Harvard economist Greg Mankiw notes the mounting evidence that conservatives are underrepresented in academia, and suggests a possible remedy (without necessarily endorsing it):
Question to think about: If right-wingers are underrepresented in universities relative to the population and discriminated against by the left-wing majority, as Larry [Summers] suggests, should there be affirmative action for right-leaning academics? It seems that, on principle, those on the left (who favor affirmative action to promote diversity and correct past injustice) should endorse such a university policy, and those on the right (who more often oppose affirmative action) would be against.
The underrepresentation of conservatives (and, I would add, libertarians) is almost certainly not all due to ideological discrimination. But evidence suggests that discrimination is probably at least a part of the story. In this excellent Econlog post, economist Bryan Caplan explained why ideological discrimination is more likely to flourish in academia than in most other employment markets. Even aside from discrimination, the ideological homogeneity of much of academia causes a variety of problems, such as reducing the diversity of ideas reflected in research, skewing teaching agendas, and generating the sorts of "groupthink" pathologies to which ideologically homogenous groups are prone.
However, whether or not the discrimination is the cause of the problem, affirmative action for conservative academics (or libertarian ones) is a poor solution. Among other things, it would require universities to define who counts as a "conservative" for affirmative action purpose, a task that they aren't likely to do well. Affirmative action for conservatives would also give job candidates an incentive to engage in deception about their views in the hopes of gaining professional advancement. Moreover, conservative professors hired on an affirmative basis despite inferior qualifications would find it difficult to get their ideas taken seriously by colleagues and students. They might therefore be unable to make a meaningful contribution to academic debate - the very reason why we want to promote ideological diversity in hiring to begin with.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Self-Selection and Ideological Imbalances in Academia:
- Intellectual Diversity in Academia--Discrimination v. Self-Selection:
- Affirmative Action for Conservative Academics?
- Pitfalls of Ignoring Libertarianism in Studies of Academics' Ideologies:
- Academics' Ideology and "Moderation":
- Ideology and Academia - Liberal Dominance Only in Those Fields Where it Matters:
- Professors and Intelligent Design:
- Interesting Study on Professors' Ideology:
Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
At least there is a good justification for attempting to achieve ideological diversity at a university. I have yet to hear a good justification for attempting to achieve racial diversity for its own sake.
As I've said before, the bias against conservatives is very real, especially at "elite" and Would-be "elite" universities. But its primary mechanism is the chosing of fields that are considered "interesting" and "important." The subjects that schoalrs choose to write about can provide some indication of their political and social leanings. This is far from infallible when it comes to more traditional fields; political history can attract radicals as well as moderates of various stripes and conservatives.
But if you choose to hire someone in the "new cultural history", gender, subaltern studies, and so on, you can be certain that you are not getting a scholar who sports "Fred for President" bumper-stickers on their car.
And yet how can you compell a department to hire in one field versus another? That sort of micro-management by --who?--the provost? president? trustees? . . . well, it is simply impossible. Yet the selection of certain fields as "valid" ensures that your department can dodge potential conservatives, while smugly reassuring everyone that "We never ask" about a candidates politics.
It's a bad deal for us. But at least we get summers off.
When one teaches undergraduates, teaching conservative ideas WILL lower your teaching evaluations. I am very careful that none of my students suspect that I may be a conservative. (I am relatively open with my colleagues. Though I have learned self-censorship which does not come easy to me.)
In theory, I would favor affirmative action for conservatives, at least at the margin. But as with all affirmative action, targeting is an issue. It seems clear to me from the data that the most underrepresented group is the religious right conservatives rather than libertarian type folks.
Why would anyone assume such professors would have "inferior qualifications" or that professional standards would necessarily be lower in order to hire conservatives. It's axiomatic in other forms of affirmative action that lower standards are required to fill the quotas, but it seems pretty clear in this case that the analogy does not hold.
I'm not trying to prove any point here; I have no idea and I'm just curious.
An example: Two candidates for a tenure-track position have demonstrated equal achievement in biology at Harvard, but one believes in old-earth creationism. Discrimination based on ideological belief here seems quite justified.
The moral seems to be that while one could have a principled commitment to ethnic/gender/(dis)ability "diversity" but against ideological diversity, the converse is not true.
I think you mean ipso facto not de facto.
As a matter of curiosity, do posters and commenters here regard the situations as comparable? Are the same forces are at work in those institutions as in academia? And are similar remedies appropriate?
Besides, like all AA, it would treat the symptom and not the cause. That might make sense when the cause is something as complex and difficult as the effects of a history of pervasive racism, but it seems to me that it would be easier to try to deal with the things that cause fewer conservatives to want to be in academics.
- government imposed quotas
- universities deciding that in order to make up for past discrimination and current disparities, they give some weight in the hiring process to people with expertise in topics conservatives find important.
- making a point to advertise and publicize openings in places where conservatives will tend to run across them, instead of recruiting from a good old boy network of friends of those already hired.
Opposing the first category doesn't have to mean opposing the 2nd or 3rd category.
No wonder there are so few liberals.
Innyhoo, the reasons for the lack of conservatives in academia, including their own social standards, are irrelevant. A critical mass is needed, however achieved, or the education of the students will be incomplete. You can look it up.
And if your argument is that there is something about the jobs generally that in some way discourages conservatives from going into the field in the first place, well, unless you can link that specifically the acts of a specific employer, you're still out of luck. Read the Sears case and see how far that sort of argument got women plaintiffs in a major Title VII case.
Diversity with out representing equivalent equality in political and social organizational viewpoint, is simply not Diversity, nor open minded intellectual discovery.
No one really cares about the political viewpoints the Thermodynamicists in the Mechanical Engineering Department, when they study heat Transfer. The Diversity is definitely needed in the PoliSci, Economics, Law, Sociology and Journalism departments, though.
Yes I'd go go to court; and slap the Universities silly in an attempt to reopen the closed minds of a supposed open-minded University faculty.
I have been advocating such a course of action for several years.
I'd do that to the reporting crews of most major media institutions as well, while leaving the editorial pages alone, to reflect the viewpoint to the Publishers, except in single newspaper towns.
But before affirmative action programs begin for conservatives, then they should be enslaved for a few hundred years, or lose their right to vote because "voting is too dirty of a game" to involve them, or, just be told that conservativism is a preference and not an orientation and equal protection or due process should not matter to them.
Still up for the task ex demo?
I've been teaching college for 12 years, so I think that my experience goes beyond the mere anecdotal. My best conservative students almost never go on to PhD programs, largely becuse they've been at our university for four years. They know that the atmosphere in academia is poisonous for conservatives. So they go into other fields, including think tanks nd the federal government.
Harvey Mansfield said something along these lines as well when one year his doctoral students were the only Harvad government PhD's who failed to land academic posts. His comment was that his student would just have to go to Washington and run the country, or something like that.
As for Joseph's point about the Sears case, I have no idea what you mean by "you're still out of luck." Are you saying that because of that decision, academe has no reason to act with intellectual integrity? I'm not so good at Latin anymore, so what's that Latin term for 'non sequitur'?
And I hope Thales (Keep well hydrated, my friend) will take me at my word that "Burkean conservatism" is not well-represented in our universities. Note the dearth of scholarship on Burke outside of British and Canadian universities. Note also that so many of those who pass for conservative on campuses tend to have Straussian leanings (you mentioned Bloom), and thus share the gnostic epistemology of our colleagues on the left.
At the "Edmund Burke Faculty Fan Club" meetings out here, I tend to play solitaire.
OK. But then I think we'll need to do this to Hispanics and the disabled too, to meet your fine-tuned sense of justice. Any suggestions on how we get around federal law on this one?
How about any other classification? I'm 1/8 American Indian. Some places say that only counts if you retain some manner of "identification" with Indian lifestyle, whatever that is (most AIs drive pickups, hunt, and identify with rednecks), some say it only counts if you have tribal affiliation -- and some IAs don't even have federally recognized tribes -- and others don't care.
And how much does it take? Some question Obama's status because he's half caucasian and the other real African-African. Are Japanese-Americans a minority (hey, they didn't lock up German-Americans en masse one generation ago) or Chinese-Americans (who were murdered in the 19th century)? What do you do with a person who has a hispanic surname but is actually Italian (I know of one such who had problems getting into law school because of it) or one who is half hispanic and half chinese (I know her) or half hispanic and half Italian (a good friend).
I can't see where classifying on the basis of philsophy would be a lot more arbitrary than classifying on ethnicity. And it would at least address the question of diversity where in scholarship diversity is most important -- differences in intellectual viewpoints.
Oh, and did I mention that I'm a conservative?
Nah, there's no discrimination in the Academy against conservatives. There's no true diversity in the Academy.
I am not expressing an opinion as to what in fact is currently the case in academia, nor how an affirmative action program for conservative scholars would work if one were effected. I am simply questioning whether it follows as logically that the affirmative action hires would most likely be inferior to the permanent party now there. ceteris paribus, or whatever we need say to make clear that we are only theorizing, depending on how severe the hiring bias had been, might not the new hires outshine the old ones?
And as to Aubrey's comments:
Being a military officer requires substantial intellectual capacity. It also requires physical courage, a frightening level of physical conditioning, the indefinable trait known as "leadership", and the willingness to accept command (combat) responsibility (which of my people get to die today?).
No wonder there are so few liberals.
So... apart from the willingness to accept combat responsibility, which of those traits can you demonstrate the average liberal doesn't possess while the average conservative does?
And what you're ignoring in your noble description of the military officer is the willingness to demonstrate unfailing obeisance even to the point of murdering others, however unethical, uninformed, or irrational it may be to do so under the circumstances (what you term "command responsibility"). I'm happy to say that this final trait is not a hallmark for the scholar, and only among the ranks of the military and the servile citizens who play cheerleaders for it would this abominable quality be considered virtue.
I think that's right on the money. Self-selection. I know it was a pretty big factor for me in not deciding to get a masters. And of the humanities, I was in one of the less left-leaning ones.
Well, ideally. One could write a similarly glowing summary of what being a professor requires.
In reality, of course, professors fall short ... and as for military officers ....
You, however, mistake US officers for, say, Russian officers. Educated libs know the difference, but pretend not to.
You're educated.
And libs don't actually have what it takes to do the murdering. They cheer--see all the support for lefties over the last three-quarter century. You know. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Fidel, not to mention any number of tinpot lefties who are in second place in the murder competition.
So take the freedom better men than you provide you and enjoy it. Standing on a chair, you couldn't spit as high as a basic trainee's boot sole. Enjoy your insignificance.
If you think these traits apply primarily to conservatives, you clearly haven't looked at the demographic for the red states lately. Not to put to fine a point on it, but they are fatter and less educated. A lot fatter.
You write: We've heard for some time that African Americans and women enter the academic job market at lower rates than do white males in large part because of a perception that academia is unfriendly to them. Does this sound familiar?
Some folks say do so that. The correct response to that, as a matter of employment discrimination law (I'll get to ethical behavior below) is that this doesn't matter, unless you can show a specific employer behaving badly to specific members of a protected class. That's the relevance of the Sears case -- sorry if my brief reference to it made it sound like a non sequitar.
You conclude: Are you saying that because of that decision, academe has no reason to act with intellectual integrity?
Absolutely not. I do not approve of discrimination based on political ideology, and as chair of my school's appointments committee, I can say that I/we do not practice it.
As to AALSRighy, I've looked through the 800 or so AALS forms, and few if any scream out "conservative." And if they did, I doubt it would matter most places.
Of course, insofar as discrimination-countering affirmative action requires the existence of discrimination, it's entirely possible the affirmative action hires will be "taken less seriously" as people (wrongly) use the affirmative action program to justify their preexisting prejudices.
It may be the case that liberals are underrepresented in the military, but again, that would have to do with the fact that many liberals are against the military. By contrast, I doubt very many conservatives are against academia in and of itself, even if they are against the sort of things that currently happen to be taught by academic.
Why is Mr. Aubrey channeling the villain from A Few Good Men?
"Affirmative action" for conservative academics has the makings of superb satire on just about everything and everyone but especially on conservatives who would end up depending on a government program for employment. A skilled novelist or playwright could do wonders with the theme.
But actually I assume that this post is meant as a joke. It is interesting to see who takes it seriously and as if it takes "mounting evidence" to convince anyone that academia is "underrepresented" -- a liberal phrase if there ever was one -- with conservatives. Judging by the reaction to this post I wonder if the real issue is that people with a sense of humor are underrepresented in conservatism?
I could just take this as another example of some comments on this blog that indicate beliefs that a startlingly high number of major institutions in the U.S. are somehow dominated by the "left." But I'll bite: what's the evidence for the claim that "top business executives are significantly more likely to be left-leaning than your average American"?
It may be the case that liberals are underrepresented in the military, but again, that would have to do with the fact that many liberals are against the military. By contrast, I doubt very many conservatives are against academia in and of itself, even if they are against the sort of things that currently happen to be taught by academic.
I don't think many liberals (a few, maybe) are really against the existence of a military in general. A significant number think it's currently too large, overused, treated with too much reverence, and maybe devoted to some essentially wrong principles (though that's still a pretty uncommon belief). Similarly, a lot of conservatives think that American academia is currently corrupt, decadent, useless, bloated, and snobbish, even though few if any would want to abolish it (at least, without replacing it with some kind of higher education system). So I don't think your distinction works.
Aren't they likely to be better educated, hence more likely Democrats? Or is that a canard?
You make a good point, about how the seeking of candidates in certain fields largely rules out conservatives, but I think you're seeing deception where there isn't any. Historians I've interacted with (largely ancient historians, so maybe it's different in other fields) aren't, I think, giving more opportunities to social historians as a more subtle way of banning conservatives: they're doing it because they really think there's a lot of interesting work to be done in social history, more than in, say, traditional military history. That is, if they happened to find a social historian with a Thompson bumper sticker (and admittedly, that's a rare and elusive species), they'd be happy to consider his work, and a military historian wouldn't find the job market any easier if he joined the Green Party.
Are people really stuck at the level of confusing "well-educated" with "employed by a school?"
Affirmative action based on one's political views (or any other voluntary characteristic) makes no sense at all. If self-identification were the test, then the number of conservatives would suddenly increase (to take advantage of the entitlement), thereby rendering the scheme unecessary.
1) Mankiw is right on with his suggestion that conservatives should be against it. they're in general against every form of AA that is currently practiced, so the logical assumption would be that they are also against this. but from above we see that this is wrong. why? mankiw rests his statement on the assumption that conservatives are principled. they are not. they are against forms of AA that don't help and/or hurt classes that they don't belong to, but are all for forms of AA that help out classes they do belong to.
2) The support for AA for conservatives based on supposed institutional discrimination or some analogous description of a "hostile" workplace similarly illustrates moral bankruptcy. The standard theme expressed in these boards by conservatives is that employees can and should be employed "at will" of the employer. this means they can be hired and fired for any reason...even if your just doesn't like the fact that you are a conservative.
3) (an addendum to point 2 above.) what evidence do conservatives provide for said discrimination against them? the fact that they are underrepresented. what evidence to liberals provide for discrimination against females/minorities? the fact that they are underrepresented. So why is it suddenly okay or even desirable to have AA for conservatives, but for minorities or women?
The post clearly says: "However, whether or not the discrimination is the cause of the problem, affirmative action for conservative academics (or libertarian ones) is a poor solution."
Of course, being better educated is correlated with a higher income -- and people who make a lot of money tend to vote Republican, so...
But in regards to executives supporting Democrats, let's not forget that contributing to the guy in charge is a good way to get favors and keep him off your back.
You, however, mistake US officers for, say, Russian officers.
I assume you say this on the basis of my comment that (U.S.) military officers must remain obedient, even to the point of murder. You mistake this to mean something like shooting civilians unarmed in a cell, perhaps. I'm referring instead to unjust war in general, the killing of civilians b/c they *might* be terrorists or offering aid to enemy combatants, the killing of enemy combatants when the war at best rests on questionable justification (a la today's Iraq), etc.
Or are you really going to tell me that U.S. soldiers can question orders and the ethics or lack thereof underlying them?
Hence the phrase "many conservatives" at the beginning of my post. I had thought that made it clear that i was only talking about some but not all conservatives.
"mankiw rests his statement on the assumption that conservatives are principled. they are not. they are against forms of AA that don't help and/or hurt classes that they don't belong to, but are all for forms of AA that help out classes they do belong to."
So I am an Enemy of the People?
If you weren't so determinedly ignorant, you'd know the answer to the questions is yes, they not only may, but must. Doesn't mean they are right, of course.
And your view of a particular war as unjust is not necessarily right, either. In fact, if I were short of time to do my research, I'd take your view and do the opposite. I might not be correct all the time, but it would be the way to bet.
Political leanings are irrelevant. It's the subordination of teaching, research, and faculty hiring to political leanings that is destructive and abhorrent.
Dog--You left out "and routine."
Earlier, you claimed that the study of Burke has pretty much died down in the American academy? What department/field are you familiar with? In my experience Burke is alive and well, especially if one is studying empire/imperialism. Check out "Empire and Liberalism" by Mehta and "A Turn to Empire" by Pitts. Both have very favorable readings of Burke.
so let me get this straight...to cover up your misreading of my post, you accuse me of misreading ilya's post? and you call me lame?
No wonder there are so few liberals.
Standing on a chair, you couldn't spit as high as a basic trainee's boot sole. Enjoy your insignificance.
If you weren't so determinedly ignorant...
I would indeed imagine you aren't short of time to do research, as you suggest, except it seems the only defense you have mounted thus far against my observations are ad hominem attacks. It would be different if you could actually demonstrate my ignorance or insignificance with, I don't know, say, reasoned argument or evidence to contradict my claims?
But I forget myself--you can't be bothered with such "liberal-biased" notions.
As for your claim that officers can and must question/disobey orders they feel ethically objectionable, I don't know that merely saying it's so is sufficient. Professor Richard Swain of West Point, at least, acknowledges this reality: while he maintains that officers are not obligated to obey an illegal order (uh-huh... and I'm sure those get passed around the ranks all the time!) Swain also notes that:
http://starbulletin.com/2007/02/07/news/story02.html
So, yes, officers have the obligation perhaps to disobey illegal orders, likely as those are to come in to being, but not those they find morally objectionable or irrational. And they can expect to be "held accountable" for refusing to commit atrocities that are considered "legal" for purposes of military command. I don't need to remind you that my observation was entirely about the ethics (i.e., morality) and rationality of following orders blindly--not the legality thereof--and the expectation that even military officers are expected to follow even unethical &irrational orders or pay the penalty.
Are you now claiming that Somin is Mankiw, or is espouaing his words?
Really?
You think acting morally is always a free pass? What world do you live in?
Sometimes an individual's morality may be just screwed up. Not in accordance with the demands of the war, and not in accordance with the general view of morality.
Point is, as Robert Leckie said, in the dark accounts of war, all the entries are in red. You can reproach yourself decades later for not having been as active in training troops as you might have. Did it cost lives? There are always consequences, even for the least action or inaction.
Fighting Germany in 1936 to prevent remilitarization of the Rhineland would have been unjust as hell, given the mid-twentieth century view of the rights of sovereign nations. That may not have been why the French caved on the subject, but the result of avoiding an unjust war is clear.
You do the best you can with what you have, and, unfortunately, the better you do, the less likely is it to seem just. Since there is no way of knowing what was forestalled.