Affirmative Action Quotas

[Gary Sisco]

See second to last paragraph for the radical right's whining response. Apparently they haven't noticed that the fact that the "left" (I gag) is entrenched means that it has already the establishment, which means that it will be overthrown all on its own and replaced by some other clique that will rule for a time, and then, etc. Meanwhile, all hail the new party line. Let us march forth boldy under the slogan: Affirmative action for the right! We want quotas and we want them NOW!

America's one-party state

Dec 2nd 2004
From The Economist print edition








If you loathe political debate, join the faculty of an American university

TOM WOLFE'S new novel about a young student, “I am Charlotte Simmons”, is a depressing read for any parent. Four years at an Ivy League university costs as much as a house in parts of the heartland—about $120,000 for tuition alone. But what do you get for your money? A ticket to “Animal House”.

In Mr Wolfe's fictional university the pleasures of the body take absolute precedence over the life of the mind. Students “hook up” (ie, sleep around) with indiscriminate zeal. Brainless jocks rule the roost, while impoverished nerds are reduced to ghost-writing their essays for them. The university administration is utterly indifferent to anything except the dogmas of political correctness (men and women are forced to share the same bathrooms in the name of gender equality). The Bacchanalia takes place to the soundtrack of hate-fuelled gangsta rap.



“Academia, Stuck to the Left”, by George Will is published by the Washington Post (free registration required). America's State Department publishes the background to and the decision of Justice Lewis Powell's court in Regents of the University of California v Bakke, concerning diversity in education.





Mr Wolfe clearly exaggerates for effect (that's kinda, like, what satirists do, as one of his students might have explained). But on one subject he is guilty of understatement: diversity. He fires off a few predictable arrows at “diversoids”—students who are chosen on the basis of their race or gender. But he fails to expose the full absurdity of the diversity industry.

Academia is simultaneously both the part of America that is most obsessed with diversity, and the least diverse part of the country. On the one hand, colleges bend over backwards to hire minority professors and recruit minority students, aided by an ever-burgeoning bureaucracy of “diversity officers”. Yet, when it comes to politics, they are not just indifferent to diversity, but downright allergic to it.

Evidence of the atypical uniformity of American universities grows by the week. The Centre for Responsive Politics notes that this year two universities—the University of California and Harvard—occupied first and second place in the list of donations to the Kerry campaign by employee groups, ahead of Time Warner, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft et al. Employees at both universities gave 19 times as much to John Kerry as to George Bush. Meanwhile, a new national survey of more than 1,000 academics by Daniel Klein, of Santa Clara University, shows that Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. And things are likely to get less balanced, because younger professors are more liberal. For instance, at Berkeley and Stanford, where Democrats overall outnumber Republicans by a mere nine to one, the ratio rises above 30 to one among assistant and associate professors.

“So what”, you might say, particularly if you happen to be an American liberal academic. Yet the current situation makes a mockery of the very legal opinion that underpins the diversity fad. In 1978, Justice Lewis Powell argued that diversity is vital to a university's educational mission, to promote the atmosphere of “speculation, experiment and creation” that is essential to their identities. The more diverse the body, the more robust the exchange of ideas. Why apply that argument so rigorously to, say, sexual orientation, where you have campus groups that proudly call themselves GLBTQ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning), but ignore it when it comes to political beliefs?

This is profoundly unhealthy per se. Debating chambers are becoming echo chambers. Students hear only one side of the story on everything from abortion (good) to the rise of the West (bad). It is notable that the surveys show far more conservatives in the more rigorous disciplines such as economics than in the vaguer 1960s “ologies”. Yet, as George Will pointed out in the Washington Post this week, this monotheism is also limiting universities' ability to influence the wider intellectual culture. In John Kennedy's day, there were so many profs in Washington that it was said the waters of the Charles flowed into the Potomac. These days, academia is marginalised in the capital—unless, of course, you count all the Straussian conservative intellectuals in think-tanks who left academia because they thought it was rigged against them.

Bias in universities is hard to correct because it is usually not overt: it has to do with prejudice about which topics are worth studying and what values are worth holding. Stephen Balch, the president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, argues that university faculties suffer from the same political problems as the “small republics” described in Federalist 10: a motivated majority within the faculty finds it easy to monopolise decision-making and squeeze out minorities.



Ivy-clad propaganda
The question is what to do about it. The most radical solution comes from David Horowitz, a conservative provocateur: force universities to endorse an Academic Bill of Rights, guaranteeing conservatives a fairer deal. Bills modelled on this idea are working their way through Republican state legislatures, most notably Colorado's. But even some conservatives are nervous about politicians interfering in self-governing institutions.

Mr Balch prefers an appropriately Madisonian solution to his Madisonian problem: a voluntary system of checks and balances to preserve the influence of minorities and promote intellectual competition. This might include a system of proportional voting that would give dissenters on a faculty more power, or the establishment of special programmes to promote views that are under-represented by the faculties.

The likelihood of much changing in universities in the near future is slim. The Republican business elite doesn't give a fig about silly academic fads in the humanities so long as American universities remain on the cutting edge of science and technology. As for the university establishment, leftists are hardly likely to relinquish their grip on one of the few bits of America where they remain in the ascendant. And that is a tragedy not just for America's universities but also for liberal thought

[Gary Sisco]

No comment, huh?

I thought so.

Weighted voting for dissenters? Now there's an idea whose time has come. I'm sure they'd be all for it if the shoe were on the other foot, no?

Yeah, right. I mean, far right.

[Enforcer]

Tolerance as a concept is usually invoked under very selective circumstances. Usually those circumstances can be summarized with a statement that goes something like, "You need to accept me."

[Sergio Zamora]

Maybe I missed the point of the article, but I don't get what one thing has to do with the other. The article really obfuscates the use of the word 'diversity'. Things can be diverse in different aspects.

I'm not making a judgement on whether or not it is true that most faculty are liberal or that that is bad thing, but I fail to understand the comparison between that kind of diversity and the other (racial, sexual orientation, etc) kind.

[Rob C]

Originally Posted by Sergio Zamora

Maybe I missed the point of the article, but I don't get what one thing has to do with the other. The article really obfuscates the use of the word 'diversity'.

Exactly the point of conservatives' co-option of the term.

[Darryl G. Thomas]

The "leftist" leanings of academia is a big issue for the Right. I read Will's article on it awhile back and filed it under "So What". Why? Because what are you going to do? Have colleges vet their staffs according to their political beliefs? And then what? Offer tenure according to their political beliefs?

So I guess affirmative action's cool if it benefits the Right, but it's not cool if it doesn't.

Meanwhile, the Right's attack on affirmative action (based upon race) on college campuses seems to be working fine. Black enrollment is dropping off. The University of Georgia's in a panic because their incoming freshman class is lilly-white.

Personally, speaking for myself, I don't give a shit if America becomes more racially segregated than it is right now. Hell, I say we should return to the historically Black colleges. They're cheaper and the environment would be less hostile.

[Gary Sisco]

I was being sarcastic, Darryl, that a far righter in the US would propose quotas for conservatives on university faculties. The weighted voting for dissenters was hilarious also. What ever happened to "winner take all" and its inherent correctoidness?

But the hugely funny thing to me, as former leftist of many years, is that most of the people they're raving about aren't even leftists (except perhaps in their and the far right's febrile imaginations). What they are for the most part are pomos, and normally vulgar pomos at that. Deconstructionists sans reconstruction. In short, nihilists. The whole thing would be a hilarious joke if it weren't for the many young minds the idiotic system systematically ruins.

[cookie]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

The whole thing would be a hilarious joke if it weren't for the many young minds the idiotic system systematically ruins.

I think this is shit. I don't think anybody tried to make me think any certain way in school (just let 'em fuckin' try) and even in liberal Ithaca, I ran into conservative (though tolerant--go figure) profs.

The "young minds" are capable of thinking for themselves. Trouble is, a lot of 'em don't care to think. And that's their own damn fault, IMO. Same thing with the public schools. Sure, a lot of 'em suck and sure, there are terrible teachers. But most schools have some books.I think it's as much up to the students as to the teachers to make sure they take advantage of education. The student's too young to know? Their parents ought to direct them. But no, too many parents would rather bitch about their schools than get their asses in there and do something about it. They'd rather remove their kid like their kid is too good for the public school. Who gives a shit about other people's kids?

Anyway, I look at this stuff as more whining by conservative white guys because they no longer rule the social roost by default.

[Gary Sisco]

Think it's shit if you like, Cookie, but I had experience with hundreds of college-aged activists coming out of that system, and the only thing they knew how to do was tell you what they didn't like about things. But movements for social change are and always have been based on what you know you want your society to look like. The former breeds political despair (and hence has no radicality apart from being radically nihilistic) and the latter breeds political hope, without which there can be no movement for change, and why should there be?

I can't help but note that one of the historical coincidences of the time has been the rise of deconstruction sans reconstruction posing as a radical political stand (heavy on the pose) and the nearly complete disappearance of a left in the US that has any historical relationship to the various forms it has taken historically, including very much they ways in which they thought and argued.

Of course, kids are "free" to think for themselves. The trouble is that thinking, like all human skills, is a learned activity. No one can think for oneself, however "free," if one doesn't know how to think to begin with. (Please note that I said how to think, not what to think.)

In short, nothing's stopping them, sure. So, they are "free" in that sense. But on the other hand, there are precious few learning how to think, either, so "free" in that sense really does become just another word.

And sure most schools have books. The question is how many are read? My high school, for example, had *The Communist Manifesto,* but I was at the time the only one who'd ever taken it off the shelf and checked it out. (They recorded the names of those who had, in those days, on a card on the inside cover. The Manifesto card was blank whiteness.) I'll add that I paid a heavy price for reading it. The librarian purposefully destroyed half of an independent project of mine that was a requirement for graduating, and did so, purposefully, when there would be no time for me to redo the work.

In a time when students expect high grades as a matter of course, I doubt very much that many will be willing to accept a price for showing independence of mind and deed. Some will, sure. But some always will, and always have, even under Stalin, even under the Reich.

That's not the some I worry about.

[cookie]

Shoot, Gary. I just lost the reply I was writing! Damn. Well, maybe I can make it shorter too.

I also checked out the Communist Manifesto in high school and I took shit for it. I had a teacher who proclaimed in class that all gays should be lined up and shot in the streets. My father was a Reaganite. I grew up in a conservative culture and I still carry the mark of that culture. I can go to school and I can learn the manners and being white, I can pass for middle class, but I'm just a fuckin' hick who grew up in a trailer. I *escaped* to liberal academia.

Who taught me to think? Teachers plain and simple. I was lucky to have the support of moderate and/or liberal teachers. The debate team was a good experience for me because I had to consider both pro/con and also nuances where pro/con, black/white weren't necessarily a useful way of looking at an issue. Anyway, I credit school and teachers for opening me to the wider world of thought. The church certainly wasn't doing so. And granted, I'm no great genius or anything, but I can read/write/ think independently and without public school, I don't believe that would have happened. Especially because I'm a girl.

The other thing is that in our home, we talk about politics. Our kids are good little parrots, as are most kids. But we have to cool them out and ask them to consider WHY and IF they really believe that stuff. I hope they learn to ask questions even if the answers they put together turn 'em into stone neo-cons. At least we can have some lively dinner discussion.

Anyway, I don't doubt that much of what you say is true. I work with college kids and some of them are so damn dumb and of that number, there are few truly hungry for learning and willing to work for change.

I think you have a point about people just wanting to deconstruct without reconstructing. In other words, whinin' and bitchin' without actually doing something about it.
______________-
Check it out: I'm a proud Mama and this is as good a place to express it as any. My 8-year-old Joe has apparently written and circulated a petition to have art class more than once a week (!). I didn't learn of it until he told me he wanted to present it to the school board. I asked him who suggested he circulate a petition. He said no one. He did it on his own. Wow, my kid the activist. Anyway, I told him that if he wants to take it to the school board, he will have to get on the agenda and he's insistent that we do so.

They won't listen to him, of course, but I have to let him do it. He's the kind of kid that you couldn't stop anyway.

[Gary Sisco]

They're called mentors and I can't recall a single good mind that can't claim one, (official) teacher or not.

But I can't deny my experience. If people are being mentored in the universities today, a huge lot of them are being mentored by people who needed one themselves but didn't find one.

[cookie]

Yes, Gary. I'll admit that I was fortunate to have great mentors in my life. But without public school and without scholarships, I would never have met them.

I feel I was also remiss in not mentioning how eavesdropping on my father and grandfather shaped my thinking. Politics was often THE topic for the evening and they certainly didn't agree with each other on certain issues. However, at heart they were moderates like a good many Maine "conservatives" and "liberals" And it wasn't eavesdropping on the conversations about world, national, or state politics where some of the best lessons were. Local politics were the real lessons in a way. Gramp was a selectman with all its attendant privileges and woes; its rocks and its hard places.

[Gary Sisco]

That's good, Cookie. Some of us find them in schools and some find them outside of schools, but all good minds have found them.

I found one in college (as an adult) and one in the movement. Both taught me much about thinking and how to do it. Neither bothered much with what I should think, once thinking.

And that is the gist of these kinds of discussions. I don't care what politics a good teacher has, because a good teacher doesn't care if his or her students share that politics. Therefore, it matters not whether they are "leftists," pomo, or "conservative."

[cookie]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

T I don't care what politics a good teacher has, because a good teacher doesn't care if his or her students share that politics. Therefore, it matters not whether they are "leftists," pomo, or "conservative."

To THAT, my friend, I can agree.

[Gary Sisco]

There. How hard is it? The world's problems solved again!

Rack 'em.

[Gary Sisco]

Interesting that none of our conservala pundits who've often mouthed off about racial affirmative action have offered any comment when the shoe's on their own foot.

Who the shoe fit, let him wear it.

[cookie]

Originally Posted by Gary Sisco

The world's problems solved again!

Rack 'em.

Yeah, right.

Well, at least the little schoolkids in Ithaca might get art twice a week instead of once. Poor babies. Kids in NYC don't get ANY.

[Gary Sisco]

True, but at least they have museums and libraries and such -- and lots of free stuff to do on any given week. The same can't be said for the kids in East Dipshit, who have nothing in school and nothing outside it, either.

[patricia]

I think that there are far too many parents who outsource their children's minds to the school system, whichever one, thinking that they have no part in teaching their children how to think critically.
Children are capable of critical thought much earlier than people seem to think. They question the general order when they are very small. Their terms of reference are limited, but they still have an idea of how things should be. It is up to us as parents to encourage that curiosity and the teachers who follow to bolster that thirst for knowledge of the world in which they live.
The books are out there, waiting to be read.
The life-experiences are out there, waiting to be lived.
And yes, mentors are vital. I have had several and I am most grateful to them for opening my mind through the years.
Ideally, parents and the school system should work in tandem, not independantly.
Learning how to think and how to question what we think we already know as small children, is a function of gradual maturity and gathering of knowledge, nurtured by the adults who have a stake in an educated society. Why have so many opted out of the most important challenge that they will ever, in their lives be given??
When did we abandon that very basic premise??? It transcends race, religion and socioeconomic considerations. Why would we think that only certain segments of society have a monopoly on good education??

[Ennis Snavely]

I'm a nihilist and I have nothing to say about any of this.

[Gentle Giant]

I think affirmative action should have been temporarily suspended whenever it could have benefited Clarence Thomas.

[Gentle Giant]

One of the funniest tihngs Dennis Miller has ever said:

According to the latest census, whites are now a minority group in the US. And I gotta tell you, I am tired of getting heat from the MAN!

[tippy]

I don't think the education system was established to teach people to think for themselves in the first place. It was more for strengthening and reproducing a common (Anglo Saxon) culture. Same model behind the No Child Left Behind Act. From my understanding, Black students always did better in their own schools (go figure) and didn't want to be integrated (fear of their children's safety topping the list), but Fed. Gov. didn't want to provide appropriate funding for these schools which, God knows, would have been the right thing to do. On top of the money, people might get smart and feel empowered. I digress but I too am against the everybody gets an A culture now in existence--on the other hand, I am against a competitive system (where performance hides the value of learning from "smart" and "dumb" alike) which teaches kids their value on a scale and imprints a powerful psychological limit on their capabilities. It's a tall order to nurture (rather than kill) a child's innate curiosity in such a system and teacher's *really* have to be attentive and know what they are doing. On the other hand, I am currently attending a School of Education and they are mindful of and troubleshooting such issues quite vigilantly, redeveloping ideas of how to best educate a child within this kind of system. It's no small feat, but I do appreciate that they are trying to wheel this massive entity with better ends in minds (so we don't continue to support a system where kids come out knowing "jack").

[patricia]

Thinking "outside the box" has become a catchphrase, but isn't that what the acquisition of new knowledge, whatever field is being explored, is?? To cookie-cut knowledge would seem to be counterproductive. We celebrate innovation, while discouraging it, in favour of standardized highschool education, catering to .............whom?? I specified highschool, because basics are necessary, but should have been learned much earlier than highschool, at home, then in standardized elementary and middle schools. It's almost too late to teach basics to highschool students, if they seem to have slipped through the cracks, illiterate, earlier.

[tippy]

That's true, patricia. I was observing at a high school recently and a fellow observer said to me "These kids are already ruined" which kind of hurt me from it's negative spirit but on second thought I realized how right she was. (She also hit me with "Face it, George Bush is gonna win" on the same day, a week before the election. Although I have perceived her as a damper on my spirits--kinda like Eeyore--I shouldn't be shooting a prescient messenger. )

[cookie]

"These kids are already ruined."

Not necessarily, but they themselves bear some responsibility if they allow someone to deem them a failure out of the gate. Then again, sometimes they just prove it over and over.

I just gave out final grades and am in the process of correcting the final papers in calligraphy. I wish I could give them all an A, but apparently, they weren't paying attention in class. Now, that's a generalization because at least one girl got an A-. She came to class on a regular basis. She asked questions. Her final project was pretty screwed up though, so I don't get it. Here's an example of a dumb move that was discussed and pointed out in more than 2 classes: you have to transpose the changes from concert to the instrument's key. This girl did lovely transpositions of the written notes with only a few of what Sinatra called "little strangers"--incorrect accidentals. But she didn't transpose the solo changes---just copied them from the piano part. This is a MAJOR mistake. But at least her parts were laid out clearly and she can scratch out the wrong changes and put in the right ones. I'd have to give the chart a B overall and that's being pretty generous. I'll give her an A- overall because she was in every class and she can easily correct her mistakes.


Other students didn't do THAT well--especially those who didn't come to class. One girl wasn't finished by the deadline and though she's a good kid, I told her to her face that if it wasn't in by the time I posted grades, I would be forced to give her an incomplete. I also told her that I would take off half a letter grade for handing it in late. They had ample time and were warned several times. I told them that I *wanted* it finished by last friday (last day of classes), but that I would accept them through noon today (last day of finals).

This is the first time I've had to assign academic grades and my big question to myself is whether I *taught* adequately. I believe I did. I made myself available outside of class. Every week, I covered any mistakes I found in the previous week's homework. I had them show me their work every week and we sat in a circle and looked at each other's parts. I pointed out mistakes to be avoided (and re-copied by the offender) and praised good, logical, clear, sight-readable charts. So I don't get it. I still have to give the grade based on THEIR performance, not mine though (they do critique my performance in a formal evaluation) and I'll be curious to see what they say. Still, I think I was pretty clear and was available to answer any and all questions that were brought to me (I expect them to have questions simply because they are such green musicians) and I can't give A's to people who don't come to class or who make silly mistakes like not transposing changes for the horn-players. Not only did we come across and discuss it in class, it's a just plain dumb mistake due to mechanical vs. musical thinking.

I *wish* I could give A's but I'll tell ya, the best thing that ever happened to me was a professor failing me because I fucked around all semester and didn't have the paper written by the end of finals. That made me get serious quick. I'm not even being as harsh as failing anyone. I don't think it does them any favors to let sloppiness slide by.

Sorry. Rant over.

[cookie]

Originally Posted by patricia

Thinking "outside the box" has become a catchphrase, but isn't that what the acquisition of new knowledge, whatever field is being explored, is?? T\

It's also using common sense and not needing to have your hand held. My student not transposing changes is an example. Even IF it hadn't been discussed in class, it's a common sense thing that she should have taken into account had she actually been thinking about it. To me, that's not even about lack of experience. If you have to transpose the notes, you have to transpose the changes because they *represent* notes. Duh.

Sorry. I'm just flabbergasted by that mistake. Sometimes there's no reason to "think outside the box." Sometimes, you need to know what the box IS.

[cookie]

As to the original topic of this thread (aff-ac protections for conservatives in academia)

Ha, ha, ha. What babies. It's sour grapes and it's stupid. Say you *do* protect and recruit conservatives and that in the academic discourse, they lighten up or change their views. It does, on occasion, happen. Are they then ineligible for protections? Sour grapes and thin skins.

Maybe they should submit applications to Bob Jones U.

[tippy]

Hey, cookie you can only do your best and I know I'd *love* to have you as my teacher. A lot of kids end up in college without their own reasons for being there.

[Enforcer]

Originally Posted by tippy

Hey, cookie you can only do your best and I know I'd *love* to have you as my teacher.

tippy, you're gonna get Dolan going with this comment. You know how his mind works and all. "Google mishap"... hahahaha

Stirring the pot,
Larry