By Professor
Doom
My own eyes have shown me a distinct
leftist prejudice on campus. I feel that people can believe whatever they want,
but I’ve experienced some of the bigotry for not adhering to the Left view, and
documented just how hard it is for a conservative to show
discrimination against him; you can’t find it in the other direction because liberals easily
outnumber any other group on campus. It’s bad enough now that there are political litmus tests for hiring and
promotion.
“The extent of the tilt to the left has been
growing and has now reached a magnitude not remotely matched in the past. In
some areas it is so extreme that it amounts to virtual exclusion of any but
left-of-center faculty members…This pattern is strongly suggestive
of a conscious intent in the hiring process.“
A recent study showed that the leftist bias among
college faculty has gone from “strong majority” to “nearly no other viewpoints
possible.” I don’t think it’s quite that bad in my field, but the study says it’s
much worse in more politically-inclined disciplines (eg, political science and
sociology).
The study also suggests that the
overwhelming majority of liberals on campus are corrupting higher education,
especially In California. Again, yeah, no kidding. Micro-aggression theory, for example
is ripping apart UCLA.
How did hiring that could draw on only tiny numbers in the
general population produce so large a Marxist campus presence without a
substantial amount of discrimination in favor not just of the left, but of the
extreme left? This suggests an illegal political test in hiring.
While I agree with the study’s conjecture,
above, and have experienced a similar discrimination in promotion as well, it
does rather beg the question: how do these people get their degrees without at
least a little respect for empirical evidence? I mean, the 100% failure rate of
Marxism in the 20th century—colossal, bloody failures at that,
resulting in the deaths of tens of millions of human beings—should make it hard
to subscribe to Marxism. I do wonder if Marxists are quite as common in the
hard sciences, where empirical data is highly valued, as in the social sciences
(anecdotally, I’m going with “no,” as every avowed Marxist I’ve met has been in
social sciences and history).
Anyway, the Leftist bias in academia has
been well known for some time, even if the current up-spike is not so well
known.
How then, can someone write a book, Why Higher Education Should Have a Leftist Bias? The book argues that the incredible (and hypocritical) bias is actually a good thing for higher education. We’re already at the point where there’s real concern that leftist students aren’t being served in higher education because they can go their whole college career without being exposed to any other point of view. A college degree takes 40 or so classes…the bias is very strong if picking 40 Leftist professors in a row is now considered quite possible.
Considering the huge downward slide of higher education these last few decades, there’s no existing trend in higher education I’d support. Granted, I’m not convinced the rise of bigoted Leftism is the primary cause of higher education’s ills (the student loan scam is the biggest source, with mercenary administrators not too distant a second), I see no way how making Leftism the only point of view on campus is going to help.
Even though the book’s premise is false on the face of it, it still has a list price of—holy cow!--$84. Adding insult to injury is a major publisher (Macmillan) actually published this. Perhaps there’s a Leftist bent to the publishers, too?
The book has a glowing professional review attached to it, but, no reader reviews (no shock, with the price so high…why would publishers publish a book that nobody would buy?). Mercifully, a Forbes article gives something far less one-sided. The blatantly false premise makes criticizing the book a little easy, but a few quotes stand out:
“From [the author’s] perspective, the dark and greedy forces of corporate America and its right-wing attack machine have prevented President Obama from moving full-throttle to transform the U.S. into the wonderful country we could enjoy. He maintains that the country is so dominated by “conservative” thinking that college professors must try to even things up.It’s impossible to take that seriously.
Twice the U.S. elected the very leftist Obama, and has many media outlets that push relentlessly for more statist policies and demonize anyone who opposes them. …”
Both Left and Right have their hands
covered in blood regarding what’s happened in this country. It is, indeed,
impossible to take seriously any claim that only one side is responsible.
There are many educators who make the
principled case that big government conservatism and big government liberalism
are equally blameworthy for our ills. but Lazere dismisses them because
he thinks they’re bound up with loathsome “conservatism.”
To clarify the Forbes article, the
issue probably has more to do with “big government” than with any Left or Right
points of view.
Not that Lazere doesn’t raise some good arguments, but they do nothing
to advance his idea that college faculties should teach with a leftist bias.
Back to the supposed thesis of the
book, apparently there’s not much to justify why we need a Leftist bias in our
education, preaching to the students the glories of their faith, regardless of
whatever the course subject will be.
The author of the book, of course, loves
socialism, and says we should still espouse it despite the millions of corpses
in its wake. Forbes reasonably disagrees:
There is nothing wrong in studying socialism in courses where
it’s pertinent. In an advanced economics course, for instance, students might
read Ludwig von Mises’ 1922 book Socialism, which would go a long
way toward disabusing them of the idea that socialism can bring about the
delightful world Lazere imagines. But it’s not appropriate for professors
to smuggle their naïve beliefs about socialism (or other topics) into English
classes where they’re neither pertinent to the subject nor within the
professor’s field of knowledge.
I have to disagree with that last line,
especially when there’s only one point of view allowed in certain fields of
knowledge. I smuggle a belief or two in my classes. No, you don’t have to have
“Ph.D.” after your name to be able to say something relevant.
Hey, I admit, it’s hard not to mention
politics, and I feel entitled to do so even if that’s not my so-called field of
knowledge. Here’s an example of something political in my math classes:
Me: “ ’Infinity’ isn’t a number, it’s
a concept referring to ‘that which is larger than any number.’
“ ‘Negative Infinity’ doesn’t refer to
‘smaller than any number,’ but instead to ‘that which is more negative than any
number.’
“While it’s not possible to get to infinity, or negative infinity, the
US government is currently engaged in a project to achieve negative infinity.
This project is called ‘The National Debt’.”
The class laughs at the above, and I
consider it a political joke as well as commentary. As an aside, anyone else
notice how economics on any level doesn’t seem to be a factor in today’s
political discussion? I can’t tell you how many questions about Iran/Iraq/ISIS
were in the debates, but darned if I can recall even a single question about
our government’s ridiculous spending policies, zero interest rate loans to
cronies, or student loans.
Folks, Iran didn’t get you laid off, ISIS
didn’t destroy the returns on your retirement investments, and Iraq isn’t the
reason our college graduates can only get minimum wage jobs….but I digress.
Back
to Forbes:
I applaud professors who succeed in
improving students’ ability to employ logic, but Lazere’s approach was badly
flawed in that respect. Worse, I fear that many other professors will seize
upon his title and proclaim that their dogmatic, leftist pedagogy is justified.
