Musa al-Gharbi argues that the progressive left has successfully conquered university administration and schools of education.
As Sam Abrams’ research has shown, college administrators hail predominantly from the arts, humanities and social sciences. Graduates of these fields often have a distressingly limited understanding of how, concretely, many social institutions operate – and how, specifically, these institutions might be leveraged to achieve particular ends. However, those who gravitate towards administration often do understand, or come to understand, how to ‘work the (higher ed) system.’ And one of the key things they have done with this institutional knowledge is expand the size and influence of the administrative class itself.
…Perhaps the most genius aspect this approach (targeting ed schools) is the indirectness. This strategy was implemented in a very deliberate, systematic, forward-thinking way by a constellation of activists, scholars and practitioners (who were very explicit about the political goals of their pedagogical approach!). Nonetheless, when their efforts began to come to fruition, it appeared as though it was a spontaneous, organic, student-driven movement. Young people reached (elite) universities, and increasingly the workplace (in particular industries), attempting to mold these institutions in accordance with the logics that have been inculcated into them since primary school — by teachers executing the curricula designed by these activists, practitioners and scholars. Yet rather than taking up their disagreement with the people who had designed said curricula, who had laid out these modes of thought and engagement, critics were instead forced to contend with the students themselves — by then, true believers. The optics of this were not great (for the critics, that is, who came off as reactionary, out of touch, overly-judgmental, etc. for their apparent denigration of the students and their views).
Some random notes of my own.
1. I suspect that a lot of the growth in college administration serves to provide an employment safety-valve for people earning degrees, especially Ph.D’s, that are not very marketable.
2. My high school experience definitely preceded the leftist take-over of schools of education. My freshman year, the principal brought in Up With People to perform for us. They struck me as an attempt to promote social conformity, so that we wouldn’t become hippies or Vietnam War resisters. I told those around me that this was a right-wing propaganda exercise. The experience stuck with me, primarily because when I voiced my suspicions a very attractive classmate sneered at me, “Arnold, you have no soul.”
3. I don’t think that those of us on the right should try to make an issue of the political orientation of college administrators or at schools of education. Instead, I think that we should push for intellectual rigor in college courses and in education research and policy. I would rather make my stand on the cause of intellectual rigor than on the cause of political balance.
4. My father was a college administrator in the 1970s, as Dean of Arts and Sciences and later Provost at Washington University. The environment was different in those days.
He was very pleased with Washington University’s coterie of literary figures (William Gass, for example). He was pleased also with prestigious African-American scholars, one of whom (Gerald Early) ultimately was named the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters. But although Washington U’s sociology department had a glamorous reputation, my father was willing to oversee its demise. He was a key player in the “conservative administration” referred to in this blog post. He absolutely would not have agreed with the blogger’s view that the crisis of the department reflected some fundamental controversy within the discipline of sociology, or that the problem with sociology was its radicalism. He saw the department as a collection of nut cases whose ethical failings caused way more trouble than they were worth.
In general, when he encountered dissent, my father’s preferred approach was to try to find symbolic concessions. But he was much more hard-nosed when it came to control over tangible resources. The blogger’s story of the sociology department says that “the dean essentially put the department into receivership, freezing future hiring and budget increases.” That sounds like my father, using control over resources to ensure that the tenured but unwanted faculty would depart.
He was not the sort to deal with an issue by standing on a soapbox. I do not think that he would have responded to demands on campus for social justice by issuing a rebuttal. I can imagine that he might have been willing to have the University issue statements showing sensitivity to issues of race and gender, but he might have resisted creating administrative positions and programs staffed by intellectual mediocrities. The many colleges that put real resources into building up these bastions of social justice advocacy are paying quite a price for their folly.
I think you make a good point on rigor being a better standard…but how do you judge that rigor in social sciences? It’s not so easy for professors to be objective when they have biases. I think you (or maybe some other economics blogger) made a good point about how the university you went to outsourced the exams to someone else to reduce the potential of bias. I think that is a fantastic idea.
Given that these biases are unlikely to change soon, if I were a Republican state legislator (neither Republican nor state legislator), I would think an argument could be made for passing a law that says that political affiliation of new tenured professors in the social sciences over a period of time must at least match the composition in the state. So for instance, if 30% of the state’s registered voters are Republicans, then at least 30% of the new tenured professors over a period of time must be registered Republicans (this could obviously be gamed…but it’s a start). Similarly, if there are 40% Democrats, then at least 40% of new tenured professors must be registered Democrats. This wouldn’t prevent 70% of those hired from being Democrats, but it would give a little more balance to the Republicans.
Proportional representation of political parties was the informal principle governing allocation of Faculty positions in Italian public universities during the Cold-War republic. This practice produced a mostly mediocre, largely absentee professoriate.
I have to disagree that you can’t get rigor in non-scientific fields. Even in philosophy, there’s a big difference in the rigor of different disciplines. You get rigor through using precise definitions, through carefully logical arguments, and through the avoidance of fallacies. In general, these things tend to come about automatically if there’s vigorous debate. And for that reason, some fields within philosophy are highly rigorous – epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, ethics, logic, and others. Other areas are very poor on rigor – feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, Africana/Latinx philosophy, critical theory, etc. The reason, basically, is that these latter fields tend to be more agenda driven and very hostile to outsiders, so debate is very weak and mostly avoids large numbers of shared assumptions that remain largely untested. So, admittedly, you can’t get the type of rigor you get in the sciences, but vigorous debate has a way of weeding out soft ideas, and several philosophical fields are very soft.
Great idea!
The truth is that most colleges have been discriminating against Reps for many decades. That should be more illegal — meaning the anti-discrimination phrases used in the law should be explicitly applied also to politics.
Similarly, most conservative students should be suing their diversity colleges for false advertising — their printed words and promises are to encourage thought, but their actions are to indoctrinate. Their refusal to hire Reps is part of the indoctrination.
Today’s polarization is coming from the widely accepted college practices of demonizing conservatives, which came after decades of accepted discrimination against them.
Law fare needs to be used against the dishonest, discriminatory, polarizing colleges.
It is interesting to see the anti-democratic use of top down authority idolized. Most universities have some sort of process for faculty input for departmental budgets. It seems it is no coincidence or wonder that the great achievements of USA libertarians have all been anti-democratic court rulings: abortion, gay marriage, and now sex-change operations on pre-pubescent children.
I’ll admit I’m curious where you got your info on the “anti-democratic court rulings” in favor of “sex-change operations on pre-pubescent children”, but I think I’d be afraid to click on the link.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/a-fight-over-a-sexual-identity-of-a-three-year-old-ends-up-in-court-9757780
Given that it was a newspaper site, I summoned the courage to read the article you cited.
This was a dispute between two parents. There was no court ruling on the topic whatsoever. There was no claim of anyone seeking a medical intervention on the child of any kind.
The father, who claimed that he only supported allowing his daughter to behave and dress like a boy because she wanted to, was issued a restraining order based on a complaint from the mother, and later arrested for violating its terms.
There was absolutely nothing in the article to suggest a court ruled on anything related to a sex change operation in any way.
It ain’t clickbait without a sex change in the headline. And how else can we ensure this important topic gets as much discussion as it merits?
You are absolutely right that abortion and gay marriage began as anti-democratic court rulings. But I suspect we would have wound up in pretty much the same place eventually. Some sort of gay marriage and right to abortion poll pretty well nowadays. The process would have been longer and messier, of course. Kind of like the still in process “great achievement of USA libertarians”: marijuana legalization.
Gay marriage wasn’t a majority opinion when it was forced by the courts, and it saw a jump in the polling AFTER the court ruling. Something along the lines of “the high status people decided X, so now I’m on board.”
In truth we have no clue what “the arc of history” is. There was a time when opinion on the death penalty had gone from 68-25 for/against in 1953 to 47-42 in 1966. Progressive opinion at the time was that the Death Penalty was on the way out and that trends in public opinion represented that. In fact those polling numbers look a lot like gay marriage numbers leading up to Supreme Court ruling.
Then of course we have a crime wave and in 1994 support for the death penalty was 80-16. If the courts had decided to “get ahead of the arc of history” in the mid 60s they would have been outlawing a practice that would come to have huge majority support within a relatively short period.
Aren’t Universities/Education sort of the society of law enforcement/military in which tend to attract a specific political belief in that universities/education are always going to lean left?
1) The reality for US Universities is they are going to have declining attendance the next 10 -20 years. Foreign applications are down, job market in good shape and future birth rates drops in 2008 are all going to lead to the decline of applications. So it is reasonable to both get ahead of this.
2) If somebody really wants to hurt the US University system then compete with it with effective vocational training. There are a lot of future shortages of blue collar jobs over the next 10 years and create a better system to turn High School graduates into these careers.
You think domestic birth rate decreases will lead to a declining population and college enrollment? That implies very low levels of immigration. Do you really think immigration levels are about to shrink and decline? I consider it a safe bet that the opposite will happen. Immigration to the US will sharply increase, and the US population will sharply increase. With large population growth will come an increase in college attendance.
I am suggesting that Universities will face declining applications the next 5 – 10 years from better job markets, less foreign student applications and after 2006 birth rates (2024 year). I might be wrong here but these realities and trends are already true. And with political environment, I don’t the government increasing legal immigration by any great amount.
1) Since 2015, Foreign applications have dropped every year by a few percent.
2) Immigration rates are slightly lower than they were 10 – 20 years and many Immigrant families are not future college students.
Intellectual rigor in the academic context is perceived as inherently conservative. It is intolerable for only a few students to receive A’s if everyone is equal. Enforcing high standards will be seen as elitist and oppressive.
I love me some Heterodox. Yes, the Ed Schools are enormously problematic. In 2011 I created a small one in Boston as a protest of sorts.
But I’m skeptical of this:
Young people reached (elite) universities, and increasingly the workplace (in particular industries), attempting to mold these institutions in accordance with the logics that have been inculcated into them since primary school — by teachers executing the curricula designed by these activists, practitioners and scholars.
First, many of the elite private schools don’t hire Ed School grads at all. They hire people from top colleges with normal majors.
Second, freedom of speech on college campuses has sharply dropped in past 5-10 years. Almost nothing has changed in Ed courses during that time.
The thing about Ed Schools teacher prep courses? They’re boring, ignored, low rigor. University of Wisconsin has, I think, a 3.9 GPA among ed school students. Nobody reads, tries.
The problem with Ed Schools? They graduate rookie teachers who struggle enormously. But that has long been true.
I completely agree with Kling that complaining about political bias and ideology will not garner sympathy and it is a losing fight. I don’t see fighting for academic rigor fairing any better. Many schools and classes have academic rigor today, and that’s not an exciting political issue.
I’d prefer to see a focus on innovative institutions that better serve the needs of the masses to build career skills. That’s a progressive goal that should genuinely appeal to people across the political spectrum.
The increasing polarization in the US is driven by the elite college indoctrination centers. This is a HUGE problem and should be far more focused on.
Complaining about college bias won’t result in sympathy – but it MIGHT result in taking away the undeserved tax supported indoctrination.
Why should these elitist anti-Rep factories get Federal guaranteed student loans? Why should Dem Party indoctrination centers (and meet-up / hook-up centers) be considered tax-exempt? The tax exemptions were granted when the assumption, and mostly the practice, was no bias. It’s been changing for decades, tho.
Reps need to be angry at the dishonest, discriminatory colleges, and take away their gov’t money, and special tax exemptions.
And if they lose exemptions only when they have less than 30% registered Reps, that would be ok with me (tho obviously many would then “game” the counting and there would be Dems who register as Reps).
Colleges should have Reps as professors. It not easy to see how to get there, in any realistic path in the near term. But focus on the money is good.
But,but..
Is this new? If we do not see this as a semi-repeatable process, a generational thing, then we have to look further, look to some new innovative organizations or technology. It is easy to write this off as young kids being naive, but we would expect to see the phenomena in history.
Instead we are seeing something a bit new, colleges are being thrown about by technology. Smart kids are getting graduate level knowledge on their interests from the internet. The smart kids are not supporting colleges and do not flash their degrees. They are not wasting time in undergraduate lecture halls.
Late to this, but given that the American teaching population has, for 40 years and counting, been 2:1 Dems to Republican (1 in 3 teachers voted for Trump), the idea that ed schools are responsible for converting the teaching profession to wokedom is ludicrous, and triply so for the notion that ed schools were then able to extend their influence to the university at large.
Perhaps there is a “critical mass” for ideas and individuals who propose them. If there isn’t a critical mass to provide pushback to various liberal doctrines (be they true or false), the pushback doesn’t happen at all in an educational setting.
Methinks there is a quote from Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, “Some must speak too soon so that others may speak in time.” The late Page Smith quotes him like that, at any rate.
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It doesn’t have to be that conservatives are demonized and driven out–nor does it have to be that the next generation is brainwashed in all things liberal or progressive, certainly not from a grand plan.
Thomas Schelling’s notion of “tipping” (I believe he modeled neighborhoods tipping from white to Black, and occupations “tipping” from male-dominated to female dominated) could be helpful. He also has a model for “the dying seminar” in which there aren’t enough people to keep it going–it iterates into smaller numbers until it vanishes.
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Someone in a classroom of 30 people has to have the courage to say (for example) that continually raising the minimum wage may not be good policy. Or that affirmative action may backfire in some ways. Or that parochial schools might possibly get better results in education not simply because of selection bias and the ability to expel the troublesome students. Or that the American Nazi Party has the right to right to march publicly and to nominate speakers in public lectures.
Without enough individuals to air these non-liberal notions, others won’t voice them unless they are exceptionally courageous. Soon no one voices them in a class of 30 people. A student can reach the age of 20 without hearing certain ideas. Then at some point he or she becomes too busy and impatient to entertain certain new ideas. Besides, they occasionally read the _New York Times_ or glance at the headlines, and the _New York Times_ doesn’t like those ideas and says they are wrong.
In other words, the Overton window can be moved by that process, even without some grand plan to move it.