Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Groupthink
Hello Everyone,
Here is an article I thought people would think is interesting. Usually I would just put a link, but this one I really think is worth seeing.
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php? id=56a4b06e77oshwaiq5psszuc2gti5neb
Conservatives on college campuses scored a tactical hit when the American Enterprise Institute's magazine published a survey of voter registration among humanities and social-science faculty members several years ago. More than nine out of 10 professors belonged to the Democratic or Green party, an imbalance that contradicted many liberal academics' protestations that diversity and pluralism abound in higher education. Further investigations by people like David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, coupled with well-publicized cases of discrimination against conservative professors, reinforced the findings and set "intellectual diversity" on the agenda of state legislators and members of Congress.
The public has now picked up the message that "campuses are havens for left-leaning activists," according to a Chronicle poll of 1,000 adult Americans this year. Half of those surveyed -- 68 percent who call themselves "conservative" and even 30 percent who say they are "liberal" -- agreed that colleges improperly introduce a liberal bias into what they teach. The matter, however, is clearly not just one of perception. Indeed, in another recent survey, this one conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles, faculty members themselves chose as their commitment "far left" or "liberal" more than two and a half times as often as "far right" or "conservative." As a Chronicle article last month put it: "On left-leaning campuses around the country, professors on the right feel disenfranchised."
Yet while the lack of conservative minds on college campuses is increasingly indisputable, the question remains: Why?
The obvious answer, at least in the humanities and social sciences, is that academics shun conservative values and traditions, so their curricula and hiring practices discourage non-leftists from pursuing academic careers. What allows them to do that, while at the same time they deny it, is that the bias takes a subtle form. Although I've met several conservative intellectuals in the last year who would love an academic post but have given up after years of trying, outright blackballing is rare. The disparate outcome emerges through an indirect filtering process that runs from graduate school to tenure and beyond.
Some fields' very constitutions rest on progressive politics and make it clear from the start that conservative outlooks will not do. Schools of education, for instance, take constructivist theories of learning as definitive, excluding realists (in matters of knowledge) on principle, while the quasi-Marxist outlook of cultural studies rules out those who espouse capitalism. If you disapprove of affirmative action, forget pursuing a degree in African-American studies. If you think that the nuclear family proves the best unit of social well-being, stay away from women's studies.
Other fields allow the possibility of studying conservative authors and ideas, but narrow the avenues of advancement. Mentors are disinclined to support your topic, conference announcements rarely appeal to your work, and few job descriptions match your profile. A fledgling literary scholar who studies anti-communist writing and concludes that its worth surpasses that of counterculture discourse in terms of the cogency of its ideas and morality of its implications won't go far in the application process.
No active or noisy elimination need occur, and no explicit queries about political orientation need be posed. Political orientation has been embedded into the disciplines, and so what is indeed a political judgment may be expressed in disciplinary terms. As an Americanist said in a committee meeting that I attended, "We can't hire anyone who doesn't do race," an assertion that had all the force of a scholastic dictum. Stanley Fish, professor and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, advises, "The question you should ask professors is whether your work has influence or relevance" -- and while he raised it to argue that no liberal conspiracy in higher education exists, the question is bound to keep conservatives off the short list. For while studies of scholars like Michel Foucault, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri seem central in the graduate seminar, studies of Friedrich A. von Hayek and Francis Fukuyama, whose names rarely appear on cultural-studies syllabi despite their influence on world affairs, seem irrelevant.
Academics may quibble over the hiring process, but voter registration shows that liberal orthodoxy now has a professional import. Conservatives and liberals square off in public, but on campuses, conservative opinion doesn't qualify as respectable inquiry. You won't often find vouchers discussed in education schools or patriotism argued in American studies. Historically, the boundaries of scholarly fields were created by the objects studied and by norms of research and peer review. Today, a political variable has been added, whereby conservative assumptions expel their holders from the academic market. A wall insulates the academic left from ideas and writings on the right.
One can see that phenomenon in how insiders, reacting to Horowitz's polls, displayed little evidence that they had ever read conservative texts or met a conservative thinker. Weblogs had entries conjecturing why conservatives avoid academe -- while never actually bothering to find one and ask -- as if they were some exotic breed whose absence lay rooted in an inscrutable mind-set. Professors offered caricatures of the conservative intelligentsia, selecting Ann H. Coulter and Rush Limbaugh as representatives, not von Hayek, Russell Kirk, Leo Strauss, Thomas Sowell, Robert Nozick, or Gertrude Himmelfarb. One of them wrote that "conservatives of Horowitz's ilk want to unleash the most ignorant forces of the right in hounding liberal academics to death."
Such parochialism and alarm are the outcome of a course of socialization that aligns liberalism with disciplinary standards and collegial mores. Liberal orthodoxy is not just a political outlook; it's a professional one. Rarely is its content discussed. The ordinary evolution of opinion -- expounding your beliefs in conversation, testing them in debate, reading books that confirm or refute them -- is lacking, and what should remain arguable settles into surety. With so many in harmony, and with those who agree joined also in a guild membership, liberal beliefs become academic manners. It's social life in a professional world, and its patterns are worth describing.
The first protocol of academic society might be called the Common Assumption. The assumption is that all the strangers in the room at professional gatherings are liberals. Liberalism at humanities meetings serves the same purpose that scientific method does at science assemblies. It provides a base of accord. The Assumption proves correct often enough for it to join other forms of trust that enable collegial events. A fellowship is intimated, and members may speak their minds without worrying about justifying basic beliefs or curbing emotions.
The Common Assumption usually pans out and passes unnoticed -- except for those who don't share it, to whom it is an overt fact of professional life. Yet usually even they remain quiet in the face of the Common Assumption. There is no joy in breaking up fellow feeling, and the awkward pause that accompanies the moment when someone comes out of the conservative closet marks a quarantine that only the institutionally secure are willing to endure.
Sometimes, however, the Assumption steps over the line into arrogance, as when at a dinner a job candidate volunteered her description of a certain "racist, sexist, and homophobic" organization, and I admitted that I belonged to it. Or when two postdocs from Germany at a nearby university stopped by my office to talk about American literature. As they sat down and I commented on how quiet things were on the day before Thanksgiving, one muttered, "Yes, we call it American Genocide Day."
Such episodes reveal the argumentative hazards of the Assumption. Apart from the ill-mannered righteousness, academics with too much confidence in their audience utter debatable propositions as received wisdom. An assertion of the genocidal motives of early English settlers is put forward not for discussion but for approval. If the audience shares the belief, all is well and good. But a lone dissenter disrupts the process and, merely by posing a question, can show just how cheap such a pat consensus actually is.
After Nixon crushed McGovern in the 1972 election, the film critic Pauline Kael made a remark that has become a touchstone among conservatives. "I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won," she marveled. "I don't know anybody who voted for him." While the second sentence indicates the sheltered habitat of the Manhattan intellectual, the first signifies what social scientists call the False Consensus Effect. That effect occurs when people think that the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. If the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way.
The tendency applies to professors, especially in humanities departments, but with a twist. Although a liberal consensus reigns within, academics have an acute sense of how much their views clash with the majority of Americans. Some take pride in a posture of dissent and find noble precursors in civil rights, Students for a Democratic Society, and other such movements. But dissent from the mainstream has limited charms, especially after 24 years of center-right rule in Washington. Liberal professors want to be adversarial, but are tired of seclusion. Thus, many academics find a solution in a limited version of the False Consensus that says liberal belief reigns among intellectuals everywhere.
Such a consensus applies only to the thinking classes, union supporters, minority-group activists, and environmentalists against corporate powers. Professors cannot conceive that any person trained in critical thinking could listen to George W. Bush speak and still vote Republican. They do acknowledge one setting in which right-wing intellectual work happensnamely, the think tanksbut add that the labor there is patently corrupt. The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and the Hoover Institution all have corporate sponsors, they note, and fellows in residence do their bidding. Hence, references to "right-wing think tanks" are always accompanied by the qualifier "well-funded."
The dangers of aligning liberalism with higher thought are obvious. When a Duke University philosophy professor implied last February that conservatives tend toward stupidity, he confirmed the public opinion of academics as a self-regarding elite -- regardless of whether or not he was joking, as he later said that he was. When laymen scan course syllabi or search the shelves of college bookstores and find only a few volumes of traditionalist argument amid the thickets of leftist critique, they wonder whether students ever enjoy a fruitful encounter with conservative thought. When a conference panel is convened or a collection is published on a controversial subject, and all the participants and contributors stand on one side of the issue, the tendentiousness is striking to everyone except those involved. The False Consensus does its work, but has an opposite effect. Instead of uniting academics with a broader public, it isolates them as a ritualized club.
The final social pattern is the Law of Group Polarization. That lawas Cass R. Sunstein, a professor of political science and of jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, has describedpredicts that when like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts toward extreme versions of their common beliefs. In a product-liability trial, for example, if nine jurors believe the manufacturer is somewhat guilty and three believe it is entirely guilty, the latter will draw the former toward a larger award than the nine would allow on their own. If people who object in varying degrees to the war in Iraq convene to debate methods of protest, all will emerge from the discussion more resolved against the war.
Group Polarization happens so smoothly on campuses that those involved lose all sense of the range of legitimate opinion. A librarian at Ohio State University who announces, "White Americans pay too little attention to the benefits their skin color gives them, and opening their eyes to their privileged status is a valid part of a college education" (The Chronicle, August 6) seems to have no idea how extreme his vision sounds to many ears. Deliberations among groups are just as prone to tone deafness. The annual resolutions of the Modern Language Association's Delegate Assembly, for example, ring with indignation over practices that enjoy popular acceptance. Last year, charging that in wartime, governments use language to "misrepresent policies" and "stigmatize dissent," one resolution urged faculty members to conduct "critical analysis of war talk ... as appropriate, in classrooms." However high-minded the delegates felt as they tallied the vote, which passed 122 to 8 without discussion, to outsiders the resolution seemed merely a license for more proselytizing.
The problem is that the simple trappings of deliberation make academics think that they've reached an opinion through reasoned debate -- instead of, in part, through an irrational social dynamic. The opinion takes on the status of a norm. Extreme views appear to be logical extensions of principles that everyone more or less shares, and extremists gain a larger influence than their numbers merit. If participants left the enclave, their beliefs would moderate, and they would be more open to the beliefs of others. But with the conferences, quarterlies, and committee meetings suffused with extreme positions, they're stuck with abiding by the convictions of their most passionate brethren.
As things stand, such behaviors shift in a left direction, but they could just as well move right if conservatives had the extent of control that liberals do now. The phenomenon that I have described is not so much a political matter as a social dynamic; any political position that dominates an institution without dissent deterioriates into smugness, complacency, and blindness. The solution is an intellectual climate in which the worst tendencies of group psychology are neutralized.
That doesn't mean establishing affirmative action for conservative scholars or encouraging greater market forces in education -- which violate conservative values as much as they do liberal values. Rather, it calls for academics to recognize that a one-party campus is bad for the intellectual health of everyone. Groupthink is an anti-intellectual condition, ironically seductive in that the more one feels at ease with compatriots, the more one's mind narrows. The great liberal John Stuart Mill identified its insulating effect as a failure of imagination: "They have never thrown themselves into the mental condition of those who think differently from them." With adversaries so few and opposing ideas so disposable, a reverse advantage sets in. The majority expands its power throughout the institution, but its thinking grows routine and parochial. The minority is excluded, but its thinking is tested and toughened. Being the lone dissenter in a colloquy, one learns to acquire sure facts, crisp arguments, and a thick skin.
But we can't open the university to conservative ideas and persons by outside command. That would poison the atmosphere and jeopardize the ideals of free inquiry. Leftist bias evolved within the protocols of academic practice (though not without intimidation), and conservative challenges should evolve in the same way. There are no administrative or professional reasons to bring conservatism into academe, to be sure, but there are good intellectual and social reasons for doing so.
Those reasons are, in brief: One, a wider spectrum of opinion accords with the claims of diversity. Two, facing real antagonists strengthens one's own position. Three, to earn a public role in American society, professors must engage the full range of public opinion.
Finally, to create a livelier climate on the campus, professors must end the routine setups that pass for dialogue. Panels on issues like Iraq, racism, imperialism, and terrorism that stack the dais provide lots of passion, but little excitement. Syllabi that include the same roster of voices make learning ever more desultory. Add a few rightists, and the debate picks up. Perhaps that is the most persuasive internal case for infusing conservatism into academic discourse and activities. Without genuine dissent in the classroom and the committee room, academic life is simply boring.
Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and director of research at the National Endowment for the Arts.
Here is an article I thought people would think is interesting. Usually I would just put a link, but this one I really think is worth seeing.
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php? id=56a4b06e77oshwaiq5psszuc2gti5neb
From the issue dated November 12, 2004
Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual
By MARK BAUERLEIN
Conservatives on college campuses scored a tactical hit when the American Enterprise Institute's magazine published a survey of voter registration among humanities and social-science faculty members several years ago. More than nine out of 10 professors belonged to the Democratic or Green party, an imbalance that contradicted many liberal academics' protestations that diversity and pluralism abound in higher education. Further investigations by people like David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, coupled with well-publicized cases of discrimination against conservative professors, reinforced the findings and set "intellectual diversity" on the agenda of state legislators and members of Congress.
The public has now picked up the message that "campuses are havens for left-leaning activists," according to a Chronicle poll of 1,000 adult Americans this year. Half of those surveyed -- 68 percent who call themselves "conservative" and even 30 percent who say they are "liberal" -- agreed that colleges improperly introduce a liberal bias into what they teach. The matter, however, is clearly not just one of perception. Indeed, in another recent survey, this one conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute of the University of California at Los Angeles, faculty members themselves chose as their commitment "far left" or "liberal" more than two and a half times as often as "far right" or "conservative." As a Chronicle article last month put it: "On left-leaning campuses around the country, professors on the right feel disenfranchised."
Yet while the lack of conservative minds on college campuses is increasingly indisputable, the question remains: Why?
The obvious answer, at least in the humanities and social sciences, is that academics shun conservative values and traditions, so their curricula and hiring practices discourage non-leftists from pursuing academic careers. What allows them to do that, while at the same time they deny it, is that the bias takes a subtle form. Although I've met several conservative intellectuals in the last year who would love an academic post but have given up after years of trying, outright blackballing is rare. The disparate outcome emerges through an indirect filtering process that runs from graduate school to tenure and beyond.
Some fields' very constitutions rest on progressive politics and make it clear from the start that conservative outlooks will not do. Schools of education, for instance, take constructivist theories of learning as definitive, excluding realists (in matters of knowledge) on principle, while the quasi-Marxist outlook of cultural studies rules out those who espouse capitalism. If you disapprove of affirmative action, forget pursuing a degree in African-American studies. If you think that the nuclear family proves the best unit of social well-being, stay away from women's studies.
Other fields allow the possibility of studying conservative authors and ideas, but narrow the avenues of advancement. Mentors are disinclined to support your topic, conference announcements rarely appeal to your work, and few job descriptions match your profile. A fledgling literary scholar who studies anti-communist writing and concludes that its worth surpasses that of counterculture discourse in terms of the cogency of its ideas and morality of its implications won't go far in the application process.
No active or noisy elimination need occur, and no explicit queries about political orientation need be posed. Political orientation has been embedded into the disciplines, and so what is indeed a political judgment may be expressed in disciplinary terms. As an Americanist said in a committee meeting that I attended, "We can't hire anyone who doesn't do race," an assertion that had all the force of a scholastic dictum. Stanley Fish, professor and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, advises, "The question you should ask professors is whether your work has influence or relevance" -- and while he raised it to argue that no liberal conspiracy in higher education exists, the question is bound to keep conservatives off the short list. For while studies of scholars like Michel Foucault, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri seem central in the graduate seminar, studies of Friedrich A. von Hayek and Francis Fukuyama, whose names rarely appear on cultural-studies syllabi despite their influence on world affairs, seem irrelevant.
Academics may quibble over the hiring process, but voter registration shows that liberal orthodoxy now has a professional import. Conservatives and liberals square off in public, but on campuses, conservative opinion doesn't qualify as respectable inquiry. You won't often find vouchers discussed in education schools or patriotism argued in American studies. Historically, the boundaries of scholarly fields were created by the objects studied and by norms of research and peer review. Today, a political variable has been added, whereby conservative assumptions expel their holders from the academic market. A wall insulates the academic left from ideas and writings on the right.
One can see that phenomenon in how insiders, reacting to Horowitz's polls, displayed little evidence that they had ever read conservative texts or met a conservative thinker. Weblogs had entries conjecturing why conservatives avoid academe -- while never actually bothering to find one and ask -- as if they were some exotic breed whose absence lay rooted in an inscrutable mind-set. Professors offered caricatures of the conservative intelligentsia, selecting Ann H. Coulter and Rush Limbaugh as representatives, not von Hayek, Russell Kirk, Leo Strauss, Thomas Sowell, Robert Nozick, or Gertrude Himmelfarb. One of them wrote that "conservatives of Horowitz's ilk want to unleash the most ignorant forces of the right in hounding liberal academics to death."
Such parochialism and alarm are the outcome of a course of socialization that aligns liberalism with disciplinary standards and collegial mores. Liberal orthodoxy is not just a political outlook; it's a professional one. Rarely is its content discussed. The ordinary evolution of opinion -- expounding your beliefs in conversation, testing them in debate, reading books that confirm or refute them -- is lacking, and what should remain arguable settles into surety. With so many in harmony, and with those who agree joined also in a guild membership, liberal beliefs become academic manners. It's social life in a professional world, and its patterns are worth describing.
The first protocol of academic society might be called the Common Assumption. The assumption is that all the strangers in the room at professional gatherings are liberals. Liberalism at humanities meetings serves the same purpose that scientific method does at science assemblies. It provides a base of accord. The Assumption proves correct often enough for it to join other forms of trust that enable collegial events. A fellowship is intimated, and members may speak their minds without worrying about justifying basic beliefs or curbing emotions.
The Common Assumption usually pans out and passes unnoticed -- except for those who don't share it, to whom it is an overt fact of professional life. Yet usually even they remain quiet in the face of the Common Assumption. There is no joy in breaking up fellow feeling, and the awkward pause that accompanies the moment when someone comes out of the conservative closet marks a quarantine that only the institutionally secure are willing to endure.
Sometimes, however, the Assumption steps over the line into arrogance, as when at a dinner a job candidate volunteered her description of a certain "racist, sexist, and homophobic" organization, and I admitted that I belonged to it. Or when two postdocs from Germany at a nearby university stopped by my office to talk about American literature. As they sat down and I commented on how quiet things were on the day before Thanksgiving, one muttered, "Yes, we call it American Genocide Day."
Such episodes reveal the argumentative hazards of the Assumption. Apart from the ill-mannered righteousness, academics with too much confidence in their audience utter debatable propositions as received wisdom. An assertion of the genocidal motives of early English settlers is put forward not for discussion but for approval. If the audience shares the belief, all is well and good. But a lone dissenter disrupts the process and, merely by posing a question, can show just how cheap such a pat consensus actually is.
After Nixon crushed McGovern in the 1972 election, the film critic Pauline Kael made a remark that has become a touchstone among conservatives. "I don't know how Richard Nixon could have won," she marveled. "I don't know anybody who voted for him." While the second sentence indicates the sheltered habitat of the Manhattan intellectual, the first signifies what social scientists call the False Consensus Effect. That effect occurs when people think that the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population. If the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way.
The tendency applies to professors, especially in humanities departments, but with a twist. Although a liberal consensus reigns within, academics have an acute sense of how much their views clash with the majority of Americans. Some take pride in a posture of dissent and find noble precursors in civil rights, Students for a Democratic Society, and other such movements. But dissent from the mainstream has limited charms, especially after 24 years of center-right rule in Washington. Liberal professors want to be adversarial, but are tired of seclusion. Thus, many academics find a solution in a limited version of the False Consensus that says liberal belief reigns among intellectuals everywhere.
Such a consensus applies only to the thinking classes, union supporters, minority-group activists, and environmentalists against corporate powers. Professors cannot conceive that any person trained in critical thinking could listen to George W. Bush speak and still vote Republican. They do acknowledge one setting in which right-wing intellectual work happensnamely, the think tanksbut add that the labor there is patently corrupt. The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and the Hoover Institution all have corporate sponsors, they note, and fellows in residence do their bidding. Hence, references to "right-wing think tanks" are always accompanied by the qualifier "well-funded."
The dangers of aligning liberalism with higher thought are obvious. When a Duke University philosophy professor implied last February that conservatives tend toward stupidity, he confirmed the public opinion of academics as a self-regarding elite -- regardless of whether or not he was joking, as he later said that he was. When laymen scan course syllabi or search the shelves of college bookstores and find only a few volumes of traditionalist argument amid the thickets of leftist critique, they wonder whether students ever enjoy a fruitful encounter with conservative thought. When a conference panel is convened or a collection is published on a controversial subject, and all the participants and contributors stand on one side of the issue, the tendentiousness is striking to everyone except those involved. The False Consensus does its work, but has an opposite effect. Instead of uniting academics with a broader public, it isolates them as a ritualized club.
The final social pattern is the Law of Group Polarization. That lawas Cass R. Sunstein, a professor of political science and of jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, has describedpredicts that when like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts toward extreme versions of their common beliefs. In a product-liability trial, for example, if nine jurors believe the manufacturer is somewhat guilty and three believe it is entirely guilty, the latter will draw the former toward a larger award than the nine would allow on their own. If people who object in varying degrees to the war in Iraq convene to debate methods of protest, all will emerge from the discussion more resolved against the war.
Group Polarization happens so smoothly on campuses that those involved lose all sense of the range of legitimate opinion. A librarian at Ohio State University who announces, "White Americans pay too little attention to the benefits their skin color gives them, and opening their eyes to their privileged status is a valid part of a college education" (The Chronicle, August 6) seems to have no idea how extreme his vision sounds to many ears. Deliberations among groups are just as prone to tone deafness. The annual resolutions of the Modern Language Association's Delegate Assembly, for example, ring with indignation over practices that enjoy popular acceptance. Last year, charging that in wartime, governments use language to "misrepresent policies" and "stigmatize dissent," one resolution urged faculty members to conduct "critical analysis of war talk ... as appropriate, in classrooms." However high-minded the delegates felt as they tallied the vote, which passed 122 to 8 without discussion, to outsiders the resolution seemed merely a license for more proselytizing.
The problem is that the simple trappings of deliberation make academics think that they've reached an opinion through reasoned debate -- instead of, in part, through an irrational social dynamic. The opinion takes on the status of a norm. Extreme views appear to be logical extensions of principles that everyone more or less shares, and extremists gain a larger influence than their numbers merit. If participants left the enclave, their beliefs would moderate, and they would be more open to the beliefs of others. But with the conferences, quarterlies, and committee meetings suffused with extreme positions, they're stuck with abiding by the convictions of their most passionate brethren.
As things stand, such behaviors shift in a left direction, but they could just as well move right if conservatives had the extent of control that liberals do now. The phenomenon that I have described is not so much a political matter as a social dynamic; any political position that dominates an institution without dissent deterioriates into smugness, complacency, and blindness. The solution is an intellectual climate in which the worst tendencies of group psychology are neutralized.
That doesn't mean establishing affirmative action for conservative scholars or encouraging greater market forces in education -- which violate conservative values as much as they do liberal values. Rather, it calls for academics to recognize that a one-party campus is bad for the intellectual health of everyone. Groupthink is an anti-intellectual condition, ironically seductive in that the more one feels at ease with compatriots, the more one's mind narrows. The great liberal John Stuart Mill identified its insulating effect as a failure of imagination: "They have never thrown themselves into the mental condition of those who think differently from them." With adversaries so few and opposing ideas so disposable, a reverse advantage sets in. The majority expands its power throughout the institution, but its thinking grows routine and parochial. The minority is excluded, but its thinking is tested and toughened. Being the lone dissenter in a colloquy, one learns to acquire sure facts, crisp arguments, and a thick skin.
But we can't open the university to conservative ideas and persons by outside command. That would poison the atmosphere and jeopardize the ideals of free inquiry. Leftist bias evolved within the protocols of academic practice (though not without intimidation), and conservative challenges should evolve in the same way. There are no administrative or professional reasons to bring conservatism into academe, to be sure, but there are good intellectual and social reasons for doing so.
Those reasons are, in brief: One, a wider spectrum of opinion accords with the claims of diversity. Two, facing real antagonists strengthens one's own position. Three, to earn a public role in American society, professors must engage the full range of public opinion.
Finally, to create a livelier climate on the campus, professors must end the routine setups that pass for dialogue. Panels on issues like Iraq, racism, imperialism, and terrorism that stack the dais provide lots of passion, but little excitement. Syllabi that include the same roster of voices make learning ever more desultory. Add a few rightists, and the debate picks up. Perhaps that is the most persuasive internal case for infusing conservatism into academic discourse and activities. Without genuine dissent in the classroom and the committee room, academic life is simply boring.
Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University and director of research at the National Endowment for the Arts.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Just watched Brokeback
Weekends never seem to last long enough. There will be very few breaks for me for the next two years because of my new Masters program. So I never seem to choose the right movies to watch. Now I am watching Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. I already know it is funny, nothing to worry about. Before this we were watching Brokeback Mountain. I didn't know that it would be that bad of a love story. The movie wasn't unbarable or anything. It was just that a few times you sit back and think, "What the hell happened here?"
Okay, the first sex/rape scene, I did not see that coming. There was no romantic build up. There was nothing. Just a couple of sheep hearders going about thier buisness. It looks like one of them accidently grabs the other in his sleep. I thought that the Heath Ledger character was going to kick his ass, but instead he does something else with it. That seems to be consistant. Heath Ledger just looks like he's pissed off through the whole movie. There is a definite look of disgust on his face that makes the movie kind of amusing.
I think the only reason this movie would ever get any awards is because of the agenda it has. You don't have to see the movie to really figure that out though. Most people I know have not seen it regardless of how much hype it created. It really didn't show at that many movie theaters either when it came out. Anyway, the hype it created was the only reason I bothered to see it in the first place . It just isn't a very good love story, or more of not a very convincing one. Its the second movie I've seen with a gay love story. I kind of knew from the first that I wouldn't really be thrilled about it. Maybe its part of being a conservative Catholic. Oh well, I won't worry too much about it. I'm tired.
Okay, the first sex/rape scene, I did not see that coming. There was no romantic build up. There was nothing. Just a couple of sheep hearders going about thier buisness. It looks like one of them accidently grabs the other in his sleep. I thought that the Heath Ledger character was going to kick his ass, but instead he does something else with it. That seems to be consistant. Heath Ledger just looks like he's pissed off through the whole movie. There is a definite look of disgust on his face that makes the movie kind of amusing.
I think the only reason this movie would ever get any awards is because of the agenda it has. You don't have to see the movie to really figure that out though. Most people I know have not seen it regardless of how much hype it created. It really didn't show at that many movie theaters either when it came out. Anyway, the hype it created was the only reason I bothered to see it in the first place . It just isn't a very good love story, or more of not a very convincing one. Its the second movie I've seen with a gay love story. I kind of knew from the first that I wouldn't really be thrilled about it. Maybe its part of being a conservative Catholic. Oh well, I won't worry too much about it. I'm tired.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
You have to see this!
Okay, I posted about Miami before...
You have to read this article!
One example of the craziness that is Miami. It will make you laugh:)
You have to read this article!
One example of the craziness that is Miami. It will make you laugh:)
Friday, November 24, 2006
Happy Thanksgiving
Late Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I am down in Texas for the time being. My parents moved to a new small East Texas town that I must see and do other such things. It is good to have this small break. It is about to be quite busy. I will be starting graduate school at the first of December and working fulltime. For some reason I think I will be much more successful with this schedule though. So, not much to write about at this point. I am alive and well. I just had a cancer scare, but found out that it isn't cancer at this point at least. Just found that out the day before yesterday. It gives me something to be thankful for at least. Well, I shouldn't keep myself on the computer for too long. I never see my parents. Till next time....
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Piercings
Did you know that there is an infection that can occur from a naval piercing that can cause heart failure? Look it up. I've had a few piercings and have taken them out before I got married. I went to the doctor the other day and he noticed a couple of my healed piercing scars and had to tell me all about the dangers of piercings. I have to admit I have no urge towards it anymore. I don't even wear earings anymore. Another story he told me was about a girl who had a nipple piercing and two weeks later removed it. She had an abscest grow in her breast that had to be removed. He relized while removing it that the abscest ended up replacing her entire breast and she really only had the outer skin left. She had to have it rebuilt. People should know that they can be extremely dangerous sometimes. I just read a short article(it is somewhere on that page) about a girl who had to have heart surgery from having a piercing. Luckily I have had no such problems. I just notice when you look up piercings there are mostly positive articles about it. People should be warned that there are major risks for something that is mostly just a fashion accesory.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Thoughts on upcoming election
Elections are on my mind, and it is interesting the amount of political advertising you see in our area. I guess that is the plus of living in a swing state. I have to say that on the side of political advertising, the democrats are winning. I see so much on the democrats it makes me sick. I think I'm going to vote straight ticket republican ticket just because how sick of them I am. Well, I was going to anyway.
Of course, I do worry about how republicans will fare in our area. I live in the congressional district of Mark Foley.... Yes, the same guy that was caught in this gay sex scandal of sorts. I had no clue who would be there to replace him till I looked it up online. Joe Negron is the man if anyone is interested. I think that most people that come to this blog are no where near where I live though. I wonder if those in other parts of the country are noticing the lack of republican advertising. Is it just because I am moving from a dominant Republican state to a swing state? I do not know.
Watching a few commercials have proved to me that it appears that the popularity of the Iraq war is waning. I was just wondering, how many Americans think it would be a good idea to pull out right now? Now I was not a big fan of the war at first, but from studying history you would have to be an idiot to think that it is a good idea to pull out now. We aren't loosing anything. We knew that it would be a long term thing. Also pulling out would create problems like there were in Afghanistan before. We have already trained them, they would start hating us for leaving and then the terrorism would grow much more popular in the area. Does that sound about right to you?
I listen to the news and to the adds and I think the country has about lost their minds. The news are writing opinion articles for news and the political adds are all saying PULL OUT NOW, PULL OUT NOW! Or there is also the case that the news prints opinion as news on Iraq. War is not a pleasant thing, but it is necessary for security. It is as simple as that, and do we really want to have the appearance of being so fickle? This seems to be the key issue that all are focusing on for this election and it is retarded to do so.
Other than that there is a focus on Bush's leadership skills. Do you really think our president is that dumb? I remember this guy on the news talking about the books that President Bush was reading at the time. He was reading Shakepeare at the time. The news guy commented on how our president discovered Shakespeare. Are you retarded? Do you seriously think that a Ivy league graduate would be just discovering Shakespeare in his 50s. I think he has thought to read it before in his life. My point is, if you are intelligent you can see how manipulative the news is. I guess I'm doing exactly what liberals usually do. They claim that only those with intelligence would vote democratic. It seems to be working for them so far. I think it is about time to turn it around on them. I personally think that if the regular person paid attention to the issues and voted the issues, that they would see themselves to be more conservative. I discovered that of myself, and I use to be a liberal. Republicans are not deceptive, they are not running the stupid and there is no reason to fear speaking out about something other than the popular opinion of the democratic party.
Like I said at the first of the post, elections are on my mind and I am sick of the democrats. I went from being a liberal democrat, to independent who was embarrassed of saying anything of my political opinions, to a definite conservative republican. I had help along the way, but I will say definitely that the democrats are brainwashed. I am not. Flame if you want, I won't pay attention to it unless you can actually post a comment to convince me of something. If you don't know who I am, I have done plenty of research to come to my current political beliefs. Right now, I'll be surprised if anyone comments though. I can't help but post my political thoughts every once and awhile. What else is there to write on at this time of the year?
Monday, October 09, 2006
Its morning and I'm tired
I hate waking up this early. It seems that it is my curse though. I'm not a morning person, so every job I've had demands that I get up before everyone else. I have to be at work at 7am. Its better than 4am. I had to get up at that time for United. I just simply do not understand the work schedule that I do. For one, I am doing 9 to 10 hours of work a day rather than the tpical 8 hours. What is the reason? I'm not paid outstandingly for it. The work amuses me. But why go past the typical work day?
I was talking with Arthur about it. He did a 7 to 3 work schedule before, and he enjoyed that schedule. I would enjoy that schedule too. Do you know that the typical work day was 9 to 5? I never knew that. I always thought it was 8 to 5. I guess some places just demand longer. Lunch counts for nothing. Nothing to quit your job over. What does it matter. The place does it to keep up with compatition. I just hope we don't end up like the Japanese and killing ourselves early from so much work. Ah... Oh well, it will happen anyway.
I've wasted enough time. Now I have to go. Just wanted to get something up. I noticed I only posted once last month. September went by in a flash. I expect the same of October. Well, that is it for now. I have to go to work. Can't be late.
I was talking with Arthur about it. He did a 7 to 3 work schedule before, and he enjoyed that schedule. I would enjoy that schedule too. Do you know that the typical work day was 9 to 5? I never knew that. I always thought it was 8 to 5. I guess some places just demand longer. Lunch counts for nothing. Nothing to quit your job over. What does it matter. The place does it to keep up with compatition. I just hope we don't end up like the Japanese and killing ourselves early from so much work. Ah... Oh well, it will happen anyway.
I've wasted enough time. Now I have to go. Just wanted to get something up. I noticed I only posted once last month. September went by in a flash. I expect the same of October. Well, that is it for now. I have to go to work. Can't be late.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Thursday, August 17, 2006
What I want to be when I grow up
When looking for a job in the past I had a tendency to look too much into what I wanted to be later on in life. It took me awhile to relize that I should just go for whatever the hell I can get... minus Job Coach. I don't want to do that again. I feel like I've been constantly looking for work for the past year. Its not that I've been unemployed that whole time either. I've been told I'm the expert in the family on looking for jobs. That is what I spend my spare time doing, filling out job applications and writing cover letters. I've been to about seven job interviews in the past few weeks as well. I do have a job set up to where I only have a week off from the one I just quit and then I start again at a new place. Of course, I did this again because I moved to a new area... I'm not close enoough to Miami to work there. I still have this part of me that wants to be somewhat involved with "what I want to be when I grow up" sort of thing. That was why I worked for United Airlines for awhile. Anyway, at the same time there hasn't been one area specifically that I wanted to go into when I grow up. I'll give you an example:
1. Professor/Teacher- This is what my parents do and this is what most people know what I want to do. I've always thought I was a natural at teaching. I do well at job interviews where the position requires something to do with teaching as well. There are a couple of things keeping me from any such position, an upper level degree or a teaching certificate. I'm still attempting to get into a Master's program. I'll see how that works.
2. FBI/ Federal Agent- Okay, this one is a little sillier because I first wanted to go into doing this from growing up watching X-Files. I was a little too obsessed with that show. Still, I have attempted to get federal jobs. I don't think it will work. Well, they require good credit and to be in some sort of shape... Yep, like I said, I don't think its going to work out.
3. Pilot- I think this is one of the most far fetched one of them all. That is why I went into working at United Airlines, at least I had the opportunity to fly alot. I think I would also need that surgery to correct my vision or something to be a pilot. I don't know. I really gave up on that one a long time ago.
4. Astronaunt- This is the most far fetched one of them all. But now you see why I wanted to be a pilot? I loved astronomy. I wanted to have some opportunity to go into space. Hey, it could happen. Millionares can do it now. So that is all I need, to become a multi-millionare.
5. Virologist- Once upon a time I was a biology major and this was why. I wanted to study viruses. I still think they are fasinating, but I discovered that chemistry is hard. So that dream has dies. I don't put this one as far fetched though. I keep thinking that if I try one more time that I could pass chemistry.... I just would just need to go back to college. Maybe later.
6. Political Cartoonist- Still a possibility, I think I just have the problem of not being original enough. I can draw, but no ideas. That is why I post others political cartoons. Granted that I think most political cartoonists are unoriginal and liberal assholes, but I couldn't follow that model. It just wouldn't be right.
I think that is enough for now. But I have a question, who actually thinks that they want to be a clerical worker or an HR assistant when they grow up? I personally am a little biased against HR at this point. I think HR is a nonsense position. I would think that most people would want more interesting positions. But more than likely, I will be an administrative assistant soon enough. Not HR, they actually have a degree for that. Have you ever heard of anything more bullsh*$t than an HR degree?
1. Professor/Teacher- This is what my parents do and this is what most people know what I want to do. I've always thought I was a natural at teaching. I do well at job interviews where the position requires something to do with teaching as well. There are a couple of things keeping me from any such position, an upper level degree or a teaching certificate. I'm still attempting to get into a Master's program. I'll see how that works.
2. FBI/ Federal Agent- Okay, this one is a little sillier because I first wanted to go into doing this from growing up watching X-Files. I was a little too obsessed with that show. Still, I have attempted to get federal jobs. I don't think it will work. Well, they require good credit and to be in some sort of shape... Yep, like I said, I don't think its going to work out.
3. Pilot- I think this is one of the most far fetched one of them all. That is why I went into working at United Airlines, at least I had the opportunity to fly alot. I think I would also need that surgery to correct my vision or something to be a pilot. I don't know. I really gave up on that one a long time ago.
4. Astronaunt- This is the most far fetched one of them all. But now you see why I wanted to be a pilot? I loved astronomy. I wanted to have some opportunity to go into space. Hey, it could happen. Millionares can do it now. So that is all I need, to become a multi-millionare.
5. Virologist- Once upon a time I was a biology major and this was why. I wanted to study viruses. I still think they are fasinating, but I discovered that chemistry is hard. So that dream has dies. I don't put this one as far fetched though. I keep thinking that if I try one more time that I could pass chemistry.... I just would just need to go back to college. Maybe later.
6. Political Cartoonist- Still a possibility, I think I just have the problem of not being original enough. I can draw, but no ideas. That is why I post others political cartoons. Granted that I think most political cartoonists are unoriginal and liberal assholes, but I couldn't follow that model. It just wouldn't be right.
I think that is enough for now. But I have a question, who actually thinks that they want to be a clerical worker or an HR assistant when they grow up? I personally am a little biased against HR at this point. I think HR is a nonsense position. I would think that most people would want more interesting positions. But more than likely, I will be an administrative assistant soon enough. Not HR, they actually have a degree for that. Have you ever heard of anything more bullsh*$t than an HR degree?
Friday, August 04, 2006
Dear Diary
I have kept diaries since I was in middle school. At least I have on and off. I have always enjoyed the act of journaling and I treat it like an old friend. I recently came across one of my oldest diaries. I let my husband read it. What did it really matter, it is the thoughts and actions of a 14 to 15 year old girl, or maybe I was 16. I don't really remember. He really gets into reading those things, like he loves studying me. Now I see one of consequences from doing such a thing. I picked up a new diary. A leather bound book of blank pages, I love them. I couldn't help it. I came home and started writing in it. My journaling had stopped with the blog and I need to start that again. I mean it's not like I can really do the same thing online. You can't really share your heart and your raw emotion to anyone who could possibly want to simply stop by your web page. After I finished writing he looked over and asked if I wrote how I was sorry for not writing to the diary before because I hadn't purchased it before now. Yes, that sounds about what I would usually do. Hey, like I said I write to them as an old friend. I've read diaries where the person writes simple and basic info of their day. That is so boring! I can't take that. One thing that I love more than anything else is letters. I love reading old letters and such. Sometimes I miss the fact the act of letter writing is more or less dead, taken out by email. I write the diary like a letter. I think it makes it so much more interesting when you look back. Maybe that is why Arthur was drawn in? I don't know. Hmm.... I just know I must sleep. Diary and then blog is a little much, but on the weekend I have time. What can I say? Laters.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Moving as a pack rat
When I finally get unpacked I will be extremely happy. Part of me wonders when the hell that could possibly happen at this point. We moved as I wrote in my last post. The movers were assholes and were not very good with my stuff. For instance, the grand piano... My most precious possession, is unplayable. I'm not sure when we will be able to get someone out here to make it playable again. It is painful seeing it like that. They put the thing together without me being in the room. So I was extremely pissed. I was getting ready for a job interview and my husband was the first one to notice there was something wrong with the keys. They won't go down. So it makes it difficult to play it. I yelled at the movers as I left to not touch another damned thing as I walked out the door, and that is what they did. The furniture is together, but everything else is in boxes.
This is not my first time to move. I've understood how painful it is for me to move from my previous moves within Texas: Terrill to Paris, moves within Paris, Paris to Amarillo, moves within Amarillo, Amarillo to San Marcos, San Marcos to Brenham, Brenham back to San Marcos, San Marcos to San Antonio and now finally down here to the treasure coast of Florida... I think that is what it is called. Most of those moves are from the point I started college to this point, and I think some of my boxes have not been unpacked since highschool. That is the main reason I say "painful" in describing moving, I am a pack rat. I keep everything, and I think I feel it more in this move than any other. I finally have decided, why do I need a full collection of RL Stine Fear Street books from when I was in elementary school? That is just one example. Then there are the ones that I keep questioning "what the hell do I do with them", but I can't get myself to thow them away. I have college newspapers from when I was an editor. I have trophies from playing soccer in elementary school (I threw them away because they were destroyed anyway). I start to argue with myself about these possessions. What if I want them in the future for some reason? Am I hurting myself by throwing them away? Yes, I start the process of putting them in give away boxes, and then question if they will ever leave my living room floor.... I get attached to possessions too much. It is a problem.
So we will see how long the place will remain in this state. Our main stuff is unpacked right now. I just wonder if there is room for all my junk. I may need Art's assistance in throwing things away. Yes, it can be painful to go through this process. Well, now I must get ready for work. I will write later.
This is not my first time to move. I've understood how painful it is for me to move from my previous moves within Texas: Terrill to Paris, moves within Paris, Paris to Amarillo, moves within Amarillo, Amarillo to San Marcos, San Marcos to Brenham, Brenham back to San Marcos, San Marcos to San Antonio and now finally down here to the treasure coast of Florida... I think that is what it is called. Most of those moves are from the point I started college to this point, and I think some of my boxes have not been unpacked since highschool. That is the main reason I say "painful" in describing moving, I am a pack rat. I keep everything, and I think I feel it more in this move than any other. I finally have decided, why do I need a full collection of RL Stine Fear Street books from when I was in elementary school? That is just one example. Then there are the ones that I keep questioning "what the hell do I do with them", but I can't get myself to thow them away. I have college newspapers from when I was an editor. I have trophies from playing soccer in elementary school (I threw them away because they were destroyed anyway). I start to argue with myself about these possessions. What if I want them in the future for some reason? Am I hurting myself by throwing them away? Yes, I start the process of putting them in give away boxes, and then question if they will ever leave my living room floor.... I get attached to possessions too much. It is a problem.
So we will see how long the place will remain in this state. Our main stuff is unpacked right now. I just wonder if there is room for all my junk. I may need Art's assistance in throwing things away. Yes, it can be painful to go through this process. Well, now I must get ready for work. I will write later.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Moving
We went to our new place to get ready to move. Here is another picture that I took of the beach. It was cloudy, but it is cloudy every day. Regardless, there were still people out playing at the beach. I can't wait till we are settled down in our new place.
This is a picture I found online of the lighthouse in the area. There will probably be plenty of drawings of this once I have enough time to draw. Anyway, wish me luck! Hopefully we will have everything ready in our place by the end of the next week:)
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Corinthians 8: 7, 9, 13 - 15
Now as you excel in everything -- in faith, in utterance, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in your love for us -- see that you excel in this gracious work also.
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.
I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want, so that their abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality.
As it is written, "He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack."
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.
I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want, so that their abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality.
As it is written, "He who gathered much had nothing over, and he who gathered little had no lack."
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Thursday, June 22, 2006
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