Exaggeration nation: Tenured radicals
Here’s Slate‘s review of Louis Menand’s new book about higher learning, which concludes with a note on the vaunted lefty politics of American academics:
In the 2004 election, he notes, 95 percent of humanities and social-science professors voted for Kerry; zero percent voted for Bush.
Oh, goody. It’s the old chestnut about the political uniformity of the academy.
This skirmish always leads to the idea that we ought to have a few more conservative professors to even things out. But why stop there? Let’s apply the same standard to the overwhelmingly conservative leadership of Fortune 500 companies. If diversity among the professorship would produce better ideas, then it stands to reason that diversity among the captains of industry would produce a more vibrant economy.
While we’re at it, maybe we could use some more partisan balance among evangelical preachers, senior citizens and gun-owners.
I propose a trade. Let’s randomly select half of the CEO’s from the most powerful corporations in the country, and they can trade jobs with half of the Ivory Tower folks in the best English departments. Of course, the two groups would also trade their income, opportunities for advancement, control over their lives, employment prospects, access to private jets, expenses-paid vacations, and ability to influence decision-making.
How about it, Wall Street: any takers?
Thought not.
Look, if you’re worried about your kids going off to college to get indoctrinated by anarcho-syndicalists, relax. They’re more likely to get indoctrinated by Jose Cuervo. Professors can barely talk them into moderately crisp syntax.
And the trouble with this argument has always been that it rests on the ludicrous fiction that professors have great power over anybody besides each other. Actually, according to the review, that’s Menand’s real subject matter in the book:
The fault is not with the politics themselves; academics are usually careful to keep policy out of the classroom. It is with the homogeneity. The system is simply replicating itself too smoothly.
It’s not that higher learning fails to mirror the electorate scrupulously, but that there isn’t enough upheaval within. The profession is too professionalized. Intellectual life is too sedentary, too sure of itself, too sparing in its aims and engrossed in its own self-perpetuation.
In other words, the profession is getting too damn conservative. Maybe we could use a revolutionary or two around here.
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You will find that political donations from the infamous Fortune 500 consistently skews to the Democrats. I’m not sure what other objective criteria there is. As far as evangelicals, there is a serious Religious Left unless you define that on strictly the abortion issue. As for gun owners I would hope that liberals and other Lefties will avail themselves of their 2nd Amm rights if they feel so inclined and as for seniors, well, yes, the polls will tell you that conventionally Right leaning voting and opinions will predominate but maybe libs just need to take better care of themselves. But trafficking in stereotypes is pretty easy and not too revealing. The acadamy skews even to the Left of the Democrats (excepting Obama) and that is as hard a fact as sociology can deliver. Now, if Harvard wants to have 80% marxists in all disciplines, they are free to do that but much of the university scene in this country is publicly funded from taxes. I would prefer much less of that done but if it is to be done, yes I seriously object that mockery and dismissal is the attitude of these public employees to any notion to the Right of the Mondale Platform, especially if it is enforced through the exclusionary tenure process. Add to that the ostentatious declarations of these pampered aesthetes that their chief occupation is a search for socratic truths… well, I would prefer not to subsidize that so much.
You’re right: objective criteria are indeed difficult. However, since Menand’s research cites 2004 election statistics rather than contemporary monetary donations, I looked up voting by income in the Bush v. Kerry contest to make a closer contrast to the figures cited.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html
It turns out that voters earning $200,000 or more went for Bush 63%. My assumption is that Fortune 500 executives belong to this bracket (top 3% of earners), although I would indeed be interested if you have any data showing that they vote in a radically different way from their peers. My analysis also assumes that a vote is a better reflection of one’s core beliefs than a donation, since many people are in the habit of funding both sides in a contest as a way to secure influence rather than to express allegiance.
Of course, all of that doesn’t matter, since I am mocking the absurdity of the calculus, not its results.
Also: I’m sure that you’ll be delighted to learn that the tenure system is falling apart swiftly, as an ever-growing number of pampered humanities instructors work as adjunct faculty for maybe 15 or 20 thousand a year (if they’re lucky), with no benefits. You will soon be living in a society in which practically nobody bothers searching for Socratic truths, so you may keep your subsidies to spend as you wish.
Thanks for your thoughts! nv
The solution to the “problem” of universities being too liberal — if there were such a problem, which there is not — would be for more right-wingers to join university faculties. End of THAT issue.
If there were a “serious Religious Left” — which there is not — you would hear the members of the serious Religious Right loudly warning about its pernicious influence, which you do not. They know it’s too small and voiceless to be worth worrying about.
As for “political donations from the infamous Fortune 500 consistently skew[ing] to the Democrats,” that is just flat wrong. But if it were smart, the infamous Fortune 500 OUGHT to skew that way, because if you went over S&P 500 returns for the last 96 years — during which the Democrats and Republicans held the White House for 48 years each — you would find that an investment in the S&P 500 under the Democrats would have been 6 times greater than under the Republicans. And it’s not all because of the Great Depression. The trend was the same from 1945 through 2008. The most toxic combination for investing occurs when the S&P 500 posts a negative for January AND a Republican is president. Among the years these toxics occurred were 2008, 2002, 1974, 1973 and 1957. Those were five of the most devastating years for the stock market since World War II.
As for “Now, if Harvard wants to have 80% marxists in all disciplines, they are free to do that but much of the university scene in this country is publicly funded from taxes. I would prefer much less of that done but if it is to be done, yes I seriously object that mockery and dismissal is the attitude of these public employees to any notion to the Right of the Mondale Platform, especially if it is enforced through the exclusionary tenure process. Add to that the ostentatious declarations of these pampered aesthetes that their chief occupation is a search for socratic truths… well, I would prefer not to subsidize that so much” . . .
Who gargled that run-on gibberish?
Sarah Palin? George W. Bush?
@ Parsifal
No, it seems as though Neil is correct.
From the HuffPo:
“Forget about corporate conservatism. According to recent FEC reports, CEOs of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies donating individually to presidential campaigns are investing heavily in Democrats in ’08.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-treul/fortune-500-ceos-favor-de_b_74017.html
… Then there’s this poll just released today from Bloomberg:
“Obama Seen as Anti-Business by 77% of U.S. Investors”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20100121/pl_bloomberg/a8uii1bcrdmy
So one poll says fat cat CEOs favor the Democrats (at this juncture only, of course) and another says the people who invest in their companies do not. Quite a disjunction. Maybe the people who perceive the Democrats (at this juncture, of course) as being anti-business should get mad at the CEOs of the companies they invest in for favoring the Democrats (which, as I said earlier, would seem to be the wise thing to do, when viewed historically).
What this shows is the folly of waving about poll results. What investors perceive and what happens with their investments are two different things. The perception in the poll could be a reflection of the popular feeling that Republicans are the party of corporate fat cats (which they are) and Democrats are the party of the average person (which they are). The indisputable fact is that, as I demonstrated conclusively above, for roughly the last 100 years investments have fared remarkably better under Democratic administrations than under Republican ones.
@ Parsifal
“The perception in the poll could be a reflection of the popular feeling that Republicans are the party of corporate fat cats (which they are) and Democrats are the party of the average person (which they are).”
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
What a riot! Where do you come up with this stuff? OMG.
Question: How many poor Democrats in DC buddy? Lots of “average joes” in their ranks of power?
I think not… Kennedy, was he “an average guy”? How about Barney Frank? Chris Dodd? Tell me, what kind of family did Pelosi come from, a rich one or a poor one?
It must be difficult to walk around with those blinders on.
Parsifal is correct about the stock market doing better under Democratic Presidents. Jeremy Siegel in Stocks for the Long Run has good data on this. Siegel is also very confident about the next 10 years for stocks, but I haven’t read anything from him on Obama.
We’re a long way off from tenured radicals in these comments, but okay, what would be more interesting to me and, I suggest, more relevant, than looking at the stock market doing better under one party or another holding the presidency, would be to consider:
*If the market is up for much of a presidency, like Clinton’s or W. Bush’s, but then begins to decline because of a bubble being burst, do the several good years still count as being better for the Market (and the economy) when some could argue that much of that “better” was illusion, largely caused by a bubble?
*What role does divided government play in that “better.” Did Reagan have a Democratic congress? Did Clinton have a Republican one? Does divided power lead to more fiscal restraint all around, controls on political power, and this promotes the “better” Stock Market? What role does Congress play in all this? And governors? And so on? It goes well beyond the presidency, doesn’t it?
*What role does war play? Can we look at a period of war and simply attribute the “better” market to the presiding president? Which raises the obvious question of what else was at work during these periods. How many variables influence stock market performance?
*Do Democratic and Republican mean what they used to mean? If the party’s actions are different from the past, does it mean anything to compare “better” results from decades ago to now? Was JFK’s regulatory and tax approach similar to or different from Obama’s in substantial ways? If different, judging market results or making predictions based on their belonging to the same party seems a superficial way to reach conclusions. Has someone studied what role is played by tax rates, capital gains rates, government spending, and so on, and how this affects the Stock Market, and as a result, job creation and economic growth for regular people? That would tell us more than which party had the presidency during which times, especially if you believe that a particular president represents a departure from what a party is supposed to stand for.
*Do we take into account that the first year or so of an administration is inheriting an economy from the previous administration? Reagan started with Carter’s economy. Obama started with Bush’s. At some point the administration has to take ownership of the economy, of course.
*Are we talking number of years with a “better” market, or are we talking about averages? Because we saw skyrocketing numbers for many years that were then wiped out by crashes, burst bubbles. What conclusions can we draw from just looking at numbers of years or averages when those gains were wiped out?
*If a party blames Wall Street fat cats for economic woes, but the fat cats get fatter under that party’s administration, how seriously do we take the rhetoric of the party doing the blaming?
By the way, I am not doing any of this research. I don’t have that kind of time. I imagine it’s out there somewhere. I just think asking these questions is better than a my-party-is-better-than-yours pissing contest.
It is not a pointless pissing match. If the popular perception, fanned by the hysterics of mindless zealots, is that Republican administrations are better for business, then it should be pointed out how incorrect that perception is. Investing, of course, is not the totality of American business, but it is a large and certainly very high-profile one.
It is the same with national defense and security. The charge, fanned by ditto, is that Democrats are weak on defense and security. It is forgotten that the four major wars the United States participated in in the previous century — WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam — were prosecuted either wholly or largely under Democratic administrations. You can argue whether they were wisely prosecuted, but you cannot argue that any faults in the prosecution was because of some inherent Democratic disinclination to protect the country.