Conservatives in Academe

March 9, 2004

Comments

Megan McArdle, back from a long vacation that left her untanned but with a deformed blog template, has composed what she correctly entitles, “A hell of a long post on conservatives in academia.” She does a good job of outlining the debate, operationalizing its terms, sorting out the major arguments, and looking at the potential remedies.

She’s certainly right that conservatives are much less prominent among the faculties of selective universities than in society at large or even in comparison with other highly educated professions. I also share her libertarian instincts on the matter; there’s not much to be done about this phenomenon that wouldn’t be worse than the problem.

5 responses to “Conservatives in Academe”

Mithras

March 10, 2004 at 12:34 am

Hmmm, I didn’t notice a deficiency of conservative professors (of all stripes) at my elite law school.

What does a liberal physics, biology, geology, medicine, accounting, business administration, or computer science professor look like? And why does it matter?

I guess conservative victimology just needs to keep itself going somehow.
McGehee

March 10, 2004 at 8:35 am

Mithras, first of all, “data” is not the plural of “anecdote.”

And I’m sure I would be wildly entertained by your definition of “conservative.”
Mithras

March 10, 2004 at 7:25 pm

Well, McGehee, McArdle offers exactly the same amount of data that I do. Since we’re all pulling it out of our asses here, what’s the problem?

And good point about the definition of “conservative.” Mine swings from “social reactionary” to “wealthy status-quoist” to “libertarian fantasist.” Let’s define “liberal” along the way, too – something else the people advancing this line of argument have neglected to do.