Category: authoritarian leftists

Kristof on the Authoritarian Leftism of universities: Part deux

May 30, 2016 • 9:15 am

On May 8 I wrote about one of Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times columns, “A confession of liberal intolerance.” There he promoted the idea of increased diversity in universities: not just diversity of ethnic minorities, but diversity of ideas. In particular, he called for hiring more conservative professors, since, by and large, academia comprises Leftists. Kristof didn’t favor direct affirmative action for Republican professors, not did he ask for hiring of creationists or other conservative loonies. Rather, citing studies of academic biases against conservatives (e.g., academics say they’re less likely to hire someone if he/she was an evangelical Christian, regardless of the field), Kristof asked us to consider hiring those with a record of scholarship running against the grain of the usual left-wing humanities courses. (Political leaning is, of course, irrelevant in science.)

In the hundred-odd comments on my post, many agreed, but some did not. Academia, they said, is self-selecting against conservatives, who don’t want to teach at universities—they’d rather earn big bucks. I don’t buy that one. While Kristof does admit that conservatives tend to stay away from social sciences for fear of ostracism, why not deliberately seek some out for the sake of diversity, just as we seek out qualified blacks, women, and other minorities? I’m not saying that the discrimination conservatives face is equivalent to that experienced by other minorities, but surely we should make efforts to expose students to a diversity of opinions. Remember, that’s one reason why many of us favor free speech—so that out of conflicting viewpoints one can winnow either the truth or one’s own beliefs. If that diversity of viewpoints isn’t available in the faculty, how are students supposed to adjudicate those conflicts?

Other readers argued that in many areas political viewpoints are irrelevant. And that’s true, as in science. But in many areas they are: the humanities, gender studies, economics, political science, and even divinity school—should a university be so benighted as to have one. Others said that the liberal point of view happens to be true, so what’s the point of dragging in conservative falsehoods? I don’t buy that, either. While it was said that conservatism itself “denies empirical reality,” there are many issues—abortion and affirmative action law, for instance—where there are arguments on both sides, and while facts can be adduced, judgments (like all ethical judgments) must be made on subjective preference. (I general, I agree that liberalism leads to greater well being of society, but that’s a consequentialist argument that not everybody buys.)

Finally, others noted that some brands of conservatism are simply bull-goose looney, such as that of Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and many other Republicans. But what Kristof was calling for was not party diversity, but diversity of viewpoints: a remedy for the liberal sameness that is pervasive on campus. As an example of a quasi-conservative, or at least someone who doesn’t fit the Leftist mold, I offer up my own colleague, Judge Richard Posner, a professor at our law school with some conservative views, and who happens to be the most-cited legal scholar in the 20th century. There is no doubt about his immense value to my University.

Over the past month Kristof has been pondering his column and the reactions to it, and today published a sequel to his op-ed, “The liberal blind spot,” which comes with a nice gif:

29kristof-master768He first notes that he got a tremendous negative reaction to the column—from liberals. He then dispels some misconceptions (“I wasn’t arguing that we should deliberately hire creationists or racists”), and offers up three arguments for increasing “viewpoint diversity”. Here they are, with Kristof’s words in quotes.

  • It’s a form of bigotry. 

    “First, stereotyping and discrimination are wrong, whether against gays or Muslims, or against conservatives or evangelicals. We shouldn’t define one as bigotry and the other as enlightenment.

    When a survey finds that more than half of academics in some fields would discriminate against a job seeker who they learned was an evangelical, that feels to me like bigotry.”

Agreed.

  • Diversity has benefits. 

“Second, there’s abundant evidence of the benefits of diversity. Bringing in members of minorities is not an act of charity but a way of strengthening an organization. Yet universities suffer a sickly sameness: Four studies have found that at most only about one professor in 10 in the humanities or social sciences is a Republican.

I’ve often denounced conservative fearmongering about Muslims and refugees, and the liberal hostility toward evangelicals seems rooted in a similar insularity. Surveys show that Americans have negative views of Muslims when they don’t know any; I suspect many liberals disdain evangelicals in part because they don’t have any evangelical friends.

Sure, achieving diversity is a frustrating process, but it enriches organizations and improves decision-making. So let’s aim for ideological as well as ethnic diversity.”

I agree again, though I’m less concerned with dispelling negative stereotypes against conservatives than with exposing students (and other academics) to arguments they’d otherwise miss.

  • A surfeit of Leftists scholars leads to their marginalization. 

“Third, when scholars cluster on the left end of the spectrum, they marginalize themselves. We desperately need academics like sociologists and anthropologists influencing American public policy on issues like poverty, yet when they are in an outer-left orbit, their wisdom often goes untapped.

In contrast, economists remain influential. I wonder if that isn’t partly because there is a critical mass of Republican economists who battle the Democratic economists and thus tether the discipline to the American mainstream.”

Well, I’m not so sure that leftist professors really are marginalized in society. In liberal Presidential administrations, liberal academics are often called upon to fill government jobs. Rahm Emanuel and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. are examples from the Obama and Kennedy administrations, respectively.

Regardless, despite my own liberalism, I do think the dearth of conservatives on American campuses is a bug, not a feature. Many of us deliberately seek out conservative viewpoints to challenge and hone our own views. Those who don’t do that risk leading the dreaded unexamined life. Students don’t read newspapers, by and large, and a lot of their views are formed when they’re in college. Given that (except in schools like Liberty University), and that they’re marinated in liberal academia, what is the argument against exposing them to conservative views?

Who would I like to see teaching in colleges? George Will, for one. And although Christina Hoff Sommers is demonized by many feminists, she’s an equity feminist and could teach in a gender studies department—if she’d survive! Add your own candidates below.

Kristof on “liberal intolerance”

May 8, 2016 • 9:45 am

I heard a statement a while back that stuck in my mind. It went something like this: “The only kind of ‘diversity’ that colleges don’t want is intellectual diversity.” That struck me as so true that I meant to write about it. But now I don’t have to, as liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has done it in today’s op-ed column, “A confession of liberal intolerance“. It’s illustrated with this gif:

08kristofANIMATION-master768-v2

And its opening precisely defines the problem:

We progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives.

Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.

The problem is at two levels: the students, who in many cases simply don’t want to hear ideas different from theirs (nominally liberal ideas, but sometimes regressive), and on the faculty level. Kristof concentrates on the latter, citing surveys showing that academics are less likely to hire conservatives than liberals, Republicans than Democrats, and even less likely to hire evangelical Christians. Academia is also self-selecting for liberals, for reasons I’m not quite sure of. But bias there is. As Kristof notes:

Four studies found that the proportion of professors in the humanities who are Republicans ranges between 6 and 11 percent, and in the social sciences between 7 and 9 percent.

Conservatives can be spotted in the sciences and in economics, but they are virtually an endangered species in fields like anthropology, sociology, history and literature. One study found that only 2 percent of English professors are Republicans (although a large share are independents).

In contrast, some 18 percent of social scientists say they are Marxist. So it’s easier to find a Marxist in some disciplines than a Republican.

This is disturbing. Lord knows that I’m a Leftist—though perhaps not in the minds of Authoritarian Leftists—but we lose something if we’re not constantly challenged by those having different views.

I’m not saying we should hire Holocaust denialists, creationists, or other loons who might present such lies in the classroom. But religious faculty can challenge secularist views, making us examine our nonbelief, and at least to understand others who accept the numinous; and conservatives can challenge things like abortion and affirmative action, discussions worth having even if you’re liberal. After all, the best way to scrutinize your beliefs, and hone the ones you retain, is to be challenged—often.

Kristof also dispels the view that conservatives and religious people simply aren’t worth hiring:

It’s also liberal poppycock that there aren’t smart conservatives or evangelicals. Richard Posner is a more-or-less conservative who is the most cited legal scholar of all time. With her experience and intellect, Condoleezza Rice would enhance any political science department. Francis Collins is an evangelical Christian and famed geneticist who has led the Human Genome Project and the National Institutes of Health. And if you’re saying that conservatives may be tolerable, but evangelical Christians aren’t — well, are you really saying you would have discriminated against the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.?

Of course Posner is on my own faculty, and is a highly valued colleague. (He’s sort of conservative, but has some liberal views.) One reason that there’s a bias against conservatives—something I found surprising—is that people just think conservatives are a priori wrong. Kristof describes some reactions he gets on his Facebook page:

I’ve been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.

“Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false,” said Carmi.

“The truth has a liberal slant,” wrote Michelle.

“Why stop there?” asked Steven. “How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?”

You can’t say a worldview itself is wrong, for worldviews encompass ethical philosophies, which aren’t objectively right or wrong. (Sam Harris would disagree.) What one can say is that if conservatives (and liberals) make statements about reality, about what kinds of social interventions will achieve certain ends, those claims are in principle subject to empirical tests. Insofar as worldviews are consequentialist in that way—that they are not just philosophies or subjective preferences but claims about the results of possible actions—then yes, they can be shown to be right or wrong. But too many liberal claims aren’t of this type: they constitute assertions that are deemed unchallengeable because they’re simply asserted as statements of “rights”: women have a “right” to an abortion; affirmative action is “a right.”

I happen to agree that women do have the right to choose abortion (right up to the end of pregnancy), and that we still need affirmative action for minorities or women (in some situations). In general, I think a liberal and progressive worldview is one that improves the world’s well-being, for, as a consequentialist, that’s the kind of world I want. But we need to be able to defend those views against our opponents, and not just dismiss them by saying the opponents are “wrong” and that our preferences are “rights.” Why should women be able to have abortions on demand? If so, up until what period of gestation? Why should gays be able to marry? All of us pro-choice and pro-gay-rights people need to think more deeply than simply asserting that such things are “rights.”

It is only our conservative opponents who can force us to articulate our reasons—and hence to scrutinize our beliefs. That’s precisely why we need political and ideological diversity on top of gender and ethnic diversity. But you’ll never hear colleges or students demanding that!

The most delicate snowflakes yet: students at Western Washington University issue a ludicrous set of “demands”, and change some spelling

March 11, 2016 • 1:00 pm

Read on about the most ridiculous group of demands I’ve ever seen issued by disaffected college students—and that’s among a huge list of colleges whose students have demanded ludicrous authoritarian-Leftist reforms of their institutions. In this case, though, it’s Western Washington University (WWU), where the student demands (in the document “Student Assembly for Power and Liberation Demands [WWU]”) is so beyond the pale that it’s come full circle to unadultrated fascism—identity politics gone wild.

The Daily Beast and Inside Higher Ed (IHE) report on the students’ shenanigans, summarizing their demands (there are many more, as you’ll see if you look at the link above). The worst is the call for establishing the regressive “College of Power and Liberation,” which sounds like something right out of 1930’s Russia. Here, verbatim from IHE, is a summary of what the Snowflakes want:

  • A new College of Power and Liberation to focus on “the study of histories and communities that continue to be mis- and underrepresented into the mainstream curriculum at Western.” In addition to the college itself, the list calls for “a cluster hire of 10 tenure-track faculty,” a new building to house the college and that the Student Assembly for Power and Liberation have “direct input and decision-making power over the hiring of faculty for the college.”
  • That $45,000 be allocated to compensate students and faculty “doing de-colonial work on campus,” which is defined as “providing space and resources to learn alternate histories, supporting students’ nonacademic work, emotional and intellectual labor that is not about publishing or service to the institution, providing often unrecognized trainings, workshops and/or interventions on behalf of students.”
  • The creation of a 15-person student committee called the Office for Social Transformation “to monitor, document and archive all racist, antiblack, transphobic, cissexist, misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, Islamophobic and otherwise oppressive behavior on campus.” Using a three-strike system, the committee would have the power to take disciplinary action up to and including dismissal against faculty members who receive citations for creating “an unsafe classroom environment.”
  • A mandatory online survey conducted by the faculty and administration that would “allow Western Washington University community members to confidentially express concerns of discrimination and safety.”
  • A new “multicultural residence building,” applications to which would be overseen by the new Office for Social Transformation.
  • And finally that the university provide tuition reimbursement to “any Western Washington University student who has been targeted by, harassed by or has experienced excruciating acts of violence that [were] racialized, sexualized, gendered, based on ability, employment status, citizenship and/or mental health from the university.”

Note that the multicultural residence building, for which you must write an essay to qualify, will segregate students by ethnic group—exactly the opposite of what colleges should be doing. The fascistic “Office of Social Transformation” (shades of 1984!) omits anti-Semitism as an offense, of course, and also threatens faculty members with being dismissed for creating an “unsafe” atmosphere. Since when did “safety” change from physical threats into mental challenges? And the WWU students are demanding to be paid for giving emotional attention to other students.

To appreciate the full inanity of these demands, read the full 7 pages . There you will see one of the most bizarre aspects of that document: their new spelling for two words, to wit:

As has become increasingly obvious to us since we arrive at Western, we cannot count on the University to follow through for hxtorically oppressed students. These demands come out of a long hxstory of oppression played out at all levels of schooling, and just like the events of last quarter, these demands do not come out of nowhere.

We demand the creation and implementation of a 15 persxn paid student committee. . .

These aren’t typos: they’re used repeatedly, and are apparently a misguided attempt to “de-gender” words that have “his” and “son” in them. What’s next—an amino acid called “hxstidine” and toxic compounds called “poisxns”?

Finally, the student demands at WWU end with this lovely sentence:

We expect to receive a response from the university on March 1st, 2016 at 5pm agreeing with these demands and a proposed date to meet collectively.

According to both articles, the WWU administration hasn’t agreed to these demands, and has also pointed out the numerous legal and financial strictures they’d impose on the university. But the administration hasn’t done what I’d be tempted to do: give a verbal middle finger to these students. Perhaps some of their plaints are justified, but the students are so arrogant, so entitled, that they’re ruining any chance they have to effect change.

Gad Saad on New Atheism, religion, the “regressive left”, trigger warnings, evolutionary psychology, safe spaces, and free speech

February 29, 2016 • 1:00 pm

It’s worth getting acquainted with both Dave Rubin and Gad Saad, and these two shortish videos give you the chance (they’re bits of a single one-hour video).

Dave Rubin is a comedian and talk-show host, best known to us nonbelievers as host of The Rubin Report (YouTube channel here), which is a good replacement for The Young Turks since the latter show went Full Leftist Authoritarian (I find it unwatchable; I’d rather listen to out-and-out conservatives like Bill O’Reilly!). Rubin has, in fact, been responsible for popularizing—and mocking—that group of identity politicians and Islam-apologists known as “The Regressive Left.” I prefer to call it the “Authoritarian Left” since not all their stands are regressive.

Saad, of Lebanese and Jewish origin, is an evolutionary psychologist and professor of marketing at Concordia University, right here in Montreal. He also has a widely read website, Homo Consumericus, at Psychology Today. His criticism of the Authoritarian Left, and his work on evolutionary psychology, are guaranteed to alienate the large section of the atheist blogosphere that rejects evo psych on purely ideological grounds while claiming that the entire field is scientifically worthless. Too bad—Saad’s a thoughtful and reasonable man, and I wish I had his equanimity. And it’s just dumb to reject wholesale the notion that while human morphology and physiology reflects our evolution, our behavior is an exception.

In the first video, Saad covers a lot of ground. For one thing, he goes after the dissimulator Reza Aslan, and wonders if Aslan knows he’s lying when he produces his “endless tsunami of nonsense.” He further considers whether there’s any difference between religiosity and lunacy, the connection between religion and sports, and whether religion that has no impact on the public sphere deserves criticism (i.e., is it injurious in any way to have unfounded religious belief on which you don’t act?). Finally, he tells us why religion will always be with us, and why “New Atheism” is demonized.

This second video, twelve minutes long, deals with evolutionary psychology, and why so many people are reluctant to give any credence to the notion that some of our behavior reflects natural selection that acted on our ancestors. Saad goes on to discuss what he calls “political correctness and the thought police,” and why their actions are harmful.

If you’d like to listen to Saad’s Ottawa lecture, “How political correctness limits the free exchange ideas on campus,” to which he refers in the video above, go here. I recommend it; Saad’s a very good speaker.

I think all of us are behooved to listen to those who oppose our views. How else can we critically examine our beliefs, or sharpen our arguments should we decide to retain them? But if you’re sick of The Young Turks or miscreants like Reza Aslan, Rubin’s show is a good palliative.

RationalWiki guts a reader’s attempt to correct its article on female genital mutilation

February 13, 2016 • 12:00 pm

JAC: I haven’t used RationalWiki very much, as its articles are not only not as thorough as those in Wikipedia (though some day Greg will produce his long-awaited post, “What’s the matter with Wikipedia?), but also appear slanted toward the Authoritarian Left. Although created to counter the odious Conservapedia site, it seems to have swung too far in the opposite direction—towards censorship of Incorrect Thought. Wikipedia says this about the site:

RationalWiki is a wiki written from a skeptical, secular, and progressivist perspective. It was created in 2007 as a counter to Conservapedia after an incident in which contributors attempting to edit Conservapedia were banned. Since then, it has developed into a wiki that criticizes “crank” ideas, pseudoscience, and fundamentalism. Ideologically, RationalWiki typically argues in favour of freedom of religion, atheism, feminism, and LGBT rights, and it criticises conservatism and right-libertarianism. RationalWiki frequently uses sarcasm and humor in its articles. Unlike many wikis, RationalWiki has no formal system for electing sysops, and most users who are thought to have good intentions are given the tools.

But the skepticism has been tainted by authoritarian leftism, something amply documented by reader Aneris, who attempted to fix RationalWiki‘s article on female genital mutilation (FGM). Its original article (the one that’s still there) did everything it can to dissociate the practice of FGM from Islam, even though, as reader Heather Hastie documents on her website, at least four schools of Islam either recommend the practice or deem its obligatory. There have also been fatwas saying that the practice is Islamic, and the vast majority of women mutilated in this way are Muslims whose families follow the practice. Only the blinkered, or those who excuse Islam of all malfeasance, could deny the close association of the practice with Muslim belief.

Below Aneris’s recounts his/her unsuccessful attempt to get RationalWiki to give the fact about FGM instead of an Islam-exculpating ideological take. He rewrote their article, only to discover that his additions were quickly and completely expunged. Why? Because they associated FGM with Islam. I doubt there would have been the same reaction had FGM been a habitual practice of evangelical Christianity.

by Aneris

Some wikis document fictional universes like that of Harry Potter, Star Wars or Creationism. The “RationalWiki” documents the beliefs of what is perhaps imperfectly called (authoritarian) “Regressive Left” or “Social Justice Warriors”. Jerry’s recent post about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) motivated me to look into the matter and also see where those “Regressive Leftists” are coming from, and perhaps suggest improvements to their RationalWiki article. I wound up writing a section for them.

I try to make a difference, but typically find that what is deemed “true” is not determined by sources and evidence, but by a spontaneous majority that merely wins the “edit war”. Alas, FGM was just such a case. I sacrificed style for direct quotations in the belief that this would provide a solid evidential basis; however, I found everything I wrote was deleted quickly – including about a third of all sources of the article, down from 39 to 24 (this doesn’t mean much in itself, but gives a rough idea).

Before I touched it, the article already contained a small section on FGM and Islam, but that has now been purged as well. The reason given, and they’re serious, is this: “terribly written section with random unsourced statements […]”. But the icing on the icing on the cake is that such Regressive Leftists deny what they are doing. The RationalWiki is adamant that neither Social Justice Warriors nor Regressive Leftists really exist. The current article, one that would please even Reza Asla, can be viewed here.