On Paul Krugman, Liberal Academia, And God
By Brian Wise (04/12/05)
Liberalism is the only political movement that forthrightly denies it has any influence. Take the media (please). Disavowing the existence of a liberal media (Republicans call it Old Media) became such a chore for the Left that Eric Alterman finally took it upon himself to prove there was no such thing. Beginning with a dismissive closing argument (“What liberal media?”) and working his way backward, Alterman convinced himself – and a publisher – not only that the liberal media didn’t exist, but that it hadn’t ever existed. All in all, Alterman’s book was an amusing little piece of stick-to-itiveness, but no more honest or convincing than any of the old denials about Old Media, or the courts, classroom, and entertainment industry.
Enter Paul Krugman, who every time you see him looks more and more like the Unabomber’s little brother. Last Monday (5 April), Krugman began his column this way: “It’s a fact, documented by two recent studies, that registered Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives make up only a small minority of professors at elite universities. But what should we conclude from that?” I thought, Aren’t non-conservatives self-proclaimed, too? And then I thought, Wow, he didn’t deny it. But instead of denying that liberals dominate campuses, he attempted to explain it, which turned out much less believable than a simple denial would have been.
Krugman suggests that conservatives see the lack of fellow conservatives on campus “as compelling evidence of liberal bias in university hiring and promotion.” Leave it to liberals … they have the innate ability to see through every Republican who was ever “legacied” into Yale, yet they think nothing of academia’s nearly universal like-mindedness or its ideological hiring practices. What else would you call a group of people who wouldn’t hire someone because he thinks differently than they do? Equal opportunity pioneers?
“Claims that liberal bias keeps conservatives off college faculties almost always focus on the humanities and social sciences, where judgments about what constitutes good scholarship can seem subjective to an outsider.” I note this line and pause here only to point out just how easily “outsider” rolls off the tongues and fingertips of elitist academics, who seem to forget that parents are also technically “outsiders,” just outsiders who contribute large sums of money toward their salaries. One can accept a certain self-protectionism, even while wondering why, with academia, self-protectionism always seems to bridge the gap into becoming isolation.
“But studies that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why? One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering.” Which is the roundabout way of saying the exact same thing about Republicans that Harvard president Larry Summers said about women, minus the fake outrage, manufactured controversy, and “no confidence” vote. If Summers was wrong about women then Krugman is wrong about Republicans, though we may have to wait for a clarification of this week’s prevailing wisdom.
Allowing that there are few Republicans in the “hard sciences,” does it always logically follow that Republicans as a group aren’t interested; and allowing that it’s mostly Republicans seeking out business and history, what does that say for Democrats’ intellectual curiosity for those subjects, if any?
None of this really vexes Krugman as much as he lets on; a columnist has to write so many words a week, and sometimes it doesn’t matter where they come from. What really bothers him about Republicans on the faculty is that they may bring God into important ideological discussions, and … well, he doesn’t think serious people believe in God. For this Krugman sites Florida State Representative Dennis Baxler, who is sponsoring something called The Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, which would afford college students the right to sue schools if their “academic freedoms” are infringed upon. How will we know? The “Independent Florida” explains that professors who “use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class” could have bullseyes on their foreheads. Representative Baxler takes it a step further: “Some professors say, ‘Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design, and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,’” which would also be lawsuit worthy.
Krugman could have made a fine point about Republicans fighting to end abuse of the courts while saying nothing about things like the Academic Freedom Bill of Rights, and he would have been on to something. Several Republicans, including this one, would have nodded. (Certainly I am sympathetic to the plight of conservative students in unfriendly classrooms, and I recoil at the idea of a 19-year-old being put through his Socratic paces, but I doubt that opening new avenues to sensitivity driven court-clogging will solve much of anything.)
Instead, Krugman takes this path: “In its April Fools' Day issue, Scientific American published a spoof editorial in which it apologized for endorsing the theory of evolution just because it's ‘the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time,’ saying that ‘as editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.’ And it conceded that it had succumbed ‘to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do.’” Furthermore, “The editorial was titled ‘O.K., We Give Up.’ But it could just as well have been called ‘Why So Few Scientists Are Republicans These Days.’”
Now we know why “Scientific American” has never been confused with “The Onion.” But still, its parody – and Krugman’s endorsing it – proves thought provoking. If the standard for debate is now that only people who are qualified to discuss a subject should be taken seriously when that subject arises, the Left had better be prepared to jettison about three-quarters of its most popular activist voices, up to and including Streisand, Turner, Affleck, Moore, Garofalo, Bono, Franken, Maher, Dowd, Krugman …
And if evolution is such a forgone conclusion, why are there still apes?
“Think of the message this sends: today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science, or scholarship in general. It shouldn't be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party.” When exactly have scholars have respect for the Republican party, at least since the time Buckley was going to Yale? “Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they're seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses' content.”
“And it wouldn't just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don't give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits.”
See the previous points, and add these questions: What honest, intelligent Republican denies the importance of slavery in early America, and what is so wrong with teaching competing economic theories? Are these things that actually concern Krugman, or are they things he reflexively writes when worried that he may someday have to sit next to a professor who believes in God?
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