Damned Ivory Tower Liberal Elite

Gadflyer has a nice piece, via Pandagon, detailing the increasing strength of conservative groups on campus.

But beyond anger, the defining characteristic of cultural populists is that they view themselves as victims of murky forces operating behind the scenes. And just as they’ll pass their adulthoods convinced they belong to a silent majority that’s repressed by a covertly liberal media, they go through their college days believing a biased faculty is trying to force a hidden lefty agenda down their throats.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here, and you should read the rest of the article. In my time at UW, I’ve had my share of right and left wing students. In some important senses, there’s not that much of a difference; both the left and the right have their fair share of the dumb and the bright, and exceptional students come from both groups. I would have to say that the conservatives tend to have a slightly higher percentage of the genuinely intellectually incurious, but it may be that these people just end up conservative by default rather than through any ideological conviction. One thing that I have noted, and that fits well with the argument made by Holland, is that the conservatives move in lockstep in a way that the lefties never do. The left wingers can barely agree with each other enough to put together a newspaper or bake sale, while the conservatives are always on point, and always have ready resources to draw on for making their arguments and for indicating the proper attitude about a particular issue. Back in 1999, first year that I taught American Foreign Policy, the conservative attitude of the day was anti-interventionist realism; liberals were wishy-washy emotional moralists who cared lots about things like democracy and human rights, but not a whit about oil, guns, or the national interest. Needless to say, the message changed in 2001, but the consistency stayed the same. Indeed, it’s pretty scary how a dozen conservatives across several different classes will mouth the same talking points.

Implications of all this? I’m a touch less alarmist than Holland. Academics do tend to be on the left wing, and this often shows up in class, even in conservative disciplines like economics. Doesn’t tend to matter, because no one takes the professors seriously on matters of politics. The left wasn’t able to organize a whole generation of activists, and I very much doubt that the conservatives will have better luck with the long term results of their efforts. Short term, it’s a different story. As Holland points out, conservatives have a ready made set of grievances against any professor who gives them a bad grade. “I didn’t get a D because I argued that the 14th Amendment was unconstitutional, I got a D because my professor is a raving liberal.” It also allows students to harbor a deep set of resentments against faculty whom they wish to believe are grading with an ideological bias, which leads to a whole variety of different types of personal attacks.

I haven’t had most of these problems, but that’s probably because several things innoculate me; I’m white, I’m male, I’m fairly big, and I like talking about guns, bombs, and nuclear weapons. All of these things get me a pass in the eyes of conservatives. It matters a lot more for professors, TAs, and instructors who don’t have these things going for them, and who face losing control in the classroom because some College Republican gets a burr up his ass about the D he got on the last paper.

But hey, here’s a handy response to all the Republicans who rant on about “merit” and affirmative action. Next time you’re in the classroom and someone makes this argument, ask how many students are part of the Greek system. Then, ask them why they joined. Almost invariably, they will not say “to get drunk and get laid.” They will say “for the connections that such organizations provide in the real world.” Then wait a while, and see if they can connect the dots.