The Elusive Goal of Intellectual Diversity

[grok]

http://www.ornery.org/cgi-bin/printer_friendly.cgi?page=/essays/warwatch/2003-11-30-1.html <FULL TEXT>

By Orson Scott Card

November 30, 2003

It's hardly a surprise that most universities are committed to political correctness -- you can hardly get a job at an American university these days unless you can show you are "committed" to "diversity."

As a friend of mine on the faculty of a western university wrote not long ago, "higher education may have other litmus tests for ideological conformity, but the you-better-believe-in-diversity test is the only one that isn't hidden."

Ironically, the result of this absolute insistence on a commitment to diversity is ... a lack of diversity.

When the administration and faculty have all had to make the same affirmation in order to get their jobs, how likely is it that anyone will use their "academic freedom" to question a doctrine that they have already declared they believe in?

<snip>

Interestingly, this essay suggests "Affirmative Action" as a possible solution. What say you?

Grok

[coda]

1. His rehashed Horowitz is in dire need of some diversity.

"Ironically, the result of this absolute insistence on a commitment to diversity is ... a lack of diversity."


Well, that is ironic. Obviously, an affirmative action program that insists on hiring 50% faculty members that are committed to zero diversity would make for a great balance.



To make a point, he uses a student written letter to the campus paper. He then adds, "...and, surprisingly, the letter was published." LOL. Gee, how did that happen on this repressive, politically correct campus?

Kind of belies the point the author is trying to make, doesn't it?


In this letter to the campus paper, the student, writes, "Of 84 faculty members whose voter registration we could determine definitively, 79 professors (or 94%) were registered as Democrats, while only 5 professors (or 6%) were registered as Republicans. This represents a nearly 16:1 imbalance."

He uses the writer's 84 faculty member "sample" as representative. What university is this? How many TOTAL faculty members are there at this unnamed University? Obviously not important enough to find out.


He also uses his correspondence with a military officer. "I recently had a chance to correspond with a military officer who was doing graduate work at a major university."

There isn't any attempt to confirm, with even one faculty member, that everything being stated was fact. That isn't to say the military officer was lying, it's just that -- only -- his perspective of the situtation was used as fact of what happened. Oops. Could be the "diversity" of other's views might affect the point he's attempting to make.

If anyone who went to college and had the following happen:

"But within two months," he reports, "most of the faculty members considered me a friend, despite our differences in world-view."

I think they would consider themselves officially "embraced" and in a fairly narrow time frame, to boot.

Kind of belies the point the author was trying to make, doesn't it?


Oh, and by the way, his column from the week before? "Zell Miller Tries to Save the Democratic Party" :eyes:

[pscot]

2. Affirmative action is the answer.

A hiring plan that requires college faculties to have at least half their members with IQ s of 100 or less. Bound to scoop up some republicans that way.

[karnac]

3. Politcs on campus are cutthroat sometimes

When I went to SFSU years ago, I volunteered to register voters at a get-out-the-vote democratic table all day. Ther was no republican table. We registered about 150 or so Democrats, about 10 independents and about 25 Republicans. At the end of the day, our coordinator separated the the republican registrations out and tossed them in the nearest receptacle. I was tempted to say something but never did.

But then again, the stakes are so high now. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. Not sure I could though.

[chasqui]

4. similar subtle things happened at UW Madison

There was virtually no 'get out the vote' operations in the areas of that campus where Science and Engineering resided. The reason for that was, well, the vast majority of science and engineering types are lilly white.

[Cocoa]

5. I don't believe it

I was there when Donna Shalala was there, and didn't see ANY of the stuff that was supposedly happening.

What are you talking about, where was this lily-white area? And what get out the vote operation are you talking about?

[grok]

7. Well, I've never seen that.

And since, I've never noticed that, perhaps such tactics never happen.

One thing I have noticed though at publc universities, there usually is a dearth of public political postings of one side and not the other. Almost as if one side has the gall and temerity to post an opposing view or event, it is immediately torn down by the other. I wonder if that is done with the sanction of the faculty. It seems it would have to. I don't know. But I've seen similar unexplained inconsistencies at Berkeley, Gatech, UW and UNC when I traveled.

Anybody else notice anything similar?

[Cocoa]

6. this movement is so stupid

it's the latest campaign of the VRWC.

[Snazzy]

8. Hmmm... a little spin perhaps?

So, what, we attempt to turn the affirmative action issue on it's head by saying that we need more conservatives and true believers in academia?

What a load of crap.

Interesting that Orson Scott Card is such a popular guy over at Freeperville. Him and Zell get done blowin' each other yet?

Also interesting is your choice of articles here Grok.

[karnac]

11. Affirmative action is too much of a stretch

Conservative or Libertarian ideas should live or die their own merit in Academia. It would be absurd to prop them up artificially. Frankly, they would more easily be challenged if actually faced instead of simply dismissed. Tolerance would be a better option. So you can see what your foe is doing and thinking.

What is automatically dismissed can come back to bite you if you don't understand it. This phenomena started in the 50;s so the cons went elsewhere. Those neocon and paleocon thinktanks have become very dangerous because they are so separate. And we are not so privy to their research till it's far far too late.. Yet they understand us more than we understand them. Strangely, they have a bunch of progressive people in them. I remember a couple years back a VERY leftist politico from Santa Cruz was added to the staff of the Hoover institution. Probably to keep discussion and vetting dynamic and interesting. The idea production is extremely high, even if the ideas are flawed

I was just listening to Camille Paglia discussing this very subject on CSPAN. Her beef on this is that conservatives have been driven from the humanities almost entirely. into engineering, science, business and whatever. The result of which the lack of new ideas,thinking, new approaches. Just repetitive dogma with a lack of flexibility. And of course neither side knowing each other well.

Camille is such an odd duck. Lesbian, Liberal AND libertarian in freedom thought. And totally anti-iraq war.

[alarimer]

9. well

I think the reason that conservatives or Republicans are so underrepresented at some universities may be that the conservative worldview does not seem to lend itself to intellectual curiosity or openness of mind. Or possibly they are more interested in the private sector where they can make tons of money and less interested in preparing students for the future. But where I went to school (in deep south Alabama), democrats were an endangered species. There was a young Republicans club but no young Democrats. I have no idea of the politics of the faculty. I suspect that some departments at all universities tend to be more liberal than others.

[karnac]

12. Not the same.

Liberal in thought is NOT the same as Liberal in ideology. Hell, the Nazis held the world in terror for a short while with their superior war machines and technology. That's because they usually allowed vettings and debate on technical issues. And they were NOT liberal in ideology by any means.

Even then, the nazis failed in ONE small way in this realm And it was fatal to them.

Now this a mighty stretch but it illustrates the costs of limiting ideas and discussion, in this case science.

Jews, before WWII were a people willing to adapt themselves almost completely to any nation,culture, politics where ever the lived. This was even true in Germany where they fought valiantly on the side of the Kaiser in WW1.

In comes Nazism and excludes Jews from all academia, not to mention the rest of society. Every vestige is erased. Writings, theory. Even as to certain atomic physics theory which are deemed "too Jewish".

WWII comes and the Germans try to build the atomic bomb first to win a losing battle against the Allies. BUT they are handicapped by the fact they just kicked out the BEST physicists in the world as WELL as their ideas and learning.

Guess who won and who did. The side willing to listen to new and different ideas. And take in the expatriate Jewish scientists.

[Bobby Digital]

10. Interesting read (n/t)