Saturday, December 05, 2009

Getting together

... Conservatives and the university.

4 comments:

  1. How is this not sour grapes? It's hard not to see it that way.

    Does one see similar commentaries about how leftists (whatever one means by that) denied entry to conservative think-tanks? Not hardly. Think-tanks desire to be of unitary consciousness, as they have an agenda and often they have political goals.

    One of the few conservative thinkers that I'm aware of, who over the past few decades has actually sought discussion and would have been happy to engage with diverse viewpoints, was (Catholic philosopher) Michael Novak, a genuine intellectual if ever there was one. I'm sure other examples could be found.

    The key problem, which Myers does identify correctly, I believe, is unitary thinking within an institution: the refusal to hire dissenters among the ranks. My response to the accusation that this is rife in academia is to say, So what? How is that different from any other institution? It's rife everywhere, in these ideologically polarized times.

    What's the saying? Oh yeah: "Do not criticize the more in your brother's eye until you have removed the log from your own."

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  2. I think might somewhat disagree, Art. A university, as an educational institution, should not fall victim to groupthink. A think tank, presumably, has a stated viewpoint. A university should be open to all viewpoints.

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  3. My reply is Durkee is at the original post.

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  4. I agree that a university should be open to all viewpoints. Where I think there's a problem is when a department starts hiring or firing based on those ideological viewpoints. It's easy these days to claim that universities are liberal and don't like to hire conservatives—but that's a bit of a straw man, because I can think of examples within English departments at state universities where exactly the opposite has been true.

    I'm trying to figure out how much merit this analysis has, and I'm suspicious because it does seem to set up strawmen to knock down.

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