| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Fredric L. Rice" |
| Date: |
12 Dec 2004 12:32:38 PM |
| Object: |
IQ of non-Christians greater than Christians |
Why Academia Shuns Republicans
JONATHAN CHAIT
December 10, 2004
A few weeks ago, a pair of studies found that Democrats vastly outnumbered
Republicans among professors at leading universities. Conservatives
gleefully seized upon this to once again flagellate academia for its
liberal bias.
Am I the only person who fails to understand why conservatives see this
finding as vindication? After all, these studies show that some of the
best-educated, most-informed people in the country overwhelmingly reject
the GOP. Why is this seen as an indictment of academia, rather than as an
indictment of the Republican Party?
Conservatives have a ready answer. The only reason faculties lean so far to
the left is that deans, administrators and entire university cultures
systematically discriminate against conservatives.
They don't, however, have much evidence to back this up. Mostly, they
assume that the leftward tilt is prima facie evidence of anti-conservative
discrimination. (Yet, when liberals hold up minority underrepresentation at
some institutions as proof of discrimination, conservatives are justifiably
skeptical.)
Conservative pundit George Will recently tied the dearth of conservative
professors to the quasi-Marxist outlook in African American studies,
women's studies and cultural studies. And at many campuses, those
departments certainly don't amount to much more than left-wing propaganda
factories. It's also true that radical multiculturalist theory - which sees
white male oppression as the key to everything - has taken root in plenty
of more mainstream disciplines.
This no doubt makes things hard on prospective conservative academics, not
to mention mainstream liberal ones. A historian I know (a liberal) used to
complain that history departments showed little interest in the traditional
research he did, only caring about subjects like "buggery in the British
navy."
But the rise of fashionable left-wing scholarship can be blamed for only a
tiny part of the GOP's problem. The studies showing that academics prefer
Democrats to Republicans also show that this preference holds in hard
sciences as well as social sciences. Are we to believe that higher
education has fallen prey to trendy multiculturalist engineering, or that
physics departments everywhere suppress conservative quantum theorists?
The main causes of the partisan disparity on campus have little to do with
anything so nefarious as discrimination. First, Republicans don't
particularly want to be professors. To go into academia - a highly
competitive field that does not offer great riches - you have to believe
that living the life of the mind is more valuable than making a Wall Street
salary. On most issues that offer a choice between having more money in
your pocket and having something else - a cleaner environment, universal
health insurance, etc. - conservatives tend to prefer the money and
liberals tend to prefer the something else. It's not so surprising that the
same thinking would extend to career choices.
Second, professors don't particularly want to be Republicans. In recent
years, and especially under George W. Bush, Republicans have cultivated
anti-intellectualism. Remember how Bush in 2000 ridiculed Al Gore for using
all them big numbers?
That's not just a campaign ploy. It's how Republicans govern these days.
Last summer, my colleague Frank Foer wrote a cover story in the New
Republic detailing the way the Bush administration had disdained the advice
of experts. And not liberal experts, either. These were
Republican-appointed wonks whose know-how on topics such as global warming,
the national debt and occupying Iraq were systematically ignored. Bush
prefers to follow his gut.
In the world of academia, that's about the nastiest thing you can say about
somebody. Bush's supporters consider it a compliment. "Republicans, from
Reagan to Bush, admire leaders who are straight-talking men of faith. The
Republican leader doesn't have to be book smart," wrote conservative New
York Times columnist David Brooks a week before the election. "Democrats,
on the other hand, are more apt to emphasize - being knowledgeable and
thoughtful. They value leaders who see complexities, who possess the
virtues of the well-educated."
It so happens that, in other columns, Brooks has blamed the dearth of
conservative professors on ideological discrimination. In fact, the GOP is
just being rejected by those who not only prefer their leaders to think
complexly but are complex thinkers themselves. There's a problem with this
picture, all right, but it doesn't lie with academia.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-chait10dec10,1,5960569.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
---
Stop Elmer Fudd web site: http://www.ElmerFudd.US/
Covert text file server: http://www.notserver.com/
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: IQ of non-Christians greater than Christians |
12 Dec 2004 08:17:57 PM |
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Why does that not surprise me...and why did they waste money to study a
no-brainer like that
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| User: "Rune Børsjø" |
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| Title: Re: IQ of non-Christians greater than Christians |
16 Dec 2004 12:29:59 AM |
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On 12 Dec 2004 18:17:57 -0800, wrote:
Why does that not surprise me...and why did they waste money to study a
no-brainer like that
Any study that shows neocons what blithering idiots they are is well
worth the money.
--
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
-James Madison
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