Posted on 09/16/2002 2:34:21 AM PDT by kattracks
It's not news that college professors are lopsidedly drawn from the political left. But American Enterprise magazine offers some numbers on how heavy the tilt has become.In eight academic departments surveyed at Cornell University, 166 professors were registered in the Democratic Party or another party of the left, with just six registered with Republicans or another party of the right. Similar imbalance showed up in departments at the 19 other universities surveyed. At Williams College, a poll turned up only four registered Republicans among the more than 200 professors on campus.
Some professors say the imbalance is natural because progressives tend to gather in do-good professions while conservatives gravitate toward traditional careers in business and finance. Besides, they say, voting patterns of teachers are irrelevant if classes are taught fairly.
There's some truth in both arguments, but neither can account for what is happening on campus. In the 1950s and early 1960s, professors were routinely hired by department chairmen who opposed their principles - because the candidates were sound scholars and students needed divergent views. Now debate has virtually disappeared, and there isn't much diversity of opinion.
What can be done? More monitoring by outside groups would be a start.
The model is FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), which has been remarkably effective in rolling back constraints on free speech and other repressive measures on many campuses.
We also need a broader effort from the various organizations that evaluate and rank universities. These organizations have generally averted their gaze from the rising ideological storm.
It's easy to see why - ranking colleges by course content, academic freedom and diversity of faculty would be enormously costly and controversial. But the current system seems like a plan to rank used cars without looking under the hood.
Writing in American Enterprise, New York lawyer Kenneth Lee suggests civil rights litigation. The suits would argue that universities violate equal opportunity laws by engaging in employment discrimination against Republicans and Christian conservative professors.
Not a good idea. After arguing for years that colleges should not establish race and gender quotas, how can the right suddenly endorse court-imposed quotas for conservative academics? Besides, the goal is not a set number of teachers for each viewpoint, but a genuinely open policy of hiring by talent, not ideology.
Litigation is likely to play some role in reforming the campuses, but social pressure will be the main tool. Journalists should begin noticing the one-sided hiring policies. And politicians, civic leaders and alumni have to start browbeating universities into making faculties more open and diverse.
This won't be easy or quick, but it has to be done.
Not a good idea. After arguing for years that colleges should not establish race and gender quotas, how can the right suddenly endorse court-imposed quotas for conservative academics? Besides, the goal is not a set number of teachers for each viewpoint, but a genuinely open policy of hiring by talent, not ideology.
Litigation is likely to play some role in reforming the campuses, but social pressure will be the main tool. Journalists should begin noticing the one-sided hiring policies
. . . in journalism. Until which time, expecting them to notice it in academia is a little like waiting for pigs to fly.And politicians, civic leaders and alumni have to start browbeating universities into making faculties more open and diverse. This won't be easy or quick,
and it won't do any good.
I suggest we deem the present-day college campus a "reservation." Let these, an overwhelming majority of which are kept afloat from state treasuries, be maintained as safe havens for the Endangered Leftist, where he can be observed practicing his peculiar native culture and his quaint protest and activism rituals in their natural environment. The more sensitive creatures and areas would be kept behind velvet ropes or plexiglass, and visitors would be sternly instructed "do not feed or annoy."
Meanwhile, sensible people can build the educational systems of the future, using high-speed two-way communications, programmed learning, online libraries, and extremely fine targeting of material to interested classes. I havea little bet with myself that these ultra-modern systems would cause a rebirth of classical education, as most of the reason modern youth take no interest in the intellectual riches of the past is that they don't know they're there.
I could be wrong, of course.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
Bwahaha
Taught fairly - BWAHAHAHAHA! I mean, pretty near any Sociology department has a class that examines whether the U.S. is intolerably evil because of innate class stuggle, or, on the other hand, whether it's intolerably evil because of the fascist nature of its leaders. See? Diversity of opinion...or, as NPR would put it "all things considered..."
Heinz' wife is dying of cancer and the only drug that might save her is too expensive because the druggist is charging 10 times what it cost him to manufacture. Should Heinz steal the medicine?
Note the appeal to emotion, note the information that the druggist is a greedy capitalist entrepreneur... if the children decide that Heinz is right to steal the medicine, they are more highly developed. Teaching socialism as higher development, see. And there's more. Oh, so much more....
Homeschool, people. Homeschool. Throw away the TV, shun Hollywood, avoid popular culture and whatever you do, do not send your children to public schools and universities or you'll see them transformed into little James Taggarts before your very eyes.
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