Conservatives need not apply? < "stupid people are generally conservative ">

I think it would be interesting to compare Conservatives' average SAT scores against Liberals' average SAT scores.

You are exactly right here. In fact when Hayek wrote revisions of his famous work "The Road to Serfdom", he took considerable time and space in his forward to explain the word liberal as it was defined in that time; which was completely different than the definition of the word in our times. Either this professor is being deliberately missleading here, or he actually doesn't know the difference in the two meanings of the word liberal. Which wouldn't reflect very well on his intelligence!

The key word is AVAILABLE. They hire the "best, smartest people available." Could be that the best and smartest do not wish to work in academia. The best, smartest professor I had in college is conservative. He is brilliant.

P.S. It seem this a$$ operates on the premise that people are intelligent because they are Liberal. I operate on the premise that we are Conservative because we are intelligent.

I never considered an academic career IN PART because the Universities are nests of liberal PC nonsense and my "karma" couldnt tolerate being in such a depressing environment and seeing such cr*p all the time. Moreover, I've seen enough bias in academia to know that white male conservatives would not be treated as well as others. For example, if I was wearing a dress instead of a suit, a PhD in my area would be enough to get a much more prestigious position ("affirmative action" and "diversity"ya know). The odds are stacked against the white male conservatives and i'd rather not play that game.

Hard to argue against much of this, but let me qualify it a bit.

In general, the PC-ness varies across campus. There are departments where it is impossible or even contradictory to be a conservative (Women's, Ethnic Studies). There are departments where, on any but a few campuses, the conservative would not be hired, or if he/she snuck through, would be run out on a rail (most of the Humanities, some of the social sciences). And then there are fields that are apolitical or even conservative-leaning (the sciences, much of business, engineering).There's an 'Atlas Shrugged' element to this. The sciences, engineering and business bring in most of the funding and a lot of the prestige, but we typically have little influence, in part because few of us have the time to get involved in the incredible pettiness of campus politics.

Affirmative action and worse - outright unconcealed discrimination - are rampant, of course.

In fact, white males are largely shunning academia. I sat on a search committee meeting yesterday where of the eight top candidates, 6 were Chinese or Indians, one was an American female, and one was an American male. This is a hot area of science. I asked why, and the consensus opinion is that white American applicants can get a better salary with less stress working in private industry; few want to bother with academia any more. The problem is, as we replace the science and engineering faculty with non-native speakers with little knowledge or experience with American traditions, American science students will become even more alienated than they already are.

I salute the conservatives who ARE on campus, on the front lines of the cultural and political battles. My hat's off to you!

Thanks, but I do it mostly because I enjoy it. Without 100:1 odds against, the fight would be too easy!

In many cases, those who can't DO, teach others how it
OUGHT to be done. I said in many cases, so don't flame me.

Well, smugness is a characteristic of this particular demographic, and this guy has it in spades.

What he's suggesting is that the intelligence gradient acts as the principal selection pressure in determining group membership. It does not. This particular group is self-selecting, and selection pressures come from deliberate volitional acts by its members, not from any "tendency" toward intelligence. In short, they're liberal because that's who liberals hire.

I always admired another Scotsman, Adam Smith, for his spot on description of the average university as a "sanctuary in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices find shelter and protection, after they have been hunted out of every other corner of the world."

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Madeleine Albright to Deliver Duke Commencement Address
First female U.S. secretary of state broke new ground on the world stage

Thursday, February 5, 2004 | DURHAM, N.C. -- Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will deliver Duke University's 2004 commencement address Sunday, May 9, Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane announced Thursday.

When sworn in on Jan. 23, 1997, Albright became the nation's first female secretary of state. She currently is a principal in The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm that she founded in Washington, D.C.

Madeleine Albright has been a tireless champion of the Middle East peace process and international cooperation," Keohane said. "She has broken new ground as a respected woman leader on the world stage. We are honored to have such a distinguished leader speak to our graduates and their families."

Gloria Borges, the president of Duke's senior class, said she was "delighted" to hear that Albright would be speaking at commencement. "She is a great representative for women in politics and leadership," Borges said. "During a time when foreign policy is so necessary to facilitate world peace, we're very interested to hear what she has to say."

During Albright's tenure as secretary of state, NATO intervened to halt ethnic cleansing in Kosovo; a stable peace was reached in the Balkans; the number of democratic nations grew in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America; U.S.-China relations improved; and the U.S. experienced a growth in trade in the Americas, in Africa through the African Growth Opportunity Act, and through the conclusion of numerous other agreements that facilitated American business overseas.

In addition to her work today with The Albright Group, Albright is also the first Michael and Virginia Mortara Endowed Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service; the first Distinguished Scholar of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan Business School; chairman of The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; chair of The PEW Global Attitudes Project and president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation. Albright also serves on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange.

Prior to her appointment as secretary of state, Albright served from 1993-97 as the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations and as a member of the National Security Council. In 1995, she led the U.S. delegation to the UN's Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing, China. She also has served as president of the Center for National Policy, a non-profit research organization formed in 1981 by representatives from government, industry, labor and education to promote discussion of domestic and international issues.

She has been a research professor of International Affairs and director of the Women in Foreign Service Programs at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in international affairs, U.S. foreign policy, Russian foreign policy and Central and Eastern European politics. While there, she was responsible for developing and implementing programs to enhance women's professional opportunities in international affairs. Albright also has served as a senior fellow in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, conducting research in developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution.

From 1978-1981, she was a staff member on the National Security Council, as well as a White House staff member, where she was responsible for foreign policy legislation. From 1976-1978, she served as chief legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Edmund S. Muskie.

Albright was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1937. Two years later, her family fled to England to escape Hitler's rise to power. Her family eventually made its way to the U.S. in 1950, and Albright became a U.S. citizen in 1957.

Awarded a B.A. from Wellesley College with honors in political science, she studied at the School of Advanced International Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, received a certificate from the Russian Institute at Columbia University, and earned her master's and doctorate from Columbia's Department of Public Law and Government.

In her autobiography "Madam Secretary: A Memoir" (Miramax), released last September, Albright provides an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the Clinton administration and its international efforts. The book also contains personal anecdotes about many of the world's leaders.

Albright has three daughters and six grandchildren.

For more information, contact Keith Lawrence | phone: (919) 681-8059 | email: keith.lawrence@duke.edu.


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Since Bush's tax cuts were all for the wealthy, which all vote Republican, we must all be rich and stupid. How did all us idjuts get to be so gawldang rich?

ANOTHER you-know-who ping! Take a look at post #109. Dear Lord, she'll probably come to dinner you-know-where!

Bump for tonight. This "stupid conservative" is buried in a rather complicated 3D model at the moment.

Well, thanks to my free and anonymous mail account at Yahoo!, I have sent off my reply to Brandon:

Because you have deliberately misrepresented what John Stuart Mill stated in the 19-Century, or are ignorant of the political facts regarding the statement you quoted recently while claiming that "liberals" are smarter than "conservatives" and the American public in general, I have decided to inform you so that you may offer a public admission and apology.
First you state "We try to hire the best, smartest people available. If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire." You are obviously unaware (unless you are deliberately lying to those whom you feel are your inferiors) that Mill deeply distrusted the idea of inherited status, such as the British aristocracy possessed, and was instead much more free-market oriented. He also would have been appalled at the fascistic speech codes left-wingers have applied to the nation's campuses. He would have been much more in favor of the views of Ronald Reagan and William Rehnquist than you or any other left-winger, as the ideas behind the labels "liberal" and "conservative" have undergone a nearly-complete reversal from the 19th- to the 20th-/21st-Centuries.
Then you stated "Mill's analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican party in our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia." This is your elitist way of saying that Republicans are too dumb to work in academia, and also that the public is even more dumb than the Republicans because they vote for them. And then you people have the unmitigated gall to attack others as being elitists!
I work in the academic field. In fact, I help raise money to pay for the programs, scholarships, and professorships at one of the nation's leading universities. I know from experience that the alumni who create businesses or otherwise succeed in the real world, and in turn make the gifts that pay your salary, are for the most part free-marketers who are much more likely to vote Republican than Democrat (and that is based on the political contributions listed on various proprietary databases that I use in my job).
You are a perfect example of the arrogant, elitist, left-wingers that cannot understand the hypocrisy of championing admissions and scholarship preferences based solely on skin color and not the content of the applicant's character, and then turn around and howl over the satirical yet informative affirmative action bake sales that have become a favorite form of street theater among American students.
You are a perfect example of someone who cannot succeed in the real world while you sit comfortably in your tenured little fascist kingdom and pontificate on subjects of which you have no knowledge.
You are a perfect example of why Americans no longer respect or trust academics as we once did.
I look forward to reading of you admission of ignorance regarding John Stuart Mill or your deliberate misrepresentation, and your apology to Americans everywhere for your ignorant, elitist, and incorrect statement.

Members of academia tend to be a bit smarter than average.

Not in my experience.

Academics are undoubtedly smarter than average when compared to the overall population. When compared to other successful individuals the difference declines substantially or disappears. There's no shortage of idiots walking around with PhDs these days.

In my parents' generation, I think a college education generally meant something. Today, so many people are getting degrees--often times encouraged and abetted by government-sponsored discrimination programs--that a college degree, even a PhD, has much less meaning than it used to have.

I have the theory that people with an IQ over, say, 135 tend to be liberals. Thats pretty far up the bell curve however. On the other hand, people with IQ's of 90 or less tend to be (vote) liberal.

I have thought the same thing. My reasoning is simple. Those with low IQs believe they need to be taken care of. Those with higher IQs believe only they are qualified to do it.

Although I love to teach, I couldn't stomach the paycut. I'll stick to teaching a night course at the local UC or Cal State.

That's a funny article. An entire philosophical tratise based on the songs of Madonna.

"I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it."

Mr Mill has obviously never read Democratic Underground.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html

"Those who can do! Those who cannot teach!"

Although I do have quite a few conservative friends who are middle and high school teachers, that statement most definitely applies to academia.

I can thank my first poli sci professor, who was running on a quasi-socalist platform against the incumbent GOP congressman for pushing me into politics. When he got trounced, the reaction around campus was just outright shock. My first and by far most enteratining campaign.