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| An ivory tower at All Souls College, Oxford By Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32343526 |
Solidarity usefully reprints a short article by the well-known retired professor and gadfly, Harvey Graff. Entitled The Myth of the Left-Wing Professors, it's accompanied by a short introduction by David Finkel. Key grafs include these:
Among the most distorted and damaging myths of higher education is the ideologically driven and profoundly anti-intellectual myth of “the predominance and indoctrination of left-wing university professors.”...
By “myth,” I do not mean false or fictitious. Regardless of any question of truth or accuracy, myths aren’t circulated or accepted by some people if they do not accord with certain recognizable elements. Nor does falseness limit the spread, selective influence, and damaging effects of myth. That fundamental point is too often missed by media commentators and even among scholars in history, politics, literature or anthropology.
Today’s political and cultural crisis of misrepresentation of professors’ ideological conduct and misconduct can only be understood in historical context. For the full millennium of their history, universities have been avowedly culturally and politically conservative.
I actually agree with much of this. The first paragraph claims that the "myth" has two parts, namely the "predominance" and "indoctrination" of "left-wing university professors." Predominance is mythic because today's professors aren't "left-wing" at all, but are instead merely centrist "liberals," such as dominated American politics from FDR through the Obama administrations. I don't think this is true--today's professors are--by and large--way more reality-deprived than, say, staunch liberals like John Kenneth Galbraith or Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But ok, if Mr. Graff wants to relabel professors as "liberal," then sure--I'll let him have at it. But just for clarity I'll describe the polarization in this country as being "left" and "right," even if it's not precise terminology.
Mr. Graff denies that professors engage in "indoctrination." I agree with him there. It's not like they don't try--it's rather that they don't succeed. I think the fastest growing political groups on campuses these days include the Young Republicans--a phenomenon almost certainly in response to the very illiberal political correctness and kooky wokeness that now dominates faculty opinion.
Mr. Graff's second paragraph is more true than he probably realizes. People--on both the left and right--don't choose their opinions on the basis of "facts" or dispassionate argument. Instead we engage in status competitions with each other. Our opinions reflect group affiliation and shared values. Mr. Graff is clearly a cheerleader for his left group, as witnessed by the irrational and emotional invective he directs toward his political enemies.
The third paragraph is the truest of all. Professors were not just conservative in the past, but they're ultra-conservative today. I think reactionary is a better description. They steadfastly try to maintain the sanctity of the faculty guild. They're against most technological progress, notably fracking and, more recently, artificial intelligence. Some of them even want to ban airplanes!
Mr. Graff's view hearkens back to a time when university faculty derived their status from medieval guilds. In those days literacy was rare, books were reproduced by copying by hand, and nobody had yet invented the e-reader. The faculty really was a special bastion of literacy and learning. Some of this still obtained back when I was a grad student: the chemistry literature filled an entire library of bound volumes, to which only members of the academy had access.
But today all residue of guild privilege has evaporated. Research results are now distributed on-line, and important results made public long before the referees have put on their eye-glasses. Indeed, the whole referee/gate-keeping/publication treadmill seems hopelessly out of date. Today's coin of the realm are blog posts, social media conversations and YouTube videos. The professors are left in the dust.
It looks to get worse. These days AI can complete almost any homework assignment in the undergraduate curriculum. I have no idea what the future effect of that will be, but enhanced status for the professoriate does not seem a likely outcome.
Today's professors have competition from all sorts of very smart people outside of academe. And if there's one thing that professors can't stand, it's competition. The faculty want to put that competition back in the box, and to reassure academics that they still have access to the special rights and privileges not granted to other citizens under the Constitution. These privileges come under the rubric of academic freedom.
Which may be briefly summarized this way:
- Faculty should have a right to tenure.
- Faculty should have unlimited power to hire and tenure other faculty.
- Faculty should be totally in charge of the curriculum.
- Faculty should get unlimited funds from federal and state governments which they can spend any way they want with no accountability whatsoever.
Ohio’s new state-mandated (anti-) diversity centers on five public university campuses is a major transparent case in point. Based on false claims and anti-intellectual, anti-diversity mandates, they substitute limited views and narrow requirements. State Senator Jerry Cirino’s legislative efforts to reduce public higher to a tragic mockery of freedom of speech and fact-based pursuit of knowledgeable interpretation sputter — rising again with SB1 passing recently.
In other words, the Ohio state legislature has determined that "diversity" lies outside the Overton Window for university faculty in Ohio. That may or may not be the proper limit (I think it's probably too restrictive), but the state legislature has every right to pass that law.
We all have a constitutional right to free speech. But nobody has a constitutional right to be a professor in the state of Ohio. If you are a professor in the state of Ohio, then you need to live within the Overton Window in your professional life. In your personal life (eg, on your private Facebook account) you can say whatever you damn well please.
Free speech for individuals is absolute. Speech by academics acting within their professional capacity has to be within bounds that benefit the community and the institution. Those limits are ultimately set by the people who pay the bills. It can't be otherwise.
Further Reading:
