Diversity of Everything but Thought

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

blatham wrote:

finn

It was a bit high-handed, wasn't it. Sorry, I'll extract your name from the list and put it on "probatory" status. You're only moderately nuts on this one and your reputation suffers damage from the company you keep.

This is a fight I won't let pass. Academic freedom and indeed, freedom of ideas will not be advanced through overt or covert manipulation by operatives from a political party. If anything might be clear, that ought to be.

ps...my response to the critique of Krugman is within what you've just quoted above (in red)

High handed indeed, but no less to suggest that Foxfyre and Baldimo are some sort of intellectual neanderthals.

Don't pass on the fight, but don't resort to the intellectually low device of ad hominem attacks.
"Neanderthalism" wasn't the charge. Fixed ideas, unammenable to revision is the charge. Foxfyre and Baldimo will likely go to their graves believing what they believe on this issue, quite unmoved by any glimmer of a notion that their perceptions/ideas are formed not in some objective, valid and careful manner as through personal experience and open-minded study, but instead through their daily turn to information sources which feed them certainty and simplicity and a desired conclusion.

No, that's not "Neanderthalism."

As to the Sokal incident...the best accounting of this to my mind was a piece by Stephen Weinberg in the NY Review of Books (now archived). I read it while having dinner at an outdoor restaurant and laughed so hard the folks at neighboring tables were likely alarmed I might splatter them with half-chewed linguini. Sokal, a physicist, had submitted a hoax piece to a publication called Social Text. His title will give you a flavor... "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". Though completely nonsense, it was published. When word of the hoax got out, it produced an enormous amount of commentary (check google with "Sokal's Hoax") within academia and outside as well. His target was a an influential 'movement' within the social sciences which had gone quite fruitcake (abstract beyond belief and without any means by which to test theses, and with a nomenclature such as you see in his title). The influence of this stuff was broad (literary studies, feminist studies, and to a much lesser degree, political studies as well). Adherents tended to fit the 'true believer' mold. It was in full bloom when I was studying and these were one of two groups of folks with whom I found myself in pretty constant and heated argument (one friendship terminated unhappily). The other group, by the way, was the campus crusade for christ evangelicals. But what is important to understand here is that this wasn't a manifestation of a political group/agenda nor of 'liberalism', even while the soft-headed on the left commonly bought into the nonsense. The problem was soft-headedness...buying into Authority for the easy answers, lack of care and rigor in thinking/reading/talking/writing. What is also important to understand here is that this movement has been taken to task, and greatly undermined, by voices from within academia itself...not from outside. [/color]

One can hope that academia is, to some extent, self-regulating, and while I am sure there are any number of examples where it has been, the current trend is, clearly, for enforcement of the bias of the Left.

Just as priests are no more than hapless humans, so are academics. Ideally, there is no place for politics in either vocation and yet we all (should) know that there is.

Watson & Crick raced against their rivals's scholarship as much as they raced towards the truth. Free market competition enhances our society in so many ways!

In any case, the argument that universities are governed by a liberal bias is hardly an attack on academic freedom or the freedom of ideas.
No, it is not, in and of itself. But of course Horowitz et al seek 'remedies' far more invasive, dogmatic and dangerous than merely tossing out the idea for debate.

What the remedies of "Horowitz et al" may or may not be, your argument has hardly been limited to the assertions of Horowitz and the mysterious "et al." I do appreciate, though, that you acknowledge that an argument against Liberal bias is not an attack on freedom of ideas. Hold that notion firmly going forward.

You, like Krugman, have chosen to characterize the entire argument against the liberal university bias as a retrogression to the theological hoodoo of the Dark Ages.

Actually, you have this wrong in an important way. I have seen no evidence that Horowitz, for example, is motivated by some or any religious ideas at all. And there are others pushing in the same direction who, although they might profess faith membership and motivation, are not necessarily telling us the truth. On the other hand, there clearly is a push from the more radical edges of christian theology (mainly protestant but not entirely) to push back the 'tide of godless secularism' in society through activism in education. So, the forces pushing in this particular direction are a mixed bag.

A mixed bag indeed, and yet Krugman focuses on theological forces. If you don't share his bias, so be it, and yet you have introduced the "on the other hand" device to "suggest" that there is very definitely a threat from the "radical edges of christian theology." Without doubt there is a faction which couches the discussion in the extreme, but by your own words this is a "radical edge." I could be wrong, but "radical edge" suggest, to me, a fringe, minority element. While the "radical edge" needs to be observed and guarded against I, somehow, take your argument to extend beyond the fringe.

Certainly there are idiots out there whose objection to academia is based on the almost cartoonish campaign against evolution, but this is hardly the common thread among those concerned with academic freedom and the freedom of ideas as they may be imperilled by the Left. As much as you may despise Horowitz (the dirty traitor!), the foundation of his argument is not theological.
Right. But that doesn't necessarily make his argument valid in the same manner that we cannot say a theological argument isn't, necessarily, invalid. He is a Republican Party operative and that rings a different bell. As to academic freedom being "imperilled by the Left"...the Sokal case is a pretty good example of how the academic community, in its diversity, gets around to correcting itself, if too slowly often. But when you allow in an academic 'corrective' agency which is an arm of a political party or political ideology, then you are heading towards something potentially much much worse. Consider if Putin made an announcement tomorrow that one half of all university professors ought to be Marxists. For the sake of fairness and freedom of thought, of course.

I'm afraid I am having trouble separating the blatham argument from the Krugman argument. The premise of Horowitz is not theological - on this we can agree. That Horowitz is a Republican Party "operative," however, is ridiculous. Do you believe that Krugman is a Democratic Party "operative?" (E.J. Dionne is, without question, a Dem operative, but not Krugman). What is tremendously ironic is that you are worrying about a politically motivated corrective agent for politically motivated bias. As long as the bias is Liberal, then, by all means, lets wait for the tortoise paced self correcting process of Academia. Somehow, I doubt you would be so patient if the bias were Right directed.

What I find most offensive about your argument is the implied assertion that conservatives are the agents of Ignorance and Superstition and only liberals can be relied upon to champion Reason and Enlightenment.

This is a prejudice that ill serves you.
But it's not my assertion. Not explicitly nor implicitly. And it's not my belief. As I said earlier, in almost no cases at all did I know the political affiliations of my professors. That was completely irrelevant. Conservative plate tectonics? Liberal Beowulf or Chaucer? Green Party formal logic? Libertarian archaeology? Even the polical science courses were marked by, for example, a reading on JS Mill or Isaiah Berlin or John Rawls paired with a critique or oppositional position paper. Professors, in almost all cases (and I mean 9 out of 10) delighted in arguments from students, so long as they were thoughtful and studied. They didn't want to hear agreement...they wanted to hear thinking going on.

So, perhaps, your argument is not that of Krugman's. There is a sort of slight of hand going on here that i can't keep up with.

Conservatives are not more or less agents of reason and enlightenment than liberals. If we can make any sensible generality here it is that conservatives tend to opt for tradition moreso than do liberals. But as we don't know for sure whether the old or the new might be better, neither position can be given a pass.

And yet you seem to be passing out reams of passes to Liberal arguments. Perhaps that's not entirely fair, but you do have a tendency to shift to the Left when instincts are triggered. Having said this, I'm afraid that I do not see this as tension between the Old and the New. The problem that we are addressing rise far beyond a simple conflict between Old and New, if for no other reason than I refuse to acknowledge the position of the Academic Left as the "new."


But what is also true in all of this is that right now, in the US, there is a movement comprised of political elements on the right and religious elements on the right which are seeking to gain greater control of curricula and teaching personnel in order to further both political and dogmatic ends. [/color]

True, but there is also a movement afoot in Canada to turn over all lands to native Americans. The important question is not whether or not such movements exist, but how influential they may be.

Liberals invest far too much power in their Right-wing Christian Bogeyman. That Bush quotes scripture is nothing new hen compared to past presidents -- including Clinton, Carter, Johnson, Humphrey, Truman, FDR etc etc etc.

That he might actually believe in the principles contained in the scriptures he quotes may be unique, but hardly threatening -- to the rational.

I'm there with you and other Liberals in fighting the idiots who wish to eliminate evolution from what is taught to our children as fact, but, again, this is not, by any means, the whole of the argument against Liberal bias in American Universities.

Now if you would entreat me to give the self-correcting process of Academia to resolve the problem, then you should expect that I will ask the same patience of you in so many other issues. Deal?

Now that I'm through scolding you, let me entreat you to engage, as only you can, in a reasoned and eloquent debate on the subject, and to cease trafficking on the fringes.

Your friend and admirer; always,

Finn Agonistes

I know your type. You just wish to get me naked.[/[/color]quote]

Oh you homoerotic rascal. Sorry, but I don't feel that way about you. Can't we just be friends?

Thanks Finn. To be excluded from the Neanderthal set--I'm actually just a wee bit south of Neanderthal--by you is high praise indeed.

How is a college education structured, Walter?

Here, there are two years of continuation with high school classes, (writing, math, science, history, and optional social sciences) and then two years of concentrated study in your major.

After that, you can continue in your specialized study.

Perhaps you get a decent enough education in high school-- you can skip the 'core curriculum'?

I don't need to massage the result, I am merely straight-forwardly giving you evidence I have experienced, and am currently experiencing personally. If I offer opinion, you are correct to judge that I may have injected my own bias. If I offer fact, you either believe me or call me a liar. I am many things, but I am not a liar.

You are intent on avoiding the facts I'm reporting, because they very clearly show that bias does occur in the classroom, and you don't want to admit it.

I don't know how your Composition classes were administered. Why don't you tell us?

Re 80%, this has been a point of contention with me--as I would much rather my daughter's Composition professor spend more time on grammar, punctuation and the like--but he merely told students to read certain passages from a Composition Manual on their own. He prefers the issues discussions, and this is what they spend almost all of their time doing. I have not been happy about it, as my daughter could use more 'instruction', and less discussion.

My professors spent a bit of classtime with actual mechanics of Composition, but again, the greatest time was spent in conversation about the subjects we would be writing about.

I don't limit my evidence on my family's experiences. Habits of professors is something discussed a great deal among the people I know at school. Its the main subject of the people I talk to. Of course, some is random gossip, some is constructive about who to take, or who does what--but some relates to what we are discussing here.

Composition, Human Geography, Historical Geography, Western Civ, American History, Political Science, Philosophy, psychology, sociology--and their associated classes...

and likely more are deeply suceptible to political and values-oriented opinions of instructors. To claim otherwise is incredibly naive.

Sociology is almost completely spoonfeeding liberal ideals to students. While I happen to agree with most of what Sociology engenders, some of it is bullshit, and unveiled liberal propaganda which children are forced to accept and restate on tests as fact. You can't deny it.

The school I attend is incredibly small, and I'm sort of surprised you'd suggest that I open myself by giving identifying information.

The reading list for the Composition class would be one book each. As I said, the great bulk of essays are taken from classroom discussion. The Dharma Bums (Kerouac) was my daughter's recent assignment. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was one of mine. To even things out a bit, an Alexander Hamilton biography is one used by another class. I've read non-fiction for Western Civ, which I loved--no complaints there.

I just think we should stop avoiding the truth about liberal propaganda on college campuses.

One case in point.

The girl who sits next to me in Global Issues asked me to help her with her paper. When I read her notes, I told her she didn't need my help--she obviously had a great grasp of the content. She said, though, that the prof was obviously Conservative, and she knew she needed to write it 'so he would like it'. She needed to be initiated in his opinion about globalization. For some professors, it should be characterized as good. For this one, it should be characterized as bad.

She was right. And, even if she wasn't--it was WRONG of his views to so permeate the couse that a student would feel they had to follow the instructor's slant.

But FAR TOO OFTEN, they do. And, BECAUSE OF THE OVERWHELMING LIBERAL BENT OF PROFESSORS ON US COLLEGE CAMPUSES, the overwhelming slant presented in classrooms is liberal.

No, that's not "Neanderthalism."

A mixed bag indeed, and yet Krugman focuses on theological forces. If you don't share his bias, so be it, and yet you have introduced the "on the other hand" device to "suggest" that there is very definitely a threat from the "radical edges of christian theology." Without doubt there is a faction which couches the discussion in the extreme, but by your own words this is a "radical edge." I could be wrong, but "radical edge" suggest, to me, a fringe, minority element. While the "radical edge" needs to be observed and guarded against I, somehow, take your argument to extend beyond the fringe.

That Horowitz is a Republican Party "operative," however, is ridiculous. Do you believe that Krugman is a Democratic Party "operative?" (E.J. Dionne is, without question, a Dem operative, but not Krugman).

One can only wonder why blatham finds it necessary to spew such bilious comments in your direction fox.

When asked about the findings, Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors, said, "The question is how this translates into what happens within the academic community on such issues as curriculum, admission of students, evaluation of students, evaluation of faculty for salary and promotion." Knight said he isn't aware of "any good evidence" that personal views are having an impact on campus policies.

"It's hard to see that these liberal views cut very deeply into the education of students. In fact, a number of studies show the core values that students bring into the university are not very much altered by being in college."