Conservative students at Duke University, twice my alma mater, created a small tempest recently with charges that the faculty in certain departments lack intellectual diversity.
From the Chronicle, the Duke newspaper:
[A] Duke Conservative Union advertisement in Monday's edition of The Chronicle that claimed the University lacks intellectual diversity…The advertisement listed the break-down of faculty members' political affiliations--Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated--for each of eight humanities departments, based on a cross-reference of Duke's departmental faculty lists with North Carolina voter registration records. According to DCU, 142 of the faculty members and deans included in the survey are registered Democrats, 28 are unaffiliated and 8 are registered Republicans.
Via TNH’s Making Light, I located a wonderful article by Michael Berbube in the Journal of Higher Education. The article is only tangentially related to the subject of this post, but it is well worth reading. I did note the following passage:
I've been watching the evolution of campus conservatism for more than 20 years now. I remember vividly the reaction of Accuracy in Academia, Reed Irvine's slightly nutty group that tried to recruit vocal right-wing students to report on and root out "liberal bias" in the classroom. Accuracy in Academia has largely disappeared from public view, but conservative activists have kept up the complaint about liberal campus "bias" all the same, and after September 11 some of their efforts have taken an especially nasty turn… the at-large culture warrior David Horowitz has begun a dramatic campaign to urge alumni and state legislatures to initiate a "diversity" hiring program to bring more conservative faculty members to the nation's universities.
Take for instance the case of Nicholas Spaeth. Spaeth is the former Attorney General of South Dakota. He is also a former executive at Intuit which makes the Turbo Tax Software. Mr. Spaeth was recently hired as a Senior Vice President and chief legal officer at H&R Block. H&R Block’s reasons for hiring him sound like the decision was based on merit. Mr. Norquist is very upset that H&R Block hired Spaeth. Spaeth's sin? He is a Democrat. The Washington Post reports (link via Seeing the Forest):
Republican activists were chattering and e-mailing one another yesterday about H&R Block -- and it wasn't about getting their taxes done.They were angry that the tax and financial services preparation company had recently hired Nicholas J. Spaeth, a Democrat, as the company's senior vice president and chief legal officer…
Republicans feel very strongly about this type of thing. They've organized the "K Street Project," an effort to identify the partisan ties of lobbyists so the White House and others will know who's a loyal Republican and who's not…
"They run a Democratic shop. They're insulting to Republicans. They don't understand Republicans," said Grover Norquist, one of the forces behind the K Street Project.
Linda McDougall, vice president for corporate communications at H&R Block, said Spaeth's politics, whatever they might be, had nothing to do with his appointment or with his work.
"We looked at skills in doing the job, not in the points of view," she said.
She noted that the company's political action committee contributions for the 2001-2002 campaign cycle and for 2003 were split 50-50 between Republican and Democratic candidates. She also said Sarah Wilson, a legislative assistant in the Washington office, worked for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush.The company's even-handed PAC contributions did not impress Norquist.
"That is so 1984. So they have no interest in legislation in this town?" Norquist said. "That is so lazy."
If Duke actually used Democratic Party membership as a hiring criterion, Horowitz would bust a blood vessel. Grover Norquist, on the other hand, explicitly advocates H&R Block looking at party registration in hiring.
Please note Norquist’s implicit threat to H&R Block:
So they have no interest in legislation in this town?" Norquist said.
Norquist makes clear that in Republican controlled Washington, legislation is passed not on the basis of the merits but based on whether the constituents for such legislation hire only Republicans, give money exclusively to Republicans and toe the Republican line. Companies that have the nerve to hire Democrats will not get a fair hearing on legislation.
Suppose a university refused to provide research support, office space or funding to any department that had the nerve to hire a Republican. Can you imagine the outcry if a university president upon being informed that a Republican history professor had been hired, had commented, “that is so 1994, don’t they care about university support for the history department?” What, for instance, would David Horowitz reaction be to that?
Posted by Dwight Meredith at February 12, 2004 04:16 PM | TrackBackVery interesting.
I'm one of many who have wondered why so many far lefties are in academia. I knew of two quasi-socialists who were professors when I went to college & it really didn't matter all that much, except when they'd participate in propaganda during a lecture that had nothing to do with their political rhetoric at the time.
I mean, what really *is* the rationale for saying that Ronald Reagan wanted to create a fascist society via tax cuts when the topic is supposed to be the regulations government considered vis-a-vis Standard Oil in the early 20th century? :)
Posted by: Ricky at February 12, 2004 05:29 PMThe way many republicans and their ilk spit out the words "liberal" and "democrat" as epithets, curses, or worse--well, there seems to be a group of people with an inherent, emotional need to bully others.
--ventura county, ca
Posted by: Darryl Pearce at February 12, 2004 05:33 PMRicky, there is nothing in the Duke story to suggest that there are an abundance of liberals in academia. It suggests that there are Democrats in the Duke University humnanities departments.
There are plenty of conservatives in other departments. My guess is that most of the falculty of the Duke med school are republicans for instance.
Posted by: dwight meredith at February 12, 2004 05:38 PMRicky:
Perhaps the point was to make you remember the discussion and the subject matter; apparently it worked. Sounds like a good educator to me.
Obviously, a good article, but forgive me if I'm still laughing at the idea that a group of Duke University students have tied their panties in knots because their professors lack intellectual diversity. Well, I guess it takes one to know one, which is why the kettle is often so well-positioned to call the pot black. No offense to anyone, but on the whole . . . teeming with intellectual diversity is not how I would have characterized the undergraduate Duke University student body.
Posted by: Barbara at February 13, 2004 08:29 AMSlightly OT, but a well-timed firebomb at one of Grover Norquists' weekly meetings could do a lot for the leftist cause in this country...
Posted by: zjo at February 13, 2004 04:58 PMRicky, there is nothing in the Duke story to suggest that there are an abundance of liberals in academia.
I was just chattering, Dwight. Nothing untoward in any way was even in my mind as it pertained to politics, just forwarding a weird scene @ my college.
Posted by: Ricky at February 13, 2004 08:58 PMBérubé (not "Berbube", which is what Superbowl fans saw during halftime) wrote fearlessly about the dishonesty and cognitive dissonance of the right's culture warriors in the essays collected in his book, Public Access. No question that those guys would prefer the hiring of Democrats in academe to be as rare as it seems to be at the top of the corporate hierarchy.
Posted by: Mr Ripley at February 15, 2004 01:36 AMThere is a pronounced conservative backlash by activist students on campuses where the faculty is dominated by liberal left wingers that has gone beyond the protest stage and entered the alternative organization, political in-fighting stage.
Anyone who lives in or near a college community is well aware that these colleges harbour enormous populations of influential liberal democrats. With the advent of Students as a powerful voting bloc in local elections, this emergence of conservatism is of great concern to the democratic party machine which controls this bloc of votes---thus the great whining and wailing you hear in the liberal media.
Horowitz is a member of my generation...the SIXTIES RADICALS who have now shifted their focus to the welfare state as the enemy of freedom and liberty. In my state, Maine, there are community based---to be sure, run by far left activists, movements to 'reform' the vast Department of Human Resources. One cutting edge issue are removals of children from their parents--last year over 30 were taken in birthing wards from 'unfit' mothers!
How ironic that the DHS is the creature of the liberal democrat welfare state say the Conservatives.....and they are right and students are well advised to adopt conservative viewpoints or else it will be their newborne child who the welfare state takes next. If a woman has the right to terminate the life of her unborne child; why doesn't she have the right to decide where it will be educated and the choice of schools?
Its a good article, but. There is no point in trying to reason or expect consistency, truth or any sort of decency from the Republican Party. They are simply power-mad and we have to beat them and keep beating them until they are completely defunct. Our aim as Democrats has to be to destroy the Republican party and all the institutions that back it, like the current gang of K street lobbyists.
Posted by: CalDem at February 16, 2004 11:14 PM