The Chronicle of Higher Education got its hands on a poll that two Berkeley professors took of their colleagues. The question was about the Trump administration's attack on universities, and the possible responses were:
- The criticisms are not valid so we should not act on them;
- Some criticisms may be valid, but we should take no action in the current environment because it would undermine university autonomy;
- Some criticisms are valid, and we should take action deliberately via regular governance processes;
- Some criticisms are valid, and we should take action urgently; and
- Other.
In all, 290 professors responded, which is only about 15% of those to whom the survey was sent. The results:
I read this as showing that while a large majority don't want to cave to Trump, many professors think there are serious issues at universities related to things Trump in on the warpath about: wokeness, antisemitism, out-of-control DEI programs.
As one unnamed professor put it: “Over the years, I’ve been confronted by various scenarios that have caused me to mutter to myself, ‘This has gone way too far.’ Do we really have to acknowledge that we are holding a conference on stolen land when it takes place over Zoom?” . . .
The institution’s lack of conservatives — and the resulting ideological rigidity on campus — was another theme. “I proudly worked for the Biden administration,” wrote a faculty member, “and somehow pass for right wing in our very narrow intellectual environment.” Another professor said that while left-wing constraints on speech “are not equivalent to the Trump administration’s penchant for terrorizing noncitizen scholars with arbitrary deportation,” there “continues to be an unfortunate sense that if you endorse a position that’s associated with the right you are somehow committing a serious faux pas.”
The relationship between the over-the-top anti-racist, anti-colonial rhetoric and what actually happens in universities is complicated and sometimes downright weird. Lots of academics roll their eyes about that sort of stuff, and some hate it, but most keep their heads down and get on with their teaching and research. It seems to me that if Trump's ranting and flailing has any impact in the long term, that will be because a large number of quietly moderate professors (and students) actually agree with him about many parts of academic life.
2 comments:
"It seems to me that if Trump's ranting and flailing has any impact in the long term, that will be because a large number of quietly moderate professors (and students) actually agree with him about many parts of academic life."
First of all, quietly moderate professors do not "actually agree" with him. There is no intellectual ideology to latch on. Simply being on the opposite side of "wokeism" is not an ideology. Similarly I hear people saying that he is bringing a new and different ideology to foreign policy - again, there is no ideology. If personal self-enrichment is a policy, then maybe you are correct. Please stop suggesting that Trump has any intellectual principles other than enriching himself. It's a huge disservice to "moderates."
It never ceases to amaze me the things that people focus on in regards to colleges and academia.
Why are we concerned about DEI programs, as opposed to the insanity of tuition costs? Why are we more worried about how many right-wing professors are teaching in colleges, than we are about how useless college degrees have become for the young people getting them?
But hey - let's humor the concern of "not enough Republicans" in colleges. How did that come to pass, exactly? Does anyone stop to actually wonder?
Do you suppose that the right wing's recent tendency to reject objective reality and instead cling to delusion and fantasy has perhaps ostracized them a tad from environments dedicated to knowledge and education?
Or do you suppose that our primarily for-profit college system has simply run the numbers of cost benefit analysis, and realized that right wing professors ultimately simply cost more than they're worth to employ, because their actions and words tend to offend the young people colleges want to attract the business of?
Or could it be something even simpler? A form of self-selection bias, perhaps, in which right wing individuals eschew taking jobs at colleges because they feel the academic environments are too liberal... and in so doing, they make said environments even LESS conservative via their absence?
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