Megan McArdle and John Tierney are clamoring for affirmative action for conservatives in academia (I think that is what McArdle is getting at, her post isn’t that coherent, Tierney seems to endorse an actual quota system).
Here’s what I’d like to know: how are we supposed to know if someone in the sciences is conservative? Would they just check a box on some form? Wouldn’t everyone do that then?
I don’t know the politics of most people I work with. I know one calls himself a conservative but hates Sarah Palin, a a few are NPR-style liberals, a few others are Liebercrats, and there’s one guy who reads Daily Kos, but that’s about all I know. I find everything any of them (except the guy who reads Kos, who is sharp) says about politics to be stupid, and I try to ignore whatever I hear so I don’t have to hold it against them. I think the guy in the office next to me could be a real winger, because he likes the rational market hypothesis, but he also wears sandals, so I don’t know and I’m not that interested.
When the Glorious People’s Conservative Revolution comes, will we have to keep track of this, so we make sure we have a certain number of conservatives in each department?
Update. Indeed, here’s McMegan arguing for affirmative action in academia, even in the hard sciences.
morzer
Could we demand affirmative action for intelligent and honest business and economic editors at the Atlantic? Possibly even include a working calculator requirement?
Jamey
Does Rocks for Jocks (Survey Geology for football players) count as Conservative Affirmative Action?
Joel
As an academic scientist, I don’t see very much in the way of affirmative action for minorities, much less people with politically conservative views (in fact, I know many more conservative scientists than ethnic minorities in science). The reality is that many people who are qualified for this profession opt for other, more lucrative ones.
fasteddie9318®
At least they’re finally able to admit that conservatism is a genetically determined trait like race, gender, or sexuality. It’s just a short step from there to finally getting recognition for conservatism as a genetic defect, and then we can get these folks the proper care they need to cope with their challenges.
gex
Once again, for conservatives taking action to promote diversity is wrong in every single case except when it is to promote conservatives. Just like all their positions. It’s okay for me and for people I deem worthy or real-American enough.
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: Bahahahhahahahahahahahaha! You funny.
This whole ‘affirmative action for conservatives’ thing pisses me the fuck off. The whole point of affirmative action is to help a group of people who are a disadvantage because they are part of a disenfranchised minority group. The keyword is disenfranchised. Which conservatives, no matter how much they like to bitch and moan about being the victims, are not.
Gah. It makes me want to rip my hair out by the handful.
Bighank53
Have they checked to see what those jobs pay? There’s a reason why lazy, greedy people don’t become professors, and political orientation has fuck-all to do with it.
Boots Day
This is a great idea. We should implement it at the same time we reserve 40 percent of the Fortune 500 CEO jobs for avowed liberals.
Jamey
Also, stop paying educators like chumps and maybe “conservatives” will consider careers in academia, rather than sales, insurance, or banking. But for now, the altruism gene seems more likely to pass through liberal blood lines.
The sup’t of my town’s school system oversees 500 employees and serves the families of 2200 kids. He earns just south of $200k, despite having an MA, MS and PhD. Conservatives generally howl bloody fucking murder because he has the temerity to earn as much as a 23-year-old junior trader at Goldman.
dmsilev
Always the victims, aren’t they?
And, as DougJ says, most people in the hard sciences tend to base hiring decisions on …ability to perform in the hard sciences. I’ve done a fair number of interviews, from both sides of the desk, and “so talk to me about your views on abortion and top-bracket tax cuts” has not once come up as a topic. Funny, that.
dms
General Stuck
Introduce them to a monkey with a banana. There will be a twinkle in a conservative’s eye.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
It just seemed like the logical corollary to these demands for affirmative action.
fasteddie9318®
Also too, I look forward to the quota system for biology professors who don’t subscribe to the lynch pin theory behind modern biology. The freshmen who take Biology 101 from the guy whose final exam answer is “JEBUS DID IT” will really be prepared for the next level of their academic journey.
bago
I’m still trying to figure out how to be off by orders of magnitude on a checkbox too. Perhaps something will come for me. It might even be something I ate.
//Not even going to try for a 16 homophone.
Jamey
@General Stuck: Or the recognition that he’s in the presence of a superior intellect…
Bill Murray
@Joel: In engineering, conservatives do much better than women. In my department of 5 faculty, we have an many conservatives (4), as the entire engineering faculty has women — and that’s because the university hired two new women faculty for this academic year. This matched the two already on the faculty.
The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts
When Megan McArdle gets a job doing *actual* economics or *actual* business, she can ring me up. And when The Atlantic hires someone who knows anything about either of those topics, then maybe AOL will buy them. Until then, STFU.
On a more serious note, there are some wingers in my department (and probably more in the economics dept) and, you know what, we get along. But their knowledge of their area supersedes their political beliefs. But if we’re talking affirmative action for idiocy, then why isn’t Sarah Palin teaching journamalism? On second thought, don’t answer that. I don’t even want to contemplate.
Politically Lost
Work and politics can be hazardous. The other day I was making a rather (I thought) bland point about how we should not be continuing on with torture and indefinite detention to an attorney I do contract work for.
I know he’s a bit of a glibertarian constantly complaining about young bucks and taxes, but I was shocked at his response. He literally said shut up or I’ll never hire you again.
OK. How’s your salad?
gnomedad
Bluntly, I suspect conservatives are less interested in becoming career academics. I Am Not A Social Scientist, but if post-docs were observed to be more conservative than faculty in the same field, that might indicate some prejudice. It wouldn’t surprise me if the reverse were true.
Sasha
When she starts calling for affirmative action for liberals in the military, I might begin to take her seriously.
But probably not.
Juror #7
@Bighank53: Oh, I don’t know…I’m lazy and greedy, and I’m a professor.
Linnaeus
Maybe we could call for more socialists in our nation’s business schools.
What’d I say?
beltane
Affirmative action for conservatives has worked out pretty well for McArdle. How else can one explain the fact that this dullest of knives has a prime spot in the Atlantic’s drawer. Is this anything more than another front in the right’s war against empirical knowledge?
ChrisNYC
I hate this stuff from conservatives. You know, if your philosophy derides “the ivory tower,” if you value private industry and scoff at academics as do-nothings who are drains on society, if you require that every bit of effort produce immediate and utilitarian results, then you’re not going to spit out a lot of profs. Just like liberals are never going to be heavily represented on the Chamber of Commerce. Same with entertainment — entertainers have always been outsiders, extremists, to an extent — people who question conventional views (or at least tell themselves they do). The conservative wailing about how Hollywood is full of woolly liberals overlooks that their philosophy actively denigrates the things that entertainers do and value. How many conservative parents would be happy if their child came home and said, “I really want to be an actor (or dancer or musician or whatever)!!!!”
Marc
Doug, your own questions for conservatives from earlier today will fit the bill quite nicely. In fact, I suspect they’d be the only acceptable measure.
Isn’t it about time our science majors heard the other point of view on evolution and global warming? Teach the controversy!
DougJ®
@beltane:
I think she is an affirmative action hire, yes, but I think it is more about gender than being a conservative. Most of the Atlantic’s bloggers have been right-center.
I count her, Sully, Douthat, Crook, Goldberg on the right-center to right.
Yglesias, Fallows, and TNC on the left-center to left.
asiangrrlMN
@Politically Lost: That’s so not a bland topic these days. Sadly, there are many people who are perfectly fine with torture and indefinite detention. You probably would have been better off talking about evolution v. creation.
@DougJ®: But how like the conservatives to hire a shitty female writer instead of a competent one.
Calouste
Look likes this “conservatives are the new blacks” has been rolled out as a talking point.
Bloix
I think we need affirmative action in the military. I think it’s dangerous that the people who control the weaponry are so out of step with the American people. And I think we particularly need affirmative action for atheists in the military.
Jablowski
Wonderful idea. Why don’t we apply broad politically-based affirmative action. More conservative literature professors in exchange for boardrooms of oil companies and banks represented by a fair proportion of liberal executives. Maybe the Koches should hire DougJ to be a writer for Reason.
mr. whipple
Check their calculators for symptoms of gastritus?
nestor
I listened to NPR before I was liberal. The Car Guys must have sealed the deal.
BalJu Commenter #2401
http://live.psu.edu/story/51023
High school biology teachers reluctant to endorse evolution in class
Wow, I missed this and I am floored. To quote Shaggy, “We’re doomed, doomed, horribly doomed!”
DougJ®
@asiangrrlMN:
Yes, I agree. And “affirmative action” may not be the right word for her anyway, it maybe the whole weird bundle of things, “I’m a vegetarian but I hate other vegetarians”, “I’m a pro-choice woman, but I hate the pro-choice movement”, etc.
It’s all catnip to the contrarian loving dipshits at the Atlantic.
Kryptik
Is this more of that ‘Is Conservatism Anti-Science because Science is Anti-Conservative?’ bullshit thought exercise stuff again?
asiangrrlMN
@DougJ®: I think your last sentence hit the nail on the head. And, she’s cute (so I’m told), so some of the younger liberal guys aren’t as hard on her as they should be.
Steve L.
@DougJ®: K-Thug came with this today: http://nyti.ms/fTd37F
cleek
McArdle remains a fool.
film at 11.
The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts
@asiangrrlMN:
It’s the Juice Box Mafia effect. Yglesias, Drum, etc. won’t call her out on her outrageous bullshit because they all hang out and have a drink together at the cool kids’ restaurants after work. It’s Village 2.0. Nothing more, nothing less.
burnspbesq
Apparently the Republican leadership in the House can’t divide by three or multiply by two.
They brought a Patriot Act reauthorization bill to the floor under an expedited rule that requires a two-thirds vote, and by golly, they lost 26 of their own folks and didn’t have two-thirds.
http://my.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20110208/4a3d9f00-dc4d-41be-9143-4c69bc546abf
JCT
@asiangrrlMN:
LOL, I watched one of my colleagues at a dinner party nearly fly across the room to drag her geneticist husband away from a wealthy donor’s (wingnut) wife when she hear the woman say rather pointedly that she didn’t believe in evolution. Close one…
As an academic physician I run into my share of conservatives, many also have start-up companies. Actually one of my senior colleagues is SO right-wing that our entire field jokes about it. He makes the Koch brothers look like Soros. After the 2008 elections a bunch of folks sent him real estate ads from rural Wyoming and the Caribbean — he wasn’t too amused.
jrg
These people have been railing about how academics aren’t worth a shit for years… Pushing crap like “God did it is a scientific theory”. Now they’re wondering why there are not many conservative academics?
Jesus Christ. If they’re not smart enough to figure that out, I think I have an answer for them.
John PM
This is ironic, considering that conservatives already have their own form of affirmative action in academia, ie, economics and finance. Do we really want them to spread their intellectualism to other Fields? Can you imagine a doctrinal conservative teaching Archeology? All fossils would be no more than 6000 years old.
Hob
Hey, don’t give McArdle all the hate; Tierney deserves plenty too. For any publication, let alone the NY Times, to call that guy a science writer is just as outrageous as Megan being an economics editor.
cleek
@The Commenter on BJ formerly known as arguingwithsignposts:
doesn’t really sound like Drum, who lives on the other side of the country and is probably 20 years older than, and not at all a DC insider wanna-be like, Yglesias and McArdle.
Arundel
“Besides, liberals suddenly argue, we shouldn’t look for every sub-population to mirror the composition of the population at large; just as Greeks gravitated towards diners in 1980s New York, and the small market business was dominated by kKoreans, liberals are attracted to academia, and conservatives to, well, some other profession.”
I just needed to plop that down, her typos and all, as I shake my head at her utterly weird notion that Greek NYC diners were a thing of the 8o’s , or that something called “small market business” was dominated by kKoreans (sic). I’m a New Yorker lifelong, and I am just aghast at her ignorance.
GregB
Conservative white men are the Jews of liberal fascism.
McArdle is just putting Goldberg’s dictum into action.
Ron Beasley
The problem is conservatives don’t become academics,teachers, etc because they become bankers, stock brokers and CEO’s because above all they want to become rich. It’s in the genetic code – they are sociopaths.
ppcli
Gawd, what a horrifying example of “Earth Flat? Opinions Differ – you decide” journalism.
Opposition to Young Earth Creationism is not “bias”. It follows from quite simple facts that anyone with a high school education can grasp, so long as they also embrace a basic respect for evidence that one would hope would be required for any university professor, in whatever subject.
Maybe what we need is affirmative action for journalists: every journal or newspaper should have at least a couple of people who don’t believe that facts are irrelevant, and everything is just a matter of opinion.
General Stuck
I think it’s a sign of desperation plugged into the eternal stupidity and butthurt of conservatives. What do they have to show for the rise and fall of the vaunted conservative movement? The brain dead tea party reactionaries? flying about the room like punctured balloons, and making no sense to the right wing intelligentsia other than affording temporary political survival . They had their day in the sun and playtime for their ideas in real time governating. And it all flopped like it was destined to, from shoving conservative square pegs into a round liberal democracy. Just won’t work.
So wizards like Mecmegan et al sit around all day with a ton of resentment and not much else between their ears for a revival alternative to the rage virus tea tards, who likely scare them as much as us, with their matches and cans of gasoline, and shaky current allegiance to the GOP.
They couldn’t cut the mustard straight up in power, so now they pine to rig the game another way, by forcing themselves and their bullshit into academia, to change the game itself visa vi indoctrination of young minds in their formative state. Not unlike the creationists and homeschoolers circumventing science and all that un godly anti(white) American propaganda. It is all about power, and how to get it and hold it. It is what they must have. The rest is negotiable for that singular purpose.
jrg
@Ron Beasley:
Bullshit. Sociopaths make up no more than 5% of the population. Most “conservatives” are well-meaning retards, like Forrest Gump.
Fwiffo
The reason you don’t find conservatives in the sciences is the same reason you don’t find pro-lifers working at Planned Parenthood.
Steve
The best part of her post is where she dismissed the argument of “Conservatives aren’t all that interested in academia” by saying “that sounds just like ‘blacks choose not to go into management because they don’t want the responsibility’!”
The second best part is where she says that even if conservatives could get jobs by hiding their political views, that would be JUST LIKE society requiring blacks to “pass” as white in order to be accepted as full human beings.
Not only is this a broken record, it’s a really bad broken record. This is “Jew of liberal fascism” territory.
Omnes Omnibus
@jrg: That book was hilarious, shame about the movie.
DougJ®
@Hob:
You are right. But there’s no chance he’ll respond.
J.W. Hamner
What I found most strange about the Tierney piece was the following quote from a conservative grad student:
Uhm, science FAIL? If what that student says is accurate then I think we can safely say “political psychology” is not science in any way, shape, or form. If they just admitted that, it seems like they’d be fine. It’s like that in economics after all, and people don’t seem to bat an eye at the thought of “conservative or liberal economics departments.”
On the other hand, I’m sure my vote for Obama or desire for a more expansive welfare state had no effect on how I collected, analyzed, or theorized about my data in cardiovascular physiology. What exactly would be a conservative view of cardiovascular physiology be? High blood pressure is good for you?
numbskull
@Bighank53: BINGO!
You win the internets for today.
Suffern ACE
@J.W. Hamner:
Moral failings cause disease and its not worth treating it if it isn’t profitable.
Arundel
Also, a “show of hands” thing showing that psychologists are largely “liberal”?
Don’t even see the point there. I don’t even understand what a “conservative psychologist” would be. One who insists on labelling gay people as mentally aberrant in the DSM? And shifting from psychologists to psychiatrists (acknowledging the difference) I wonder what the hell McMegan thinks about quotas for “conservative” psychiatrists. So when depressed and suicidal gay teens seek counsel they can have a chance to be treated by shrinks telling them they are second-class, will never have their relationships acknowledged legally in marriage, and that they are doomed to ostracism?
Is that Meghan McCardle’s idea here? A “conservative” psychologist or psychiatrist is far beside the point. The arts and humanities are inherently liberal, and psychology as a science is often associated with those forms of enlightened , secular humanism. And thank God or FSM for that. Things like this make me think she is a hateful homophobic loon.
Ps. Megan might be encouraged that in the bad old days there were plenty of “conservative” psychologists who sent legions of gay men to be tortured by electroshock therapy to be “cured”. Stupid bitch.
gnomedad
@J.W. Hamner:
Well, Rush will tell you cigars and steaks are.
New Yorker
Can we expand affirmative action into other areas? For instance, I don’t see too many Quakers or other pacifists in the military. I think our next SecDef needs to be a hippie from Topanga Canyon.
Also, I’m outraged by the utter lack of Communists on the boards of major companies. I think each company in the S&P 500 should have at least one person who fought with the Shining Path in Peru.
Nylund
I’m in the econ department. I can’t tell you anyone’s political views in my dept except one. We have one winger who regularly in class refers to Democrats as “the marxist Democrats” and fills his lectures with all the reasons the Fed should be destroyed and why Obama is an evil socialist. The rest of the faculty hate him because he teaches an intro class (he doesn’t have enough education to teach higher than that per school policy), and we all have to spend so much time re-teaching his course, then our own, when his students move on to the next level.
I also have winger students who proudly talk about how they make sure to check all the political contributions of their professors before registering, lest they inadvertently get taught by a liberal. Those kids scare me.
Steve
McArdle concludes her long argument for affirmative action by saying that no one (well, hardly anyone) actually wants affirmative action:
Uh huh. They don’t actually want the jobs, they just want you to acknowledge that they’re being victimized. Wait, let me say that again – THEY DON’T ACTUALLY WANT THE JOBS. That is why this whole argument falls apart: there is, in fact, no critical mass of conservatives who are desperately trying to get into the academy, but are being shut out by invidious discrimination. Compare this to, say, historical precedent where thousands of blacks truly wanted to become doctors but couldn’t because med schools wouldn’t admit them and hospitals wouldn’t give them privileges. Did those blacks say “we don’t demand that you hire us, we just want you to acknowledge that we’re being victimized”? Hell no. They wanted the jobs!
This whole thing is such a pile of sophistry. There is no evidence that conservatives who want to work in academia get turned away at any greater rate than liberals or moderates who want to work in academia. Indeed, unless you’re a loon who really believes the Marxist-Leninists took over all the tenure committees in the 50s and never let go, it’s really hard to fathom how the exact same patterns of discrimination would repeat themselves across thousands of different colleges and universities with unique local cultures.
PeakVT
@Bloix: And I think we particularly need affirmative action for atheists
in the military.on the Supreme Court and in Congress.Improved.
Bret
I’ll propose a compromise. I’ll let them conservatize academia if they liberalize Wall Street.
New Yorker
Have you ever read David Horowitz?
Southern Beale
LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL
Dude that is CLASSIC …
cleek
@Arundel:
i know i’d love to see a psychologist who thinks “empathy” is a dirty word.
jwb
@New Yorker: David Horowitz? The crazy dude who thinks the average faculty member makes $1,000,000 a year and teaches a course once every four years? That David Horowitz? He has no interest in being honest.
Craig (FuriousGiorge)
The nice thing about Meggsy is that she is generally willing to mix it up in comments. The bad thing is that those comments are often stupider than the original post.
lllphd
wait wait wait wait wait….
let me get this straight. these fools want a quota system for faculty, but affirmative action is unconstitutional????
ok. my head has just encountered a black hole; singularity suckage, cannot. breathe….
RSA
What I like is where Megan writes,
but her link says nothing of the kind. A Pew survey from 2009 puts the percentage of scientists (not professors, though) who are Democrats at 55%.
Ailuridae
I guess since nobody else is willing to point out the elephant in the room I guess I will: there are a dearth of conservative academics in the social sciences because conservatives are largely incapable of analyzing empirical data that doesn’t agree with their strongly held beliefs.
If you look where conservatives have managed to thrive in academia it is largely in economics programs where the “work” they do is largely devoid of any empirical backing and often in compete disagreement with the available data. That’s a feature not a bug
jwb
@Ailuridae: I think they want to export that model they’ve been so successful with in economics to the rest of academia.
lllphd
um, why do i not have permission to edit my comment? and it won’t let me delete, either.
i intended to say:
“…but affirmative action for STUDENTS is unconstitutional????
whassup with the comment-bot?
Elia
A bit off-topic but:
can someone tell me when, exactly, it was determined that Moynihan was right all along?
And am I just a crazy librul NPR Nazi or does anyone else recall the controversial statements by Summers being far more self-consciously provocative and douche-y than the article would lead one to believe? I don’t remember the situation going down that way at all.
Ailuridae
@jwb:
I agree. And, in all honesty what would the harm be? It isn’t like those conservative economists’ poorly thought out theories collapsed the world economy or anything.
Southern Beale
On a somewhat related noted … search for greatness FAIL! Conservatives think they have broken the glass ceiling, crash straight into reality …
Omnes Omnibus
@Ailuridae: Yeah, that would have sucked. Also too, it is all for the best that no Straussians got hold of the US foreign policy reins; that shit would have been off the chain.
lllphd
@Arundel:
wow. the very notion of a conservative psychologist gives me the creeps. i’ve been in this business for over two decades, and i can honestly say i don’t believe i’ve ever met a conservative psychologist. hm; never thought about it before, but there you are.
on C&L or maybe mediamatters i saw this frank luntz focus group on obama’s cairo speech (or maybe more recent), but one member of the group said that obama’s a liberal and liberals don’t care about people.
do these people not realize our founding fathers were the first liberals???
well, maybe after that guy from nazareth, the carpenter, yeah; you know the one.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
She can have her damned academic quota just as soon as Noam Chomsky and I are seated on the board of Goldman-Sachs.
bonkers
@GregB: McArdle is just putting Goldberg’s dictum into action
I’m quite certain Goldberg’s dictum has never seen any action.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@DougJ®: So typical conservative. Projection of what you hate about yourself onto others. See also: homo-haters, anti-teen pregnancy advocates, etc.
Tattoosydney
So the majority of scientists and academics don’t support creationism, unfettered capitalism and fear of learning, but instead believe in the scientific method, making the world a better place and the power of knowledge.
In other news, most doctors think making people healthier is a good idea and that Megan McArdle is a dickhead.
gwangung
Hard sciences, business, engineering and medicine are roughly half and half.
Social sciences are a majority liberal.
Humanities and arts are substantially liberal.
Basically, this call for conservative affirmative action is a call for the academic version of AN AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CAROL.
Linnaeus
I would offer the argument that one reason we’ll don’t see the number of conservatives that McArdle would like to see among the faculty of colleges and universities is that those institutions have an inherent tendency that favors the presence of more liberal minded people in key positions. Universities are spaces where (in principle, at least) free inquiry for its own sake is highly valued, which in turn means it’s more likely you will find people whose work challenges the dominant discourses in society.
The Republic of Stupidity
Affirmative action for conservatives…
This is so farking McStupid it makes my god damned TEETH hurt…
At least conservatives are admitting being a conservative is some sort of serious handicap… no?
Cain
@Steve:
Actually, when I was in college blacks almost uniformly went to the school of management. You probably had like 15 black guys in engineering freshman class. You hardly saw them. But you saw a lot of them in the school of management.
cain
The Republic of Stupidity
@gwangung:
True… and we all know how well THAT one played out…
Steve
@Linnaeus:
Conservatives, of course, believe they are the bold dissenters who challenge the dominant, politically correct discourses in society.
Hunter Gathers
As we all know, conservatives are the most maligned minority in the history of the world. Sure there was the Holocaust, slavery, constitutional enabled misogyny and Jim Crow, but the fact that conservatives don’t dominate every walk of life in the public and private sector demands that we honor them by creating a new form of Affirmative Action.
Racial and religious minorities and women have not suffered like conservatives have.
Cry me a river, you whiny little bitches.
JCT
I’m looking forward to that new “political affiliation” checkbox on grant proposals.
I probably shouldn’t joke about that……
charlied
Was Dr. Laura a psychologist or did she only play one one the radio? that could be a perfect example of a “conservative psychologist.
dr. bloor
@lllphd:
I guarantee you have, particularly if you’ve ever been to an APA conference. The number whose political beliefs inform their work to any great extent might be relatively small–I really don’t know–but psychology has no claim to have cornered the market in enlightened liberalism.
Midnight Marauder
@Ailuridae:
The italicized sentence pretty much explains the rise and dominance of Fox News with conservatives, I think. Conservatives already had their “day in the sun and playtime for their ideas in real time governating,” as General Stuck so eloquently stated. It was revealed that the real world is fundamentally and diametrically opposed to their ideology in terms of producing beneficial results for a large number of real human beings. There is no way for them to sustain or succeed in a venue built on empiricism.
They will always try to tear it down and build their own version of reality. Always.
dr. bloor
@charlied:
Her Ph.D. is in physiology.
trizzlor
I cannot take seriously any article about the “liberalization” of academia that doesn’t mention NSF/NIH grants and where the parties stand on that issue.
fasteddie9318®
@Steve:
Obviously; I mean, conservatives take the daring risk of speaking untruth to powerlessness every day of their lives. Every. Single. Day. Can any of us claim similar fearlessness? I wouldn’t want to trade places with a courageous fellow like Paul Ryan, bravely telling the Peasant to fuck off and eat cat food if it ever does get to “retire,” all in defense of our unfortunate, disenfranchised Galtian overlords. Heroism like that is truly rare indeed.
sherifffruitfly
That’s not news. White folks have ALWAYS been pro-affirmative action for white folks. That’s, like, how our country has been from day 1.
Rich Gardner
Heh! I did deskwork for a corporation for a few months. Didn’t know how my two closest workmates felt about politics, so it took me awhile to ask. One was “Oh, The Lord will see to everything. He will guide us to the right path,” and the other was “Our Glorious Leader President Bush will attain victory for America!” In both cases, I continued to get along with both of them, but that was only because we had a strong relationship by then.
How do you know when you’re working with someone of a particular persuasion in a corporate setting? That’s simple. You don’t. Everyone is going to focus on just the work until they feel comfortable with you and keep in mind that my dad worked with certain people for years. My mom would ask “Oh. is he married?” Dad would mumble and mom realized it never occurred to dad to ask.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Hunter Gathers: And their ongoing denial of rights to gay people…
HeftyJo
@DougJ
“I try to ignore whatever I hear”
Okay this is probably where your comprehension skills seem to break down then. Most basis of understanding is generated from LISTENING, VISUALIZING, and understanding; rather fundamental skills I might say.
hamletta
@fasteddie9318®:
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Holly McLachlan
You have got to stop giving this puerile pundit your eyeballs. She is bringing professional-class readers to The Atlantic website by writing intentionally pettish, self-congratulatory rot that is designed to please their aging egos (or damage them. Either way she brings in clicks).
I don’t often say, “Ignore her” about a rightwing talking head, because many of the prominent ones are powerful opinion-shapers — effective propagandists.
She is not. She’s an elite ass. She reaches almost no one and preaches merely to the converted. And she is kept on by her editor because of the attention she draws to their site.
Xecky Gilchrist
Forget affirmative action for righties! Just go back to the McCarthyite loyalty oaths.
Suffern ACE
@Steve: Of course they don’t want the jobs. What they want is to root out liberals and have wanted that since Buckley. I feel that I am about to read reviews of Tenured Radicals and Illiberal Education all the frick over again. Why oh why is it perpetually 1993?
Suffern ACE
And since the DLC and the Democrats as a whole largely abandoned Affirmative Action as national policy goals in the 1990s, why are we even arguing this point?
MikeJ
@Suffern ACE: Because they didn’t go far enough and argue *for* affirmative action for conservatives.
Kyle
We had a recent example of affirmative action for conservatives — the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Courtesy of Republican hack John O’Bierne in the Pentagon selecting CPA staffers from right-wing foundations according to their views on abortion and support for the Chimp.
The results speak for themselves. They administered Iraq about as well as they administered the US in the Cheney/Chimp years. Who would have guessed that a 23-year-old Liberty University grad and Heritage Foundation intern would be unqualified to run the Baghdad Stock Exchange?
WarMunchkin
It seems that she’s arguing that conservatives feel discriminated against when people talk about politics in workplaces surrounded primarily by liberals. I actually don’t oppose a no politics at work rule, and I doubt many people disagree with that either.
On the other hand, the idea of academic disciplines screening out conservatives during the hiring process implies something completely different. Does she think that people are asked about their political beliefs during the hiring process? As far as her ill-advised comparison to racial discrimination – does she think people ask whether the person sitting in front of them is black or female during the interview, or just figure it out by looking at them?
Also this:
Science is a professional field – if you have an idea goes against conclusions that are out there, then extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and if you have it, you should publish it. That said, if it turns out that you’re full of shit, and people point that out, you don’t get to cringe and say “bias!”, you need evidence.
asiangrrlMN
@lllphd: Come to MN and meet Michele Bachmann’s hubby. He’s a psychologist and practices gay-reversion therapy.
@Tattoosydney: Heh, hon. You’re in fine fettle tonight. I see you’re trying to work dickhead into every comment.
@JCT: Man. That geneticist hubby probably wanted to unload on the woman.
General Stuck
Ot
Teehee!!
A lesson for letting snakes in your tent.
Guess who else has a blue dog problem, now. Or, maybe burnt orange dogs would be better.
hamletta
@Kyle: Worse. They were Heritage Foundation rejects. Plus some legacy hires, like the daughter of one prominent neocon whose name escapes me now.
I read the story of that clown car in the infamous WaPo, but it came out at the same time as the Abu Ghraib story, so it faded into the background.
It was appalling. This was our Very Serious Foreign Policy: sending a bunch of clueless children to set up civic institutions in one of the world’s oldest civilizations, as if the Iraqi people were a bunch of savages who just needed to understand The Glory Of the Market Economy.
Dave C
@trizzlor:
This. Why would we expect that many scientists would want to vote for a party that is committed to gutting the life-blood of basic scientific research?
Xenos
@Southern Beale: I don’t know about you, but after 2008 I think I would prefer to forget about Geraldin Ferraro, too.
Martin
My inside view: if conservatives weren’t so fucking lazy and greedy they’d be willing to trudge through the horrors of earning a PhD in the hard sciences or engineering and they’d be offered these academic positions instead of us having to import people from all over the world.
I don’t know why the GOP thinks it’s not a meritocracy out there, but hiring into junior academic positions absolutely is.
And anyone who thinks that engineering academics is full of liberals is a fucking idiot.
David
Here is part of a Wingnut blog where they’re trying to determine if Gabrielle Giffords’ husband is a Democrat or a Republlican:
He certainly ticks the right demographic boxes:
1. He recently found faith.
2. He’s an aeronautical engineer, and engineers tend to be libertarian types.
3. He has a successful naval career.
Two facts that may make him lean Democrat:
1. He is married to Gabrielle Giffords, a far-left Democrat who tries to convince people she’s a “moderate.”
2. He’s an astronaut, and they tend to be Democrats when they run for office. Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and John Glenn (D-OH) were the only two astronauts who became senators.
. . .
http://polipundit.com/?p=29133
petorado
Part of the problem with this “conservatives get no respect” meme calling for some sort of affirmative action for them in academia is that conservatism, as it was once understood, is dead. An irrational, immature, entitled, selfish, and non-science believing movement has assumed the mantle of a once respectable cohort and crapped on it — now they want respect?
All this talk of Reagan’s 100th birthday has shown that the needle has moved way far to the right and this new movement is really “regressivism”, as in regressing back to the Dark Ages, maybe the Stone Age, but certainly no further than 6,000 years ago when humanity, as they believe it, began. This is no movement capable of demanding equal rights. It’s a loose collective bound together by the principle of “hey, when do I get mine?”
Ash Can
@petorado: More like, “Hey, I’ve got mine, and I want yours too!”
DW
OK, I hate to bring this up, but what’s the percentage of Jews in academia? Given that Americans Jews are heavily Democratic (usually voting 4 or 5 to 1) and given that Jewish culture puts a big emphasis on education and intellectual achievement unlike some other *cough* Evangelical Protestants *cough* groups in America, perhaps that could be skewing the numbers. In which case we just need to bring back the old anti-Jewish quota system. I’m sure David Gerlenter would be thrilled. Or Megan McArdle & co could encourage conservatives to show a little more respect for education and the scientific method. Keep insulting academics and they won’t be your friends.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@David:
Not going clicky, but why on earth do they care? Or wait – don’t tell me – if he’s a Republican, then his decision to go on with the space shuttle mission is a brave stand for duty and country and it’s what Gabby would want him to do, but if he’s a Democrat, then it’s an appalling, typically selfish liberal abandonment of his ailing wife just when she needs him most. Amirite?
Tattoosydney
@asiangrrlMN:
It’s my favourite word at the moment. It comes in handy so often.
karen marie
You kids seen this?
Triassic Sands
Haidt refers to a statistically impossible lack of diversity. I wonder what kind of diversity would show up when the Chamber of Commerce gets together. I wouldn’t expect American conservatives to enter some fields because their most cherished values are in direct conflict with those fields.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have read any of this article, since it was written by John Tierney, someone I have avoided for many years.
Arclite
@Boots Day:
Heh, I’m glad to see that I wasn’t the only one to instantly think of this.
TenguPhule
I’m in favor of a bag limit for the Teabaggers.
Jebediah
@Southern Beale:
Not really on topic, but crippity crap that Riley is cute!!
Otto snores too, and I love listening to it. My wife calls it “sleeping aggressively.”
And on the topic of Otto – we had a little incident with a large-ish person being aggressively anti-social at our local Starbucks this afternoon, and Otto acquitted himself perfectly. He let the bad dude know he wasn’t going to be allowed to do any bad things, while staying in front of me, but not actually trying to remove any of the dude’s body parts.
As for the dude, I think the 100 pound AmStaff gave him a little pause…
Jebediah
@Jebediah:
Replying to myself feels dirty, but I felt you all needed to also know that the ten-pound Chihuahua mix did not seem to have the same intimidating effect as Otto.
matoko_chan
Douchebag has written at length on this, and indeed it is part of his opus magnus, Grand New Party.
Page 154, Salam-Douthat stratification on cognitive ability.
Conservatism is anti-empirical, and science is based on empiricism…. 94% of scientists are not conservative.
Beinart has written about this, also.
You could call it IQ-bussing for intellectually challenged redstate youth, but then…..you guys are mostly IQ refuseniks.
This is becoming a scary problem for them….since conservatism has essentially become memetic selection for stupid, elite students flee the GOP like scalded cats, and there is no obvious solution.
SRW1
Did McArdle already spring the demand that a good starting point for conservative affirmative action in academia would be to have the world-renown scholar Jonah Goldberg elected President of the AAAS?
matoko_chan
i wish someone that can comment there would mention Salam-Douthat stratification on cognitive ability to McMegan. just to see what she says.
conservatives now have the same problem with anti-intellectualism that they have with base racism–now that they NEED to they can’t turn it off.
Brietbart to NAACP chief–You go to Hell!
Barry
That’s becauuse you’re supposed to *throw* the Chihuahua, like a shiriken :)
matoko_chan
@petorado: its more like the rise of the third culture is going to replace Dead-White-Guy Phailosophy.
Conservatism is anti-empirical–IT DOESNT WORK.
We are seeing the thunderheads on the horizon of the perfect storm that is going to lead to forever defeat for the GOP.
in 2020 or so.
;)
Scott
Part of the issue is what’s part and parcel of being conservative. I’m studying for a PhD in developmental (i.e. non-clinical) psychology, and I teach plenty of undergrads. Many of them are smart- I’m at a top public university- but end up shying away from the field after intro psych. I don’t know their political affiliation, nor do I care, but many times I can tell that it’s because I’ve taught something that goes against “conservative orthodoxy.” This has been everything from presenting research showing homosexuality is biological to the extreme (but not deterministic) role of the environment in shaping a person. Rather than act as a learning experience, these moments serve to make the student feel persecuted for his/her beliefs, and since this is an intro class the notion is taken to be representative of the field. These students are all intelligent, and I am thrilled that they don’t take my word as gospel when I am teaching but rather are inquisitive. Many of them would get a recommendation from me if they wanted to get a doctorate. But rather than make themselves an asset, they self-select out of the field and are consequently under-reperesented.
Bobbby Thomson
@cleek:
I’ll give you geography and age, but Drum and Yglesias didn’t get to be the right wing’s favorite liberal bloggers with their vivid prose.
gnomedad
@David:
From the comments:
one two seven
Affimative action for conservatives in academia? Tell that to my HR professor who uses every lecture as an opportunity to rail against Obama/health care.
grumpy realist
I remember my father, who was a noted chemistry professor, having to deal with the whole You’re Being Discriminatory! stuff during the Sixties from students on campus. He pointed out that as far as he could tell, no chemical equation had ever been known to discriminate against anyone and as long as they demonstrated mastery of the subject, the students should have no worries about their grades…
(Most of the self-styled Black Radicals realized how silly they were being and shut up at that point.)
Phil P.
@Boots Day:
Bwahahaha. This seems fair to me, if we’re going to do the right-wing affirmative action thing in academia. Anybody bothered to suggest this in McMegan’s comment section?
In all seriousness, I work in academia as well at a R-I university, and nobody who is successful there has any damn time for ideology or politics, in the classroom or outside. Too busy developing grant proposals, working with undergrad & grad advisees, slogging through committee work, and–occasionally–doing some science.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
@gnomedad: You may be on to something here–different set of health recommendations for Republicans: Get at least 3 hrs of sun/day; use only whole milk dairy products; red-meat enemas; up daily tobacco intake by at least 50%; encourage your kids to play with the neat stuff under the kitchen sink; etc…
lllphd
@dr. bloor:
oh, definitely, on that point i’ll agree. in fact, the field of psychology is spilling over with individuals who do not seem to be capable of thinking outside any kind of box whatsoever, even when they’re parroting inherent contradictions in the pop theory du jour. and they seem to gravitate to the state boards (hey, ya gotta get something on your cv when you can’t construct a novel thought) where they can deliver their narrow-minded authoritarianism under sanction, and still claim to be liberal and open thinkers.
but still, i have not encountered a single psychologist who would claim conservative political views. but then, i avoid conferences in general, and apa in particular, like the plague.
Berial
This is the ONLY reason conservatives CARE about the issue. They want to be the ones ‘indoctrinating’. The fact that facts have a liberal bias is not something they care to discuss. They simply want to dominate the discussion and indoctrinate the young so they can hold on to political power. They don’t really give a DAMN about the actual sciences. Which is why they aren’t IN the sciences to start with.
redoubt
@GregB: Well, she is using Goldberg’s Arschlochspielen Research Bureau.
PWL
Well. it’s nice to know that Megan & Co dream of a world somewhat similar to 30s Germany, where they had “Jewish science” (bad) and “Aryan science” (good).
sacman701
Even if there were any evidence that academic hiring decisions were political (in econ no one gives a rip as long as you can get published somewhere), affirmative action for conservatives wouldn’t work because people would just pretend to be conservative to get a leg up.
Judas Escargot
@David:
Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and John Glenn (D-OH) were the only two astronauts who became senators.
Harrison Schmitt, last man on the moon, had one term from New Mexico (as an R).
Last I heard he was a global warming denier (weird as he’s a trained geologist).
Tonal Crow
Conservatives can’t make it on the merits, so now they’re screeching for quotas.
Redleg
I am a business school professor at a medium-sized state university. Very few of my colleagues have said enough over the last decade for me to figure out what their politics are. I expect being a b-school we have our share of conservatives but I don’t really have a sense about the proportions.
Since anti-intellectualism seems to be a prominent theme among some conservatives, it seems to me that the reason there aren’t more conservatives in the academy is that there aren’t that many (proportionally) that are getting Ph.D.s.
Jebediah
@Barry:
And if my aim is true, she will … lick him until he is good and annoyed. But she is so spazzy, she might like being a shuricanine!
Wile E. Quixote
@DougJ®:
That’s charitable, I think she’s a “some dork saw starbursts because she’s tall and used to blog as ‘Jane Galt’ and wanted to fuck her” hire.
lllphd
@asiangrrlMN:
um, isn’t that practice of gay-reversion actionable? i mean, homosexuality is not considered a disease by the APA, so how can one ethically practice its cure?
someone needs to file a complaint!
Southern Beale
@Jebediah:
Wow, 100 pounds?! Jesus is that what I have to look forward to??!!!
:-)
I was hoping Riley would be a LITTLE dog!
Glad to know they can be aggressive without being, you know, murderous. A few people in my life say I am crazy to have him at the house. I don’t get that.
Wily Jalapeño
@Scott: Whoa – another developmental psychologist on this board. Good to know!
This whole McMegan post…it’s almost as if she relishes writing in such high mendacity. That she makes such an elementary error in assuming that conservatives are biased from attaining academic positions versus the eminently more plausible hypothesis of selection effects (and her racial example that touches on selection factors is just downright fucking embarrassing) really says all that needs to be said about the merit of what she’s written.
JFC, I’ve read Tom’s stuff at inverse squared, and Susan of Texas, TBOGG, here, so I’m not unaware of her “issues.” But I’m still just gobsmacked every goddamn time.
STUPID INTERNETS. BE LESS STUPID.
SpaceSquid
Someone should ask McArdle the following question: does she believe herself to be intellectually capable of holding an academic post?
If she responds with “Yes”, then it’s proof that a) she has absolutely no idea what academics actually do or how they do it, and b) her bleating about liberals thinking they’re better than conservatives is actually code for her resentment over academics thinking they’re better than her.
On the other hand, if she responds “No”, then – once we’ve picked ourselves up off the floor at this most unexpected demonstration of self-awareness – we should ask the obvious follow up : in that case, what the fuck do you think you’re doing claiming to be an expert on business and economics?