"Beyond Academic Sectarianism"

June 21, 2024 9:42 AM

Political scientist Stephen Teles is a self-described "liberal institutionalist" who argues that "the university should be institutionally neutral" so that academia may pursue its "distinct competence: subjecting society's orthodoxies to empirical and theoretical scrutiny."

However, "American higher education has grown increasingly closed minded." The numbers of "conservative faculty ... are low and continue to fall. ...merit needs to co-exist with pluralism — a commitment to accepting diverse ways of studying reality and basic moral precepts. Liberal-institutionalist faculty members should be explicit in arguing that moderates and conservatives would enrich their intellectual communities." (As befits a discussion of academia, the argument is more nuanced than this summary might suggest.)

posted by Mr.Know-it-some (43 comments total)

oh lord.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:52 AM on June 21 [14 favorites]

grant me the serenity
posted by flabdablet at 9:56 AM on June 21 [16 favorites]

"diverse ways of studying reality and basic moral precepts"

OK, lay out some of the moral precepts that aren't being tolerated. What's that? They're ones that lead to racist, homophobic, and transphobic outcomes? Weird! Never could have predicted that.
posted by sagc at 9:58 AM on June 21 [22 favorites]

Eh, it could also be that the American Conservatives have lost their collective way into a land of fantasy at odds with careful study and discourse. I work at a fairly standard university and would describe most of my colleagues I have discussed politics with as Center Right, mostly, but not all, Democrat, but no one who doesn’t believe that Biden and Harris are the new Lenin and Trotsky would see them as particularly “Left” for the most part.

And sectarianism brought down those university presidents, but it wasn’t academic sectarianism….
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:59 AM on June 21 [15 favorites]

Marketplace of ideas!
posted by Artw at 9:59 AM on June 21 [5 favorites]

diverse ways of studying reality

There's a much faster way to say that. One word. Only three letters.
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:00 AM on June 21

Oh hey, it's a "thinkpiece" from AEI, the folks who defend academic dishonesty. Which is all that needs to be said about this tripe.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:01 AM on June 21 [22 favorites]

Weirdly not in the Atlantic or the NYT.
posted by Artw at 10:02 AM on June 21 [13 favorites]

I am certainly willing to entertain the idea that our institutions need more political neutrality. So how many communist generals and antifa aligned police chiefs are you offering?
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:12 AM on June 21 [28 favorites]

I Haidt this kind of stuff.
posted by Morpeth at 10:19 AM on June 21 [9 favorites]

Same guy also has a piece titled “A Modertate Proposal” on bipartisanship cowritten with Matt Yglesias, if anyone was wanting to hit themselves in the head with a hammer today but was looking for an alternate way to hurt themselves and make themselves dumber.
posted by Artw at 10:22 AM on June 21 [8 favorites]

New York University psychologist John Jost, by contrast, has argued that fundamental features of conservatism, such as the "need for certainty," explain why those on the right are so underrepresented in scientifically oriented fields like his own.

Does the need for certainty coincide with a need for supporting evidence and logical coherence, or are we talking certainty in the religious sense?

Conservatives are, after all, biased toward conserving knowledge, whereas academia tends to reserve its laurels for creative, conceptually path-breaking producers of new knowledge.

LoL, wut? That's what librarians are for.

Usually right-leaning individuals are the ones who argue that group distributions represent the naturally clustered attributes among groups, which they say are either "hardwired" or the result of "culture."

That's one way of admitting that conservatives are racist, I guess.

Social scientists have developed a rich set of theories to explain the origins of group-based differences. These theories are largely designed to explain patterns of durable gender, racial, and ethnic inequality, and tend to emphasize factors beyond individual discrimination. Such models — often falling under the category of "structural" or "systemic" injustice — turn out to be surprisingly useful in explaining why so few conservatives are present among elite university faculties. They also lead to some unexpected directions for reform.

It could be that those theories can explain why conservatives experience systemic disadvantage, or it could be that conservatives' collective refusal to engage with the development of evidence-supported theories of social organization disqualifies them from an institution whose function is exactly that.

I think the biggest problem is that people fail to make a distinction between conservative as identity and conservative as philosophical/ideological orientation. Like, what does a conservative social scientist do? If they do the same things in the same way as liberal social scientists (even if they come to different conclusions), they're probably indistinguishable from liberal social scientists. I think the "traditional" left-right political spectrum is actually fully contained within what identity conservatives now call "the left" and conservatism per se is an entirely distinct category that defines itself by its incompatibility with academia. Maybe it's not that conservatives are being pushed out, it's that they need this distinction to exist. If the fire in one's political furnace is stoked by victimhood, it's really a magically effective strategy, no?
posted by klanawa at 10:24 AM on June 21 [19 favorites]

Naw, we need something better than conservatives, moderates, liberals, and leftists. Conservatives represent the worst of thought and philosophy while seeking the least humanity possible for any given situation. Diversity of thought and perspectives are cool, you can have a nice vegetable stew with many different ingredients, some no teven vegetables. However, the second you plop even one turd into the soup, it ruins the whole pot. Academic Institution are well-served with proactive plumbing.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:29 AM on June 21 [6 favorites]

Although he would never have done so, we can translate Bourdieu's idea into simple economic terms.
there's a lot of hand waving involved
posted by HearHere at 11:10 AM on June 21

Goddammit, no political orientation has done more to drive wedge issues, create division and intolerance, juice identity politics and raise partisanship to a virtue than the US rightwing. Academics are slagged nonstop as lefty elitists. Why the surprise if academics push back and stand their ground too?

... if conservatives' disadvantaged position in academia is not mostly the result of direct discrimination, what explains their scarcity among college faculty?

Hmmm. The fact that today's US conservatives are increasingly close-minded and anti-intellectual? Just a stab in the dark...

...academia tends to reserve its laurels for creative, conceptually path-breaking producers of new knowledge.

Um, yes! We don't benefit from our thought leaders telling us that everything's just peachy as-is, the sun DOES revolve around the Earth, etc.
posted by Artful Codger at 11:32 AM on June 21 [4 favorites]

Does the need for certainty coincide with a need for supporting evidence and logical coherence, or are we talking certainty in the religious sense?

They're using the language of the former to cover up that what they really value is the latter. I might use "ideological" instead of "religious" but even that distinction is an ecumenical matter. If "conservative academia" (such as it is) can't withstand actual academic rigor, redefine what it means to be rigorous.

I think the biggest problem is that people fail to make a distinction between conservative as identity and conservative as philosophical/ideological orientation. […] conservatism per se is an entirely distinct category that defines itself by its incompatibility with academia.

This is basically it. Conservative identity politics depends on a persecution complex where an enemy can be blamed for one's own failings. If a suitable enemy doesn't already exist, you can pick one that's close enough and just keep shouting, and control the narrative by being the loudest for the longest. You can also depend on the fact that other people in your tribe also feel persecuted and don't care about the details as long as there's an out group to blame.
posted by fedward at 11:41 AM on June 21 [4 favorites]

Hi, I do political science! I have sat on eh low dozens of search committees and reviewed high hundreds to low thousands of job applications and reviewed I don't know how many journal submissions.

Here is the truth! Brace yourself!

Nobody gives a fuck.

In assistant-professor hiring, nobody gives a fuck what your political beliefs are as long as you're not a tedious asshole about them. Yes, if you spend your whole interview day(s) being a tedious asshole about right-wing bullshit, you probably won't get the job. Equally, you probably won't get the job if you spend that time being a tedious asshole about lefty wokescold stuff, or about Star Trek or sportsball. In all cases you won't get the job because *you're a tedious asshole* and nobody wants to spend the next 30 years in the office next to yours. In senior-scholar hiring, you can even be well-known to be a tedious asshole as long as you're productive.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 12:16 PM on June 21 [25 favorites]

If academic leaders were to go to places where young, intellectually oriented conservatives are found [...] and make clear that their institutions want (indeed, need) them to be part of their intellectual community, that could make a difference. While academic leaders should not directly involve themselves in graduate admissions and training, it is wholly within their purview to ask their departments and schools to reach out to potential applicants who are likely to have right-leaning beliefs, and to ensure that their graduate-training culture is not ideologically exclusionary. [...]

While conservative scholars could contribute useful perspectives to a range of fields, it would also help for liberal institutionalists at top research universities to offer positions in subjects that are disproportionately appealing to right-leaning scholars. Finally, these faculty members should think about putting pressure on the non-academic departments of the university, such as student life, that are in many cases even more ideologically narrow than academic departments.

This isn't "institutionally neutral," it's affirmative action for conservatives. The institution would be deciding in advance which ideological views should be represented in what proportion, and then imposing that "balance" on the entire university. That is the very opposite of neutral.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 12:35 PM on June 21 [26 favorites]

Are we sure this isn’t David Brooks writing under a pseudonym
posted by obliterati at 12:55 PM on June 21 [7 favorites]

And the prophet Wilhoit spake unto them, saying

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny.

posted by flabdablet at 1:03 PM on June 21 [10 favorites]

it's affirmative action for conservatives.

Yes, that's the whole point of the article. It's affirmative action in the original sense: It recognizes that the existing structure is resulting in academia attracting employees who are not only not reflective of the overall political distribution of the country, but to a point where there is a uniformity that, he argues, harms the field: "True scholarship — the kind that leads one to check the footnotes and dig into the datasets of fellow scholars — depends on conflict. Without that, it is too easy to let sloppiness slide." Now, if you reject that premise - as seems to be the groupthink consensus here - there's no point in thinking about how to diversify the profession.

Also, his use of "conservative" is quite different than the current MAGA meaning. E.g., "my dissertation committee featured three extraordinarily learned and serious conservative thinkers: Martha Derthick, James Ceaser, and Steve Rhoads." We're not talking about hiring for the Tucker Carlson Endowed Chair in Crap Studies.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:08 PM on June 21 [2 favorites]

In assistant-professor hiring, nobody gives a fuck what your political beliefs are as long as you're not a tedious asshole about them

Ah, see but what this person is asking for is it should be illegal for you to find him a tedious asshole.
posted by Artw at 1:09 PM on June 21 [11 favorites]

The word 'liberal' keeps getting used for all sorts of strange things that bear no relation to my conception of the term.
posted by pipeski at 1:16 PM on June 21 [5 favorites]

We're not talking about hiring for the Tucker Carlson Endowed Chair in Crap Studies.

I mean, not yet.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:18 PM on June 21 [5 favorites]

I once took up the challenge of meeting the conservative intellectual tradition, to engage seriously with Conservative Thought. Brethren and sistern, I paid 15 good American dollars for a fresh new copy of Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot. I'm pretty sure that's what I paid 18 years ago, and I see it still costs the same at Amazon. Which ought to be a clue about something or other. But I digress.

Brethren and sistern, I can report that this weighty tome, once one strips away superfluous appeals to tradition and weightless invocations of religiousity, says nothing at all. The world is the way it is because it is the way it is, and no improvement is possible. The work is not vexed by the the fact that actual progress has been made (nations no longer are impressed nakedly into slavery, for example, and the young are taught to read instead of being sent to the mines to pick scraps out of the tailings) because it does not engage with the real world.

The reason conservative thought has trouble in the academic environment is, to paraphrase somebody famous, there is no there there.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 1:37 PM on June 21 [12 favorites]

"True scholarship — the kind that leads one to check the footnotes and dig into the datasets of fellow scholars — depends on conflict. Without that, it is too easy to let sloppiness slide."

I'm trying to figure out this argument. Is it:

(A) Academics should recruit their own sea lions, because there's no such thing as a bad faith argument?

or

(2) Standards should be lower for conservatives, because not only are no resources wasted, but "sloppiness" will decrease when everybody has to deal with work that doesn't meet the higher standards everybody else has to meet?

Do these new equal opportunity rules apply to leftists who study, say, anticapitalism or collective or intentional communities, or is it only conservative scholarship that is underrepresented in the academy? [Narrator: it is not].
posted by fedward at 1:43 PM on June 21 [5 favorites]

This is fundamentally no different from demanding chemists whose research confirms phlogiston and physicists who find novel uses for orgone and qi. He doesn't want a broader set of perspectives. He wants to force people with credentials and prestige and epistemic authority to submit to him.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:43 PM on June 21 [6 favorites]

Is the perceived absence of right-wing academics more of an American thing, or does it apply to academia in other countries? (Relative to their political spectrums)
posted by plonkee at 1:51 PM on June 21 [1 favorite]

This is fundamentally no different from demanding chemists whose research confirms phlogiston and physicists who find novel uses for orgone and qi.

It's very different, because phlogiston and orgone and qi are relevant to their respective fields as wrong ideas. In contrast, being conservative or liberal is of no consequence for your research or teaching activity.

It's more like demanding more academics who are swifties or who really hate apples.

The whole thing is fundamentally stupid. "True scholarship — the kind that leads one to check the footnotes and dig into the datasets of fellow scholars — depends on conflict. Without that, it is too easy to let sloppiness slide." Of course there's conflict, as he knows full well. Conflict about good methods for causal inference. Conflict about how important bayesian statistics is. Conflict about operationalization of "democracy."
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:05 PM on June 21 [4 favorites]

It recognizes that the existing structure is resulting in academia attracting employees who are not only not reflective of the overall political distribution of the country, but to a point where there is a uniformity that, he argues, harms the field

The rejection of a specific ideological bent does not prove "uniformity", though. It is quite possible to reject a certain worldview while creating a diverse space (and in fact when dealing with bigotry, this is required.)

"True scholarship — the kind that leads one to check the footnotes and dig into the datasets of fellow scholars — depends on conflict. Without that, it is too easy to let sloppiness slide."

This is a bad premise from two angles:

One, this is just another bullshit "war is a force that gives us meaning" argument that tries to frame conflict as an inherently good force. The idea that collaboration can produce good work appears to be alien to him.

Two, the argument that a group of left-leaning academics are going to be unified in thought and not at each others throats shows a deep lack of experience with such individuals, and exactly how vicious they can be to each other.

Finally, I have to laugh at this author's claim of wanting to protect the field from harm given that he is writing this for the fucking American Enterprise Institute (whose logo is prominently on the page linked) - an organization that actively engages in attempts to rehabilitate academic frauds in order to push ideological positions.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:09 PM on June 21 [7 favorites]

more academics who are swifties

total derail, but anyone else remember when a swifty was something else?
posted by elkevelvet at 2:33 PM on June 21 [2 favorites]

The word 'liberal' keeps getting used for all sorts

When I write, I often fail to distinguish between what I think conservatives think liberalism is, what I think liberalism is, and how liberalism works in whichever society as a label or identity.

In Canada, the Liberal party is thought of as vaguely centrist. In BC, it's a rightwing/libertarian coalition (whose members are currently jumping ship for an extremist conservative upstart party with no apparent moral qualms). In academia, it means the same thing as anywhere else in the West. Among (c|C)onservatives it means, roughly, "Stalinist child-molestor."
posted by klanawa at 2:57 PM on June 21 [3 favorites]

...Has the author looked at the academic job market lately? Tenure-track jobs have fallen off a steep cliff, especially in the humanities. There were approximately seven jobs advertised in my field (19th c. British) last year. Nothing is going to happen to the ideological composition of the profession if there is no profession to enter. (My own department last had a tenure-track hire in the 2013-14 school year.) Moreover, smaller colleges are now contracting in size or disappearing altogether, including relatively conservative denominational campuses--a Catholic school I interviewed at when I was first on the market went under this year. What jobs does he think conservatives/centrists are going to get, exactly?
posted by thomas j wise at 4:20 PM on June 21 [9 favorites]

For a person paid to think, perhaps he should think about returning the money. Neutral relative to what? Has he never heard of the Overton window? Neutrality is commitment to fairness and impartiality. Not to laissez-faire and both-sides-ing.
posted by SnowRottie at 5:20 PM on June 21 [5 favorites]

It's very different, because phlogiston and orgone and qi are relevant to their respective fields as wrong ideas. In contrast, being conservative or liberal is of no consequence for your research or teaching activity.

I studied economic history, and I wouldn't trust a deeply conservative economic historian because that is a person continuing to hold ideas that fly in the face of the reality that they are supposed to be studying.

History isn't a matter of opinion, even if there is a lot of interpretation. But there are right and wrong interpretations - and trickle down economics just has never, ever worked.
posted by jb at 5:27 PM on June 21 [6 favorites]

anyone else remember when a swifty was something else?
*ponders this, considerably*
posted by HearHere at 5:36 PM on June 21

Praeger U and Hillsdale are hiring if he needs work, sounds like exactly his purview.
posted by nofundy at 5:44 PM on June 21

Has the author looked at the academic job market lately?

Dude is on the gravy train where he just had to write more or less exactly this article every six months, he’s in the wingnut irony tower about a hundred floors up from where you’d have to care about something like that.
posted by Artw at 6:09 PM on June 21 [6 favorites]

CONSERVATIVE: "I've been silenced for my ideas!"

LIBERAL: "Oh no! You've been censored for wanting to lower taxes?"

CONSERVATIVE: "No."

LIBERAL: "Uh, you've been silenced for wanting deregulation?"

CONSERVATIVE: "No, not that."

LIBERAL: "Then which ideas?"

CONSERVATIVE: "Oh... you know the ones..."
posted by AlSweigart at 7:22 AM on June 22 [10 favorites]

If anyone's interested enough, here's a detailed critique by economic historian Brad Delong, with a response by Teles.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 5:13 PM on June 22

So, that article provides context - Teles misses dudes who used to be buddies with Charles Murray. Hey, looks like I was right!
posted by sagc at 7:28 AM on June 24 [2 favorites]

But it kinda gives lie to the defenses of Teles you've posted, Mr.Know-it-some - he's not upset about sloppiness, or some sort of proportional representation of American political opinions in the academy. His agenda is to permit sloppiness in defense of conservativism, and skew the academy toward representing views he values. That seems like it was pretty evident to everyone here; accurate observation is not "groupthink" any more than agreeing that the sky is often blue is.
posted by sagc at 7:33 AM on June 24 [6 favorites]

And the prophet Wilhoit spake unto them, saying
"As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny."
posted by flabdablet

undeserving of serious scrutiny.

The pseudophilosophy itself is undeserving. The intent behind it – a power grab – needs the most serious of scrutiny.

What they say is not serious. What they intend to do is.
posted by Pouteria at 8:16 AM on June 24 [1 favorite]