Althouse: "The university’s ideological tilt, combined with its intolerance, cannot but place higher education in an even more precarious place."

May 29, 2016

"The university’s ideological tilt, combined with its intolerance, cannot but place higher education in an even more precarious place."

"After all, how long will taxpayers in red states be willing to subsidize universities that appear to be their ideological enemies? In a politically polarized nation, why subsidize the other side?"

Writes lawprof Jonathan Adler, citing Wisconsin politics specifically, quoted in a post by Instapundit, who also links to the post I wrote yesterday about why lawprofs can't/won't see the intellectual diversity problem.

I get the idea that there's pushback from the political sphere, especially here in Wisconsin, but I can't imagine how much political pushback there would need to be for my law school to acknowledge a need for more intellectual diversity in the form of more conservatives on the faculty.

The other day a student asked me, "Why are you the only conservative on the faculty?" I said, "But I'm not a conservative. I'm just someone who takes the conservative viewpoint seriously and thinks it deserves respect."

107 comments:

Original Mike said...: "The other day a student asked me, "Why are you the only conservative on the faculty?" I said, "But I'm not a conservative. I'm just someone who takes the conservative viewpoint seriously and thinks it deserves respect.""

So there are no conservatives on the faculty?; 5/29/16, 5:53 PM
YoungHegelian said...: After all, how long will taxpayers in red states be willing to subsidize universities that appear to be their ideological enemies? In a politically polarized nation, why subsidize the other side

Oh, it'd be a lot easier to do than state by state. If the Republicans take the Presidency, they can just write up a bunch of regs that deny either federal funds or tax exemption to Universities that don't fit their standards of "objective scholarship".

You know, make shit up & push it down everyone's throats by federal mandate without any legislative input.

Just like the Obama administration.

Suck it, lefties.; 5/29/16, 5:54 PM
Sal said...: Intellectual inbreeding. Coincidentally, what the typical lefty law professor looks like.; 5/29/16, 6:02 PM
Amadeus 48 said...: All hail AA. This comment section is a testament to her openness to the expression of all viewpoints. There is some of the craziest stuff I've ever read in my life in these comments, but also some of the most thoughtful, insightful analysis around. Best of all, it comes from real people...at least most of them are real....maybe.; 5/29/16, 6:02 PM
dbp said...: "I said, "But I'm not a conservative. I'm just someone who takes the conservative viewpoint seriously and thinks it deserves respect.""

Not to the extent that we ought to hire a conservative, but respect-respect.; 5/29/16, 6:08 PM
effinayright said...: What I want to know, and what I suspect many of your commenters want to know, is,

Have YOU, professor Althouse ever publicly called for a more balanced ideological faculty at your law school, or in the Univ. of Wisconsin at large?

If not, why not?

Since you're tenured, have YOU ever seen, read or heard about any potential new hire at your school being rejected for his ideological impurity?

If so, what objections did you raise?; 5/29/16, 6:12 PM
buwaya said...: Well, the simplest solution would be legislation adjusting the requirements for a law license, taking the gatekeeping role away from the universities. That should at least much reduce the number of law schools besides reducing the cost to the public. It wouldn't take explicit defunding or ideological tests, which would be a can of worms at best.; 5/29/16, 6:13 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "So there are no conservatives on the faculty?"

The student stated his perception. I haven't done an ideological analysis of my colleagues.; 5/29/16, 6:14 PM
Gahrie said...: I get the idea that there's pushback from the political sphere, especially here in Wisconsin, but I can't imagine how much political pushback there would need to be for my law school to acknowledge a need for more intellectual diversity in the form of more conservatives on the faculty.

How about some pushback from within the department itself...you know a couple of intellectually serious professors could get up in a faculty meeting and express the idea that we are doing the students a disservice by not teaching conservative points of view?; 5/29/16, 6:14 PM
Gahrie said...: The student stated his perception. I haven't done an ideological analysis of my colleagues.

Oh come off it.....; 5/29/16, 6:15 PM
rcocean said...: "how long will taxpayers in red states be willing to subsidize universities that appear to be their ideological enemies? In a politically polarized nation, why subsidize the other side?"

This assumes Conservatives have the passion and the intelligence to be upset. I see no evidence of either.

Rest easy, liberals.; 5/29/16, 6:17 PM
Original Mike said...: "The student stated his perception. I haven't done an ideological analysis of my colleagues."

Riiiight.; 5/29/16, 6:19 PM
buwaya said...: Removing the law schools gatekeeping role is the same sort of bypass move as the charter schools initiative, which skips past the public school bureaucracy and masses of legislative mandates.
It's impossible to reform public schools because these are bound in a Gordian knot of complication, of many levels of regulation, court judgements, legislative bodies and etc. Each tug on a string in that knot is a battle because each has a lot of rice bowls attached, and the mass of them are unfeasible to address with limited resources.
So also with university funding.
Best to do everything possible to make the university irrelevant.; 5/29/16, 6:20 PM
buwaya said...: These things can be done.
In K-12 a great deal has been achieved, against frightful odds.; 5/29/16, 6:22 PM
Jason said...: Yeah, I'm about ready to burn it all down.

Let the left-tards find their own funding.; 5/29/16, 6:22 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Have YOU, professor Althouse ever publicly called for a more balanced ideological faculty at your law school, or in the Univ. of Wisconsin at large?"

I participate in hiring decisions, but never in the form of saying let's find the best conservative. We're usually looking for the best person overall and often with concern about filling a particular subject-matter need (such as tax or family law). I can't remember a hiring search that was defined as looking for a particular political viewpoint, and it always seems that we are judging the individual on that person's merit. You just vote yes or no on each candidate, so it's never a matter of agreeing on the reason WHY a particular person should be hired and when reasons are given they don't come in the form of saying this person is good or bad because of his or her politics. But it is human nature to see good in what corresponds to the way you think. It's hard to hear someone present an argument that's full of things you don't agree with and give full credit to the person for the quality of their argument in the abstract.; 5/29/16, 6:23 PM
Fernandinande said...: Amadeus 48 said...
Best of all, it comes from real people...at least most of them are real....maybe.

"You can fool the real people some of the time, and really fool some people all the time, but you cannot really fool all the real people in real time." -- Abraham J. Einstein.; 5/29/16, 6:23 PM
Comanche Voter said...: Well pushback comes in many ways. I doubt that California state supported universities will get much pushback from oour legislators in Sacramento who, if anything, are more "progressive" than most faculty members.

But in some states--Missouri may be an example, pushback will come in the form of a big budget cut whomp to the side of the head. We had a little such budget cut, revenue shortfall at UC Berkeley--which the chancellor promptly fixed by laying off five hundred janitors and clerks. Let's just call that a rose thorn scratch. We'll need bigger surgery at Berkeley.; 5/29/16, 6:28 PM
AmPowerBlog said...: You're pretty conservative, Althouse. But on some issues, like abortion, you drift over to the left. That is, unless you're pro-life now?; 5/29/16, 6:37 PM
deepelemblues said...: "The other day a student asked me, "Why are you the only conservative on the faculty?" I said, "But I'm not a conservative. I'm just someone who takes the conservative viewpoint seriously and thinks it deserves respect.""

These days in the professor's profession that's enough to qualify her as a conservative.; 5/29/16, 6:39 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: "You know, make shit up & push it down everyone's throats by federal mandate without any legislative input."

This is exactly right.

Imagine a football game where the refs refused to call holding, they just are old-school guys that are envious of rich young punks like Tom Brady.

The idea "deep derp the rules say no darn holding so we will not adjust to conditions as our God has demanded, we will idolize some Wise Latina and her Law as a better ideal than Almighty God Himself."

Well boys, they might apply the law unequally and call you for holding, but that will strengthen a true man's resolve by highlighting what Martin Luther King Junior highlighted to some effect.

You cling to your ego-demanded principle's for yourself alone.

Trump has shown, proven, the left-wing media is stupid and beatable, the opposite of powerfully Godlike, which is the lie that has betoken shitheels inside the GOP with grand lies and always results in further Leftism for the country.; 5/29/16, 6:46 PM
Gahrie said...: It's hard to hear someone present an argument that's full of things you don't agree with and give full credit to the person for the quality of their argument in the abstract.

We used to have institutions in the US that taught this skill...I can't remember what they were called...it'll come to me in a minute.....; 5/29/16, 6:54 PM
n.n said...: If not for anti-native policies, redistributive opiates, class diversity schemes, and egocentric belief systems, the liberal orthodoxy would not survive strict scrutiny by the People and Posterity.; 5/29/16, 7:01 PM
Original Mike said...: "We used to have institutions in the US that taught this skill...I can't remember what they were called...it'll come to me in a minute....."

Her students might want to take notice.; 5/29/16, 7:02 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Colleges not 50% trans/50% gay /50% straight?

No funding for you!

Any complaint of racism, like recently at Harvard, not resulting in the termination of ALL persons associated in the, well not chain, toilet paper of command?

No funding for you!

No Nazi soup offered, IRONICALLY of course?

No funding for you!

Fucking pedestrians.; 5/29/16, 7:03 PM
Michael K said...: "the simplest solution would be legislation adjusting the requirements for a law license,"

No, the simplest solution is for people to get wise that a legal education does not have ROI with tuition the way it is. Enrollment is down enough to concern the ABA.

Total enrollment in JD programs (including both full-time and part-time students) at the nation’s 204 ABA-approved law schools fell to 119,775 in 2014, down nearly 7 percent from 2013 and about 18.5 percent from its historic high of 147,525 in 2010, according to the data collected by the legal education section.

It's down even more the past two years. Being a lawyer looked like the path to a successful middle class life but it isn;t any more.

Part if that is the left wing bias of most law schools that train ambulance chasers and useless scolds.

One negative trend in the US has been the role of lawyers as CEOs of big corporations. They are not trained to be CEOs and the whole trend resembles the US auto companies adoption of accountants and MBAs instead on engineers to run the business.

We know how that turned out . Toyota and Honda were run by engineers.; 5/29/16, 7:06 PM
Fred Drinkwater said...: With a mere three edits:

We're usually looking for the best person overall and often with concern about filling a particular skill-set (such as Ruby coding or heliarc welding). I can't remember a hiring search that was defined as looking for a particular race, and it always seems that we are judging the individual on that person's merit. You just vote yes or no on each candidate, so it's never a matter of agreeing on the reason WHY a particular person should be hired and when reasons are given they don't come in the form of saying this person is good or bad because of his or her cultural background. But it is human nature to see good in what corresponds to the way you think.

When this hiring scheme results in a 90% white anglo workforce, how do you think the Federal labor lawyers will react?; 5/29/16, 7:06 PM
Hagar said...: It is not reasonable to ask professors to teach what they have no belief in, but have you asked them just to show a little respect to students who are not "progressive"?

That also gets a bit difficult, of course - showing respect to boneheads who won't accept what you are trying to teach them - but is not that what the B.S. about academic freedom, etc. is supposed to be about?; 5/29/16, 7:09 PM
Fred Drinkwater said...: Of course I understand that race may define a legally protected class, and location on the political spectrum does not. Given some of the current justifications for affirmative action, though, it's hard to see an ethically sound rationale for the distinction.; 5/29/16, 7:09 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Can't define caveat emptor?

Well, then no buyer should be aware then. That's the lesson I teach.

No funding for you!; 5/29/16, 7:16 PM
SukieTawdry said...: The student stated his perception. I haven't done an ideological analysis of my colleagues.

Oh, come now. "Ideological analysis" is rather second nature, isn't it?; 5/29/16, 7:19 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Latin was/is rich white dead dude's language right, so I call them racist and that is the end then?

Like, the only people that understand Latin today are white, so fuck the appropriation. Kill the damned language!

Latin is macro-racist, from a non-white perspective of unprivledge. The only real perspective is mine.; 5/29/16, 7:21 PM
Birkel said...: When the end of the current regime comes, it will be surprising to those who were warned and disregarded all evidence.

Ever has that been true.; 5/29/16, 7:24 PM
Michael said...: "The student stated his perception. I haven't done an ideological analysis of my colleagues."

I find this odd. It can't be because you are incurious. I know the political bent of all my colleagues, business associates, clients. I know without really trying to know.; 5/29/16, 7:31 PM
Hagar said...: In high school, I had a Norwegian/History teacher (PhD in history) who, whenever some subject that appeared to interest us came up, would say "let's debate this" and go over by the windows and moderate the discussion. And moderate was all he did; never interjecting his own opinion, but obviously taking great delight in us expressing ours.
The result was that we were the most argumentative class in man's memory to graduate from our school, and this is what I was used to.
Consistently got in trouble with that attitude in the army though.

As for college, I can remember meeting people I had take "humanities" classes with 15 - 20 years after I graduated from UNM and their eyes would go big and round and they would say: "Oh, I remember you; you are the one who argued with the professor!"; 5/29/16, 7:35 PM
Birkel said...: Michael:

There is no more thorough ignorance than willful ignorance. The effort it likely takes would be too much for me.; 5/29/16, 7:35 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: Alize Wallace-Hadeeb, Safe Space Inspector:

"We at the University have done everything to make this the safest of environments on any American campus."

"You haven't hired any conservative faculty lately, have you?"

"We do not make such distinctions in hiring. We are about a well-rounded Higher Education for our students."

"I will take that as a 'Yes'."

"Yes?" Ha! You're funny. Of COURSE we haven't hired any conservatives -- they would never fit in."

"So the fact that they don't "fit in" is the reason for not hiring them?"

"Ummm..."

"Many students of color and non-normative gender feel THEY don't fit in to this campus environment. Do they get rejected, too?"

"I just thought we weren't supposed to hire conservatives."

"Yes, but you need to NOT hire them for the right reasons: the Purity of Rejection is Important."

"Right Reasons?"

"What do Conservatives wish to Conserve:

A system of Socially Unjust Laws?

Categorization of the Norm?

A history of Thought as Patriarchy?

The Abatttoir of Capitalism?"

"Uhhh..."

"Yes?"

"If I say Yes can I keep my job?"

"We'll note your good intentions in our Review..."

I am Laslo.; 5/29/16, 7:47 PM
Jupiter said...: "but I can't imagine how much political pushback there would need to be for my law school to acknowledge a need for more intellectual diversity in the form of more conservatives on the faculty".

It is interesting that the issue might even arise. I would guess that most schools of welding do not pay much attention to the political views of their faculty. There may be some arguments in the faculty lounge, but the correct approach to Tungsten Inert Gas Welding is not a topic calculated to reveal one's political leanings. It would appear that Law School Faculty do not actually suppose that they are passing on a useful body of information to the next generation. They are doing something else.; 5/29/16, 7:49 PM
Gahrie said...: Being the most conservative professor at a public university law school is sort of like being the tallest midget..isn't it?; 5/29/16, 7:50 PM
Original Mike said...: "The student stated his perception. I haven't done an ideological analysis of my colleagues."

Kind of reminds me of this: "Great for Bernie because he's shown his readiness to debate and Hillary turned him down. She turned him down the day after she said — on "Meet the Press," when asked if she'd do the debate Bernie had accepted — "You know, I haven't thought about it." I wrote at the time: "How is that possible?"; 5/29/16, 7:55 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: " I can't remember a hiring search that was defined as looking for a particular political viewpoint, and it always seems that we are judging the individual on that person's merit."

I'm sad to read this.

This is a Hillary answer.

I am Laslo.; 5/29/16, 7:57 PM
John henry said...: "Hilary answer"

Nailed it, Laslo. Absolutely dead nuts on.

John Henry; 5/29/16, 8:07 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: I'm enjoying the faux-Kafka of Alize Wallace-Hadeeb, Safe Space Inspector.

From Cliffsnotes:

in the sociological type of interpretation, one of the most popular methods of criticism judges Kafka's art by whether or not it has contributed anything toward the progress of society. Following the Marxist-Leninist dictum that art must function as a tool toward the realization of the classless society, this kind of interpretation is prevalent not merely in Communist countries, but also among the New Left critics this side of the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. Marxist criticism of Kafka has shifted back and forth between outright condemnation of Kafka's failing to draw the consequences of his own victimization by the bourgeoisie and between acclamations stressing the pro-proletarian fighting quality of his heroes. That Kafka was the propagator of the working class as the revolutionary class has been maintained not only by official Communist criticism, but also by Western "progressives."

It is good to carry a machete.

I am Laslo.; 5/29/16, 8:08 PM
Jim said...: First, you said "I'm just someone who takes the conservative viewpoint seriously and thinks it deserves respect."

Then, you said "It's hard to hear someone present an argument that's full of things you don't agree with and give full credit to the person for the quality of their argument in the abstract."

I'm having a hard time resolving you saying these two things right on top of each other, Ann.; 5/29/16, 8:27 PM
Anonymous said...: I enjoy reading AA but methinks the lady doth offer a disingenuous answer too much on this and several other recent posts. Given the nature of politics in Madison, can you blame her?; 5/29/16, 8:33 PM
Original Mike said...: "...and it always seems that we are judging the individual on that person's merit."

So conservatives are what? Stupid? Lazy? Dishonest? What characteristic in particular are they lacking?; 5/29/16, 8:34 PM
buwaya said...: Various bits of the Kafka-ist fun sound not Kafka I think. It became a genre. Some sounds a bit like Capek, "War with the Newts", some Havel, some Hasek "Schweik" (there must be something about Prague), and some Solzhenitsyn.; 5/29/16, 8:36 PM
Gahrie said...: So conservatives are what? Stupid? Lazy? Dishonest? What characteristic in particular are they lacking?

I think evil is the word you are looking for.; 5/29/16, 8:37 PM
Sebastian said...: "I get the idea that there's pushback from the political sphere, especially here in Wisconsin, but I can't imagine how much political pushback there would need to be for my law school to acknowledge a need for more intellectual diversity in the form of more conservatives on the faculty." Instituting affirmative action for conservatives and/or complete defunding of public law schools, and/or destruction of the law cartel (suspension of JD as prereq for passing the bar, suspension of bar as prereq for practice) should do the trick.

"The other day a student asked me, "Why are you the only conservative on the faculty?" I said, "But I'm not a conservative. I'm just someone who takes the conservative viewpoint seriously and thinks it deserves respect."" As you say, you are not a conservative; you wouldn't understand [nothing personal, of course; you get the allusion]. But it doesn't matter: UW prepares lawyers for a world in which Progs rule or intend to rule.; 5/29/16, 8:49 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Instituting affirmative action for conservatives and/or complete defunding of public law schools, and/or destruction of the law cartel (suspension of JD as prereq for passing the bar, suspension of bar as prereq for practice) should do the trick.
Also, make them eligible for jury duty.
Smash their rice bowls!; 5/29/16, 8:53 PM
Owen said...: Jim said: "...I'm having a hard time resolving you saying these two things right on top of each other, Ann."

Me too. My first approximation of a way to reconcile them is, in preparing for lectures and discussions the good Professor identifies the usual "conservative" points and tries to air them in a planned if not scripted way. But when considering a candidate there is no script, no structure to explore the arguments or the rationale of cassowary. There is a resume, some Q and A, and then a simple yes or no. Getting down into what the candidate really thinks, and why, would take a lot of work. Not wanted; so why do it?; 5/29/16, 9:05 PM
Owen said...: "Rationale of cassowary" in my last comment is, as everybody knows, a delicious dish created by Spell %!?% Check. Should be "rationale of caselaw."; 5/29/16, 9:08 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "I'm having a hard time resolving you saying these two things right on top of each other, Ann."

I'm someone who values the debate and is not strongly opinionated. I can do something that feels natural to me that most people don't do. It's similar to the cruel neutrality I often speak of here. Teaching, I feel the Court is the object of study, and it seems normal to me to give all of the options equal regard even though I don't think the justices are that brilliant. They are presidential appointees, and that builds in a certain mediocrity. But they are the actors, and what they do matters.; 5/29/16, 9:13 PM
Anonymous said...: I suspect the faculty, not only where you are, but nationwide will only begin to respond to this problem when the pushback comes in the form of decreased enrollments and/or funding cuts that lead to job losses and there is no great public outcry (other than among the professionally aggrieved) in favor of the academy. By that point, it will likely be too late to avoid the deluge.

Cost, debt, and failures are going to be the academy's undoing at the rate things are going.

Cost, for one, is escalating so fast above the pace of everything else that it is making it much less likely that going to college makes economic sense. Clueless guidance counselors and deceptive college marketing brochures may argue otherwise for a while, but eventually, somebody is going to put two and two together on the math. Meanwhile, the cost also primes the public to embrace potential cost-savings options - such as online courses or online universities that cost a fraction of what a brick-and-mortar 4-year college costs.

Debt is another one of those things whose effect will grow over time. It's been a great way to milk the students of today for tuition money, but over time, the more of these students who can't repay their loans, the more they serve as a cautionary tale to their children and family and friends about the ill-wisdom of becoming a debt slave when the degree in question is unlikely to repay the investment.

Related to the debt are the failures of the college degree to actually lead to a decent-paying career. Numerous articles have been written about the number of college graduates who have taken jobs that don't require a college degree. That alone suggests more degrees are being awarded than are prudent to award, and the more oversupply generated, the more likely the people who got the worthless degrees are to say that college wasn't worth it.

And as a postscript, if colleges and universities are turning out graduates in any number like the whining idiot snowflake protesters that have made news in the last few years, you can bet that employers and hiring managers are going to start figuring out which schools and which majors are producing those problems and start filtering them out. Schools do get reputations - when I was in graduate school, there was a semi-required class that could easily have been called "How Not to Be a Jerk Who Makes Your Employer Never Want to Hire Another of Our Graduates"...a course that existed since the school had received wind of the problems its alumni had caused in certain places and was taking pains to ensure that its future graduates remained employable.; 5/29/16, 9:15 PM
Ann Althouse said...: The rationale of cassowary....

That makes too much sense.

I should use that for a title to my memoir of life inside the law school.; 5/29/16, 9:16 PM
Original Mike said...: We all come here because we value your insights. Really would like to hear your opinion on what meritorious characteristic(s) your colleagues find conservatives are lacking.; 5/29/16, 9:35 PM
effinayright said...: Althouse: "The student stated his perception. I haven't done an ideological analysis of my colleagues."

That's a Clintonesque dodge: unless you are a new Hellen Keller you must have seen, read or heard ideological comments from your overwhelmingly ""progressive" conferes .

Nobody will believe that they are all Cistercians or Trappists who take the vow of silence. THEY surely have engaged in such an analysis, and for you to pretend you haven't run into it is simply unbelievable.; 5/29/16, 9:35 PM
Birkel said...: "...not strongly opinionated..."

Is this one of those times, unlike professions of religious faith, that we should believe the writer?; 5/29/16, 9:36 PM
effinayright said...: At bottom the Lady Perfesser is offering us Hogan's Heroes' "Sergeant Schultz" excuse:

I know NOTHINGK!"; 5/29/16, 9:39 PM
chickelit said...: I get the idea that there's pushback from the political sphere, especially here in Wisconsin, but I can't imagine how much political pushback there would need to be for my law school to acknowledge a need for more intellectual diversity in the form of more conservatives on the faculty.

Forget about political pushback -- that's never going to work if the rest of the UW Law faculty is as self-righteously liberal as Althouse implies -- not respecting conservative opinions. Isn't there case law going back to the McCarthy era which prevents discrimination based on political views? Throw that in their faces.; 5/29/16, 9:40 PM
Gahrie said...: That's a Clintonesque dodge: unless you are a new Hellen Keller you must have seen, read or heard ideological comments from your overwhelmingly ""progressive" confere

It doesn't have to go as far as that. Althouse has said that at least one student considers her the conservative professor in the law school. Surely that tells her, and us, all we need to know?; 5/29/16, 9:44 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Of course Althouse would never advocate violence, unless human womb*, so I read into her words:

You little bitch-cunt fucks won't do what worked for LBJ, so let me not merely hear, but make, you bounce as the rubble you are.

*both for the baby and non-momma.

Legislate discrimination, demand the racist bigots pay, MORE, continue.

The fact this works for some should not be overlooked, but opposite.

The fact Althouse public ally admits to being not 100% on-board with her truly fascist collueagues' wannabe Statism (at best and at worst implemented) is partially why I contribute and applaud this blog.

Asking "how could the leopard politically change its Marx" is actually courageous when living and dining with leopards who define themselves in many cases only by their spots.; 5/29/16, 9:53 PM
gadfly said...: We are presented with two admissions of ideological intolerance by two admitted moderates, law professors Ann Althouse and Jonathan Adler. Ayn Rand identified "moderates" for us back in the '50s.

"There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

... The mentally paralyzed, anxiety-ridden neurotics produced by the disintegration of modern philosophy—with its cult of uncertainty, its epistemological irrationalism and ethical subjectivism—come out of our colleges, broken by chronic dread, seeking escape from the absolutism of reality with which they feel themselves impotent to deal. Fear drives them to unite with slick political manipulators and pragmatist ward-heelers to make the world safe for mediocrity by raising to the status of a moral ideal that archetypical citizen of a mixed economy: the docile, pliable, moderate Milquetoast who never gets excited, never makes trouble, never cares too much, adjusts to anything and upholds nothing. ~Ayn Rand; 5/29/16, 9:56 PM
Original Mike said...: Is it empathy? I bet it's empathy. Conservatives don't care about people.

Am I right?; 5/29/16, 10:04 PM
David said...: " I can't imagine how much political pushback there would need to be for my law school to acknowledge a need for more intellectual diversity in the form of more conservatives on the faculty."

Hard to disagree with that. Inertia is powerful.; 5/29/16, 10:24 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: All thought towards conversion, Lafferwise, is ineffient compared to confirmation's available utilities.; 5/29/16, 10:27 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: If philosophy as taught in the modern sense produced anything, even disintegration etc., that would be an improvement on not producing anything, at least in terms of feedback enabling normative efficiencies becoming mass. Unless student despair becomes accounted for.

I cannot think of a more inhumane concept save violence than "nothing" is better than anything not praised currently, especially in one's own mind. Dottie Parker said, in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, how can you know about your own? You can't.

Only "artists" needing credentials and certifications and continuos affirmations could be so myopically critical.

I am not talking about intended harm or even inadvertent. I fear the fear of inadvertent sub-nothing thoughts verbalized more than the sub-nothing itself, as I bet would FDR.; 5/29/16, 10:50 PM
Achilles said...: Universities are a complete waste of our countries resources at this point. If you want to learn about the Napoleanic Era of France google it. If you want to learn about Drone Control Structures google it. MIT has classes for free.

Most importantly if you want to get wasted 5 nights a week and sleep the other 2 days to catch up on sleep you can do that without waiting for your financial aid to clear at home. You don't need to pay tuition to go camp out in the Dean's office or Harass the campus republicans and shout down their speakers.; 5/29/16, 10:52 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: How many Nazis failed to speak out in fear of being known as sub-nothing by virtue of their failure to maintain silence, which was Nazi to the core?; 5/29/16, 11:00 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Did any Jews die because they didn't verbalize a given situation? Should we encourage this deadly silence, noting an understanding that Buckleyesque fluency wasn't inherently assumed within by the dead?

Jesus said stones would cry out, and this is important because God knows man can be silenced through self-manipulation engendered by Satan.; 5/29/16, 11:08 PM
Owen said...: Prof. Althouse: "...should use that for a title to my memoir..."

I waive all rights.; 5/29/16, 11:14 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Why would it be better to be thought a fool, maybe, you don't really know, as opposed to removing that doubt and advancing?

Doyle Brunson loved to know what people thought of him and his "luck." As a man, he took all the info he could grasp, even if it didn't stroke his id every time, as a logical means to advancement.

His unsophistication was a strong part of his strength.; 5/29/16, 11:31 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Damnit, poker proves Althouse right on this one.

Wish I just woulda held my tongue.

WAIT BUT I LEARNED!!

But.... I'll forget too.; 5/29/16, 11:44 PM
Paul Ciotti said...: "So there are no conservatives on the faculty?"

Althouse: The student stated his perception. I haven't done an ideological analysis of my colleagues.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's what you do. Put up a notice on the law school bulletin board inviting all conservative faculty members to a BBQ at your house. You wouldn't have to overdue it. One package of hot dogs and a quart of Budweiser would be more than enough.; 5/30/16, 1:24 AM
rhhardin said...: Thomas Mann said thet Kafka was a religious humorist.; 5/30/16, 5:37 AM
tim maguire said...: Ann Althouse said...it always seems that we are judging the individual on that person's merit.

Seriously? No affirmative action, no diversity initiatives? You judge people on merit alone?

Kudos to you, that's fantastic! Sadly, you appear to be alone in this.; 5/30/16, 6:34 AM
MayBee said...: The lack of intellectual diversity really does make Tenure a joke.

What is the argument to maintain it?; 5/30/16, 6:54 AM
MayBee said...: Seriously? No affirmative action, no diversity initiatives? You judge people on merit alone?

tim maguire, that's my question too.

Affirmative Action was forced on people- is forced on people- who didn't and don't see anything wrong with their hiring or admissions practice.
So why should law professors be any different? Or universities in general? That they don't see a problem doesn't excuse or explain anything. It just confirms they have the same problem everyone else who is forced to seek diversity has.; 5/30/16, 6:58 AM
MayBee said...: BTW, Kristof has a new column as a follow up to his first one, and the comments are just as entertaining.; 5/30/16, 7:07 AM
Pettifogger said...: Ann, that you take conservatives' viewpoint seriously is itself an exceedingly unprogressive thing to do. Many progressives I know genuinely seem to believe that conservatives' views are motivated by greed and indifference.; 5/30/16, 7:26 AM
Curious George said...: "Ann Althouse said...
"So there are no conservatives on the faculty?"

The student stated his perception. I haven't done an ideological analysis of my colleagues."

You've been there 32 years and are part of the hiring process? What a steaming pile.; 5/30/16, 7:55 AM
iowan2 said...: In the end there is a truth. The left cannot legislate their agenda. The Judges have to.

It is clear that leftist have no time for the people to govern themselves. That scares them witless. Why else would a judge order a memorial removed because it represents a military man showing respects to his fallen brother, for the dangerous inclusion of a cross? Why would a learned man, so smart, even agree to hear the complaint. Because the people must be ground down by the government and disabused of the notion they are free people with the power to self govern.
https://www.bing.com/images/search/?q=Knoxville+Iowa+Veteran+Memorial&id=6F42899B78DBD8DA62EA6D1D1BEE6E0A8FED2600&FORM=BRQONH; 5/30/16, 7:57 AM
MikeR said...: "MIT has classes for free." To make this a little clearer, MIT has _all its classes_ online for free. Once sensible industries find ways to credential themselves, no one in his right mind will want to pay for a college degree.; 5/30/16, 8:28 AM
iowan2 said...: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/11/university_of_iowas_intolerant_liberal_law_faculty.html
The leftists powers denied a law proffessor a fulltime job because she wasn't a credentialed leftist. So there is a lot, a lot, of work involved in keeping academia pure.; 5/30/16, 8:29 AM
Mark Caplan said...: to acknowledge a need for more intellectual diversity in the form of more conservatives on the faculty.

From the left's perspective, that would be like saying we have too many healthy people on campus so we need some people to contract syphilis and dengue fever. To the left, conservative policies are either stupid or venal and need to be quarantined and expunged, not actively solicited.; 5/30/16, 8:49 AM
Oso Negro said...: "Rationale by cassowary", my new favorite Althousism, smacks of bird-brain logic, with a good chance of fearful physical attack. Read up on cassowaries. Really, who knew?; 5/30/16, 9:10 AM
Anonymous said...: Curious comments. In a law school with top notch professors, why should anyone know exactly what the individual political leanings are? I certainly did not know as a student at UVA Law 1979-1982. I kind of thought that my con law professor might have been a liberal, but he presented clearly (or made us realize) why Roe v. Wade was not based anywhere in the U.S. Constitution.

There was nothing presented in any of the classes that was viewpoint specific to only one view, which is the way it is supposed to be, since lawyers have to be able to argue either side of any issue. In fact, one of my first job interviews was to take the candidate I didn't vote for (Carter v. Reagan) and present an argument as to why they were the better candidate. (That made it tricky for me since I voted for John
Anderson.)

In the decades after I graduated, I was able to see which professors went to work for which administrations, and thus gained some insights into their probable political leanings.

I was able to tell more clearly which fellow students were liberals, in that they tended to criticize Chief Justice Rehnquist. And they were the exception rather than the rule. Some decades later I learned that Virginia Law had the reputation of being a conservative law school, but I never noticed while I was there. That could be the fish not noticing water effect, or the fact that only 25% of the students had come directly from college with no intervening real-world experience.; 5/30/16, 9:43 AM
lemondog said...: Just curious but what was the ideological tilt during the 1920's-30's? After WW2 and during the 1950's, 60's, 70's? Conservative, liberal, in transition?; 5/30/16, 9:46 AM
mikee said...: When everything in life is political, I suggest one win the political argument.; 5/30/16, 10:04 AM
Birkel said...: All of you've who couldn't recognize the Leftward tilt of your professors, I would encourage you to ask yourself why. I do not believe you have considered it fully.

My suggestion: The assumptions by which you operated - which you had learned systematically - were unquestioned. You were unaware that they were assumptions at all. Nobody stated the assumptions and defended them vigorously, and in the open. They were the background noise to which you hummed along.

Unlearn what was assumed, I further suggest.; 5/30/16, 10:16 AM
Jason said...: I participate in hiring decisions, but never in the form of saying let's find the best conservative. We're usually looking for the best person overall and often with concern about filling a particular subject-matter need (such as tax or family law). I can't remember a hiring search that was defined as looking for a particular political viewpoint, and it always seems that we are judging the individual on that person's merit.

And yet, despite a roughly 50-50 divide in the country, after how many hires over 30 years, all of those chuckleheads somehow manage think the same fucking way.

What are the odds?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯; 5/30/16, 11:00 AM
campy said...: "To the left, conservative policies are either stupid or venal..."

Embrace the power of "and".; 5/30/16, 12:53 PM
the gold digger said...: The assumptions by which you operated - which you had learned systematically - were unquestioned. You were unaware that they were assumptions at all.

Fish don't know they are in water.; 5/30/16, 1:31 PM
cubanbob said...: The Gold Digger said...
The assumptions by which you operated - which you had learned systematically - were unquestioned. You were unaware that they were assumptions at all.

Fish don't know they are in water.

5/30/16, 1:31 PM"

It isn't obvious that fish don't know they are in water. If we grant them the same sense of awareness that we have, they might. We somehow are aware we are surrounded by air.; 5/30/16, 2:12 PM
Jason said...: I can understand getting an overwhelming majority of people applying for academic positions teaching environmental law being liberal.

How the feck do you knuckleheads manage to do it with business and tax law?; 5/30/16, 2:43 PM
sean said...: The pushback against leftist domination and censorship at the universities is not likely to take the form of an explicit quid pro quo, such that university faculty could make a deal to appoint more conservative professors in return for more money. Rather, the liberal arts departments and a number of the professional schools will go the way of the mainline churches: fewer students, fewer donors, less public funding, less public and institutional respect, etc. Eventually, there will remain only an irrelevant rump, educating no one and barely keeping the office lights on.; 5/30/16, 2:58 PM
Jason said...: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/05/reportharvard-law-prof-hid-liberal-views-to-chair-hiring-committee-and-heavily-influence-hiring-crit.html

Harvard Law Prof Hid Liberal Views To Chair Hiring Committee and Heavily Influence Hiring.; 5/30/16, 3:44 PM
Richard said...: "Just curious but what was the ideological tilt during the 1920's-30's? After WW2 and during the 1950's, 60's, 70's? Conservative, liberal, in transition?"

Communist, Communist, Marxist, and Marxist.; 5/30/16, 4:28 PM
MadisonMan said...: In my Department, I have no idea how Professors vote. (With one fairly vocal exception) It's entirely irrelevant to the quality of their research so it's not something that would come up in conversation.

Given the past 5 or so years, I suspect they are not fans of the current Administration, given the Republicans' unsympathetic view of the University (especially given how it benefits the state). But I don't recall them being big fans of Doyle, either.; 5/30/16, 4:39 PM
sean said...: "Just curious but what was the ideological tilt during the 1920's-30's?"

The ideological tilt of the academy has always been heavily anti-American, but in the first half of the twentieth century this often took the form of pro-Confederate, elitist contempt for the American enterprise. As it became clear to Prof. Althouse's predecessors just how indefensible the Confederacy was, they switched their allegiance first to Moscow, then to Hanoi or Beijing, and lately, with all their gods having failed, to the odder precincts of Greenwich Village.; 5/30/16, 4:48 PM
Al&Bea said...: Ann - Why would you think that there will continue to be "Red States"? When universities continue to graduate intolerant mush-minded social progressives, ever more of them will begin voting. Sooner rather than later, there will be no red states.; 5/30/16, 5:32 PM
mockturtle said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/30/16, 7:22 PM
Birkel said...: MadisonMan:

It is cute that you lie to yourself so completely.; 5/30/16, 11:11 PM
Rick said...: I get the idea that there's pushback from the political sphere, especially here in Wisconsin, but I can't imagine how much political pushback there would need to be for my law school to acknowledge a need for more intellectual diversity in the form of more conservatives on the faculty.

I think you're misunderstanding the point. People know the left wing radicals aren't going stop discriminating. The push is to get them out by force or to end public support for academia so at least they aren't supported by tax dollars. Make the left fund its own institutions like the right has to.; 5/31/16, 8:12 AM
Jason said...: http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/05/political-tests-for-faculty/

Political tests for faculty. Right out in the open.

In today's age of connectivity and social media, Althouse has no idea what the politics of her colleagues are? Many of whom have spent many years in the same department? 30 years in the law school, and laws just somehow never come up?

Somehow the students know their law school faculty is infested with liberals, but she doesn't?

Is UW Madison the only school in the country where the profs don't hang cartoons on their office doors?

Our hostess demonstrates a remarkable incuriosity.; 5/31/16, 10:30 AM
Rusty said...: Take it easy on the perfesser. She isn't in a position to speak freely. She has to deal with those people every day.
Wait until her memoirs are out.
She's going to blow the lid off the UW Madison faculty.
Just you wait.; 5/31/16, 12:54 PM
California Snow said...: "But I'm not a conservative. I'm just someone who takes the conservative viewpoint seriously and thinks it deserves respect."

This is the reason I come here.; 5/31/16, 2:56 PM