By Nicholas Kristof
Saturday, May 07, 2016
We progressives believe in diversity, and we want women,
blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t
conservatives.
Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but
the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and
religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think
like us.
O.K., that’s a little harsh. But consider George Yancey,
a sociologist who is black and evangelical.
“Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black,”
he told me. “But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is
not even close.”
I’ve been thinking about this because on Facebook
recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and
undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals
proved the point.
“Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas
that are known empirically to be false,” said Carmi.
“The truth has a liberal slant,” wrote Michelle.
“Why stop there?” asked Steven. “How about we make
faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?”
To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal
arrogance — the implication that conservatives don’t have anything significant
to add to the discussion. My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for
war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused
chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing
discrimination.
The stakes involve not just fairness to conservatives or
evangelical Christians, not just whether progressives will be true to their own
values, not just the benefits that come from diversity (and diversity of
thought is arguably among the most important kinds), but also the quality of
education itself. When perspectives are unrepresented in discussions, when some
kinds of thinkers aren’t at the table, classrooms become echo chambers rather
than sounding boards — and we all lose.
Four studies found that the proportion of professors in
the humanities who are Republicans ranges between 6 and 11 percent, and in the
social sciences between 7 and 9 percent.
Conservatives can be spotted in the sciences and in
economics, but they are virtually an endangered species in fields like
anthropology, sociology, history and literature. One study found that only 2
percent of English professors are Republicans (although a large share are
independents).
In contrast, some 18 percent of social scientists say
they are Marxist. So it’s easier to find a Marxist in some disciplines than a
Republican.
The scarcity of conservatives seems driven in part by
discrimination. One peer-reviewed study found that one-third of social
psychologists admitted that if choosing between two equally qualified job
candidates, they would be inclined to discriminate against the more
conservative candidate.
Yancey, the black sociologist, who now teaches at the
University of North Texas, conducted a survey in which up to 30 percent of academics
said that they would be less likely to support a job seeker if they knew that
the person was a Republican.
The discrimination becomes worse if the applicant is an
evangelical Christian. According to Yancey’s study, 59 percent of
anthropologists and 53 percent of English professors would be less likely to
hire someone they found out was an evangelical.
“Of course there are biases against evangelicals on
campuses,” notes Jonathan L. Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals
at Harvard. Walton, a black evangelical, adds that the condescension toward
evangelicals echoes the patronizing attitude toward racial minorities: “The
same arguments I hear people make about evangelicals sound so familiar to the
ways people often describe folk of color, i.e. politically unsophisticated,
lacking education, angry, bitter, emotional, poor.”
A study published in The American Journal of Political
Science underscored how powerful political bias can be. In an experiment,
Democrats and Republicans were asked to choose a scholarship winner from among
(fictitious) finalists, with the experiment tweaked so that applicants
sometimes included the president of the Democratic or Republican club, while
varying the credentials and race of each. Four-fifths of Democrats and Republicans
alike chose a student of their own party to win a scholarship, and
discrimination against people of the other party was much greater than
discrimination based on race.
“I am the equivalent of someone who was gay in
Mississippi in 1950,” a conservative professor is quoted as saying in “Passing
on the Right,” a new book about right-wing faculty members by Jon A. Shields
and Joshua M. Dunn Sr. That’s a metaphor that conservative scholars often use,
with talk of remaining in the closet early in one’s career and then “coming
out” after receiving tenure.
This bias on campuses creates liberal privilege. A friend
is studying for the Law School Admission Test, and the test preparation company
she is using offers test-takers a tip: Reading comprehension questions will
typically have a liberal slant and a liberal answer.
Some liberals think that right-wingers self-select away
from academic paths in part because they are money-grubbers who prefer more
lucrative professions. But that doesn’t explain why there are conservative math
professors but not many right-wing anthropologists.
It’s also liberal poppycock that there aren’t smart
conservatives or evangelicals. Richard Posner is a more-or-less conservative
who is the most cited legal scholar of all time. With her experience and
intellect, Condoleezza Rice would enhance any political science department.
Francis Collins is an evangelical Christian and famed geneticist who has led the
Human Genome Project and the National Institutes of Health. And if you’re
saying that conservatives may be tolerable, but evangelical Christians aren’t —
well, are you really saying you would have discriminated against the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr.?
Jonathan Haidt, a centrist social psychologist at New
York University, cites data suggesting that the share of conservatives in
academia has plunged, and he has started a website, Heterodox Academy, to
champion ideological diversity on campuses.
“Universities are unlike other institutions in that they
absolutely require that people challenge each other so that the truth can
emerge from limited, biased, flawed individuals,” he says. “If they lose
intellectual diversity, or if they develop norms of ‘safety’ that trump
challenge, they die. And this is what has been happening since the 1990s.”
Should universities offer affirmative action for
conservatives and evangelicals? I don’t think so, partly because surveys find
that conservative scholars themselves oppose the idea. But it’s important to
have a frank discussion on campuses about ideological diversity. To me, this
seems a liberal blind spot.
Universities should be a hubbub of the full range of
political perspectives from A to Z, not just from V to Z. So maybe we
progressives could take a brief break from attacking the other side and more
broadly incorporate values that we supposedly cherish — like diversity — in our
own dominions.
No comments:
Post a Comment