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Getting a grip on groupthink
Several years ago, Emory English professor Mark Bauerlein published what remains one of our sharpest commentaries on how academic groupthink narrows the scope of scholarship and teaching--and, by extension, the kinds of knowledge that are valued and produced within our higher education system. Responding to recent studies documenting the political uniformity of four-year college and university faculties (especially those in the humanities and social sciences), Bauerlein sought to deepen our understanding of how pervasive and yet subtle intellectual conformity is in the academy; his essay focused on how, among scholars, intellectual choices are closely tied to political leanings and, crucially, on how both intellectual choices and political leanings are assumed by the broader culture of the academy in everything from its dinner parties to its personnel decisions. Academics may be quite honest when they say they do not consider a job candidate's politics--but they are not being honest at all when they refuse to admit that in crucial ways, those politics have already been carefully selected for, and are most likely embodied within the candidate's research, teaching, conversation, and general demeanor. As Bauerlein put it, "Political orientation has been embedded into the disciplines, and so what is indeed a political judgment may be expressed in disciplinary terms."
These ideas were taken up last week at a conference hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. Entitled "Reforming the Politically Correct University," the conference featured presentations by ACTA president Anne Neal, the Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter, National Association of Scholars executive director Peter Wood, and FIRE president Greg Lukianoff. Neal spoke about what alumni and trustees can do to help ensure free inquiry, fair personnel decisions, and curricular integrity at the institutions where they are stakeholders and fiduciary overseers.
Another key participant was National Journal's Stuart Taylor, co-author with KC Johnson of the remarkable Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case. The book outlined the institutional obsession with race, class, and gender at Duke and beyond--a theme Taylor revisits in his recent commentary on the University of Delaware's doctrinaire residential life curriculum (see "Academia's Pervasive PC Rot").
Of particular interest was the research presented on the pressure academics face to conform themselves to the academy's forceful intellectual status quo. Building on Bauerlein's observations about academic groupthink, social science researchers presented evidence that faculties are overwhelmingly one-sided, that ideology plays a substantial role in academics' career prospects, and that majoritarian groupthink is alive and well in departmental self-governance.
In research papers to be published next year in a book from AEI press, authors offered anecdotal evidence from their own careers. Peter Wood said that an "informal blacklist" of dissenting scholars does exist, and that he has watched it scupper the careers of many aspiring academics. He added that while it would be wrong to institute any sort of viewpoint-based affirmative action, he hoped that the growing body of research on academic groupthink would spark a "shiver of recognition" among faculties and administrators.
Similarly, University of Virginia English professor Paul Cantor described steering students away from the academy when their viewpoints don't reflect those of the academic status quo. "They have no future--they will not get jobs," he stated. "If they want to teach traditional works in a traditional matter, they have no future in an English department today." Cantor noted that English departments were more intellectually diverse fifty years ago than they are now. "English departments have been homogenized in the name of diversity," he said, explaining that while reading lists may have broadened, analytical variety has narrowed dramatically as race, class, and gender have become the primary lenses through which literary works are interpreted.
Cantor's comments tally with ACTA's own research on English departments, which shows them to be particularly vulnerable to politically correct trends and intellectual fads. So pronounced is the tendency of English departments to embrace superficial novelty--Cantor calls them the "Wal-Marts of the academy"--that they are distressingly willing to sacrifice vital areas of study to them. As ACTA revealed in a report published earlier this year, only fifteen of the nation's top 70 English departments require majors to take a course in Shakespeare. The number reflects the fact that English departments are increasingly ready to drop Shakespeare requirements to make room for students to take courses on more ephemeral topics.
The end result? A situation in which alumni and trustees simply must act. "It has become commonplace for boards and presidents to exercise little or no oversight of academic hiring," Neal said. "If we are to reform the politically correct university, alumni and trustees must take notice and take action."
The draft papers supporting the AEI conference are available online.
Posted by acta online at November 19, 2007 03:14 PM
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Comments
Does anyone at ACTA still claim it's a "bipartisan" group?
...the American Enterprise Institute. Entitled "Reforming the Politically Correct University," the conference featured presentations by ACTA president Anne Neal, the Manhattan Institute's John McWhorter, National Association of Scholars executive director Peter Wood, and FIRE president Greg Lukianoff....
Posted by: PC at November 19, 2007 04:16 PM
The situation described by Cantor is one reason I'm reluctant to support ACTA's push for a strengthened core curriculum. I simply don't trust the humanities departments where I work to come in any more contact with the natural science majors I teach. Every course taken in the humanities is one fewer desirable course in the natural sciences. If all they are going to offer is PC trash, I don't want my students wasting their time, or worse, actually being influenced by the indoctrination.
Presidents exercise oversight of academic hiring? That sounds awfully naive to me. Where I work, the top administration is pushing the diversity agenda much harder than the faculty ever would.
The trustees of the state system are less than worthless.
Posted by: Mike at November 19, 2007 07:54 PM
So this panel was at the AEI. Any dissenters invited, or was this an exercise in the same 'groupthink' environment that the forum was supposed to be criticizing?
I think Bauerlein's hypothesis is an interesting one that deserves investigation, but I wouldn't call the AEI forum a serious exploration of academic culture (at least by the papers).
Posted by: Sherman Dorn at November 20, 2007 08:14 AM