Academics who hold that it is sacrilege to question their ideas are putting free inquiry in danger, argue the president of Northwestern and one of his colleagues.
I appreciate this commentary, especially after trying to converse with my extremely woke niece, who is a junior at Northwestern, the place you both teach. When I dared to raise objections to some of her most cherished beliefs (I told her looting and rioting does not serve ANY cause well for example), she told me that was my white privilege speaking. I'm sad to say we now talk very little.
I will be quite interested to see if the halls of academia actually do open to other opinions. I have an Ivy League college degree (1986), an M.A. from a state school in the Midwest, and classify myself as an old-school liberal who believes in free speech. Not allowing speakers with unpopular opinions on college campuses because their beliefs "cause harm" is a betrayal of everything the university used to stand for. If students don't like an opinion, they should learn how to argue and reason against it. I have always been proudly left of center, but but the woke left does not represent me at all.
Adrienne, Sorry to be repetitive, but with all their Offices of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (what I refer to as DIE offices) ferreting out racists and micro aggressors in every corner of teaching and research. As I mention below, it feels like our universities are becoming more medieval, with their many forms of intolerance, censorship, enforced conformity and persecution of those who failed to meet their ideological standards.
I agree with the authors' concerns. But I also detect naivety that we can ill afford. In discussions of the decline of tolerance for intellectual and political heterogeneity on university campuses, I've often seen some version of the following statement: "So far as we can tell, the majority of faculty avoid imposing their own political views on students and strive for impartiality." Whenever I've seen this kind of statement from an academic who's become aware that there's a problem with a particular kind of woke, fundamentalist, radical, "queer," postcolonial, etc., "monoculture," what I hear is: I'm sure that most of my colleagues--whom I know from coffee, serving on college or university committees, or attending university events--aren't responsible for this phenomenon. This must mean there are a few rogue actors out there, perhaps equally spread among all the units, certainly people I don't know from dinner or the curriculum committee. Fun fact: when they're among their own, for instance in faculty meetings, radical faculty often mock administrators like you because you're so clueless about what's going on.
So, let me break that bubble: there are not just a few rogue actors. Have you met women's studies? The English department? Ethnic and racial studies? Probably religious studies. History and the law school are likely sites of a culture war that everyone just ignores. If you could be a fly on the wall of most classes in the humanities, you'd see what you're expressing concern about. The phenomenon has also spread through the humanities subfields of the social sciences. One result of defunding and marginalizing the humanities is the radicalization of the humanities. And I'll bet you that most of their students are on board, not just playing for pay; that's why they're there! And I have one more tip: when these faculty say they teach all sides or some such thing, what they mean is that they tell their students that anyone who doesn't agree with the one right interpretation or belief is racist or some colorful variant of reactionary. I know this because students tell me all the time that Professor X has explained what people on the other side of issue Y believe. Do tell! I think it's my job to explain the range of ideas and arguments--usually the best version of those ideas and arguments--in order to help my students "test" what I understand they believe. I'm constantly introducing my students to ideas they've never heard of before because they've so consistently been given the most binary (a fave term in the radical academy, usually associated with all things white and Western) version of reality. I've also spent years reading manuscripts submitted for review and observing my colleagues teach--education about what critical thinking means in vast tracts of the contemporary academy.
Let me add support to your concerns. I am a retired scientist. I have been taking courses (senior, auditor) at a local community college for about 10 years. The profs I’ve had in the ‘liberal arts,’ but not the hard sciences like biology, genetics and geology, presented their political bias – always progressive – whenever the opportunity arose. This was true only of female professors in Geography, Western Civ and Film studies until last semester, when I had a 30-something male prof in US History (1880 - 1965). He, too, felt obligated to emphasize the ‘oppressor - victim’ story of our history (a la Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States). For example, his lectures on the ‘Gilded Age and Early 20th century’ dealt mainly with class and race conflict. He never mentioned the innovators in technology (Edison, Bell, Eastman) and finance that built the prosperity we have today, let alone the industrial base responsible for to fight fascism and communism in the 20th century. I worry that this bias in university education can only get worse, with all their Offices of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (what I refer to as DIE offices) ferreting out racists and micro aggressors in every corner of teaching and research. It feels like our universities are becoming more medieval, with their many forms of intolerance, censorship, enforced conformity and persecution of those who failed to meet their ideological standards.
Hi Irwin: I think you're the first person here besides me to note that the phenomenon we're responding to has a sex. It's certainly not the case that all women academics are perpetrators of left authoritarianism. And men can also be enthusiastic disseminators. But the pattern is clear: most of the left authoritarianism is clustered in fields and subfields where women are in the majority. Any attempt to subject their "scholarship" to standards that lie outside the ideology can and will be construed as the workings of racist cisheteropatriarchal governmentality (sexism being so day-before-yesterday).
The conspicuous silence of college and university presidents on this is issue, present company excluded, is most troubling to me. One would expect them to be in the forefront of the discussion. Do you think they are acquiescing to the mob, in agreement with the mob, or clueless?
Much to like in this Morson-Schapiro piece, and for me this is a highlight:
"we might just find that some of our most deeply held views could use some nuance"
If that were only the case for post-graduate life out in the real world. In today's influence economy, nuance can't be monetized and leveraged for gaining a competitive edge. Nuance doesn't generate click-throughs, nor doe it accrue a high enough interest rate in our quest for social currency.
I'm heartened to see you writing this Morty and wonder if your impending departure has given you more freedom to express your views. As an Northwestern alumnus whose daughter graduated a few years ago and who lives near campus, I've watched for years as the university has become more and more monocultural. Fortunately, my daughter was a neuroscience major and had less exposure to the woke indoctrination that her friends experienced and constantly regurgitate on their social media platforms. The university's treatment of Laura Kipnis and Alice Dreger under your watch was an embarrassment for an institution that purports to value academic freedom. Further, everything I receive from NU as an alumnus reflects a fundamentalist, progressive perspective. Here's my question: What have you done over the last few years to support viewpoint diversity at Northwestern? Nothing is evident. It is helpful to have another local university, of which I am also an alumnus, against which to compare NU's performance in this regard. I'll always be proud to be a Wildcat, but I'm far prouder of the performance of the University of Chicago.
He's been a great President with respect to the traditional role - fundraising - and he's a terrific, personable representative of the university. I've enjoyed him the several times I've talked to him at graduation and other events. He's simply done nothing as far as I can tell to push back against the monoculture and its excesses.
The only college that remotely encourages intellectual diversity is Hillsdale. Not unrelated, they also take no government money. Harvard takes in $600M per year of its budget from the government. There is no way they would have left Warren's padded resume alone if they were truly independent. I don't think radical defunding for universities is a near term option, but unless the IRS begins to rattle the saber on the not for profit status of hyper-partisan institutions, you will see little change. The sad thing is the stark partisanship and intellectual rot is not even ideological. It is just hard core single party group think. This ethos is not remotely consistent with intellectual inquiry and truth.
Excellent piece. But “Having witnessed dramatic changes in climate” is a telling explanation for environmental fundamentalism. “Fear of future dramatic changes” is more accurate as would be “believing that one has witnessed dramatic changes in climate”. Fundamentalism is generally built on fear and misinformation that is often deeply embedded.
I really miss the days where “woke” had a spiritual connotation, as in “opening your third eye and staying woke.” Afterward it had a more conspiratorial connotation, as in: “the CIA purposefully constructed the crack epidemic, stay woke.” It was part of African American vernacular and meant nothing close to the way people use it now. Now old white liberals and conservatives alike think it means “aggressively PC and liberal,” and it’s a real shame. Not a knock on the article, just reading the way it’s used these days is so depressing.
Call me crazy if you want, but I think a good starting point for this would be for colleges to start de-stigmatizing socialism and defining it more clearly. The survey you cited of Harvard faculty has “liberal” and “very liberal” as the only two left of center choices...historically and geo-politically speaking, identifying as ”very liberal” does not mean you are a leftist, and being “liberal” does not necessarily mean you’re even on the left at all. Just look at all the never-Trump republicans calling themselves “classical liberals.” Characterizing the far left as “very liberal,” is a manifestation of the anti-socialist American agenda that has been such a strong force since the early 20th century. With the rising number of social democrats throughout the country, it would be very helpful if some of the people who identify as left of center actually learned that most social democrats would consider them centrist moderates. I imagine if you changed “very liberal” to “socialist,” those numbers would change drastically, and you’d have a more accurate picture of where the faculty falls on the political spectrum.
Hi Jeff Dewey: that would be my ideal antidote too. The problem is that authoritarian faculty of the left, wherever they hail from in the academy, now teach their version of history, politics, sociology, etc. These folks have essentially rewritten the history of every phenomenon they teach about, and--like Civil War revisionism--their brand of history has become installed as gospel across many humanities disciplines. It's essentially the battle of historians, and who do you want to believe: social justice warriors whose view of reality is vindicated at every turn or the complicated, occasionally deeply disappointing versions of reality touted by old white cisheteronormative guys (note: I'm not an old white guy)? For students longing to be on the right side of politics as well as history, the choice is sadly clear.
The idea that the Right has been blocked out of academia may be true of certain areas of undergraduate study, but they still have immense influence in business and law schools all over the country. I recommend checking out Winner Take All Politics by Hacker and Pierson - American conservatives have successfully occupied some of the most influential areas of academia over the past 50 years. Getting the Federalist Society judges on the Supreme Court in the last 4 years is a great example of this. The documentary Inside Job is another source that reveals how influential the Right is in business schools - the deans and professors at these schools are very very far away from being woke left sjw marxists.
Hi Tim: I absolutely agree. And I study conservative politics, so . . . yes. But I wonder why you specifically note the influence of the politics of the left on "undergraduate study." That seems to subtly minimize the importance of the phenomenon of a radical left ecosystem in American universities that's impervious to facts (or, as they would have it, "facts") and dead set against free speech and critical thinking.
Well that’s where the discourse is focused on. I never see public conversations of the influence conservatives have had on higher institutions and how damaging it’s been to our society. I also would object to your classification of a “radical left ecosystem” that exists on campuses. Truly radical leftists are few and far between, and the ones who are dedicated and serious about their efforts understand how important it is to be committed to free speech because “cancel culture” came for them first, and it wasn’t just loss of jobs and social stigma, it was an extremely violent and deadly cancel culture. “Radical leftists” in America faced two red scares, COINTELPRO, and in the case of Fred Hampton, an assassination by the state. Abroad, they faced mass executions. The “cancel culture” conservatives and liberals are facing now is very real, but I don’t think the “radical left” is at fault.
Yea, these can tie into each other as well. A lot of people don’t know the influence socialist theory had on geo-politics leading into WW1 and WW2. I learned lots about both world wars in school, but nothing about the role Marxism and socialist theory and the movements they inspired had on the rise of Fascism in Italy and Naziism in Germany - they were basically reactionary movements in response to the Russian Revolution - it’s a critical part of understanding why the world is how it is right now.
Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro. Your latest book is 'Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us.' Yet your university departments and curricula seem bound to 'divide us.' I'm looking at Northwestern.edu websites. All but the STEM fields promote 'critical theory' and 'anti-racism,' two of the most divisive and politically-charged subject areas in our country today:
1. https://criticaltheory.northwestern.edu/ "Critical theory involves the attempt to better understand power, conflict and crisis, and to achieve change, emancipation, or distance from the beliefs, presuppositions, forces, forms, conventions, conditions, assemblages, and institutions of human life." Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences offers a minor in critical theory . . .
"Starting now, the senior leadership team and I commit to fostering and creating a Law School community premised on and dedicated to anti-racism. . . "
7. https://www.northwestern.edu/leadership-notes/2020/update-on-commitments-to-inclusion-and-social-justice.html ". . . In alignment with a recommendation from the Black Student Experience Task Force Report, Wildcat Welcome also has been enhanced over the past three years. Most recently, additional affinity spaces have been incorporated into the program, and this fall, all new students will participate in a required diversity and inclusion training, co-developed by Campus Inclusion and Community and New Student Programs." (what the f**k do 'affine spaces' -- a geometry concept -- have to do with decision making?)
Required diversity and inclusion training, better known as propaganda training, for all new students? Do you hear yourselves? It sounds to me that you two leaders at Northwestern don't recognize that you are "Living in echo chambers where (y)our views are only ever reinforced by friends and the media does a disservice to us all. Ideological segregation, like any other kind, promotes the demonization of the excluded."
All speech should be protected when it occurs, without violence, in public places. The University is not a public place but a place dedicated to learning. Speakers at college campuses should not be presenting false facts such as "participants of January 6 were only tourists". Where there is a serious difference of opinion, such as the positive or negative effects of Brexit or the best approach to immigration both sides need to be heard with their interpretation of the facts. To present only one side of a controversy does not provide for adequate discussion and debate of serious issues. In some areas the facts are quite overwhelming such as the negative effects of racism, but even these effects need to be adjusted for the negative effects of social class; there are 14,152,000 poor white Americans.
I agree with your overall point that enhancing understanding requires the presence of ideas in conflict. However, I disagree with your assertion that universities are not public places; they are indeed places of learning, but they typically have significant state funding, even many private institutions.
I'm also a bit leery about the idea of having a problem with speakers presenting false facts. Many speakers have some questionable ideas and facts. That does not mean the entirety of their contribution is negative. Do you really think a university would invite someone to speak who does nothing more than repeat falsehoods? And if improved understanding comes best from ideas in conflict, isn't it the responsibility of the institutions of learning to find varying viewpoints that challenge orthodoxy and bring them to the students? Are our students so foolish and incapable of evaluating arguments that we fear to let arguments we don't like be heard?
And perish the thought that some cherished "fact" might turn out to be less factual than we imagined, or that some disparaged "false fact" might turn out to have more merit than we thought? It seems to me such occurrences are commonplace over generations.
Public funding does not make universities public spaces. Ultimately they are under the authority of the Board of Trustees. They maintain their own police force and are responsible for organizations on their properties, often "private" organizations like fraternities. The University of California triggered the "Free Speech Movement" because it had the authority to do so. The decision was withdrawn because the board of trustees, under a lot of pressure, decided that students had the right to advocate for a political candidate on University property. But this was a right given by the Board of trustees; it was not based on the University property being a "public" space.
I'm not a lawyer of any kind (let alone a civil rights attorney), so my analysis may be flawed. I'm not sure if public funding is an issue -- it doesn't seem to be, so it appears that private universities and colleges are exempt, but public universities and colleges would seem to fall under the auspices of the first amendment. How else do we explain the 1989 Doe v. University of Michigan case? Not the SCOTUS, of course, but if the first amendment didn't apply to public universities and colleges, then the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan couldn't have possibly struck down the UM speech code as unconstitutional. See the text of the case here:
The case is interesting and detailed, with a lot of nuance. However, it suggests fairly strongly that public colleges and universities are subject to the First Amendment. To wit:
"A. Scope of Permissible Regulation
Before inquiring whether the policy is impermissibly vague and overbroad, it would be helpful to first distinguish between verbal conduct and verbal acts that are generally protected by the First Amendment and those that are not. It is the latter class of behavior that the University may legitimately regulate."
I'm afraid I'm not aware of any legal precedents or cases related to the Free Speech Movement in California. Was there one? It seems like the board of regents simply backed down, avoiding any need for a court challenge.
I don't have much hope with all their Offices of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (what I refer to as DIE offices) ferreting out racists and micro aggressors in every corner of teaching and research. As I stated above, It feels like our universities are becoming more medieval, with their many forms of intolerance, censorship, enforced conformity and persecution of those who failed to meet their ideological standards.
I assume you have nothing to do with the "Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences" offers a minor in critical theory. I wonder if the Weinbergs are aware of how their donation is being used?
"We know that even if you wanted to, brainwashing undergraduates is close to impossible. Students might feel compelled to give you back what you ask for in order to get good grades, but experience shows us most revel in their independence, and are anything but gullible. When they smell proselytization, they run the other way. This doesn’t mean that they’ve internalized the process of testing ideas and distinguishing dogma from free inquiry, of course. If only!"
Do we really know? Is that a belief or a face? Sounds maybe you have a fundamentalist view there. Why do you think that "undergraduates" are particularly exempt from being "brainwashed"? Personally, I do not think "brainwashed" is the correct term for what is happening to many undergraduates -- perhaps bamboozled or misinformed are more apt descriptions of what too often happens to undergraduates going through the liberal arts and social science departments of colleges. However, certainly some stuff does certainly qualify as "brainwashing", such as the academic source doctrine of the Cult of the Awoken. Any undergraduate that is compelled to ingest "White Fragility" or its allied ideology by a professor who is sympathetic to it will experience an attempt at psychic domination and mental rewiring -- hopefully, they will make it through that lived experience with their intellectual and moral agency unharmed and intact. Some do not though, clearly, as they are taking it into corporate board rooms, school boards, and the halls of congress. Too much stuff that gets peddled in universities as knowledge is more delusional than the fantasies of L Ron Hubbard. It is a crime that public taxes are often used to support that trash. Churches can spread whatever nonsense they want on their private dime; government funded colleges do not have that privilege.
"While the fact that almost everyone votes the same way does not indicate a culture of deliberate brainwashing, it means that students do not always hear both sides of arguments from people who believe in them. As John Stuart Mill famously said, “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”"
Correct, because the schools don't hire or seek to employ people with a diversity of political philosophy. Schools are primarily concerned, when it comes to diversity, hiring or employing people to satisfy race and gender ratios -- insofar as people adhere to the same political philosophy - "liberal." Again, I imagine "brainwashing" is not the right word for what is happening in colleges. Deliberate "indoctrination" is probably the more appropriate word or maybe we should just use the Orwellian euphemism more often expressed by the academe itself: "activism."
Totally ineffectual piece. We've all heard it a thousand times before. The supposed audience will simply respond, "To hell with your quaint norms of "reason". What about systemic racism [sexism, gender bias, class inequalities, etc.]?" What's needed is a sustained chorus of critique of their crude and destructive ideas, not simply their authoritarian impulses. Those best placed to lead that chorus are tenured professors. Where are they in this battle for the soul of the West? Writing the occasional hand-wringing article, pleading for the cultists to play nice.
Thank you for this persuasive piece. It is also a blessing to read many of the comments here. I do not always fully agree with everything published at Persuasion, but the level of thoughtful discussion is refreshing.
I appreciate this commentary, especially after trying to converse with my extremely woke niece, who is a junior at Northwestern, the place you both teach. When I dared to raise objections to some of her most cherished beliefs (I told her looting and rioting does not serve ANY cause well for example), she told me that was my white privilege speaking. I'm sad to say we now talk very little.
I will be quite interested to see if the halls of academia actually do open to other opinions. I have an Ivy League college degree (1986), an M.A. from a state school in the Midwest, and classify myself as an old-school liberal who believes in free speech. Not allowing speakers with unpopular opinions on college campuses because their beliefs "cause harm" is a betrayal of everything the university used to stand for. If students don't like an opinion, they should learn how to argue and reason against it. I have always been proudly left of center, but but the woke left does not represent me at all.
Adrienne, Sorry to be repetitive, but with all their Offices of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (what I refer to as DIE offices) ferreting out racists and micro aggressors in every corner of teaching and research. As I mention below, it feels like our universities are becoming more medieval, with their many forms of intolerance, censorship, enforced conformity and persecution of those who failed to meet their ideological standards.
I agree with the authors' concerns. But I also detect naivety that we can ill afford. In discussions of the decline of tolerance for intellectual and political heterogeneity on university campuses, I've often seen some version of the following statement: "So far as we can tell, the majority of faculty avoid imposing their own political views on students and strive for impartiality." Whenever I've seen this kind of statement from an academic who's become aware that there's a problem with a particular kind of woke, fundamentalist, radical, "queer," postcolonial, etc., "monoculture," what I hear is: I'm sure that most of my colleagues--whom I know from coffee, serving on college or university committees, or attending university events--aren't responsible for this phenomenon. This must mean there are a few rogue actors out there, perhaps equally spread among all the units, certainly people I don't know from dinner or the curriculum committee. Fun fact: when they're among their own, for instance in faculty meetings, radical faculty often mock administrators like you because you're so clueless about what's going on.
So, let me break that bubble: there are not just a few rogue actors. Have you met women's studies? The English department? Ethnic and racial studies? Probably religious studies. History and the law school are likely sites of a culture war that everyone just ignores. If you could be a fly on the wall of most classes in the humanities, you'd see what you're expressing concern about. The phenomenon has also spread through the humanities subfields of the social sciences. One result of defunding and marginalizing the humanities is the radicalization of the humanities. And I'll bet you that most of their students are on board, not just playing for pay; that's why they're there! And I have one more tip: when these faculty say they teach all sides or some such thing, what they mean is that they tell their students that anyone who doesn't agree with the one right interpretation or belief is racist or some colorful variant of reactionary. I know this because students tell me all the time that Professor X has explained what people on the other side of issue Y believe. Do tell! I think it's my job to explain the range of ideas and arguments--usually the best version of those ideas and arguments--in order to help my students "test" what I understand they believe. I'm constantly introducing my students to ideas they've never heard of before because they've so consistently been given the most binary (a fave term in the radical academy, usually associated with all things white and Western) version of reality. I've also spent years reading manuscripts submitted for review and observing my colleagues teach--education about what critical thinking means in vast tracts of the contemporary academy.
Let me add support to your concerns. I am a retired scientist. I have been taking courses (senior, auditor) at a local community college for about 10 years. The profs I’ve had in the ‘liberal arts,’ but not the hard sciences like biology, genetics and geology, presented their political bias – always progressive – whenever the opportunity arose. This was true only of female professors in Geography, Western Civ and Film studies until last semester, when I had a 30-something male prof in US History (1880 - 1965). He, too, felt obligated to emphasize the ‘oppressor - victim’ story of our history (a la Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States). For example, his lectures on the ‘Gilded Age and Early 20th century’ dealt mainly with class and race conflict. He never mentioned the innovators in technology (Edison, Bell, Eastman) and finance that built the prosperity we have today, let alone the industrial base responsible for to fight fascism and communism in the 20th century. I worry that this bias in university education can only get worse, with all their Offices of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (what I refer to as DIE offices) ferreting out racists and micro aggressors in every corner of teaching and research. It feels like our universities are becoming more medieval, with their many forms of intolerance, censorship, enforced conformity and persecution of those who failed to meet their ideological standards.
Hi Irwin: I think you're the first person here besides me to note that the phenomenon we're responding to has a sex. It's certainly not the case that all women academics are perpetrators of left authoritarianism. And men can also be enthusiastic disseminators. But the pattern is clear: most of the left authoritarianism is clustered in fields and subfields where women are in the majority. Any attempt to subject their "scholarship" to standards that lie outside the ideology can and will be construed as the workings of racist cisheteropatriarchal governmentality (sexism being so day-before-yesterday).
The conspicuous silence of college and university presidents on this is issue, present company excluded, is most troubling to me. One would expect them to be in the forefront of the discussion. Do you think they are acquiescing to the mob, in agreement with the mob, or clueless?
In my opinion, most of them are cowards, acquiescing to the mob because if they don’t, they will be relentlessly attacked on Twitter and on campus.
Much to like in this Morson-Schapiro piece, and for me this is a highlight:
"we might just find that some of our most deeply held views could use some nuance"
If that were only the case for post-graduate life out in the real world. In today's influence economy, nuance can't be monetized and leveraged for gaining a competitive edge. Nuance doesn't generate click-throughs, nor doe it accrue a high enough interest rate in our quest for social currency.
*nor does it accrue
I'm heartened to see you writing this Morty and wonder if your impending departure has given you more freedom to express your views. As an Northwestern alumnus whose daughter graduated a few years ago and who lives near campus, I've watched for years as the university has become more and more monocultural. Fortunately, my daughter was a neuroscience major and had less exposure to the woke indoctrination that her friends experienced and constantly regurgitate on their social media platforms. The university's treatment of Laura Kipnis and Alice Dreger under your watch was an embarrassment for an institution that purports to value academic freedom. Further, everything I receive from NU as an alumnus reflects a fundamentalist, progressive perspective. Here's my question: What have you done over the last few years to support viewpoint diversity at Northwestern? Nothing is evident. It is helpful to have another local university, of which I am also an alumnus, against which to compare NU's performance in this regard. I'll always be proud to be a Wildcat, but I'm far prouder of the performance of the University of Chicago.
What? Marty is leaving Northwestern? Many of us Williams alums would have him back in a heartbeat.
He's been a great President with respect to the traditional role - fundraising - and he's a terrific, personable representative of the university. I've enjoyed him the several times I've talked to him at graduation and other events. He's simply done nothing as far as I can tell to push back against the monoculture and its excesses.
And yes, he announced his departure will be in August of '22.
The only college that remotely encourages intellectual diversity is Hillsdale. Not unrelated, they also take no government money. Harvard takes in $600M per year of its budget from the government. There is no way they would have left Warren's padded resume alone if they were truly independent. I don't think radical defunding for universities is a near term option, but unless the IRS begins to rattle the saber on the not for profit status of hyper-partisan institutions, you will see little change. The sad thing is the stark partisanship and intellectual rot is not even ideological. It is just hard core single party group think. This ethos is not remotely consistent with intellectual inquiry and truth.
Excellent piece. But “Having witnessed dramatic changes in climate” is a telling explanation for environmental fundamentalism. “Fear of future dramatic changes” is more accurate as would be “believing that one has witnessed dramatic changes in climate”. Fundamentalism is generally built on fear and misinformation that is often deeply embedded.
For fundamentalists, the future is always certain. It is just the past that must be changed, and changed, and ...
I really miss the days where “woke” had a spiritual connotation, as in “opening your third eye and staying woke.” Afterward it had a more conspiratorial connotation, as in: “the CIA purposefully constructed the crack epidemic, stay woke.” It was part of African American vernacular and meant nothing close to the way people use it now. Now old white liberals and conservatives alike think it means “aggressively PC and liberal,” and it’s a real shame. Not a knock on the article, just reading the way it’s used these days is so depressing.
Call me crazy if you want, but I think a good starting point for this would be for colleges to start de-stigmatizing socialism and defining it more clearly. The survey you cited of Harvard faculty has “liberal” and “very liberal” as the only two left of center choices...historically and geo-politically speaking, identifying as ”very liberal” does not mean you are a leftist, and being “liberal” does not necessarily mean you’re even on the left at all. Just look at all the never-Trump republicans calling themselves “classical liberals.” Characterizing the far left as “very liberal,” is a manifestation of the anti-socialist American agenda that has been such a strong force since the early 20th century. With the rising number of social democrats throughout the country, it would be very helpful if some of the people who identify as left of center actually learned that most social democrats would consider them centrist moderates. I imagine if you changed “very liberal” to “socialist,” those numbers would change drastically, and you’d have a more accurate picture of where the faculty falls on the political spectrum.
Interesting take. Another idea: teach history.
Often criticized, never refuted: Faye's horseshoe theory of politics, where far right and far left converge on authoritarianism.
Hi Jeff Dewey: that would be my ideal antidote too. The problem is that authoritarian faculty of the left, wherever they hail from in the academy, now teach their version of history, politics, sociology, etc. These folks have essentially rewritten the history of every phenomenon they teach about, and--like Civil War revisionism--their brand of history has become installed as gospel across many humanities disciplines. It's essentially the battle of historians, and who do you want to believe: social justice warriors whose view of reality is vindicated at every turn or the complicated, occasionally deeply disappointing versions of reality touted by old white cisheteronormative guys (note: I'm not an old white guy)? For students longing to be on the right side of politics as well as history, the choice is sadly clear.
The idea that the Right has been blocked out of academia may be true of certain areas of undergraduate study, but they still have immense influence in business and law schools all over the country. I recommend checking out Winner Take All Politics by Hacker and Pierson - American conservatives have successfully occupied some of the most influential areas of academia over the past 50 years. Getting the Federalist Society judges on the Supreme Court in the last 4 years is a great example of this. The documentary Inside Job is another source that reveals how influential the Right is in business schools - the deans and professors at these schools are very very far away from being woke left sjw marxists.
Hi Tim: I absolutely agree. And I study conservative politics, so . . . yes. But I wonder why you specifically note the influence of the politics of the left on "undergraduate study." That seems to subtly minimize the importance of the phenomenon of a radical left ecosystem in American universities that's impervious to facts (or, as they would have it, "facts") and dead set against free speech and critical thinking.
Well that’s where the discourse is focused on. I never see public conversations of the influence conservatives have had on higher institutions and how damaging it’s been to our society. I also would object to your classification of a “radical left ecosystem” that exists on campuses. Truly radical leftists are few and far between, and the ones who are dedicated and serious about their efforts understand how important it is to be committed to free speech because “cancel culture” came for them first, and it wasn’t just loss of jobs and social stigma, it was an extremely violent and deadly cancel culture. “Radical leftists” in America faced two red scares, COINTELPRO, and in the case of Fred Hampton, an assassination by the state. Abroad, they faced mass executions. The “cancel culture” conservatives and liberals are facing now is very real, but I don’t think the “radical left” is at fault.
Yea, these can tie into each other as well. A lot of people don’t know the influence socialist theory had on geo-politics leading into WW1 and WW2. I learned lots about both world wars in school, but nothing about the role Marxism and socialist theory and the movements they inspired had on the rise of Fascism in Italy and Naziism in Germany - they were basically reactionary movements in response to the Russian Revolution - it’s a critical part of understanding why the world is how it is right now.
Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro. Your latest book is 'Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us.' Yet your university departments and curricula seem bound to 'divide us.' I'm looking at Northwestern.edu websites. All but the STEM fields promote 'critical theory' and 'anti-racism,' two of the most divisive and politically-charged subject areas in our country today:
1. https://criticaltheory.northwestern.edu/ "Critical theory involves the attempt to better understand power, conflict and crisis, and to achieve change, emancipation, or distance from the beliefs, presuppositions, forces, forms, conventions, conditions, assemblages, and institutions of human life." Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences offers a minor in critical theory . . .
2. https://criticalrace.org/schools/northwestern-university/ . . . (no need to comment)
3. https://polisci.northwestern.edu/research/subfield-specialties/critical-theory.html (ditto)
4. https://csdd.northwestern.edu/ Center for the study of Diversity and Democracy
5. https://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/diversity/inclusive-teaching-resources.html
6. https://www.law.northwestern.edu/about/news/newsdisplay.cfm?ID=979
"Starting now, the senior leadership team and I commit to fostering and creating a Law School community premised on and dedicated to anti-racism. . . "
7. https://www.northwestern.edu/leadership-notes/2020/update-on-commitments-to-inclusion-and-social-justice.html ". . . In alignment with a recommendation from the Black Student Experience Task Force Report, Wildcat Welcome also has been enhanced over the past three years. Most recently, additional affinity spaces have been incorporated into the program, and this fall, all new students will participate in a required diversity and inclusion training, co-developed by Campus Inclusion and Community and New Student Programs." (what the f**k do 'affine spaces' -- a geometry concept -- have to do with decision making?)
Required diversity and inclusion training, better known as propaganda training, for all new students? Do you hear yourselves? It sounds to me that you two leaders at Northwestern don't recognize that you are "Living in echo chambers where (y)our views are only ever reinforced by friends and the media does a disservice to us all. Ideological segregation, like any other kind, promotes the demonization of the excluded."
All speech should be protected when it occurs, without violence, in public places. The University is not a public place but a place dedicated to learning. Speakers at college campuses should not be presenting false facts such as "participants of January 6 were only tourists". Where there is a serious difference of opinion, such as the positive or negative effects of Brexit or the best approach to immigration both sides need to be heard with their interpretation of the facts. To present only one side of a controversy does not provide for adequate discussion and debate of serious issues. In some areas the facts are quite overwhelming such as the negative effects of racism, but even these effects need to be adjusted for the negative effects of social class; there are 14,152,000 poor white Americans.
I agree with your overall point that enhancing understanding requires the presence of ideas in conflict. However, I disagree with your assertion that universities are not public places; they are indeed places of learning, but they typically have significant state funding, even many private institutions.
I'm also a bit leery about the idea of having a problem with speakers presenting false facts. Many speakers have some questionable ideas and facts. That does not mean the entirety of their contribution is negative. Do you really think a university would invite someone to speak who does nothing more than repeat falsehoods? And if improved understanding comes best from ideas in conflict, isn't it the responsibility of the institutions of learning to find varying viewpoints that challenge orthodoxy and bring them to the students? Are our students so foolish and incapable of evaluating arguments that we fear to let arguments we don't like be heard?
And perish the thought that some cherished "fact" might turn out to be less factual than we imagined, or that some disparaged "false fact" might turn out to have more merit than we thought? It seems to me such occurrences are commonplace over generations.
Public funding does not make universities public spaces. Ultimately they are under the authority of the Board of Trustees. They maintain their own police force and are responsible for organizations on their properties, often "private" organizations like fraternities. The University of California triggered the "Free Speech Movement" because it had the authority to do so. The decision was withdrawn because the board of trustees, under a lot of pressure, decided that students had the right to advocate for a political candidate on University property. But this was a right given by the Board of trustees; it was not based on the University property being a "public" space.
I'm not a lawyer of any kind (let alone a civil rights attorney), so my analysis may be flawed. I'm not sure if public funding is an issue -- it doesn't seem to be, so it appears that private universities and colleges are exempt, but public universities and colleges would seem to fall under the auspices of the first amendment. How else do we explain the 1989 Doe v. University of Michigan case? Not the SCOTUS, of course, but if the first amendment didn't apply to public universities and colleges, then the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan couldn't have possibly struck down the UM speech code as unconstitutional. See the text of the case here:
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/721/852/1419700/
The case is interesting and detailed, with a lot of nuance. However, it suggests fairly strongly that public colleges and universities are subject to the First Amendment. To wit:
"A. Scope of Permissible Regulation
Before inquiring whether the policy is impermissibly vague and overbroad, it would be helpful to first distinguish between verbal conduct and verbal acts that are generally protected by the First Amendment and those that are not. It is the latter class of behavior that the University may legitimately regulate."
I'm afraid I'm not aware of any legal precedents or cases related to the Free Speech Movement in California. Was there one? It seems like the board of regents simply backed down, avoiding any need for a court challenge.
Just plain Thank You, really, thank you.
Thanks. I find it sad that we've reached this point. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back.
I don't have much hope with all their Offices of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (what I refer to as DIE offices) ferreting out racists and micro aggressors in every corner of teaching and research. As I stated above, It feels like our universities are becoming more medieval, with their many forms of intolerance, censorship, enforced conformity and persecution of those who failed to meet their ideological standards.
I love your acronym! Re universities, they were established as medieval institutions, and I'm not sure they ever changed.
I assume you have nothing to do with the "Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences" offers a minor in critical theory. I wonder if the Weinbergs are aware of how their donation is being used?
Nope. No relation. I live in NC. I have no idea what their values are, but surely their donations are not used simply for propaganda.
"We know that even if you wanted to, brainwashing undergraduates is close to impossible. Students might feel compelled to give you back what you ask for in order to get good grades, but experience shows us most revel in their independence, and are anything but gullible. When they smell proselytization, they run the other way. This doesn’t mean that they’ve internalized the process of testing ideas and distinguishing dogma from free inquiry, of course. If only!"
Do we really know? Is that a belief or a face? Sounds maybe you have a fundamentalist view there. Why do you think that "undergraduates" are particularly exempt from being "brainwashed"? Personally, I do not think "brainwashed" is the correct term for what is happening to many undergraduates -- perhaps bamboozled or misinformed are more apt descriptions of what too often happens to undergraduates going through the liberal arts and social science departments of colleges. However, certainly some stuff does certainly qualify as "brainwashing", such as the academic source doctrine of the Cult of the Awoken. Any undergraduate that is compelled to ingest "White Fragility" or its allied ideology by a professor who is sympathetic to it will experience an attempt at psychic domination and mental rewiring -- hopefully, they will make it through that lived experience with their intellectual and moral agency unharmed and intact. Some do not though, clearly, as they are taking it into corporate board rooms, school boards, and the halls of congress. Too much stuff that gets peddled in universities as knowledge is more delusional than the fantasies of L Ron Hubbard. It is a crime that public taxes are often used to support that trash. Churches can spread whatever nonsense they want on their private dime; government funded colleges do not have that privilege.
"While the fact that almost everyone votes the same way does not indicate a culture of deliberate brainwashing, it means that students do not always hear both sides of arguments from people who believe in them. As John Stuart Mill famously said, “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”"
Correct, because the schools don't hire or seek to employ people with a diversity of political philosophy. Schools are primarily concerned, when it comes to diversity, hiring or employing people to satisfy race and gender ratios -- insofar as people adhere to the same political philosophy - "liberal." Again, I imagine "brainwashing" is not the right word for what is happening in colleges. Deliberate "indoctrination" is probably the more appropriate word or maybe we should just use the Orwellian euphemism more often expressed by the academe itself: "activism."
Totally ineffectual piece. We've all heard it a thousand times before. The supposed audience will simply respond, "To hell with your quaint norms of "reason". What about systemic racism [sexism, gender bias, class inequalities, etc.]?" What's needed is a sustained chorus of critique of their crude and destructive ideas, not simply their authoritarian impulses. Those best placed to lead that chorus are tenured professors. Where are they in this battle for the soul of the West? Writing the occasional hand-wringing article, pleading for the cultists to play nice.
Thank you for this persuasive piece. It is also a blessing to read many of the comments here. I do not always fully agree with everything published at Persuasion, but the level of thoughtful discussion is refreshing.