By David French
Wednesday, July 05, 2017
Last week the Chronicle
of Higher Education wrote a lengthy report on the curious
case of Keith Fink, a part-time lecturer at the University of California,
Los Angeles. UCLA refused to renew his contract, writing in a letter that his
teaching did not “meet the standard of excellence.” Fink cried foul, arguing
that his free-speech classes were popular with students and that he was really
fired for his pointed criticisms of the university and his stalwart defense of
free speech on campus.
And, in fact, he was popular. As the Chronicle notes, “Student evaluations of the free-speech course Mr.
Fink taught this year . . . mostly paint a picture of Mr. Fink as an engaging
teacher and his course as stimulating and interesting.” His faculty evaluators,
however, believed that there was “more to it than what the students think.”
They took issue with his Socratic method of teaching (common in law schools),
believed that he pushed his own point of view too much, and raised concerns
about the “climate” in the classroom.
As I read the story, I had an immediate sense of déjà vu.
I’ve litigated cases like this before, I’ve evaluated cases like this before,
and I’m familiar with the extraordinary double standards that define how
academic freedom works in modern higher education. Perhaps UCLA is right.
Perhaps it has even-handedly applied its alleged “incredibly high” standards
and has fired popular left-wing lecturers in part because they’ve pushed their
views too much on their students. Perhaps it routinely fires even popular
teachers for poor teaching performance. In other words, perhaps it’s different
from the vast majority of colleges and universities — schools that have
consciously and unconsciously created entire systems of anti-conservative
discrimination.
First, let’s discuss the challenge of even finding a job
in higher education. It’s difficult enough for even well-qualified leftists,
but often academic departments define academic positions in such a way that
effectively excludes the conservative point of view. Look at this current job posting at Harvard’s
divinity school. It’s for a tenure-track professor of “religion, violence,
and peace-building.” There’s nothing inherently conservative or liberal about
the topic. Indeed, it fascinates me, but hidden within the job description is
this gem of a sentence:
It is understood that applicants will employ forms of analysis that
address race, gender, sexuality, and/or other intersecting forms of social power,
such as womanist, feminist, and/or queer approaches. [Emphasis added.]
Ahh yes, “intersectionality” rears its radical head.
While this posting is extreme (though at an important institution), it
perfectly illustrates a long-building phenomenon. Academics have redefined and
refocused disciplines to such an extent that they essentially exclude
conservative inquiry. Thus, they can honestly say they’ve never discussed
politics in hiring decisions because the discipline itself has narrowed so much
that it closes itself to conservatives.
Consider this statement, years ago, from the American
Association of University Professors’ Roger Bowen. He was defending
universities from the charge of ideological discrimination in hiring. First, he
said this:
I’ve been a department chair, I’ve
been a college president. I’ve conducted more searches than I can begin to
describe, and I can tell you I have never asked a candidate what his or her
party identification is, and I don’t know of a search committee in the country
that would do that.
I’d agree with Bowen. In all my years representing
conservative professors, I’ve never seen questions regarding party
identification. But that’s a red herring. Search committees aren’t that
blatant. They don’t have to be. Here’s the key quote:
Anthropologists — which apparently,
according to the study, Democrats far outnumber Republicans [among
anthropologists] — what do they do? Anthropologists, the discipline itself is
focused on questioning religious and cultural myth, particularly myth that
celebrates national, cultural or racial superiorities. That in many classrooms
will be a shocker for a lot of students.
Sociologists tend to inquire on the
origins of inequality as a source of alienation: new concepts to many college
students that will seem, I imagine, given illustrations using the American
example, rather shocking.
Political scientists, they focus on
questions of legitimacy. . . .
Historians, they look at progress
frequently in terms of overcoming inequalities of the past, sometimes
inequality is endorsed, even embraced by conservatives.
Well, if you frame scholarship primarily in leftist terms
and limit inquiries to more left-leaning areas of interest, it should shock
exactly no one that mainly leftists apply. Leftist academics are often the
proverbial fish who don’t know they’re wet. They’ve created and inhabit a world
that by its very terms and definitions is inhospitable to conservative thought
— especially socially conservative thought.
But that’s not all, of course. Those conservatives who do
apply often find that they have to clear a higher bar for hiring, retention,
and promotion. A study published early last year in Harvard Law School’s Journal of Law and Public Policy found
that conservative and libertarian law professors are “cited more and publish
more than their peers,” and they “they tend to have more of the traditional
qualifications required of law professors than their peers.” While these
findings of course didn’t prove systematic discrimination, they were certainly
— as the author noted — “consistent with” a pattern or practice of exclusion.
To this study, I can add my own anecdotal experience. In case
after case,
I’ve seen conservative professors fired or punished in spite of possessing
superior academic credentials. In one case, an untenured conservative professor
was fired after publishing more (and more consequential) scholarship than even
some of the tenured professors who evaluated him. In another, the department
rejected a conservative professor’s promotion in part for poor scholarship even
though he’d published more than most of his peers and in spite of the fact that
key members of the department didn’t even bother to read his work.
In fact, you’ll often find an odd kind of political
affirmative action. Because so many departments view themselves as cultural
revolutionaries, they’ll tolerate and encourage enormous amounts of shoddy
research and scholarship so long as that scholarship is sufficiently radical.
It’s as if some faculties take pride in housing leftist fools and cranks.
The cumulative effect of all these factors renders
conservatives rightly suspicious when they see any university summarily fire or
otherwise punish the few conservative scholars who’ve made it through the
hiring gauntlet. Students know full well that they’ll spend part of their
academic careers sitting in classrooms taught by hectoring leftist ideologues.
Students know full well that teaching quality is wildly inconsistent. They also
know full well that far-left scholars often attack their own universities with
unrestrained ferocity. Yet they not only soldier on, they gain tenure and lead
academic departments.
I’ll follow Keith Fink’s case with interest, and I look
forward to seeing more evidence emerge. But here is a key question in his case:
Was he treated the same way that his department treats teachers with far-left
views? Does the university hold left-wing ideologues to the same “standard of
excellence?” Perhaps it does, but decades of bitter experience have taught conservatives
to be skeptical.
There is no easy answer to academic discrimination. I’ve
talked to numerous outstanding conservative law students who’ve wondered if
it’s even “worth the effort” to try for a teaching career — and the legal
profession is more open to conservatives than most of the humanities are. In
some places, there is reason for hope. Conservatives such as Princeton’s Robert
George have not only made it past the gatekeepers, they’re thriving even as
they challenge academic orthodoxy. But Professor George is the exception, not
the rule. In academic departments across the nation, the message is clear.
Conservatives need not apply.
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