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Once More With Apologies ...

After a wave of calls from conservatives for an ideologically more inclusive academy, the academic left is weighing in with replies. The most important of them come from Michael Berube, my colleague, Tim Burke, Jonathan Chait (registration required), John Holbo (twice), and Adam Kotsko.

As it is playing out, the debate has flitted from specific grievance to generalizations such that neither side directly addresses issues raised by the other. As for me, I side with the Left in categorically rejecting state-sponsored solutions such as those proposed by David Horowitz. His blatant political campaign does suggest the sort of hegemonic move that Adam Kotsko sees. And, unlike some other conservatives, I am not persuaded that every conservative candidate for academic appointment who falls by the wayside is just another instance of a general problem.

And yet ..., if you look at the argument of a Michael Berube, there is nothing but a cynical denial that a problem exists. Or, if there is a problem, it is not in his list of "the Top Ten Thousand Social Injustices in the World." (See: his reply to me at The Weblog.) I could probably think of at least a hundred that are more important, but I'm hard pressed to think of anything Michael and I are doing about them, either. Jonathan Chait's op-ed for the LA Times is slightly more serious, noting the Bush administration's hostility even to conservative academic expertise as one reason academics in general have not been attracted to the Republican Party. Steve Horwitz at Liberty & Power and Professor Bainbridge respond critically to Chait.

I take my colleague, Tim Burke, and John Holbo more seriously. If you haven't read them yet, read Burke first and follow it with Holbo's two posts. Burke finesses the issue by arguing that Mark Bauerlein's "groupthink" is essentially identifiable with the common acceptances and practices of a discipline and his own realization that "interdisciplinarity" is no panacea in terms of enabling fresh insight that challenges "groupthink." But to define "groupthink" in those terms is to ignore, for example, the political rending of contemporary historical practice represented by the founding of The Historical Society six years ago. Frustrated with a "soft left" hegemony in the American Historical Association and the Organization of American Historians, their inclination to political pronouncements, and the sidelining of traditional specializations (particularly diplomatic, military, and some forms of political history), historians from left, right, and center organized an alternative to the AHA and the OAH. They did not reject common acceptances about historical practice, but they did reject the cloying "groupthink" of too many of our gatherings. Despite Tim's claim that not much would change if you replaced a current crop of lefty/liberals with some conservatives, it would make some important differences. It made an important difference at Brooklyn College when KC Johnson challenged the decision of his department's leadership to hire a pre-determined "collegial" female by saying: "Let's look at who the best qualified candidates are." Having said that, the irenic spirit of Tim's concluding paragraph is compelling. I share his commitment to reform within our academic communities.

Like Burke and me, John Holbo bristles at academe's external critics: Horowitz is unimaginably awful; George Will is laughable. What is refreshing about Holbo's initial post is his recognition that a healthy academic community must be one in which an aristocratic elitism is frankly recognized and affirmed. That is to say: had he been in the history department at Brooklyn College, Holbo would have known that its leadership was wrong and that KC Johnson was right. And too bad that KC had to risk his untenured neck to say it. Holbo effectively argues that intellectual diversity serves the interests of an intellectual aristocracy. And he is especially effective in turning the argument for intellectual diversity on its conservative advocates, by suggesting that there is nothing in conservative principles that would justify their argument for diversity. They are, in effect, arguing for something that they don't believe in. That, I take it, is a serious charge. Whether he can make it stick or not is another matter. One thing that the Bush administration has clearly demonstrated is that you can satisfy the kinds of diversity requirements that have so pre-occupied the academic Left without yielding any ground to intellectual diversity, or quality, for that matter. It's a healthy thing when we get all excited about cleaning somebody else's house. It's a better thing when we clean our own.

Posted on Saturday, December 11, 2004 at 1:57 AM | Comments (32) | Return

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