Few conservatives in Academia! Why?? Krugman knows.

[BOSSHOG]

Krugman tells the truth again. And he knows thats the number one way to piss off conservatives.

Why are there few conservatives teaching in the Academic arena? Because they believe stuff and don't know too much. And they want to force their "beliefs" on students instead of teaching knowledge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05krugman.html?th&emc=th

The sad, sad thing is conservatives believe Krugman is wrong. They are sad, sad human beings.

[Biology]

1. absolutely

As knowledge is acquired, the tendency is to shift to a more democratic view. Hence, knowledge is evil.

[joshdawg]

2. I believe Hitler said the same thing about knowledge being evil.

[MARALE]

27. The weird thing is

So does the Bible.

:crazy:

[Still_Loves_John]

38. Where?

And don't talk about the tree. The tree is the knowledge of good and evil. That's more about a loss of innocence, which you can argue against in it's own right, but that has nothing to do with knowledge itself being evil.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. Part of the problem is flat-out that they want to keep people down.

It's not uncommon for people on the right, particularly those of lower incomes, to actually discourage family members from going to college. I think the Republican leaders are actually trying to help them make that decision, both by cutting the number of Pell Grants and by telling possibly right-leaning kids that "all they're gonna do is brain wash you!"

[rodeodance]

4. see also this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x117737

[rodeodance]

5. this is scary!!

Scientific American may think that evolution is supported by mountains of evidence, but President Bush declares that "the jury is still out." Senator James Inhofe dismisses the vast body of research supporting the scientific consensus on climate change as a "gigantic hoax." And conservative pundits like George Will write approvingly about Michael Crichton's anti-environmentalist fantasies.

Think of the message this sends: today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science, or scholarship in general. It shouldn't be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party.

Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they're seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses' content.

And it wouldn't just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don't give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits.............

[izzybeans]

6. Academic Conservativism just ain't what it used to be

It used to mean post-marxist. people like Daniell Bell and Irving Kristol weren't demagogues seeking to silence their intellectual adversaries. Kristol didn't even like what was being taken on in his name. But his son, who apparently simulataneously rides daddy's coattails and has an infantile hate for intellectualism, is a PNACer.

http://www.pbs.org/arguing/nyintellectuals.html

One may not agree with these guys, I don't, but they were at the very least honest intellectually and, as I understand it, people you could still talk to and debate with civilly. Bell still wrights a bit and his book "The Coming of Post-Industrial Society" is still a pretty amazing feet all these years later.

Conservative Intellectualism died when Leo Strauss turned it into a political ideology and it morphed into the William Kristol hate-a-thon. Conservatives should be blaming this assh#le with daddy issues for ruining their place in the academy. There is no way they could make tenure because they would never survive peer review.

[Cats Against Frist]

23. That's a great link, thanks

Every freeper should have to read it -- and yes, I agree that right-wing intellectualism was hijacked by Strauss -- AND I think that people like Friedman, whose libertarian-type writings aligned nicely with the stateless facism of right-wing social institutions helped hurry along the demise, as well. Hayek and Mises -- though hostile to "libertinism," they at least recognized that you can't have a libertarian socity without it -- I can handle -- and, strangely enough, even Rand, though I don't agree with her, at all -- but it seems, at least to me, that there is an overlap with the Straussian stuff and the Mammon Jesus stuff.

I long for the days of the "yeah -- well you killed Jesus," Christian/Jewish argument. Christian nutbags and Jewish intellectuals do not a safe mix make.

[izzybeans]

37. It's always difficult to tell if there is an intention to map onto those

ideological frameworks or not. I just began reading a book called the "Sciences of Coercion" which I don't have in front of me at the moment so the author slips me. It's about the rise of communication studies and how it was underwritten by the DOD and other agencies in the infancy of the psychological warfare programs 1935-1960 (I think). many of the authors and social scientists cited in the book, Robert Merton, Paul Lazersfeld, Daniel Bell, seemed quite surprised that their works were being co-opted by both government control agencies and radical fringe groups. This wasn't nearly as bad as the Eugenics movement and neo-nazis but their research projects did lead to terms like "strategic communication" and organizations devoted to "getting the message out". There words were used to justify propaganda campaigns in war and peace time at home and abroad. Most of them were just pondering the wonders of new transportation and communication technologies, and only a few were theorizing a more direct relationship.

Even today, the narrative style of explanation prominent in some circles of feminist theory and cultural studies has been utilized as the pragmatic frame for constructing advertising campaigns-another bastard child of the social sciences according to this author, who is a professor of communication studies himself.

One more book citation that makes since of this for me, before I turn of ramble mode that is. An edited volume entitled Science, Technology and Democracy edited by Daniel Kleinman discusses in the introduction to the essays the rise of the culture wars and its relation to the academy. It seems anyone can pick up a book these days and twist it in whatever direction they want to take it. I'd love to see Jerry Falwell's take on Michel Foucault's first volume of "The History of Sexuality". That would be quite a funny site. But perhaps this would be nothing new. Marx himself denounced Marxism as something grown beyond his intention, even in its infancy before he died.

[BamaLefty]

7. Awesome Article

Thanks Bosshog!

[leftofthedial]

8. kudos to Krugman (again)

:thumbsup:

[morgan2]

9. conservative thought

consists of marketing firms and think tanks. They're focus is on how to manipulate the population, not educate them. They can't teach that out in the open at universities, and they want their voters as dumb as can be so they can manipulate them easier.

[Skinner]

10. That's a great read.

Krugman nails it.

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

11. Here's the Scientific American Editorial

Okay, We Give Up
We feel so ashamed
By The Editors

There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.

In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn't get bogged down in details.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either-so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day.

I hope this doesn't violate Fair Use -- it's only four paragraphs.

[GOPBasher]

13. Hahahahaha that's hilarious! n/t

[otohara]

15. Linky??

must post link, must post link

[librechik]

21. Here ya go O

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=2&articleID=000E555C-4387-1237-81CB83414B7FFE9F

[spooky3]

43. MSM needs to PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION to the third paragraph.

The editors are making the argument that's been made many times before--that journalists have the responsibility to write ACCURATELY, not "balanced" in the sense of presenting one side that has little factual support as if it were of equal value as the other side that has support.

[GOPBasher]

12. Krugman rocks! He tells it like it is. n/t

[Avalux]

14. Yes, Krugman tells the truth and I love him for it

:yourock:

[otohara]

16. Teachers Don't Make Enough $$$$

it's hard work, and hardly worth the money...Greed rules to GOP

[bloom]

24. Teaching does seem a bit altruistic...

for conservatives.


There is the Bush School: http://bush.tamu.edu/

but it seems the purpose of that is to drive their political ideology - not to benefit people in general/increase knowledge/etc.

[mainer]

17. National Academy of Sciences: 93% disbelieve in god

That's the survey. 93% of scientists who belong to the NAS (a highly selective group of the most distinguished scientists) either don't believe or have doubts that god exists.

I guess they're being discriminatory against people who believe the world is only 6,000 years old. Shame on them!


http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/atheism1.htm

[ProfessorPlum]

28. "Have doubts that god exists"?

I thought that number was pretty high, but if they are just including people who have "doubts", then they'd probably get a pretty high number from ordinary churchgoing people, too. I have "doubts" too. they'd probably get a pretty high number from clergymen who have "doubts". Jesus, that statistic means nothing.

I've known a lot of high powered scientists, and the mix of atheists to fire-breathing true believers is about the same as in most any other slice of society.

[w4rma]

40. "disbelieve" is not equal to "doubts". (nt)

[Bouncy Ball]

18. Conservatives don't like the money in academia.

AND they don't know much. Simple as that. The WORST, most bitter professors I ever had were self-described conservatives. They were hateful, resentful, and ineffective.

And I noticed that before I really had a lot of socio-political awareness.

[Igel]

19. Replace "conservative" by "women".

Suddenly most of Krugman's editorial becomes Summer's speech--without the caveats and hedges Summer used.

Replace "conservative" by "Negro" ... nah, let's not go there.

There undoubtedly is self-selection with women in the sciences, but notice the reason feminists give for it. In those writings, replace "women" with "conservative" and you get the conservative line on conservatives in academia.

Parallels always fascinate me.

[morgan2]

20. fair point for discussion

Although I don't really agree its an exact parallel with woman. Conservatives, I would argue, don't become proffesors as often, because conservatism promotes individualism above society. This individualism is most often manifests itself as one trying to succed under capitalism, ie making as much money as possible. This very ideal is what steers them away from teaching. A professor generally forgoes capital, to pursue either knowledge or teaching as their goal in life.

Woman on the other hand, I dont think its fair to argue are not prevalent in the scientific teaching positions because of a philosophy of "being a woman." I don't think there is really any common ideas of being a woman that would apply. The argument over why woman aren't as prevalent in these fields is more of a nature versus nurture debate.

[Igel]

29. It's not an exact parallel, you're right.

If you back off and generalize a bit, you get "Both conservatives and women makes choices that affect their fitness for academic careers." Conservatives probably do go into private business more often than progressives, and women do make choices that make it harder for them to have tenure. (Without getting into the (un)fairness of the consequences of the choices or any of the huge number of complications.)

[athena]

35. I'm sorry, but as a woman scientist, I say this is bullshit.

Being a woman is not a choice. Being a conservative is.

[Cats Against Frist]

22. If we're dealing, largely, in stereotypes:

I am about to graduate with an MFA in poetry writing, of all things, and my religious code (my own made-up, "Pseudo-Gnostic Christian Buddhist Church of Thomas Jefferson,") requires that I wear solid-colored, black, ankle-length dresses, no make-up, and wear my hair long, down my back. I'm a "plain dresser" of the Amish sort -- though I'm definitely not Amish. And I wash my hair about once a week.

I have undergrad degrees in political science and journalism. My main areas of interest are critical and literary theory, political philosophy, experimental poetry & cross-genre fiction. My political affiliation is that of a libertarian socialist/anarchist, who hates the monetary system. AND I believe that all religions that stem from the early canonical compilations of the Catholic church worship the Anti-Christ.

Now let's say I breeze up to the front door of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition HQ, and ask to be put in a high-profile, client-interfacing PR, fundraising or accounting position.

Case closed.

The social sciences are PRODUCTS of modernity. Hence, the only classes with scholarly validity, from a classical perspective, would be those that teach a critique of the social sciences. For instance, I took a "Modern Political Philosophy" class from a right-wing, Catholic nut job that made us read C.S. Lewis, Thomas Howard, Gerhardt Niemeyer, Victor Frankl, etc. -- made us read them rip apart Weil, Rousseau, Descartes, Voltaire, Nietchze, etc.

I learned a lot, but the class should have been called "A Critique of Modern Political Philosophy," -- and if Daniel Pipes or David Horovitz, or any of those other assholes want to start a college or a department that teaches those things -- by all means, they have the right.

But to school someone, in say, "social work," or "psychology," you have to look at the main empirical research that has been conducted in the field -- as social sciences ARE, at least partly, beholden to the scientific method and sound research models -- particularly the stuff that gets published. Qualitative analysis is permitted, but to a smaller extent, and is considered somewhat anecdotal -- and IS delineated from empirical research.

Where does empiricism and the scientific method come from? MODERNITY. There are no social sciences without modernity.

But, isn't that the point -- to destroy the "psychobabble" and sociology that recognizes the splitting, projecting and scapegoating that has to take place for an authoritarian/totalitarian personality to develop -- and discredit the modern philosophers who not only paved the way for secularism, democracy and egalitarianism, but undermined the ruling class, the ruling church and the divine right of kings -- all of which was based on non-rational magical thinking -- much like fascism.

Hence, you have your motive.

***edited to add: I'm really a postmodernist, so I do recognize the classical claims that totalitarianism is actually a product of modernity. Both modernity and the philosophies of religion and order can lead to totalitarianism -- interestingly enough, "history's actors," have flipped the argument 180 degrees from where it was about 50 years ago.

Who are the totalitarians, now? (Bitches?)

[understandinglife]

25. Knowledge: what fanatics and tyrants always fear the most (nt)

www.missionnotaccomplished.us (reflect, learn, share, plan -- the future is what we make it)

[n2doc]

26. Why not talk about how few liberals there are in the White House?

I mean, come on, let's make everything as "proportional" as possible. I want to see equal numbers (51:49%, remember?) of conservatives and Liberals in ALL state and government jobs! Including the military and police! What? no one wants to make things "fair"? :sarcasm:

[BlueManDude]

30. Been using this line for years - they believe things but don't know squat

[Undercover Owl]

32. I've known it for years too.

In High school a student calmly said, following a lecture about fossils, "I guess that blows the Bible out of the water".
Another student spoke up and angrily retorted, "no, the Bible blows science out of the water!"

Sigh....:eyes:

Don't they realize how ignorant and pigheaded this makes them look?

[SemperEadem]

31. When schools have a "conservative arts" curriculum

Then the number of conservatives in Academia will increase.

Most colleges and universities have a "Liberal Arts" curriculum for a reason... to expand the mind and encourage independent thinking as opposed to regurgitation of fantasies, erroneous theories and fear-based mentality.

[progressoid]

33. "conservative arts" Wow, what an oxymoron

That would be some scary curricula.

[Old and In the Way]

34. Why do they call it "Liberal Arts" and not "Conservative Arts"

Because it's all about knowing more, not less.

[bloom]

36. kick

:kick:

[Lindacooks]

39. It's the intelligence, stupid!!

Face it, Repukes just aren't as smart.

[Charon]

41. Few Conservatives

Does anyone know what the break down by academic discipline of Lib. vs. Con. is?

[Nikki Stone 1]

42. Krugman is the one living person I would call a hero

He's hit the nail on the head again.

[LittleClarkie]

44. More liberals in academia

Why does no one rail against the over-abundance of conservatives in business and commerce and finance.

For that reason, I don't get why folks rail against colleges having more liberals. So what? Other professions have their biases as well.

Meanwhile, what social institutions DO the Conservatives like? It seems they're railing against almost everything somehow.

[amazona]

45. we all know iwhy but we're too polite to say it

I think we can be honest here and acknowledge that, on average, liberals are more intelligent than conservatives. I don't know why we even humor them by pretending otherwise. Just trying to be nice I guess. It just makes sense to me that more smart people would be successful in academia than stupid people.

[imenja]

46. it's education rather than innate intelligence

Higher education prompts people to question what they are told. Conservatism requires that one accept the dominant power structures of society, which academics, in the liberal arts, at least are trained to question. There are, of course, many liberals who believe only what they choose to believe, that which is politically convenient. We see their posts on DU every day.

Another likely explanation is that smart conservatives go into fields where they can actually make money. Academia does not offer high salaries.