Anyway, my friend wanted me to read James Piereson's piece "The Left University: How It was Born; How It Grew; How to Overcome It" from the October 3 issue of the Standard. Because I'm a lefty English professor working at a state school--and because he thinks most of my colleagues are doofuses--he wanted to know what I thought about the piece. He and I often joke that the magazines that arrive in his P.O. Box and those that arrive in mine are like "matter and anti-matter." Still, he wanted my thoughts (or, perhaps more accurately, my reaction).
In some ways, Piereson was predictable, even disappointing, because "The Left University" is really close to contributing something meaningful; it is hobbled, I think, by Piereson's unfortunate need to write for his audience, to say things like "This is the so-called 'diversity' ideology to which every academic dean, provost, and president must pledge obedience and devotion." Hell, I'd be happy if I could determine from one day to the next the ideology to which my provost and president had "pledged obedience." I recognize, though, that this largely boils down to the matter of audience, to the matter of matter and anti-matter. Piereson's got a story to sell, here. I respect that. Some weeks it's just Arthur Danto and Stuart Klawans that lure me past the first ten pages of The Nation.
Still, if folks like Piereson are concerned about the state of the academy, it's probably worth conversation. In the first part of the seven-part article, he writes:
As it happens, the contemporary university is diverse only as a matter of definition and ideology, but not in practice or reality. A recent national survey of college faculty by Stanley Rothman, Robert Lichter, and Neil Nevitte showed that over 72 percent held liberal and left of center views, while some 15 percent held conservative views. The survey also found that, over time, and especially since 1980, academic opinion has moved steadily leftward as the generation shaped by the 1960s has taken control of academe. In the humanities and social sciences, where political views are more closely related to academic subject matter, the distribution of opinion is even more skewed to the left. Unlike professors in the past, moreover, many contemporary teachers believe it is their duty to incorporate their political views into classroom instruction. Thus students at leading colleges report that they are subjected to a steady drumbeat of political propaganda in their courses in the humanities and social sciences.
I should note that this passage--and the one I quoted above--are really about as bad as it gets (though there are some doozies in part seven). And I suspect that this is where he's really trying to connect with Kristol's audience. Cool. Whatever. I read that Rothman, Lichter, and Nevitte study this afternoon. In fact, I've been meaning to read it for a couple of months, as the LRF keeps mentioning it (an indication that the study has pretty well permeated print media on the right); his concern is largely with the final sentence of that passage, above: "Thus students at leading colleges . . ." Whence the thus? Seriously. The study isn't concerned with the damage we're doing to young minds.
Instead, it is concerned largely with the hiring and promotion of "conservative" faculty at universities around the country. It's an interesting study. In addition to surveying the general political positions of professors (in terms of "liberal" "left of center" or "conservative"), Rothman, Lichter, and Nevitte also asked professors to rate how strongly they agree or disagree with six "attitude items," (just to be sure they know what they mean by "liberal"). They find that "conservative" faculty may have a slight disadvantage in hiring and promotion, but that the issue warrants further study.
Piereson uses the study primarily as a hook, inviting much of his audience to see a correlation between the way faculty identify themselves in a survey and, well, what, exactly? Ruin? The rest of the article is actually a reasonable and concise history of the academy in the twentieth century. Ironically, however, it's stale news for a weekly, as its broader outlines closely echo (tho' from a conservative perspective) books like Achieving Our Country, the published version of Richard Rorty's William E. Massey lectures from 1997. It's old news. Piereson, in a tone that often appears to be a concession to an audience he cannot imagine is likely to have continued reading his article, outlines, in parts two through six, the development of what Rorty called a "cultural left" in the academy (to his credit, Piereson even nods as respectfully as he can in this context to Dewey). That left is definitely there (I promise, however, that my dean, provost, and president have not pledged obedience to it). Check this out: I think it's even worth talking about.
Mostly, I wish Piereson had started his article the way he ended it, by pointing out that "Intellectual pluralism, the search for truth, and respect for the heritage of free institutions are neither conservative nor left-liberal ideals." Hell, I don't even mind the assertion that "The left university should not be replaced by the right university. It should be replaced by the real university, dedicated to liberal education and higher learning." Not so bad. Much, much better than scary, spurious obedience pledging by all manner of administrators and faculty.
But this is probably why, outside of Encinal (pop. 650), audience-oriented political press really stands little chance of leading to real conversation. Or progress.
UPDATE (a discussion worth bringing to the fore from the comments - Helmut):
Eric Gordy said... Piereson's analysis is definitely not the worst I have read on the topic! But there are a couple of things that always bother me about this type of analysis. First, what people like Lichter and his associates (first in their studies of media, now in their studies of universities) call "left" are positions that back in my activist days I would have called "right" -- this would suggest that there is probably more diversity in the range of political approaches than surveys like their would indicate. More fundamentally, there seems to be an operating assumption that what we do in classrooms is stand in front trying to persuade people to share our political views. I honestly do not know anybody of any persuasion who does this, and most of the time it is a big enough challenge to be sure that the students understand the material (this isn't to say that we all don't slip in the occasional snide political remark or joke, but that sort of thing probably does not rise to the sort of importance that would call the identity of the institution into question). Maybe the trouble has to do with the Enlightenment approach more generally, in which we stick to the liberal-arts conception that educated and "critical thinking" people are in some way equipped to find their way through life. But for universities to give up on this would really require a major reorientation, which I doubt any of the people now working in them would favor. 10:07 AM
As for the classroom: yeah, that's where the whole discussion begins and goes on, and on, with the LRF. He's convinced we're bending young minds--and like many on the "right," he's also convinced that what this translates to is a kind of reckless relativism. But as Helmut pointed out months ago, most of our students have to be talked out of their uncritical relativism once they arrive on campus.
10:20 AM