Exaggeration nation: Tenured radicals

Here’s Slate‘s review ^[1] of Louis Menand’s new book ^[2] 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.