field who might have had something to contribute. In my case: I’m relatively apolitical and yet have a very pluralistic view of the arts. Can you argue that my point of view is well-represented in lit departments in today’s academy? It probably isn’t. And if you’re for diversity, why wouldn’t you find the absence of such a point of view from the universities … I don’t know. Distressing? Perhaps even interesting and problematic?
6. “We’re talking how things should be. Not how they are. So long as you think it makes sense to discuss how things should be, as opposed to are, you should be willing to follow me in all this.”
No, you’re talking about how things should be. I’m choosing to carry on the conversation while not following you in this emphasis on “should” and “ideals” because that strikes me as an appropriate and — in this case, because you asked for it — conservative way to respond. I suppose it’s a lot to hope that you might pause and say, “Oh yeah? Hmmm, I wonder what he’s up to. So that’s a demonstration of a certain kind of conservatism? Who knew?” There are a ton of things I don’t get, including many that you surely do get. But I do get at least something of what conservatism is. And part of it is not letting the other guy get away with dictating abstract terms.
7. “The way to figure that out is to examine further the reasons for favoring diversity.” Go right ahead. There are some people who love examining reasons further and further, and who am I to get in their way? “Come up with a fuller account of its utility. Which my post is an invitation to do.” I’m demonstrating the utility of diversity in the process of responding to your posting the way I’m responding. Which of course you’re free to get a kick out of or not. Small point: it did trigger you off into another posting, didn’t it? I get no credit for that?
If you’re deciding whether to hire me as a junior prof, you’re free to say, “Well, harumph, he’s just not playing our game! Thus we should reject him.” You’re also free to say, “Hey, he’s pretty funny and canny, and that’s refreshing, and our department could use some of that.” You’re free to say whatever you want, of course, including that I’m not smart and I’m not interesting. Up to you.
BTW, I could make a department-specific argument about the arts, which is that anyone who thinks that discussing the arts (or enjoying them, or being able to pass along an appreciation for them) has to do with giving lots of heat-tempered, faculty-meeting-tested, hyperexplicit reasons is almost certainly someone who doesn’t really get what’s terrific about the arts. Such a person is almost guaranteed to contribute to the destruction of the arts. Funnily enough, kids coming out of college these days seem to have no fondness for reading lit. But that’s another discussion.
8. “The only question is what ‘well-being’ and ‘playing politics’ mean.” It seems to me that there are other questions hovering around too, but oh well. “Everyone is in favor of ‘well-being’, but there is some disagreement about what constitutes it.” Go ahead and argue it out with your departmental buddies, and good luck reaching an unpolitical agreement. There are other options too. One is to take in some practical feedback from outside the departmental meeting room. Lit studies have become a joke. Talented kids these days often skip the lit department and move into creative writing instead. Kids are showing up in the media world who have almost no lit background whatsoever. They may have read a Toni Morrison novel back in college, but it didn’t leave them with a taste for literature. So it strikes me that the “wellbeing” of lit departments can be sensibly wondered about. Does it really take an analytical discussion to reach that conclusion? “Likewise, ‘playing politics’ is bad…” Not always. Sometimes it’s, alas, necessary. “But expressing authentic intellectual convictions – which may include the authentic conviction that other people’s equally authentic political convictions are wrong – may also be good.” Sure. But sometimes politicizing things (such as lit studies) can also be destructive and out of place. Confronting people in the wrong way or at the wrong time can be destructive too. “It’s not the case that there is no room for serious trouble here. (And again, the trouble may not arise. But it may.” Sure. But serious trouble is always just around the corner, no? “The trouble cases are more analytically interesting.” Well, to you, maybe. And, sorry, you do seem to be attached — the Oakeshottian in me wants to say overattached — to the analytical and the interesting. What’s your point in continuing to push them to the fore? It can’t come as a surprise that someone reading you might experience your attachment to the analytical and the explicit as an attempt to dictate terms. I’m happy to agree that you’ll outclass me in the blink of an eye if we restrict ourselves to what lends itself to the analytical and to your version of interesting. But what have you proven by obtaining such an admission from me?
9. “The inexpressible mystery of it …”
I have that trouble with Kirk too — the way he invokes all the mystical hoohah. But the general conservative thing, as you probably know better than I do, is something else, even if it’s related. Analytical lefties (and other hyper analytical types too, of course) tend to freak out in the face of conservatism, partly because the conservative distrust of abstraction seems to leave them/us without anything to look to for guidance. I understand the anxiety: if you’re used to looking to abstractions for guidance, then it’s got to be bewildering to imagine life without them around. (Or with them floating around in the general soup of things just like everything else, which is the conservative view of the place of abstraction.) So what does a conservative look to for guidance instead? Depends on the conservative to some extent. But I think it’s safe to say that the general feeling is that there are an amazing number of things that can be looked to: tradition (what has tended to work will probably serve OK now too); friends; inner knowledge; experience … The world abounds in things to be looked to for guidance – occasionally an abstraction might prove helpful. All that and more, and probably changing over time and with each person and every situation. And such is life. Which is where, I imagine, many non-Kirkians kind of brush up against Kirk a bit. But saying “such is life” doesn’t automatically imply irrationalism, does it? It can also imply being interested and open; figuring things out when and where possible (and if appropriate); learning from experience; applying hunches and knowledge in modest ways …
It can sometimes seem as though the rationalist picture of things is that there is, on the one hand, some firm, well-argued-over-and-thus-trustworthy abstractions and on the other hand nothing but opinions, some of which may or may not be better than others. That picture of life (and of conduct and experience) strikes the conservative as inaccurate and barren. And the conservative will most likely leave the argument about what’s meant by inaccurate and barren to those who love such arguments.
10. “Why should the lefty accept this sort of ‘I am the great and powerful inexpressible mystery of Oz’ sort of non-reason giving reason-giving structure?” There’s probably no reason he should. Let him go on breaking his own arm patting himself on the back about his supposed “rationality” instead. “The temptation to draw back the curtain and see whether there is anything there is naturally very strong.” It’s also, sometimes, childish. Don’t we all know that there are some things better left un-fucked-with? And that there are some things we just know? And haven’t we all had the experience of watching our pleasure (for example) be taken from us by an over-analytical examination process? Yet do we question the pleasure? Was there anything unreal about our experience of pleasure? (I’m an artsy: we wrestle with questions of pleasure.) So a conservative response to the rationalist’s urge to lift the lady’s skirts in public is to give him a swat and say, “Inappropriate.” You may understand someday. You may not.
11. The two Burkes.
I don’t know T. Burke’s mind, so I’ll pass and look forward to getting to know it. Does E. Burke really strike you as hidebound? I recently went through “Reflections on the Revolution..” and was surprised at how un-hidebound I found him. I remember a passage where he was talking about revolutions, for example. His point wasn’t that revolutions are everywhere and always bad. His point was that, when the moment is right for a revolution, there are better and worse ways of conducting them. My memory’s going these days. But I’m pretty sure his argument against the French Rev wasn’t that it was a revolution, it’s that it wasn’t being conducted well. Does that strike you as hidebound? It struck me as open-minded and enlightening: I’d never thought before about such questions as timing and conduct where revolutions are concerned. But I could be misremembering.
12. “To what extent, IDEALLY –” I’ll pass on that. “– ought the university to think it has an obligation to ornament popular public beliefs with professors, merely because the beliefs are popular (not because they have been deemed sound by an academic elite.)” I’m puzzled by the question. Is the only rationale you can come up with for including some fresh and different minds in a college department to placate the public? How about: general fairness? How about: recognition that genuine disagreements exist about many things on many levels, especially in the softer subjects, and these discussions are perennial and never-ending, and it’s probably good for the kids to encounter the different approaches and arguments during the handful of years they have a chance to do so? How about: to shake up the lock-stepped tedium of a given department? How about: a feeling that the kids the department is supposedly in charge of educating will get something worthwhile out of it?
As far as the public goes: well, why shouldn’t the people in the literature department be reminded from time to time to show a little respect for the public? The public, after all, not only pays the bills, it also plays a large role in the creation of literature.
13. “Russell Kirk (just to stick with our example) dislikes nineteenth century liberals, and free thinkers, because he thinks they are Jacobins and libertins waiting to happen.” Well, I can’t defend Kirk, not knowing his writing (or much of it) firsthand. And I’m someone he might well have trouble with. On the other hand, it sure looked to me in the late ’70s that the lit types who were muscling their way into the English departments were in fact a bunch of Jacobins. And since they’ve taken power, it does seem like they’ve done pretty much the kind of thing Kirk would have expected them to do.
Too much caffeine this morning too. But very pleased to have a chance to swap observations, and looking forward to more such.
junius ponds 12.10.04 at 6:26 pm
>I suspect the overall consensus among physicists is closer to my view than to the popular media view.
junius ponds 12.10.04 at 6:28 pm
>I suspect the overall consensus among physicists is closer to my view than to the popular media view.< Not to mention the high profile critics of string theory — Dyson, Krauss, Glashow — who seem to receive plenty of attention. (The "preview" function ate my text, apparently.)
vidal_olmos 12.10.04 at 6:50 pm
A Hayekian puzzle: if Academia embodies local knowledge about its problems and its circumstance in ways that the government does not understand, why should government intervene in Academia’s business? Or is the marketplace of ideas a special case in which government intervention seems desirable in the name of healthy diversity?
Conservative puzzle: if multiculturalism is code word for everything that is wrong with the left, why is it that it is only fair for the left to promote conservative ideas in the name of intellectual diversity?
Jackmormon 12.10.04 at 6:55 pm
Michael Blowhard,
What would you have been teaching as a literature professor, if you don’t mind my asking?
Michael Blowhard 12.10.04 at 7:04 pm
Jack — Thanks for asking! But “whatever my bosses told me to teach” is probably the realistic answer. Left to my own devices, I’d probably try to cross giving solid courses in some basics with a few freewheeling courses that might resemble what I do at my blog.
Marcus Stanley 12.10.04 at 7:25 pm
People in these debates put WAY too much emphasis on being “smart” and way too little on the habits of mind that tend to make for good scholarship or good intellectual work. I have little doubt that George Will is extremely smart — he has worked his way to the top of an extremely competitive and cuthroat profession. But I also have little doubt that Will systematically skews his opinions, views, and writings to whatever will support the Republican party ideological line this month. I think that for him the depth, insight, or correctness of his views takes (a distant) second place to how instrumentally useful those views will be in advancing a particular ideological agenda.
In general, the problem I have with a lot of Republicans is not that they are not “smart”, but that they are ideological, closed minded, and pretty unconcerned about the relationship between their ideology and important real world outcomes. Ideological types are often very sharp, but they turn their brains to coming up with ever more elaborate ways to spin and explain away the effects of their policies rather than trying to understand them.
Academic disciplines of course generate their own forms of ideology and closed mindedness. But when the discipline is working well (a big if) those ideologies work to focus people on using a common set of methods and assumptions to investigate reality, rather than being a joint conspiracy to ignore it.
Giles 12.10.04 at 7:39 pm
A Hayekian puzzle – the government does tax, subsidise and intervene in Educational affairs every where. The only puzzle is why did education become everywhere a publicly provided good.
“the left to promote conservative ideas” why would anyone want that!
Michael Blowhard 12.10.04 at 7:42 pm
That is a big “if.” You’re no doubt right about Will — it’s part of his job as an op-ed guy to do exactly that. But I think the words you use to describe Republicans — “they are ideological, closed minded, and pretty unconcerned about the relationship between their ideology and important real world outcomes” — also suit a lot of English profs these days to a T. They’re off on an alternate planet, proving their points to each others’ delight, and caring not a whit if any of it reflects the real world of reading and writing.
And your point about the overemphasis on smarts (and the underemphasis on character) is a classically conservative one.
Not that I’m about to defend Republicans…
Jacob T. Levy 12.10.04 at 7:49 pm
though he disowned it, Nozick on libertarianism.
Just because I happen to have seen this claim in three places in the last forty-eight hours, I’ll note that this isn’t right. From Julian Sanchez’ 2001 interview with Nozick at http://www.juliansanchez.com/nozick.html:
JS: In The Examined Life, you reported that you had come to see the libertarian position that you’d advanced in Anarchy, State and Utopia as “seriously inadequate.” But there are several places in Invariances where you seem to suggest that you consider the view advanced there, broadly speaking, at least, a libertarian one. Would you now, again, self-apply the L-word?
RN: Yes. But I never stopped self-applying. What I was really saying in The Examined Life was that I was no longer as hardcore a libertarian as I had been before. But the rumors of my deviation (or apostasy!) from libertarianism were much exaggerated. I think this book [Invariances] makes clear the extent to which I still am within the general framework of libertarianism, especially the ethics chapter and its section on the “Core Principle of Ethics.”
[…]
JS: You outline a series of different “levels of ethics,” as you call them, the most basic being characterized by, as you said, “voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit,” and the higher levels involving more responsiveness and caring for others and positive aid. Yet you say, and this is what seems particularly libertarian, that no society should go further than enforcing that most basic requirement of peaceful cooperation.
RN: Yes, and libertarianism never really claimed that all of ethics was exhausted by what could be enforced, by what one could legitimately be coerced to do or not do. That’s the political, interpersonal realm that libertarian principles were about, not what might be the highest ethical aspiration.
JS: What is it about that most basic level then that makes it most uniquely appropriate to be enforced?
RN: Well, it’s the most important level, I think, and if you try to enforce more than that, you’re truncating that level. You’re showing lack of respect for the voluntary choices of people, and interfering with them in coercive ways. We all benefit from the existence of that free domain of autonomous action, even when (as Hayek pointed out) we do not choose to (or are unable to) make use of those particular such freedoms ourselves. It’s the level that allows us each to live our own chosen lives.
abb1 12.10.04 at 8:04 pm
In general, the problem I have with a lot of Republicans is not that they are not “smartâ€, but that they are ideological, closed minded, and pretty unconcerned about the relationship between their ideology and important real world outcomes. Ideological types are often very sharp, but they turn their brains to coming up with ever more elaborate ways to spin and explain away the effects of their policies rather than trying to understand them.
You got it, Michael. They are nuts.
Russell L. Carter 12.10.04 at 8:18 pm
“It can sometimes seem as though the rationalist picture of things is that there is, on the one hand, some firm, well-argued-over-and-thus-trustworthy abstractions and on the other hand nothing but opinions, some of which may or may not be better than others. That picture of life (and of conduct and experience) strikes the conservative as inaccurate and barren. And the conservative will most likely leave the argument about what’s meant by inaccurate and barren to those who love such arguments.”
Why would someone holding these views expect to be hired into academia? How would the criteria be constructed to differentiate between two candidates holding views consistent with this statement?
There’s probably a lot of hard science people besides me sitting here gawking at this earnest defense of irrationality.
Weird.
Michael Blowhard 12.10.04 at 8:32 pm
Why does such a statement strike you as a justification for irrationality? Oh, because of the avoiding-abstractions thing? But irrationalism isn’t the only possible consequence of letting go of most abstractions in most cases. And there’s plenty that can ground you even in the absence of hard-and-firm abstractions: tradition, practical knowledge, feedback, experience, taste …
In any case, there might be a zillion ways to judge such a candidate’s qualifications: how’s his basic knowledge? Does he say provocative, useful, and/or insightful things that also seem well-grounded? Can he teach? …
But you’re certainly right that one of the advantages of relying on formal abstractions is that it gives people in the softer fields a sense that they aren’t just will of the wisps. Nope, they’re almost like scientists: it’s hard and firm. It gives them the illusion that they’ve got some firm basis for judgment.
aeon skoble 12.10.04 at 8:33 pm
Matt M.: fair point, I didn’t mean to exaggerate or caricature, but OTOH look again at the analogy Marc used.
aelph 12.10.04 at 8:39 pm
But if the ad calls for AOS or AOC in obviously politicized sub-fields (e.g. post-colonial phil, race/gender theory, liberation ethics, peace/justice studies) you can be sure that no conservative or libertarian need apply.
Is it really the case that conservatives and libertarians are applying for these positions and being turned away for their views, or is it more likely that they aren’t interested in studying this stuff in the first place? Complaining about the lack of conservatives teaching subjects like this strikes me as silly as a lefty complaining about the lack of atheists teaching at Bob Jones.
You equate “denial of the fundamental tenets of post-colonialism†with a scientist’s abandoning scientific method.
Isn’t it logical to assume that since conservatives “deny the fundamental tenets of post-colonialism”, they’d have no desire to teach it? (Just to make it clear, I’m not trying to be hostile or dismissive, I’m genuinely curious.
LizardBreath 12.10.04 at 8:58 pm
Why does such a statement strike you as a justification for irrationality? Oh, because of the avoiding-abstractions thing? But irrationalism isn’t the only possible consequence of letting go of most abstractions in most cases. And there’s plenty that can ground you even in the absence of hard-and-firm abstractions: tradition, practical knowledge, feedback, experience, taste …
But you’re explicitly contrasting the ‘conservative’ with the ‘rationalist’. What is saying that you are not, and do not wish to be, a rationalist other than advocating irrationality? Which, of course, you’re free to do if it works for you, but I can’t see how someone else (like, say, a hiring committee for an academic department) can be expected to evaluate your ideas if they can’t be communicated to someone who doesn’t already share them. Outside of a rationalist framework, I don’t see how such communication and evaluation is possible.
aeon skoble 12.10.04 at 9:03 pm
Aelph, that’s not my point. My point was that the very fact that a dept. posts a job listing specifying a politicized sub-field implies that that dept. is pursuing an ideological, rather than purely pedagogical, agenda. In other words, an ad that reads “we want someone in political phil who has a background in post-colonialist theory” automatically means they have a desire to hire on the left. One can imagine similar “code words” for conservatives or libertarians, but there aren’t any job ads that actually use them. Depts either hire either neutrally or left-biased. The other point I was making was that Marc’s analogy wasn’t extraordinarily atypical: he analogizes a philosopher who denies the basic premises of post-colonial theory with a scientist who rejects scientific method. So it’s not that I think depts should hire more right-wing gender theorists, but that depts ought not to have ideological litmus tests for their soc/pol phil hires in the first place. Another example: if the dept. hired under the rubric “Phil of Law” that’s one thing. If they add “must have background in Critical Legal Studies,” that’s implicitly a bias hire.
Jackmormon 12.10.04 at 9:08 pm
Michael, I poked around your blog a bit and enjoyed much of what I found there.
In response to your point above–
In any case, there might be a zillion ways to judge such a candidate’s qualifications: how’s his basic knowledge? Does he say provocative, useful, and/or insightful things that also seem well-grounded? Can he teach? …
–I have to say that such a person is more likely to get a job as an adjunct than as a professor. Sounds harsh, but that’s the way the game works these days.
Professors themselves have to work within their fields; in the humanities, at least at my university, you’ll never get tenure unless you publish two well-received books, and you’re unlikely to get a tenure-track position unless you’re likely to publish two well-received books.
Jackmormon 12.10.04 at 9:20 pm
Michael, I poked around your blog a bit and enjoyed much of what I found there.
In response to your point above–
In any case, there might be a zillion ways to judge such a candidate’s qualifications: how’s his basic knowledge? Does he say provocative, useful, and/or insightful things that also seem well-grounded? Can he teach? …
–I have to say that such a person is more likely to get a job as an adjunct than as a professor. Sounds harsh, but that’s the way the system works these days.
Aeon, I disagree with the specifically political interpretation of sub-field hiring. Yes, these disciplines have been “politicized,” as you put it, but it doesn’t seem logical to me that they are in themselves political.
(And departments sometimes make such hires at student request, after intense lobbying. I’m not sure how much that would matter to your argument, but it seems like a lot of the conservative ideas about how departments are run picture them as a lot better organized and top-down than my experience of them has been.)
aelph 12.10.04 at 9:27 pm
Aelph, that’s not my point. My point was that the very fact that a dept. posts a job listing specifying a politicized sub-field implies that that dept. is pursuing an ideological, rather than purely pedagogical, agenda.
Ok, it’s more clear to me what you were getting at now.
One can imagine similar “code words†for conservatives or libertarians, but there aren’t any job ads that actually use them.
That’s the real question then, if these conservative-leaning positions are out there or not. I don’t claim to know, as I’m not a humanities academic. But I just don’t have a problem with hireing someone with a background in post-colonial studies, presuming the same university isn’t afraid to hire someone who’s speciality is in a “conservative” area. By all means, hire the critical legal studies person. Hire the post-colonialist. But hire the strict constructionist for your law school too. Even if a lefty prof. doesn’t agree with strict constructionism, it’s a real legal theory of which law students need to be aware of. Both sides could stand to relax a bit when something they disagree with is being taught.
Is the ideal I’m expressing here actually what is taking place in the academy? I’ll admit to having no idea, I’m just a lowly Computer Scientist working in private industry. :-)
Michael Blowhard 12.10.04 at 9:44 pm
Lizardbreath — I hope you don’t work in the arts!
But I’ll apologize for being a loudmouth and for hogging so much bandwidth. And I’ll shut up now.
Doug 12.10.04 at 9:48 pm
Any chance of getting a genuine, dsquared type of Shorter JHolbo and/or Shorter M Blowhard out of this?
baa 12.10.04 at 9:55 pm
Hum. I certainly didn’t mean to stir up that response, John. So let me issue a clarification that will both retract in part and advance in part.
First, by corrupt I really meant “very messed up” — corrupt in reference to the ideal norms of academic practice. Are people doing this willfully? I doubt anyone is saying “evil be thou my good,” if that’s what you mean. So I hereby retract any claim of willful malice, and I am sorry if anyone though I implied that.
I am more sorry, however, that my use of the word “corrupt†seems to have distracted from the basic issue of the post. The first point to make is that the accuracy of the conservative critique is a bit to one side. I took you to be arguing that conservatives must either abandon conservatism (and embrace Mill), or abandon their critique of the left-wing academy. I think that’s just not so. Why? Because a) you overstate the opposition between the Mill you need and American conservatism, and b) there’s a perfectly consistent conservative critique of the academy — namely that it has become politicized, crummy, and bedecked with ideological set-aside departments. You say this critique isn’t true (more on this later), but you should be asking instead if is it plausible. If yes, then the right does access to reasonable, conservative, criticism, which it could then substantiate.
Could the critique be substantiated? You say it isn’t self evident that the academic humanities are more politicized now than in the past, nor that there are ideological set-asides. Is this in fact your considered opinion? As I see it, numerous departments and disciplines have been created over the past fifty years with the explicit purpose of politicized, or politically engaged scholarship. This was one of the signal motivations behind the rise of Women’s studies and Afro-Am (also post-colonial studies, which Aeon Skoble mentions) These departments do have an ideological set-aside aspect to them. This may not be self-evident, but perhaps we can settle for evident. Similarly, I do not wish to make broad comments about the quality of work in the humanities, but must we pretend that the Sokal hoax never happened? Or that the response to the Sokal hoax never happened? Or that absolutely nothing is proved by Dennis Dutton’s contest? These are signs of sickness that should not be ignored.
Russell L. Carter 12.10.04 at 10:00 pm
“Any chance of getting a genuine, dsquared type of Shorter JHolbo and/or Shorter M Blowhard out of this?”
I’ll try! Shorter M Blowhard:
“If it feels good, do it. But know the Inquisition.”
Russell L. Carter 12.10.04 at 10:20 pm
I just wanted to add that I’m not trying to mock or insult Michael and I wouldn’t have read through the bazillion words he’s donated if I didn’t think they were a very interesting elucidation of a viewpoint I’m not very familiar with. Hell, one of my computers is named ‘feyerabend’.
LizardBreath 12.10.04 at 10:36 pm
MB-
You know, I thought about addressing what I take to be your point, that the work of an artist can be evaluated whether or not the artist can communicate rationally about it, and figured that it was outside the scope of my limited point. Now that you bring it up — certainly it is not necessary for an artist to be able to communicate rationally about their work; the work stands on its own.
That said, academic departments are not primarily, or even largely, venues for creating art. To the extent that they are, i.e. creative writing programs; music performance; studio arts; etc., there is certainly a place for the irrational. If such departments are ideologically hostile to conservatives irrespective of the quality of the art they create, that is deplorable.
Outside of the direct creation of art, academic departments are venues for the creation and communication of ideas. I still don’t see how you suggest ideas might be communicated and evaluated by people who don’t already accept them as true, outside of a rationalist framework.
To put the problem another way: of two rationalist candidates for an academic job, I can easily determine which I should hire. The superior candidate will make superior (more convincing, less likely to be logically flawed) arguments, be able to generate ideas that I find more interesting, etc. Within the ‘conservative’ mode of thought you seem to be describing, I can’t figure out how I could identify any particular conservative as likely to be a better academic than any other.
BenA 12.10.04 at 10:51 pm
My point was that the very fact that a dept. posts a job listing specifying a politicized sub-field implies that that dept. is pursuing an ideological, rather than purely pedagogical, agenda.
There are certainly also conservative politicized sub-fields — Law and Economics pops to mind, but there are probably others.
I’ll be honest, I don’t have a lot of time for Law and Economics. But I imagine that some subfields that I do find valuable (e.g. gender history), some conservatives would condemn as politicized.
So is there an acceptable “Millian” position that allows all sorts of politicized subfields, or does the very genre have to be eliminated?
Put another way, I don’t understand why, in principal, a methodology that is connected with a particular ideological position is necessarily wrong, or out of place in the academy. (And I’m putting aside for the moment a separate objection: that the accusation that a given subfield is politicized is itself ideologically determined.)
Doctor Slack 12.10.04 at 11:00 pm
As entertaining as all of this is — and with due deference to John’s voluminous erudition and careful fair-mindedness (I enjoy a good excursion into the application of “Millian” standards to hiring practices as much as the next guy) — I’d respectfully submit that Jonathan Chait’s op-ed states the problem a lot more succinctly, accurately and bluntly. The most fundamental barrier to conservative intellectuals is that academies are intellectual institutions, and taken as a political movement, the various forms of conservatism are increasingly invested in anti-intellectualism.
I’d also say that while it’s easy to recognize that a lot of the humanities and soft-science disciplines are ideologically left-leaning, it’s harder work to demonstrate that this is necessarily because they’re rejecting unrecognized conservative brilliance — and both Chait and the much lengthier Bauerlein are rather too inclined to accommodate that view IMO. Digging up a “liberal” from a few decades ago who think the kids today are all “radicals” is unconvincing; that’s the same sort of thing Marxists have been saying ever since the post-structuralist onslaught left their prestige in tatters in the Eighties, but so the f*ck what? Maybe Marxist theories of history or literary study just weren’t that good. Maybe New Criticism has had its day, too, and maybe it’s actually not worth keeping it on life support in order to appease those who fear “radicalism.” People accused of “discrimination” may, in fact, simply be trying to work on the merits — which is something that conservatives, of all people, shouldn’t need to be reminded of.
African-American Studies departments crop up as an example of closed-mindedness in both Chait and Bauerlein (the latter specifically referencing affirmative action as a taboo subject). But the bigger problem the conservative movement has there is that it doesn’t have anything especially rigorous and convincing on offer to change the minds of anyone in the discipline about this. Or, if there is some truly devastating conservative critique of affirmative action, it’s long since been out-powered and obscured by the sloganeering and crankery of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation.
Advice to conservatives: if you want respect from “liberal academia,” start by cleaning up your own house. Otherwise, you might as well hope The Poor Man proves prophetic… in which case, be careful what you wish for.
Dan S 12.10.04 at 11:36 pm
The conversation seems to have moved elsewhere, but FWIW…
jholbo’s focus on the ideal rather than the concrete is itself a pragmatic strategy. michael blowhard responds with a conservative shift to the concrete, which is fascinating. But the people with the power to change the status quo are for the most part liberals, who are unlikely to find those conservative criticisms compelling. Unless the conservative critics of academia intend to impose change from the outside (perhaps they do?), they would be better served by operating within rationalist rhetoric.
Perhaps that is impossible to do without the sorts of hypocrisy that jholbo pointed out. I don’t know – much of what I know about Conservative theory I learned from these threads.
Giles 12.10.04 at 11:38 pm
“conservatism are increasingly invested in anti-intellectualism.”
Why is anti intellectualism bad for academia – if you like debate then surely a skeptical audience is useful?
If you look at the world wide rankings there are virtually no universities from countries, like France, with a tradition of intellectual worship while countries like Australia which a long and vigorous history of anti intellectualism are disproportionately represented. I’d suggest that a healthy degree of anti intellectualism is good for academia, not bad.
Michael Blowhard 12.10.04 at 11:46 pm
You mean, some of you don’t buy the observation that Lit departments have trashed themselves over the last 30 years? Really? You’re still waiting for that to be proven? Good lord, what does it take?
OK, ignore my personal experience. Skip over the bazillions of people who’ve complained about it and the dozens of books that have been written about it. Not a grain of truth in any of that, I guess. No doubt every single person who’s registered a complaint has been motivated by a nefarious political agenda, I guess. Ignore my suspicion that all this denying-of-common-experience and Millian-waiting-around-for-formal-proof might be, in part, a way of denying the obvious for politically convenient reasons. Here’s a quote from Denis Dutton:
“There’s a very serious divide that’s developed in the academic community. The science departments have remained strong. And those departments such as psychology or economics that have tried to give an empirical base to their research and teachings have remained lively and productive. The sad story is over in the English department. English as a discipline has been reduced to a laughingstock by its adoption of cultural studies as its central focus.”
It’s like denying that the media have a leftish (in American terms) bias, isn’t it? I mean, why quarrel with the claim? If you’re interested in reasonable observations, in any case. If you’re interested in stalling a conversation because you’re trying to control where it might lead, that’s another thing.
Doctor Slack 12.11.04 at 12:15 am
Why is anti intellectualism bad for academia – if you like debate then surely a skeptical audience is useful?
Debate is an inherently intellectual enterprise. An audience “skeptical” of it is by definition not able to participate in it, at least not constructively. Cf. David Horowitz.
You mean, some of you don’t buy the observation that Lit departments have trashed themselves over the last 30 years?
Lit studies as a discipline suffers from a serious structural problem that goes well beyond whether there are enough conservatives there or not. The problem is that it’s transitioned from a model of glorified book-reviewing through a period of Marxist critique and toward a CultStud “interdisciplinary” model that’s equally half-assed. (Now, a rigorously interdisciplinary Lit field would be a thing of beauty — that’s the vision that motivates a lot of the CultStud people, you know, they’re not just in it for the fun of bamboozling you with Foucaultian rhetoric — but we ain’t there by a long shot.)
Now, there’s a reason why I deliberately avoided a career in Lit studies after doing two degrees in it, so I’m not defending the current state of the discipline. (This also is not to say that I buy into the facile rejection of everything that any of these stages produced, which is just as intellectually lazy.) There should be no doubt, no matter what your theoretical or political persuasion, that there’s a problem — like, say, the total lack of a common critical vocabulary even within English Departments for starters.
Unfortunately, solving that problem just isn’t as simple as decrying “cultural studies” or “leftism,” however frustating this might be to the Dennis Duttons of the world. There will (and should) be no rewinding back to the halcyon fifties. And until the people involved take some interest in moving the discipline forward to something genuinely interesting — and have an informed take on how to do so, and an understanding of their evil “cultural studies” foes that goes beyond caricature — reform and rehabilitation will be difficult.
It will be difficult even for politically “liberal” academicians — many of whom still have yet to come honestly to grips with many of the theories they’re claiming to critique. And those barriers are within intellectualism, which conservative “thinkers” often still can’t persuade themselves to accept.
Walt Pohl 12.11.04 at 12:19 am
The media does not have a leftist bias. Really. The media works endlessly to silence anyone appreciably to the left of Paul Krugman. Maybe they like people who are 10% left of center more than they like people 10% right of center, but even that’s not guaranteed. If George Will (or Robert Novack) were liberals and were guilty of the same ethical lapses, they would have been fired long ago.
aj 12.11.04 at 12:21 am
But doesn’t Michael’s – and many others’ – point about Lit departments being indisputably messed up raise another question about the debate: Why should we assume that the extreme cases of English/Literature and “____ Studies” (and maybe Education) stand for the state of the humanities and social sciences as a whole?
Obviously, not everyone does this but enough are doing so that it has skewed the terms of the entire debate.
Doctor Slack 12.11.04 at 12:26 am
Why should we assume that the extreme cases of English/Literature and “____ Studies” (and maybe Education) stand for the state of the humanities and social sciences as a whole?
And just as importantly: even for the most messed-up discipline you can name (“Communications” would be my candidate), why specifically would adding more right-wingers to the mix be an improvement? One has only to glance at the average conservative think-tank to see how much worse it can get than the shoddiest English Department.
liberal japonicus 12.11.04 at 12:31 am
You mean, some of you don’t buy the observation that Lit departments have trashed themselves over the last 30 years?
Lots o’ interesting stuff. But I don’t see (though I could have missed it) any discussion as to the demographic pressures that have led to this state of affairs. English and lit departments deal with the largest population of students, and the American system has used grad students teaching lower level sections as a cheap labor force. This demographic pressure results in the situation everyone seems to acknowledge. The intellectual reasons for this state of affairs are merely window dressing for this.
Giles 12.11.04 at 12:33 am
“An audience “skeptical†of it is by definition not able to participate in it”
I’m not saying that the general public should be participating in academic debates on a day to day basis – rather that when the public is skeptical about intellectual debate new academic ideas have to pass a higher threshold before the public takes notice of them. Academia is at the cutting edge of research, but it’s a feature of research that 95% of “hot new ideas†currently circulating in research will turn out to be crap. A skeptical public will hopefully only listen to the remaining 5% or at least assist in the filtering process with its fastidiousness.
The classic example is typically might be the 80’s New Zealand government which was overly intellectual a philic government implemented economic reforms based on half baked “cutting edge†academic economics which turned out to have disastrous growth consequences.
A healthy degree of skepticism is good for everyone.
Doctor Slack 12.11.04 at 12:42 am
A healthy degree of skepticism is good for everyone.
Healthy skepticism and an awareness that 90% of anything is likely to be crap is a good thing. I just don’t think this has anything to do with anti-ointellectualism as such, nor with whether the basic parameters and objectives of academe should be intellectual.
Matt McGrattan 12.11.04 at 12:49 am
“Why should we assume that the extreme cases of English/Literature and “____ Studies†(and maybe Education) stand for the state of the humanities and social sciences as a whole?
Obviously, not everyone does this but enough are doing so that it has skewed the terms of the entire debate. ”
This seems like an important point. Clearly there are some disciplines within the humanities that may, at this particular historical juncture, exhibit less than ideal standards of intellectual rigour however this is no reason to damn the humanities in general or wider academia.
My own experience of philosophy bears little relation to the caricatures of narrow-minded, ideologically driven, exclusionary practice that seem to dominate this debate.
We probably ought to be asking why some discipline or other fails to meet acceptable standards of good practice: in terms of hiring, or in terms of breadth of understanding, or the vigour of its intellectual interactions but we also ought to be careful about assuming that those disciplines, which many on all sides of the political spectrum may find less than acceptable, represent the academia in general or the humanities in particular.
Giles 12.11.04 at 1:06 am
I do – the posts above take seems to implicitly imply that the “anti intellectualism†is a threat to academe and its values – it not and there’s no reason to think that is. Rather a pro-intellectual government is probably more of a danger to academe than the obverse –. For example, the cultural studies department may bias towards the democrats because they think they’re more likely to provide them with continuing funding; but as matt points out, their failure to attract students may well be because of other structural issue, which they don’t address just because they think salvation is coming with Hilary in 2008.
The point I’m trying to make is that academe should try an maintain an intellectual independence from government and an anti intellectual government assists them in doing that.
This article describes a similar process of issue in relation how Latham/Kerry and the press screwed each others careers up http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/How-the-leftleaning-media-hurt-Labor/2004/12/08/1102182357755.html
Michael Blowhard 12.11.04 at 1:32 am
Walt — You write, “Maybe they like people who are 10% left of center more than they like people 10% right of center.” Right, that’s the point. By the way, I work in the mainstream media, and conservatives (on the content side) are very few and far between. Maybe that’s as it should be. But the fact is they’re hard to come by, and yes that does affect how the news is conceptualized and presented. Though I’ve always wondered what media people might confess to really believing if you got ’em alone and took ’em off the record …
As for English Depts, I’ve got a couple of degrees from fancy places myself, so I haven’t just been reading the headlines in Commentary. John’s posting posed a challenge involving conservatives and diversity — that’s why we’re all circling around the topic of academic deparments hiring conservatives. No one’s claiming it’s a cure-all for everything or even anything. Still, come to think of it: why wouldn’t you want a greater diversity of points of view in your Lit department?
Dan S. writes, “But the people with the power to change the status quo are for the most part liberals, who are unlikely to find those conservative criticisms compelling.” Very true! As a practical matter, one of the reasons for the existence of conservative think-tanks is that many rightie people with academic-intellectual interests (and presumably talents) couldn’t land jobs in academia. So they went and created their own intellectual world. If we’re talking about the “market” for ideas, it’d probably make sense to open it up ‘way beyond just the universities.
Lizardbreath — You make a good distinction between making art and the academic study of art. Still, when you write, “academic departments are venues for the creation and communication of ideas,” I’ve got to hope you aren’t thinking about English departments …
Walt Pohl 12.11.04 at 3:29 am
For some reason I have the impression that you’re in advertising, Michael. Is that right? I had always assumed that advertising leaned left — not the people who pay for the advertising, of course, but the actual creative people who do it, since it’s a natural vocation for art majors. What I had in mind was the news media.
I think the comparison with the media is particular infelicitous because your complaints are more plausible for English than they are for the news media.
CKR/WV 12.11.04 at 2:11 pm
I’m new to Crooked Timber and this discussion, but I’d like to thank the discussers for giving me some insight into the reasons for my unproductive dialogs with people who currently style themselves “conservatives.” I put that term into quotes because of its historical slipperyness and some things I didn’t understand until reading this thread. Trouble is, I haven’t learned yet how to make the discussions more productive.
Both sides are trying to define the terms of the debate. This results in the sides talking past each other. It might be useful to look at those terms to try to find common ground on which a debate might be conducted, but now I am trying to define the terms of the debate.
Conservatives deal with the specific, liberals with the abstract???? Let’s take a look at the conservative Bush administration and its “sticking to principles,” which seems to have won it the election with conservative voters. Or the Bible-based fundamentalists who have divine revelation before them, from which they pick and choose.
I eschewed lots of “abstractions for guidance” a long time ago, and I’ve always thought it made me liberal. So do most of the people around me. Something strange going on here that I still don’t understand. Maybe it’s a conservative rhetorical strategy to throw liberals off balance.
“Tradition, friends, inner knowledge, experience.” The problem, enunciated by several posters, is that if you want to share any of this with others (part of teaching, I think), you have to be able to discuss it in a more or less analytical way. Otherwise it is transmitted as received dogma. Or the picture comes to mind of Henry II lolling with his barons in the movie “Beckett” just before the infamous (but plausibly deniable) comment about “that troublesome priest.”
“Don’t we all know that there are some things better left unfucked with?” Yes and no. And we probably disagree on what they are. More discussion needed, more analysis (sorry, I just don’t know how to get these things through osmosis). The purpose of the university (and the intellectual life) is to question, not to fence questions out. I think that if one wants the other, it is monasticism that provides that.
Michael Blowhard 12.11.04 at 3:49 pm
Walt — I’m puzzled by your reference to advertising. Are you thinking of my peppy prose? My shallow mind? But no, in any case, I’ve worked in the mainstream media for 25 years. Very unsuccessfully, but I do know the tv, publishing, magazine, and movie business pretty well, if only as someone who’s spent a lot of time as a fly on the wall. And yes, in my experience 9 out of 10 people on the content side veer leftish in American terms, and yes that affects what we think of as the news. (In my experience, of course.) I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with this, especially now that the Internet has opened the discussion up, by the way.
CKR/WV — There are a lot of different sides to conservatism, and to rightie thought generally. (Incidentally, I’m no rightie. But I was bugged by my ignorance of rightie thought — and by the tendency of my more rabid leftie friends to demonize rightie-ism without seeming to know a damn thing about it). So I spent a couple of years self-educating myself. I got a lot out of the experience, FWIW. One conclusion: the world of rightie thought is as big and impressive as the world of leftie thought. Another: it’s no more (if no less) motivated by Raw Evil than leftie thought is.
Anyway, the first bit of confusion I had to get over was the identification of conservatism as a political philosophy with what’s characterized in the press as “conservatism.” Two different, if sometimes overlapping, things. America’s Republicans are a funny, roped-together combo of business cheerleaders, Christians, libertarians, “neoconservatives” and a handful of traditionalist conservatives. There’s nothing conservative (in the poli-sci sense) about business cheerleaders, libertarians, or even most neoconservatives. These groups, who have immense quarrels between themselves, band together out of political convenience (and, to be honest, a dislike of whatever they imagine the Dems are up to).
Confusing things even further is that there are two main strands in conservatism — continental and Anglo-American. But setting that aside for a sec …
Conservatism as people like Burke and Oakeshott conceive of it is more a matter of temperament than it is of dogma. There’s a distrust of abstraction, but also a recognition that abstractions are occasionally necessary and unavoidable. But there’s a general feeling that abstractions should be dealt with warily, because the complex organism that is a society often responds very badly to having abstractions imposed on it. There’s also a … well, I wouldn’t call it belief but a feeling that tradition and experience are much more trustworthy guides than rationalism and abstraction are. Don’t reach for formal purity and then work your way backwards to a conclusion, in other words; you’ll probably be better off reflection on the past, consulting with friends (and experts, though warily), reminding yourself that modesty and piecemeal approaches generally work out better than ambitious engineering projects …
So in a way, conservatism of this sort is more a temperameantal preference than it is a list of policy prescriptions. Respecting experience, respeting the local, and respecting history tend to lead conservatives (of this sort) to conclude that a French conservatism might be quite different than an American one — after all, France is quite a different place than America.
Translating these general temperamental preferences into specific policies, let alone forming and running a political party with “conservatism” as its theme, are always big challenges.
But generally, conservatives of this kind have a dramatically different view of the role of government than liberals and lefties do. They tend to see governing as a necessary evil rather than a potentially-exicting vehicle for change and improvement. They’d generally like to see government confine itself to certain basic functions, and to confine itself as well to managing or enabling society in such a way that people can lead rewarding lives of their own choosing, all the while accepting the fact that perfection is unrealistic. In my experience, lefties adore activist government, and are in love with dramatic gestures. Conservatives are wary of both.
Part of what explains some of the dust and brouhaha on the right these days is the existence of neoconservatism. Neoconservatism in many ways isn’t conservative at all. Neos love big programs and dramatic gestures — what’s conservative about that? Historically, what explains the neos is that they’re former leftists who (in their terms) saw the light and veered right, often in the ’80s. What they didn’t give up in changing directions was their love of crusading politics. This has many people on the right feeling all charged up — whee, excitement. But it has the people who are more traditionally conservative feeling quite angry and betrayed. Traditional conservatives are quite as likely as rabid lefties to think that Bush is in the clutches of madmen, and that the Iraq war has been a disaster from day one.
The political scientist Jeremy Shearmur came up with a taxonomy I found very helpful. In his view, there are three main political points of view: conservative, “liberal,” and socialist. Liberal subdivides into two camps: business liberals (in America, many Republicans) and welfare liberals (Dems). And he (realistically, as far as I can tell) says that politics in America is largely a quarrel between the two subcamps of “liberal.” We have relatively few true conservatives, and relatively few true socialists.
But I’m probably just confusing things. Hoping that you’re curious, let me pass along a couple of links.
Here‘s a q&a with the British conservative Roger Scruton.
Here‘s a q&a with the economist Thomas Sowell — he’s really more of a classical liberal than a conservative, but he’s well worth wrestling with, IMHO.
Here‘s Michael Oakeshott’s essay “Rationalism in Politics.” His book by the same name has an eye-opening essay in it called “On Being Conservative”; another book of his, “The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism” is a gem too.
And, FWIW, here‘s a blog posting I wrote about my self-education in rightie thought; and here‘s an interview I did with Jim Kalb, a traditionalist conservative who does a great job of spelling out what trad conservatism is all about.
nic 12.11.04 at 4:41 pm
If I may pick another tangential matter, ie. what Blowhard says on the American media veering leftish, well, that’s a perfect illustration of the relativity of political categories across different parts of the world. A few days ago, on the anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy, I watched a CNN special about it (CNN American edition, not the British one) which left me with my jaw hanging to the floor, it was so completely subservient to the Union Carbide version of the story. At one point, the presenter, a guy with what the Poor Man calls titanium-alloy hairdo (which was not the only reason I had to wonder if I wasn’t watching Fox News by mistake), went on to ask his correspondent in India (with the most artificial frowning, perplexed pose, as in, hmm, I’m really thinking hard about this question), why is it that there are still so many protests against the company, shouldn’t they instead be complaining with the Indian government (for holding on to the retribution money for so long) because at least they elected that government, not the company…! No mention of any of the real issues in the whole controversy, OR of how much (little) the money actually is when divided by the huge number of victims, no mention even of the persisting effects of the chemical spill, no. It was only an accident after all. If one didn’t know much about the whole affair, one could have concluded from this special that the protests were clearly a case of convenient antiamericanism. Or something like anti-globalisation protesters smashing McDonalds. Silly Indians. They should be more grateful, what with all the jobs we outsource there. Tsk.
Another CNN moment, special on the Zapatero laws about same sex marriage, they basically devoted most of the time, attention and credibility to guests from the religious conservatives and the Church opposing that measure. There was no one really arguing the other side. Let’s not even go into war coverage. Then I hear from some Americans that CNN is supposed to be on the left wing, or liberal, or at least so very different in slant from Fox, and it just makes me wonder what exactly is the American definition of left wing and/or liberal when applied to the media.
CKR/WV 12.11.04 at 7:55 pm
Michael, thanks for the commentary and the links. I haven’t checked out the links yet. Seems that I may be an Oakeshottian conservative??? No, I don’t think so, but I’ll check it out later.
I think I have achieved a new level of confusion as to the label for my political position.
Your comment about two branches of liberal in the US seems to be consistent with my understanding, though.
Now, how does one talk to that zoo of “conservatives” who keep shouting at the rest of us?
Stuart Buck 12.11.04 at 9:21 pm
This is rather tangential, in the grand scheme of things, but I’m a little hung up on this assertion:
What does that even mean? How is George Will — as an individual — “narrow” in comparison to “academia”? He has written columns on hundreds, if not thousands, of different subjects. Under what conditions would you say that he was “broad”?
Later, Marcus Stanley said this:
I don’t know about that. One of his recent columns highlighted inconsistencies in Condoleezza Rice’s record. He has consistently written columns that are skeptical of Bush’s conduct and stated reasons for the war in Iraq, and has criticized Bush’s budgetary choices (e.g., here, here, here, and here).
Doctor Slack 12.12.04 at 1:42 am
As for English Depts, I’ve got a couple of degrees from fancy places myself
Look, conceding that the human sciences have their own problems is not to concede a crude stereotype of pristine ideological fortresses of the “left.” Believe it or not, even English Departments (perish the thought!) boast the odd conservative grad student and prof. So you really don’t have to reassure me about your education, okay? Honest.
John’s posting posed a challenge involving conservatives and diversity
And I’m trying to outline an element of the challenge. “Diversity” is all well and good, but blindly pursuing “diversity” for its own sake isn’t supposed to be something conservatives are interested in. And all caricatures and stereotypes to the contrary, it’s not something “liberals” are interested in either.
Ultimately, “diverse” views are most useful if they’re actually informed and have something interesting to contribute. If today’s conservatism genuinely doesn’t has less to offer in this regard, then there’s no reason for any discipline to work harder to include it.
Conservatives can, of course, work to dissuade academe of that assumption, but the official apparatus of “conservatism” — especially the shoddy alternate pseudo-intellectual universe of think tanks and a prevailing partisan culture that heavily encourages conservatives to indulge in intemperate baiting of “liberals and lefties” — works against them to a much greater degree than the presumed prejudice of academia. And even in that environment, various kinds of conservative are still able to get prominent and respectable notice in universities across the North American continent (Francis Fukuyama comes to mind here, though the neos are, as you’ve noted, not always recognized as “conservative” in the traditional sense).
That’s why I brought up Chait’s point. Conservatism’s intellectual woes, when all is said and done, start at home. The sooner conservatives themselves are willing to recognize it, the better off we’ll all be.
Doctor Slack 12.12.04 at 1:49 am
Correction in my above post:
If today’s conservatism genuinely doesn’t has less to offer in this regard
Should read: “If today’s conservatism genuinely has less to offer in this regard . . .”
Michael Friedman 12.12.04 at 2:17 am
Can I suggest a much simpler argument to provide to the lefty professor who doesn’t want to hire conservatives because he thinks their ideas lack merit?
“Hi. We now control the government and the funds. We see this as a problem. Solve it or be defunded. Then we’ll see if a PhD in English literature qualifies you to say ‘Would you like fries with that?'”
Alternatively, we could go with:
“Hi. Some new rules here.
”
I actually like the second idea better. It would force a massive movement of students into more practical majors, effectively defunding much of liberal arts – after all, how many English majors do we need? As engineering and the sciences tend to be more balanced in their politics this would have the side effect of better balancing the universities.
Michael Friedman 12.12.04 at 2:22 am
Let me suggest a simpler argument.
“Hi. We now control all three branches of the government. We see this as a problem so it doen’t matter if you don’t. You are the egg heads so you figure out a way to solve it.
If you don’t solve the problem we will defund you and you can find out if an English PhD qualifies you to say ‘Would you like fries with that?'”
Doctor Slack 12.12.04 at 2:38 am
Hi. We now control the government and the funds. We see this as a problem. Solve it or be defunded.
Yeah, great idea! That would sure lay to rest any notion that conservative intellectuals can’t succeed on the merits of their own ideas. The funny thing is, many consies probably wouldn’t even see the irony of suggesting that government should be used to try to bludgeon out of departments what they can’t get through their own efforts…
Zackary Sholem Berger 12.12.04 at 2:56 pm
So what does a conservative look to for guidance instead [of abstractions]? [. . .] There are an amazing number of things that can be looked to: tradition (what has tended to work will probably serve OK now too); friends; inner knowledge; experience …
I’m sure that in this lengthy comment thread someone has already made the following remark, much as one can find in pi any sequence of integers. But in any case, I fail to understand how “tradition” is any less difficult or abstract than other, more “liberal” abstractions.
To take one example I’m familiar with, some of the sharpest minds of the Jews have spent the last couple of thousand years debating what should, or should not, be included in the “tradition,” or indeed what the word itself should be taken to mean. One might escape the frying pan of other abstractions only to be consumed utterly by the fires of such debate!
“Inner knowledge and experience”: as far as that goes, Oakeshott, or Dr. Blowhard himself, must be very impressive thinkers indeed if they can distinguish a stream of consciousness or running internal monologue from that “high, solitary and most stern” thing which is inner knowledge. Ditto for distinguishing coincidence, or mere years-gotten-through, from “experience.” Perhaps I should abandon all other scholarship and learn at the feet of those who have such tricky matters in the bag, with less recourse to “abstraction” than their brothers and sisters on the Left!
CKR/WV 12.12.04 at 3:22 pm
I’ve read the assignments, Michael, and can’t possibly respond in detail. Just a few wide comments.
In the Scruton and Sowell essays, a cardboard figure called “liberal” appears. This seems to be a result of assumptions behind the questions asked by the interviewer. Another cardboard figure called “Rationalist” appears in the Oakeshott essay.
I’ve never met these people. I’ve met people with some of the characteristics described or implied, but some of those people considered themselves liberal and some conservative.
Sowell makes a good point about data being thrown away that doesn’t concur with one’s worldview, as in his example of Paul Williams, but this is a limitation hardly confined to liberals. I cite the bad news coming from Iraq and the sunny statements of the Bush administration. Shocking that we’ve just found out that soldiers are scavenging stuff to armor their Humvees! And there’s lots more.
It’s useful, sometimes, when one is discussing in a rather abstract way, to construct ideal types that embody a range of attitudes typical of a social group. What is not useful is to conflate those ideal types with real people. These are called straw men, and they are indeed easy to knock over. But they have little to do with the specifics of the real world, which, according to your arguments, are so highly valued by conservatives.
I would also suggest that “by their fruit you shall know them.” If the sixties’ excesses (Scruton interview) discount the civil rights triumphs, then the bigoted intolerance of today’s conservatives discount anything positive they may have to offer. It’s always useful to consider what part of what your group is doing allows the worst in it to do whatever it is they’re doing. But if a group is successful enough, hubris takes over.
Finally, a point of agreement. I think that most of us today are searching for something beyond a sterile rationalism, beyond thought. So many of the old certainties have been blown up in religion. Dreadful things happened in the names of rationality and non-rationality during the twentieth century. Most of us would like to see a better world.
The links you provided and, for example, fundamentalist religion, want to go back to a time before, to make those certainties sure again. But you can’t go back. I’m comfortable with continuing the search. Many people are not. Some new syntheses are needed.
liberal 12.13.04 at 8:00 am
giles wrote, The only puzzle is why did education become everywhere a publicly provided good.
Simple. From a post on sci.econ:
>Correct me if I’m wrong here. Don’t you use similar reasoning to justify
>state funding of education (again a libertarian claim that people can fund
>their own)? Namely, I can’t pay for the education of (say) a promising
>person and receive some kind of capitalized asset in return.
Right. It’s a little different, but based on the same kind of
phenomenon. The fact that education can only be owned by the person
who gets it means that in a purely libertarian market economy (even a
geolibertarian one where land rent is recovered for public purposes or
equal distribution), there will be an inefficient under-allocation of
investment in education (probably in some aspects of health care,
too), and a corresponding over-allocation in ownable capital assets.
>(Presumably,
>promises that the person would pay me back in the future, perhaps outsized
>gains to pay me for the risk I took, would be viewed as some kind of
>unenforceable contract because it smacks of indentured servitude.)
Right. I don’t know how to resolve that, other than by public
investment in education. And it’s not like the record of societies
that do invest in public education isn’t pretty unambiguously
positive. Look what public expenditures on basic literacy have just
recently made possible in China, India, etc. How long before that
libertarian utopia Somalia joins the 21st C?
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