Responses to "Adequately Preparing Students?"

1) From EL:

I have to start by acknowledging my own bias here.  I think that
thoughtful, educated people gravitate towards the left because the
left is the realm of selflessness and fairness and extention of
opportunities.  Those people who choose to become professors are
people who choose to value depth of thought over girth of wallet, and
so it makes sense to me - as a liberal -- that most of those people
adopt a liberal ideology.

That said, I also know that there are a great many thoughtful
conservatives, yet perhaps they stay away from universities -- as you
suggested -- because university life is so overwhelmingly liberal.
But that to me is sad.  There's a terrible paradox when liberals --
who, as alex says, are open-minded, fail to be openminded enough to
accept conservatives.  I think we all lose out when esteemed
intellectuals say things like "they're evil," in reference to another
political party.  That kind of language -- and that kind of insular
ideology -- just dumbs down the political debate and naively protects
liberals from the risks of engaging in a free marketplace of ideas.

I also read recently that one of the reasons the right is so
articulate -- and is so good with soundbites and slogans and
simple-yet-convincing rhetoric -- is because they really hone their
debating skills in a meaningful way on college campuses.  When you're
surrounded by people who think differently, you become really good a
presenting your own arguments.  We progressives don't get that kind of
mental workout on campuses, because so many people agree with us.
Perhaps if we could open the door to more conservative professors, the
result would be a more articulate and rhetorically-gifted next
generation of progressives.

That said, I also think we have to be careful about the way we label
and categorize these things.  You mention, for example, that no poli
sci profs at MIT supported the iraq war.  But is support of the Iraq
War really the litmus test of a conservative ideology?  Or is it
mearly something that happened to be on the Republican party's agenda
for a time?  And is rejection of that idea evidence of a liberal
ideology, or has recent history perhaps proven that rejection of the
war was simply a more pragmatic viewpoint?  How do you really gauge
who is "conservative?"  And who determines at any given time what
"conservative" means?  Alex, for instance, describes the big
conservative ideas as "Segregation, isolationism, 'states' rights',
church and state, etc."  But when I think of conservative, I think of
rejection of social programs and and a commitment to lowering taxes.
I think that this just goes to show that it's difficult to pinpoint
which profs have a "conservative ideology."  Perhaps there are many
among them (my father is one) who are self-professed liberals but
secretly harbor many conservative ideas.

2) From AF:

First, liberal means open-minded, which is what most professors aspire
to.  The idea that scientists, writers, artists, etc. would be
conservatives when the conservative movement is pushing the rejection
of evolution and artists and writers are being told what not to write
or make, seems anathema, if not silly.

Second, my guess is that it has much more to do with the type of
profession and the disciplines.  Are most economics depts more
conservative or more liberal?  Political science?  I don't
believe they're as

Last, 'conservatives' aren't going to the same universities--are
Brigham Young, Bob Jones, Ponoma, etc. more liberal?  Are
conservatives more often home schooling their kids, sending them to
private schools, and keeping their kids from being party to
dialogue?  I think so, and I think more and more.  That's why
conservatives hate public schools and push vouchers.

On a last last note, I'm a firm believer in most of the big
'conservative' ideas being dead ideas that will always lose out as time
passes.  Segregation, isolationism, 'states' rights', church and
state, etc. can't compete with progress.  The very idea stems from
the idea of conseving the past, which we learn every day was flawed in
more ways than we can believe--it's never the bygone golden years as
Buchanan and Jesse Helms describe it.

Could the elite universities be elite if they taught us that the
earth was the center of the universe?

PS: I'm happy to talk about leftwing crazies who I know a bit about and
realize exist in significant numbers.  But, they're really just
scapegoats used by the extreme rightwing to attack moderates.

3) From AH:

I thought you already got accepted into grad school.

Seriously dude.  Most conservative brains don't want to be professors.
They want to work in the "real world" and make a shit ton of money.  Those
that are interested in teaching run into the obviously liberal environment
of university faculty.  They don't feel welcome.  "You support Israel?, We
fucking hate Israel"  If you are a conservative thinker and you had the
choice of being 1 among a 100 unfriendly liberal professors or getting
paid exponentially higher money working for the government or a think tank,
what would you do?

Hmmmmm.....

"Everyone's a liberal until they get married and have kids"