I agree higher education has more than a perception problem. What I find endlessly frustrating about these discussions is they tend to be framed as a left versus right issue instead of an authoritarian versus libertarian issue. I'm far less concerned about whether a faculty member leans to the left or the right than I am about whether that faculty member supports intellectual freedom and freedom of speech in practice. Emphasis on in practice.
While I would agree that higher education has more than a perception problem, I don't think that simply looking at the percentages of who is more "liberal" or "conservative" is a good metric for that. It doesn't help that "liberal" has an ambiguous meaning, sometimes being a synonym for "left-leaning" and other times being used for those who favor robust civil liberties. A lot of critiques of higher education come from those who see many faculty as being illiberal even though those faculty are far from conservative.
The so-called "crank realignment" (https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-crank-realignment-is-bad-for) doesn't help either, since it makes it easier for one to argue that universities are less conservative because they are less friendly to cranks -- even if the real situation is way more complicated than that.
"Liberal faculty" severely misrepresents the problem.
"Faculty who viscerally hate the very concept of integrity" is closer to being an accurate capture of why people who notice have plummeting regard for the academy. The very mechanism of truth-seeking is gone.
The first step for universities would be to eliminate the "woke 1" style DEI statements from job applications and academic fellowships specifically tailored for DEI (I ran into one of these personally while trying to apply for a position at the University of California). These required DEI statements weed out not only conservatives and moderates but also leftists who hold older socialist or social democratic ideologies instead of idenitarian woke ideology.
One ought to wonder to what extent there is preference falsification. Admitting to having 'conservative' leanings is an invitation to social death -- and that started long before the last decade.
EXCERPT | Richard Pipes, Ph.D. '50, Baird research professor of history, a registered Democrat, remembers in 1972 the Crimson calling him incredulously to ask him if it was true he planned to vote for Nixon. "When I said yes, they asked if I knew any other professor who might also be doing that. I mentioned two or three others who had told me so. But when the Crimson called them, they wouldn't talk. So the Crimson wrote that Professor Pipes was the only one at Harvard voting for Nixon. My wife was told by her ladies' tennis group that they came very close to dropping her from the group."
You have to assume that the lack of faculty diversity contributes to an increasing lack of diversity both among faculty and students. If you’re conservative or moderate surrounded by liberals — particularly if their ideology leads to unfairness and a stifling of views they disagree with, which often leads to self-censorship — then why would anyone who isn’t left-leaning attend these institutions? Especially when they cost a fortune and all they produce is more left-leaning individuals who lack the ability to think critically and engage with people they disagree with. All around, it’s a lose-lose.
Higher ed, I believe, is too far gone ... unless, of course, it actually commits to teaching the very skills that enable people with a range of perspectives to be among each other — to engage with and debate each other and amicably work together.
I suspect the problem is worse when respondents are alums of elite colleges. Not only are many of those grads remembering the long-gone long ago of the Reagan and Bush years but my experience is that they fundamentally misunderstand how much campuses have declined in the interim. Reunions certainly don’t emphasize it—they play on the sentimentality of our friendships and experiences there and the rah-rah loyalty we owe our alma maters in return. Alumni publications, for those who read them closely, often soft-sell the radicalism and downplay the impact of administrative policies. It is a pyramid scheme of sorts—a lifetime guarantee of membership and influence if we follow along and keep the checks flowing. I recently had the experience of observing an entire reunion class (a few conservatives among them) and college honor a man who is clearly, blatantly, and proudly not who he presents himself as—and not a peep from inside the gates. Mind-boggling capture and obedience. The notion that our academic institutions are massive investment funds with small educational fronts attached is not far wrong.
Great blog. The graphs could be improved, though. It took me a while to realize what they showed. In most cases, just more accurate labelling would have helped. Instead of merely using the word "confidence," which also has statistical meaning, I'd use "confidence in universities" or "confidence in higher education."
Also: did HERI delve at all into what components comprise "confidence" in higher ed? That's important as well since it defines what individuals actually meant when they answered the questions. For example, did it include only preparation for the workforce, or did it also include things like knowing how the country and its government are constructed and how those actually work under load?
While you don't need to know the latter to be able to work (more or less effectively), you do need that information to be informed as a voter. That seems to me to be an important thing. Looking at voting trends over the past several decades, it's pretty obvious that most people are entirely clueless about these issues--university graduates not only included, but especially that group. They seem to believe that merely wanting something makes it virtuous. They want everyone to have everything, and any inequality is evidence of evil. That's about as wildly unrealistic as things get, but entire bureaucracies--and ~expensive~ bureaucracies--have been built on exactly that foundation.
Resources are scarce, and have gotten scarcer, so they're zero-sum. What gets wasted on BS doesn't get used on actual education. Which is why Trump's flat 15% "indirect costs" cap has been a game changer. For the better.
A big problem is that the reality is a large portion of the Republican Party is made up of religious fundamentalists and general anti-intellectual nutcases. I KNOW, that's impolitic to say. But, given that the _Secretary of Health_ is an anti-vaccine lunatic, it's just true. I simply will not accept finger-wagging at liberals from any conservative who tolerates this shameful campaign against public health.
One implication here, is I see no empirical evidence that liberals being nicer to pseudo-scientific racists, supporters of colonialism, etc - which is what's generally meant by the special-pleading of "diversity of thought" - is going to make a difference when the terms of debate are driven by relentless right-wing lying of an extent which one result is to Make Measles Great Again.
Now, I'm aware I'm being harsh here. But I'm challenging academic-bashers to argue beyond bashing academics. Here is the basic argument:
There is an absolute flood of a right-wing lie-machine. This is simply a fact, per anti-vaccine lunacy.
This lie-machine cannot be countered by trying to be so perfect that the right-wing lie-machine is somehow stymied. They're professional liars. That's what they do.
The result is then a kind of blaming-the-victim, via discounting the effects of the lie-machine, and endlessly attacking its targets for their supposed failings.
Unless we start appointing "Professors of Biblical Biology" and "Fellowship Of Vaccination Dangers", the beatings are going to continue until university MAGAism improves.
I agree higher education has more than a perception problem. What I find endlessly frustrating about these discussions is they tend to be framed as a left versus right issue instead of an authoritarian versus libertarian issue. I'm far less concerned about whether a faculty member leans to the left or the right than I am about whether that faculty member supports intellectual freedom and freedom of speech in practice. Emphasis on in practice.
While I would agree that higher education has more than a perception problem, I don't think that simply looking at the percentages of who is more "liberal" or "conservative" is a good metric for that. It doesn't help that "liberal" has an ambiguous meaning, sometimes being a synonym for "left-leaning" and other times being used for those who favor robust civil liberties. A lot of critiques of higher education come from those who see many faculty as being illiberal even though those faculty are far from conservative.
The so-called "crank realignment" (https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-crank-realignment-is-bad-for) doesn't help either, since it makes it easier for one to argue that universities are less conservative because they are less friendly to cranks -- even if the real situation is way more complicated than that.
"Liberal faculty" severely misrepresents the problem.
"Faculty who viscerally hate the very concept of integrity" is closer to being an accurate capture of why people who notice have plummeting regard for the academy. The very mechanism of truth-seeking is gone.
The first step for universities would be to eliminate the "woke 1" style DEI statements from job applications and academic fellowships specifically tailored for DEI (I ran into one of these personally while trying to apply for a position at the University of California). These required DEI statements weed out not only conservatives and moderates but also leftists who hold older socialist or social democratic ideologies instead of idenitarian woke ideology.
DEI is racism in sheep's' clothing.
One ought to wonder to what extent there is preference falsification. Admitting to having 'conservative' leanings is an invitation to social death -- and that started long before the last decade.
EXCERPT | Richard Pipes, Ph.D. '50, Baird research professor of history, a registered Democrat, remembers in 1972 the Crimson calling him incredulously to ask him if it was true he planned to vote for Nixon. "When I said yes, they asked if I knew any other professor who might also be doing that. I mentioned two or three others who had told me so. But when the Crimson called them, they wouldn't talk. So the Crimson wrote that Professor Pipes was the only one at Harvard voting for Nixon. My wife was told by her ladies' tennis group that they came very close to dropping her from the group."
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/sites/default/files/html/1999/09/conserv.html
You have to assume that the lack of faculty diversity contributes to an increasing lack of diversity both among faculty and students. If you’re conservative or moderate surrounded by liberals — particularly if their ideology leads to unfairness and a stifling of views they disagree with, which often leads to self-censorship — then why would anyone who isn’t left-leaning attend these institutions? Especially when they cost a fortune and all they produce is more left-leaning individuals who lack the ability to think critically and engage with people they disagree with. All around, it’s a lose-lose.
Higher ed, I believe, is too far gone ... unless, of course, it actually commits to teaching the very skills that enable people with a range of perspectives to be among each other — to engage with and debate each other and amicably work together.
I suspect the problem is worse when respondents are alums of elite colleges. Not only are many of those grads remembering the long-gone long ago of the Reagan and Bush years but my experience is that they fundamentally misunderstand how much campuses have declined in the interim. Reunions certainly don’t emphasize it—they play on the sentimentality of our friendships and experiences there and the rah-rah loyalty we owe our alma maters in return. Alumni publications, for those who read them closely, often soft-sell the radicalism and downplay the impact of administrative policies. It is a pyramid scheme of sorts—a lifetime guarantee of membership and influence if we follow along and keep the checks flowing. I recently had the experience of observing an entire reunion class (a few conservatives among them) and college honor a man who is clearly, blatantly, and proudly not who he presents himself as—and not a peep from inside the gates. Mind-boggling capture and obedience. The notion that our academic institutions are massive investment funds with small educational fronts attached is not far wrong.
good piece, not a good title
Great blog. The graphs could be improved, though. It took me a while to realize what they showed. In most cases, just more accurate labelling would have helped. Instead of merely using the word "confidence," which also has statistical meaning, I'd use "confidence in universities" or "confidence in higher education."
Also: did HERI delve at all into what components comprise "confidence" in higher ed? That's important as well since it defines what individuals actually meant when they answered the questions. For example, did it include only preparation for the workforce, or did it also include things like knowing how the country and its government are constructed and how those actually work under load?
While you don't need to know the latter to be able to work (more or less effectively), you do need that information to be informed as a voter. That seems to me to be an important thing. Looking at voting trends over the past several decades, it's pretty obvious that most people are entirely clueless about these issues--university graduates not only included, but especially that group. They seem to believe that merely wanting something makes it virtuous. They want everyone to have everything, and any inequality is evidence of evil. That's about as wildly unrealistic as things get, but entire bureaucracies--and ~expensive~ bureaucracies--have been built on exactly that foundation.
Resources are scarce, and have gotten scarcer, so they're zero-sum. What gets wasted on BS doesn't get used on actual education. Which is why Trump's flat 15% "indirect costs" cap has been a game changer. For the better.
A big problem is that the reality is a large portion of the Republican Party is made up of religious fundamentalists and general anti-intellectual nutcases. I KNOW, that's impolitic to say. But, given that the _Secretary of Health_ is an anti-vaccine lunatic, it's just true. I simply will not accept finger-wagging at liberals from any conservative who tolerates this shameful campaign against public health.
One implication here, is I see no empirical evidence that liberals being nicer to pseudo-scientific racists, supporters of colonialism, etc - which is what's generally meant by the special-pleading of "diversity of thought" - is going to make a difference when the terms of debate are driven by relentless right-wing lying of an extent which one result is to Make Measles Great Again.
Now, I'm aware I'm being harsh here. But I'm challenging academic-bashers to argue beyond bashing academics. Here is the basic argument:
There is an absolute flood of a right-wing lie-machine. This is simply a fact, per anti-vaccine lunacy.
This lie-machine cannot be countered by trying to be so perfect that the right-wing lie-machine is somehow stymied. They're professional liars. That's what they do.
The result is then a kind of blaming-the-victim, via discounting the effects of the lie-machine, and endlessly attacking its targets for their supposed failings.
Unless we start appointing "Professors of Biblical Biology" and "Fellowship Of Vaccination Dangers", the beatings are going to continue until university MAGAism improves.