Redstate

As I am in the process of applying for PhD programs right now, I have been uniformly discouraged from mentioning my time as a Research Assistant at the Heritage Foundation.  The implicit assumption is that the experience I gained may be helpful but the signal of my political views would be so bad for my application that it is not worth taking the risk.  If schools cared about ideological diversity as much as racial diversity, my time at Heritage would be a highly sought after commodity as a rather unique qualification.

But the liberal academics prefer the echo-chamber to the debate room.  Their loss, and in some ways our loss as well.

In response to your statement - "Now that bloggers are reporting news and fact-checking the biased media, liberals in newsrooms no longer control the flow of information or how it's reported. I predict a similar change will occur in leftist academia." - Don't hold your breath while waiting for this to occur, because the battle for intellectual diversity has just begun.

Liberalism, or more correctly defined in this context as anti-Americanism and a socialist world-view, is thoroughly entrenched in the halls of academia.  Multiculturalism, tolerance (Christians excepted) and diversity (conservative thought excepted) are the mantra of liberal academia.   Freedom and liberty, as espoused in the constitution, do not exist in this closed environment.  This is especially true regarding the First Amendment right of free speech.

Free speech, as defined in the constitution, continues to support the blogosphere and the 'new' media in their quest to combat liberal media bias.  On campus, free speech is censored by liberal academic elites who seek to stifle intellectual diveristy and promote their socialist world-view.

David Horowitz and Students for Academic Freedom are on the front line in this battle and some progress has been made.  SAF Chapters are forming on campuses everywhere.  I'm sure the blogosphere will do all it can to aid in this worthy cause.  The fact remains, academia is a closed environment and the war for the right of intellectual diversity on campus will be a 'long hard slog.'

The problem with saying that the vast majority of academics are Democrats is that it rather ignores that "Democrat" covers a fairly broad range of beliefs.  I suspect, for example, that most Democrats in Economics departments are centrists of the DLC stripe, while most Democrats in Latin American Studies departments are leftist Aztlan secessionists.

I'm also usually a bit disturbed by conservative slagging on academia for the reason that the "solution" offered is usually something like "we should abolish tenure," "we should cut the funding off of state universities" or other such ideas that are akin to amputating the foot to treat a blister on the heel.

The concept of tenure is at least antiquated and does nothing for the institution. What is so bizarre, is that there are public school disticts that recognize the idea of tenure.

Abolishing it would have no effect on the quality of education students receive.

That the concept really needs a searching look and a major shake-up.  Tenure is the Brass Ring, sometimes pursued to the exclusion of everything else.  And it especially deserves the scrutiny because many are trying to expand the scope of tenure to include, for example, legal writing instructors in law schools.  I watched the fur fly on one of those battles, and it wasn't pretty.  Talk about a civil war inside an academic institution...between the professors and the instructors.

Operationally, this could happen through a few different pathways:

1. An elite institution could, under pressure from the board of trustees and its alumni, initiate a change in its tenure policy.  Where Harvard goes, for example, so will many other institutions.
   
2. Emerging institutions could put pressure on the entrenched university establishment by hiring away their faculty members, but with either a revised definition of tenure or none at all.
   
3. A public discussion in the media and also articles published pro/con by academics in journals like The Chronicle would need to continue in order to keep the focus on the reform process.
   
4. State legislatures could act to exert pressure on government-funded institutions to review their tenure policies.

These are just some musings, but they're a few of my ideas about how the process would begin.

You do realize, don't you, that in most universities throughout North America, when a tenured academic retires, the position is usually eliminated and the university hires an adjunct.  Maybe law school is different, but in most of the humanities, tenured positions are already vanishing.

If leftists have such a dominance over academia that none dare speak out against the established orthodoxy, why on Earth would you want to do away with one of the only protections that allows an academic to speak his mind without fear of getting fired?  If you did away with tenure, a conservative academic would have no job security.

Post on this subject, here, I mirrored an article which explains some of the obstacles conservatives face in the recruitment, promotion and tenure process as it currently exists.  The grim fact is that academia is hostile to conservative scholars with the promotion and tenure system as it exists - it's not doing them any favors at this point.

Why would I want to give anybody the right to shoot their mouth off without regards to consequences?

A wrong system that right now is owned by liberals would be no less wrong if owned by conservatives.

Besides, what did an "academic" do to deserve job security that is so much more noble than the guy on a Chrysler assembly line? At least the guy on the assembly line is doing something of value.

The idea that academia is "liberal owned" is completely absurd.   What makes you, the conservative, so diferrent from these leftists that you speak of?  This imaginary division is detrimental to the ideals that we would all agree on.  To define institutions immediately as "conservative" (good), and "liberal" (bad), is just assigning superficial values to deeper meanings.  Academia is an institution based upon people seeking to logically interpret the world.  It is not an institution based in superficial political leanings based on talking points.  To view this institution as "liberal," is to automatically delude yourself of it's value.  But, I guess that's what this website is all about.

You have absolutely no idea of how academia really works today.  It's not a crime - most people who go to college don't know how academia actually functions, either.  They see it, quite correctly from their point of view, as the ticket to a good job and the middle class.  But it is the content and mission of the institution itself, and the lack of real debate and opposing interpretations, that is the issue here.  

The fact is that academia in the United States is increasingly devoted to activism for liberal and progressive causes and worldviews.  The professors in disciplines ranging from history to sociology to law have an almost complete monopoly on the causes that will be investigated, taught, and promulgated in their communities, and conservative thought is excluded through self-selection.  

I've worked at the highest administrative levels of a (very) large University, and I've been privy to the internal workings of the faculty recruitment, promotion and tenure process, program review, administrative staff meetings, alumni relations, accreditation processes, research assistant funding, dean search committees, the establishment and funding of centers and institutes, salary and compensation, etc., as well as more mundane things such as creating the advertising distributed to prospective students to "pitch" the school.   And I can state categorically that conservatives are an endangered species who are discouraged in a variety of ways.

   quite serious?  Sure, schools of engineering and other technical disciplines are usually interested in "logically interpreting the world".   But "superficial political leanings based on talking points" is a perfect description of the rest of academia, especially schools of journalism, humanities, law, and even medicine.  The victim mentality guides most of their pedagogy, as does anti-American agitation and politically correct worldviews.  

  Of course, some pure subject matter must be covered, but always with the even-handedness of a DNC pep rally.  Even such frauds as Rigoberta Menchu are taught as gospel in English departments.  Law schools are rife with victimology.  Who is not a potential litigant?  Everyone, of course, and all viewed with an eye toward big cash settlements.  Even medical school graduates show up at hospitals wearing Mickey Mouse dolls on their coat jackets to show "support" for DisneyWorld's "Gay Day".

  And schools of social work or psychology - fuggitaboutit!  I once spent an entire semester of Advanced Social Psychology listening to one DNC talikng point after another...eyewitnesses are no good, so the death penalty should be eliminated; white people are raised to feel superior to all other races, ipso facto -"institutional racism"; there are no serious consequences for women who've had abortions...and on and on - all backed up by SCIENCE.  (Funny, I would look in vain for the  referenced material used to support some of these outrageous claims.  In many cases, there wouldn't even be a corresponding refernce at the back of the book!  It just disappeared!  Kind of like Hillary's billing records!)  And, of course, Bush (or Reagan) is always portrayed as a demon and students are subtly or blatantly encouraged to Blame America First.

   No my friend, I don't know where you've been living, but down here on earth, academia is rife with aging flower children spouting warmed over socialist nonesense and daring any student with a contrary opinion to speak up.  Don't like Redstate?  Go to FrontPageMagazine.com for a detailed anthology of liberal abuses in grad schools, college, high schools, middle schools, even grade schools for crying out loud.  I remember a recent instance in which some poor kindergardener was scolded by her uberPC "teacher" for daring to thank God for her milk and cookies.

  Write us a note if you ever find your way back to middle earth.  Hint: smokin' that dope won't help you at all...

The worry is that schools have faculties that are 85-95% liberal when the country is 20% liberal.  0-5% of the faculties are conservative when the country is closer to 35% conservative.  More important than reflecting reality is that they block out views they don't agree with through the hiring and promotion policies.

I once heard a joke that went something like this:

University official: We're quite diverse, we have black Marxists, female Marxists, foreign Marxists, old Marxists, and Chinese Marxists.  It's so great to have a diverse campus.

Obviously, you have more experience and education in the world than I do (that does not make my perspective inferior).  What you say about academia with regards to liberal proffesors recanting their liberal points of view may be correct.  However, to deny the value of institutional analysis and a skeptical perspective the powers-that-be is a grave mistake.  To generalize all liberal proffesors into one category (as enemies, I suppose), is folly.  The battle between "conservatives" and "liberals" seems to not take in any real issues, but instead, talking points.  In order to accurately approach historical analysis of our world, dissolution of any kind of superficial political leaning is in order.  In academia, this should be possible.  I guess I'm idealistic and naive, but if anyone should be able to not let a political agenda get in their way, it seems it would be the most educated.  Maybe some don't believe this, but I believe that accuracy and logic is more valuable any agenda, and is within any observers grasp.

The article's proposal that academia is somehow intrinsically bias towards conservative applicants seems baseless to me.  I seriously doubt that a phd applicant would be rejected based on political leaning.  The only facts that the article presents are that there are more liberal academics than conservative ones.  I could offer an explanation, but a more accurate explanation would probably come from the proffessors themselves.  I don't think that anyone capable and willing would be rejected on the basis of a conservative background, and to believe so seems to be paranoia.

Many academics are worse than liberals - they are unabashed leftists.  This actually gives the Democrats more headaches than you think, because it produces young people who either (1) buy the Nader perspective, where if you look at the two parties from far enough to the Left you can no longer see the distance between them or (2) enter partisan politics with such a toxic mix of boiling rage, academic/PoMo/crypto-Marxist jargon and pie-in-the-sky idealism that they wind up being completely useless to any campaign they try to associate with.

Now you all are missing a pretty big point here.  Ajoseph thinks he knows something about colleges, but who cares?  Yes, institutions of academia currenltly are definied as highly liberal.  Yes, such institutions are always the progressive ones.  Yes, being "liberal" usual comes with higher education and a better understanding of the political spectrum.  But I agree with all of these other people who like to post their opinions on message boards.  That is wrong.  If Jesus were here, he would have voted for Bush because he was a man of peace and fairness.  He would have killed those Iraqis, too, because they attacked us on 9/11 with weapons of mass destruction.  I'm your average conservative American and I say that's what counts.