The earlier post Blue Anti-Intellectualism could have been more properly titled academic anti-intellectualism since the focus was on how liberal orthodoxy in academic institutions had permeated them and become academic manners, the social reality of closed societies. The consequences of this for thought - false consensus, tendencies to extremism, etc. - and the consequences for society of having its youth sieved through such a warped filter were noted.

This news article about a study of self reported voting by academics is illuminating.

One of the studies, a national survey of more than 1,000 academics, shows that Democratic professors outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. That ratio is more than twice as lopsided as it was three decades ago, and it seems quite likely to keep increasing, because the younger faculty members are more consistently Democratic than the ones nearing retirement, said Daniel Klein, an associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University and a co-author of the study.

In a separate study of voter registration records, Professor Klein found a nine-to-one ratio of Democrats to Republicans on the faculties of Berkeley and Stanford. That study, which included professors from the hard sciences, engineering and professional schools as well as the humanities and social sciences, also found the ratio especially lopsided among the younger professors of assistant or associate rank: 183 Democrats versus 6 Republicans.

This institutional lack of diversity of thought results in the pathologies noted in Blue Anti-Intellectualism. Perhaps even worse a myth has developed that seeks to sort humans by beliefs corresponding to profession.

One theory for the scarcity of Republican professors is that conservatives are simply not that interested in academic careers. A Democrat on the Berkeley faculty, George P. Lakoff, who teaches linguistics and is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," said that liberals choose academic fields that fit their world views. "Unlike conservatives," he said, "they believe in working for the public good and social justice, as well as knowledge and art for their own sake, which are what the humanities and social sciences are about."

How does such an ignorant person come to be a professor? The idea that being politically conservative means that you are disinterested in public good and social justice is devoid of both knowledge and useful analysis, just plain dumb in other words. However bright Lakoff may be as measured by various tests of innate talent the "scholarship" produced is poor. This is like the myth among environmentalists that conservatives do not care about the environment - a specific social good - or even are antagonistic to it. These are provincial attitudes, the beliefs of people who live in isolation and develop bizarre theories about strangers they have never met. UPDATE

Conservatives are interested in public good, social justice and environmental care. Their differences with liberals are about effective ways to achieve these goals. If the liberals in academic institutions were truly scholars and truly caring this would be of the utmost importance. No society has ever achieved these goals and past efforts have come to grief far more often than not. Good intentions are not enough. Good methods are required.

There's a circularity here in that a primary cause of past failures was policy based on mistaken beliefs about the nature of humans and their societies. The ideas and policies that come from academic institutions have these same defects since the people in these institutions don't even have a rudimentary understanding of human behavior. Their behavior is dumb in the sense that their response to failure isn't to do causal analysis and correct defects, it's doing the same things yet again with greater zeal, or even more extreme things based on the original analysis, an example of Bryan Caplan's Idea Trap.

Liberals would do well to pay attention to conservative views about methods to achieve these objectives since they tend to be more insightful about human behavior and general system behavior, more aware of complexity and system dynamics over time. Perhaps their greater temperamental concern with risk leads them to consider a wider range of effects over longer time frames but whatever their reasons they do a better job of anticipating adverse consequences of naive enthusiasms. They are less likely to blunder into traps or implement self defeating policies insufficiently robust to cope with adversity. What conservatives may lack in zeal is often more than compensated for by caution, avoiding catastrophic loss.

Caution and risk aversion are often accompanied by expectation of failure, a world view that anticipates reversals and sees them as inevitable. Methods developed to implement change and make progress in spite of these concerns tend to be more realistic, more robust and resilient when inevitable reversals occur. For them patience is a virtue because haste makes waste. It's more useful to see the methodological conflict as a hare and tortoise parable than to exaggerate the differences and claim that the tortoises are disinterested in progress. In some ways they are even more interested but see haste and error as the greatest impediments to progress.

Just as false as the idea that conservatives are not interested in public good and social justice is that they are not interested in scholarship.

The researchers found a much higher share of Republicans among the nonacademic members of the scholars' associations, which Professor Klein said belied the notion that nonleftists were uninterested in scholarly careers.

"Screened out, expelled or self-sorted, they tend to land outside of academia because the crucial decisions - awarding tenure and promotions, choosing which papers get published - are made by colleagues hostile to their political views," said Professor Klein, who classifies himself as a libertarian.

Martin Trow, an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley who was chairman of the faculty senate and director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, said that professors tried not to discriminate in hiring based on politics, but that their perspective could be warped because so many colleagues shared their ideology.

"Their view comes to be seen not as a political preference but what decent, intelligent human beings believe," said Dr. Trow, who calls himself a conservative. "Debate is stifled, and conservatives either go in the closet or get to be seen as slightly kooky.

The most destructive consequence of discrimination, of every sort in every place, is that the social mind is diminished bringing harm to all. Those who discriminate are harmed as much and sometimes more than those they discriminate against. Discrimination based on gross external characteristics such as race or ethnicity though different in specifics is no more harmful to the social mind than discrimination based on subtler characteristics such as temperament. Our institutions are diminished by their de facto discrimination. The quality of their products are diminished - both research output and educational output - and this has huge costs for society as a whole.

Youths spend their formative years in educational institutions. Those that pay attention and go on to "higher education" face ever more narrow minded instructors. The sieving and winnowing of educators to produce an ever purer and narrower mind set also affects the students, and so perpetuates the narrowness both by indoctrination of the susceptible and exclusion of those who rebel. This harms society greatly since a population that is insufficiently and improperly educated has diminished performance.

It takes some emotional and intellectual maturity to grasp the necessity of diversity for increased quality of performance. One must have a bit of humility, be willing to accept that another person with very different perceptions and prescriptions may have valuable contributions to make, even if some aspects of their prescriptions are inimical to cherished agenda items. A useful analogy may be sailing and the requirement to tack, never able to point directly at an upwind destination, and so forced to zig-zag in order to make progress. Failure to tack allows better speed, but not in the intended direction.

On many important issues of public good, social justice and environmental care we have failed to tack for quite some time and gotten far off course. The tortoises that have been counseling greater caution though not inherently more correct are situationally more correct. Their ideas, having been neglected for so long, have increased in value for the current problem set. Fortunately, they have seized the tiller of society and altered our course. We would do well to recognize the errors that brought us to this contentious state and correct them rather than whipping ourselves into a frenzy and mounting a counter-coup to retake the tiller. Now is the time to be sensible, to articulate the need for diversity to make good progress, to first reform ourselves and so be in a better position to advocate shared control of direction to those now in charge.

In a better world we would expect these insights to come from scholars and be first implemented in their institutions. That seems unlikely since they are the most damaged and the least diverse. A similar rot is far advanced in broadcast media, one of the first and worst consequences of rot at educational institutions. This is why we are seeing populist revolt against these institutions, a pattern that has occurred many times in history, and like earlier revolts is aided by technological change in information and communication technologies (ICT). In the past it was printing and in the present it is telephony in all of its varied forms.

Populist revolt is not a good thing even when it has a good purpose. It's like a fever that may save the life of an animal but also can do permanent damage. We would be wise to take steps to bring the fever down, not just by fighting the fever - drugging it or mechanically cooling the body - but by joining the fight against infection, helping the fever do its work by reducing the need. Wisdom seems in short supply and things don't look promising. Very few are taking positive steps and are reacting to the course change by either threatening to abandon ship or withold labor - a sit down strike by those who falsely claim to be intellectuals - demonstrating their lack of sincere interest in public good and social justice as ends worth striving for. In a sense they are demonstrating that they are the culprits guilty of the social crimes that they have accused others of for so long. Their words and action are not only anti-intellectual, they show disinterest in the principles that once animated their creed - public good and social justice. In the pursuit of power they have become the monsters they once feared. 'He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.' -- Friedrich Nietzsche

UPDATE

Lakoff seems to be a source of the rebranding blunder noted in All the Wrong Places.

He has suggested that same-sex marriage should be referred to as "the right to marry.'' Trial lawyers like vice presidential nominee John Edwards should instead be called "public protection attorneys,'' and the term environmental protection, which brings to mind big government and reams of regulations, should instead be termed "poison-free communities.''

The Democrats may wander in the wilderness for a long time.

UPDATE: Holbo demonstrates that he doesn't know what 'politically correct' means while offering a Lakoffian framing candidate.

Let's get in the habit of calling Republican moral elitists: 'the moral elite', 'morally elite', 'moral elitists'. Just use the terms as flat descriptors for anyone proposing to legislate morality in any of the usual ways. Just to change things up, sometimes you use: 'morally superior' to designate the attitude. And 'moral superiors' to designate the tribe.

It may take more than 40 years.

UPDATE A more realistic view of Lakoff's ideas.

I want to offer my own perspective on the type of person who chooses academia over other occupations. In my view, scholars aim for the esteem of their colleagues. While the goal of peer esteem is not evil, and it is one that motivates people to some extent in many fields outside of academia, I think it would be a mistake to confuse it with public spirit or higher morals...

I think of academics as an ego game. To get ahead in academics, you must win the esteem of your peers. You do so by impressing them in various contexts, primarily by publishing research in scholarly journals.

If you find two people of approximately equal intellectual talent, one inside academia and one outside of it, it does not necessarily follow that the non-academic is one who sold out for a higher salary. The academic might have had better luck or more patience for playing the ego game. The non-academic may not have wanted to take part in the fads that were sweeping a field at a particular time. The non-academic might have a greater desire to see research applied than to see it published. And of course anyone who prefers teaching to research is severely penalized in the ego game of academia. So the "washouts" who go into business after being denied tenure may include some of the better teachers...

The view expressed in the quote from Lakoff, that professors have better moral judgment than people in other fields, is the ultimate Type M argument. That is, instead of talking about the consequences of different political philosophies, Lakoff imputes a disreputable motivation to those with whom he disagrees.

UPDATE

Michael Blowhard dabbles in geotourism and records a travelogue of his journey into alien landscapes.

A braincell or two of mine has been chewing over the commentsfests at Crooked Timber that I recently took part in. Academic intellectuals, eh? Exceptions allowed for -- including some of the Crooked Timber regulars -- talking with academic intellectuals can be like trying to communicate with Martians.

Michael took notes and though little or no communication took place he gives a lively account of his travels.

» Other from Crumb Trail
Lynne Kiesling posts three paragraphs of Hayek's Why I am Not a Conservative. It may be that there are still those who will find this illuminating, who don't have a good handle on the origins of political labels and what they mean. Here's the last gra......[read more]
Tracked: December 8, 2004 09:00 AM