Left Wing Academic Chickens Roosting: Right Wing Political Pressures on Universities

The lefties don’t much like it now that the shoe is on the other foot.

It takes little effort to demonstrate that university leftists have for lo these many years been brutalizing, canceling, and otherwise obstructing their academic colleagues who do not subscribe to DEI, cultural and economic Marxism, political correctness and all of their other shibboleths. The former have for decades been firing, not hiring in the first place, not promoting, imposing re-education camps, diversity statements, on the latter. All we need to do to establish these claims is to mention a few high-profile names (Peter Boghossian, Erika Christakis, Nicholas Christakis, Bruce Gilley, Charles Murray, Jordan Peterson, Amy Wax) who have been publicly victimized by such boorish and nasty behavior. We could also consult the publications of such researchers as Mitchell Langbert who demonstrates the vast professorial ideological imbalance which plague US universities. For literally hundreds of additional non “progressive” professors victimized by campus leftists, see David Acevedo (I am mentioned on this list).

              Nor is it difficult to establish that conservative political forces have been negatively reacting to these incursions. Only one name be mentioned in this context: Ron DeSantis.

              The reaction from the leftist bullies has been predictable. They feel hard done by; they maintain they have been unjustly dealt with. They are whining and crying to mommie.

For example, according to Andrew Hartman, a professor of history at Illinois State University “Complaints about social justice in academe go back decades. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the phrase ‘political correctness,’ which is akin to ‘woke,’ became widespread. But the difference between then and now is that in the 1990s, conservatives used public persuasion, not legislation, to bring awareness to what they saw as problems. The current effort in Florida to curb certain university activities by passing laws and issuing requests for DEI-related information is “ultimately, or at least potentially, extremely threatening to academic freedom in ways that nothing during the ‘80s and ‘90s was.”

              In the view of Kristen A. Renn, a professor at Michigan State University and a specialist in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender college-student issues: “What I find most troubling is that DeSantis is putting out a blueprint for other governors and state legislatures, He’s doing these things in ways that anybody else can pick this up and do it.”

              And stated Barrett J. Taylor, an associate professor of counseling and higher education at the University of North Texas: “But the extent of information — including employee names, salaries, and internal communications — that Florida’s politicians are seeking on DEI work does seem novel. That’s a different level of state intrusion into institutional independence.”

Here is the view of Francie Diep and Emma Pettit, journalists at the left-wing Chronicles of Higher Education: “The year before, the governor (De Santis) signed a law that permits students to record lectures for the purpose of filing a complaint. In recent interviews, Florida instructors referred to the law frequently, saying it has created an ‘atmosphere of surveillance’ in the classroom that makes it harder for them to discuss controversial ideas.”

              Here is my reaction to all these lefties on campus. You don’t much like this, do you? This is a case of chickens coming home to roost. Sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.  You started this. You richly deserve some sort of comeuppance. Pinkos, I call upon you to stop canceling. What goes around comes around.

This “atmosphere of surveillance” that “progressives” now whine about is exactly what the left has long done to target conservative and libertarian professors!  

Governor DeSantis famously announced: “Florida is where woke goes to die.” Part of me cheers this on; a real big part. There might be people equally appalled at political correctness, but none more than me. I resonate with this announcement of his. But I can give it only two cheers.

Why? Is this really what we want a university to be? A place where some ideas are forbidden to be discussed? Hardly. Rather, an institution of higher learning should be open to all shades of opinion (ok, ok, we’ve got to preclude a few. It would not do well to have a flat earther in the geography department, or a professor of astronomy who maintains that the sun revolves around the earth). But we do need an economic Marxist or two or even three in the economics department of a large university devoted to higher learning, as false as is this doctrine. We also need a few cultural Marxists in the departments of sociology, philosophy, political science; who else can more rational professors debate against?

The problem is not that DEI exists in academia. It is, rather, that a typical social science or humanities department will have 35 leftists and perhaps one scholar who cannot be described in such a manner. This has been demonstrated over and over again by Mitchell Langbert and his colleagues.

What, then, to do about this situation? Here is a modest proposal. There are three main political economic philosophies vying for the hearts and minds of the students: left-liberal-Marxist Democrats, right-conservative Republicans, and libertarians (who are pro private property and free enterprise as well as support the legalization of victimless crimes regarding sex, drugs and rock n roll). We should maintain affirmative action for the latter two groups until each of these three perspectives are represented by, say, at least 30% of the faculty.

Yes, affirmative action! If you want to have roughly equal representation of each of these three viewpoints, which I take to be, together, exhaustive of all intellectual perspectives, how else can that goal be attained?

True, this will take a long time. Many of the tenured commie radicals are years, decades, away from retirement. A faster way would be to just fire a passel of them, and hire replacements from the other two outlooks, until some semblance of balance was achieved. But to do so would be to abrogate tenure guarantees, previously given. Certainly, all non-tenured leftists should be immediately fired (they could be considered “non-collegial”), and their places taken by those who espouse these alternative viewpoints.

There is simply no way to get rid of the DEI virus with the present woke faculty on board. If they can no longer foment their evil doctrines, explicitly, as in assigning books by the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Robin DiAngelo, they will do so implicitly, and foment their foolish philosophy in a round about manner. They are only wicked, not entirely stupid. The “long march through the institutions” was exactly that: a long march which took decades. It cannot be overcome all at once. But affirmative action for faculty has at least a chance of reversing matters over the long haul.

At present, conservative and libertarian professors run scared. There are so many wokists out there, particularly in the administration. Self-censorship, all too often, is the order of the day. However, if this plan is in augurated, eventually, our universities will reflect all shades of opinion, not just pretty much only one of them.

pegs:

campus is left oriented:

Langbert, Mitchell. 2018. “Homogenous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty.” Acad. Quest. (2018) 31:186–197; DOI 10.1007/s12129-018-9700-x;

https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s12129-018-9700-x?shared_access_token=gp2rvi_iDtlQtFfwLwOT9fe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY6VS-9n0WALCjqT8pEbO7-xadb0R244aaF16x6E-Ch26FU5Z9ZKqKu88HBAJCKZSTb4_cMutGPHtjmD0_OnmTYdgYS5-VdrB0XC1ka4Sl19hVSvhDopTS6__WZeCjiR0Sk%3D

Langbert, Mitchell, Anthony J. Quain, and Daniel B. Klein. 2016. “Faculty Voter Registration in Economics, History, Journalism, Law, and Psychology.” Econ Journal Watch. September,

13(3), 422–451. https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology

New York Post Editorial Board. 2018. “When colleges say ‘inclusive,’ what they really mean is no conservatives.” July 22; https://nypost.com/2018/07/22/when-colleges-say-inclusive-what-they-really-mean-is-no-conservatives/

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/7/13/faculty-survey-political-leaning/

non “progressives” bullied, canceled, by campus leftists:

Acevedo, David. 2021. “Tracking ‘Cancel Culture’ in Higher Education.” March 2; https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/tracking-cancel-culture-in-higher-education#:~:text=The%20National%20Association%20of%20Scholars%20believes%20that%20cancel%20culture%20within,has%20reached%20an%20extraordinary%20level.&text=And%20in%20the%20long%20run,them%20in%20a%20downloadable%20archive

lefties object to rightist efforts for balance:

Daniel Golden and Kirsten Berg. 2020. “When elected officials impose their political views, how should a public college respond?” June 29;

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-red-state-university-blues?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_4564792_nl_Academe-Today_date_20220629&cid=at&source=&sourceid=&cid2=gen_login_refresh;

https://www.chronicle.com/article/researchers-did-a-deep-dive-into-efforts-to-restrict-critical-race-theory-heres-what-they-found?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_4800995_nl_Academe-Today_date_20220804&cid=at&source=&sourceid=&cid2=gen_login_refresh;

https://www.chronicle.com/article/tenure-without-teeth?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_4810483_nl_Academe-Today_date_20220805&cid=at&source=&sourceid=;

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-strange-secret-history-of-tenure?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_4810483_nl_Academe-Today_date_20220805&cid=at&source=&sourceid=

source of quotes of leftie whining on the part of Hartman, Renn, Taylor:

Diep and Pettit: https://www.chronicle.com/article/what-is-happening-in-florida?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_6054762_nl_Academe-Today_date_20230131&cid=at&source=&sourceid=&cid2=gen_login_refresh

https://www.chronicle.com/article/could-north-idaho-college-really-lose-its-accreditation?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_6099646_nl_Academe-Today_date_20230206&cid=at&source=&sourceid=

https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-how-censorship-happens?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_6099646_nl_Academe-Today_date_20230206&cid=at&source=&sourceid=&cid2=gen_login_refresh

https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-real-fight-for-academic-freedom?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_6099646_nl_Academe-Today_date_20230206&cid=at&source=&sourceid=