Mark Naison: Live With It! Liberal and Leftist Professors are Here To Stay!
[Mark Naison is Professor of AFrican American Studies and History, Fordham University.]
The whole question of liberal and leftist bias on university faculties came to the fore recently when a Conservative Alumni group offered $100 to any student who would take notes on the lecture of 30 faculty members at UCLA who the group identified as "radical professors"
I hardly think this an issue worthy of such extreme measures Yes, Conservatives are right--- university faculties are filled with liberals and leftists, but why is this a problem if they do their jobs well? The ranks of college football coaches are filled with born again Christians and rock ribbed Republicans, but I don't hear about legislative committees monitoring their activities to assure political and religious diversity in the locker room. Can you imagine the Pennsylvania State legislature calling in Joe Paterno and asking whether his coaching staff contains any marxists and feminists? Or suggesting that coaches not begin games with a prayer because their might be atheists or non-believers on their teams?
Liberals and leftists have gravitated to university teaching careers, just as Christians and conservatives have gravitated to careers in coaching and the military, but people on the Right are not going to be able to do anything about this without undermining their own credibility. Why? Because most college teachers have high standards of professionalism and are deeply immersed in their discipline. By the time they have a tenure track position on a university faculty, they have gone through a rigorous training program in pursuit of their doctorate and have gone through exhausitve search procedures which included university administrators as well as senior members of their department. In those settings, spouting political propoganda just won't cut it; you have to show a mastery of your field honed by thousands of hours of disciplined study,and if there are biases in the subjects chosen, they are hardly ones shaped by current political controversies
Sure, some faculty members have "Impeach Bush" posters in their offices, but I defy anyone to show that college teachers are more aggressive in prostyletizing for their political or religious beliefs than college football coaches or offficers in the US military, who also for the most part, have their positions paid for by "taxpayer money".
Live with it! Leftist professors are a fact of life in American Universities, and unless conservatives want to upset the majoirty of students who actually like their professors and wreak havoc with established norms of academic freedom and university governance, they are here to stay.
As for David Horowitz, who has been leading the charge for "political balance" in university hiring, I have one coment. For the sake of consistency, why don't you do the same thing with college football staffs? Why don't you place a few radicals,or even Democrats, as assistant coaches at Clemson or Penn State or University of Alabama.
I volunteer to be a the first recruit for this campaign. Joe Paterno or Bobby Bowden would love me I may be a leftist, but I push my students hard and as anyone who knows me from Brooklyn sandlot sports can tell you, I play to win!
The whole question of liberal and leftist bias on university faculties came to the fore recently when a Conservative Alumni group offered $100 to any student who would take notes on the lecture of 30 faculty members at UCLA who the group identified as "radical professors"
I hardly think this an issue worthy of such extreme measures Yes, Conservatives are right--- university faculties are filled with liberals and leftists, but why is this a problem if they do their jobs well? The ranks of college football coaches are filled with born again Christians and rock ribbed Republicans, but I don't hear about legislative committees monitoring their activities to assure political and religious diversity in the locker room. Can you imagine the Pennsylvania State legislature calling in Joe Paterno and asking whether his coaching staff contains any marxists and feminists? Or suggesting that coaches not begin games with a prayer because their might be atheists or non-believers on their teams?
Liberals and leftists have gravitated to university teaching careers, just as Christians and conservatives have gravitated to careers in coaching and the military, but people on the Right are not going to be able to do anything about this without undermining their own credibility. Why? Because most college teachers have high standards of professionalism and are deeply immersed in their discipline. By the time they have a tenure track position on a university faculty, they have gone through a rigorous training program in pursuit of their doctorate and have gone through exhausitve search procedures which included university administrators as well as senior members of their department. In those settings, spouting political propoganda just won't cut it; you have to show a mastery of your field honed by thousands of hours of disciplined study,and if there are biases in the subjects chosen, they are hardly ones shaped by current political controversies
Sure, some faculty members have "Impeach Bush" posters in their offices, but I defy anyone to show that college teachers are more aggressive in prostyletizing for their political or religious beliefs than college football coaches or offficers in the US military, who also for the most part, have their positions paid for by "taxpayer money".
Live with it! Leftist professors are a fact of life in American Universities, and unless conservatives want to upset the majoirty of students who actually like their professors and wreak havoc with established norms of academic freedom and university governance, they are here to stay.
As for David Horowitz, who has been leading the charge for "political balance" in university hiring, I have one coment. For the sake of consistency, why don't you do the same thing with college football staffs? Why don't you place a few radicals,or even Democrats, as assistant coaches at Clemson or Penn State or University of Alabama.
I volunteer to be a the first recruit for this campaign. Joe Paterno or Bobby Bowden would love me I may be a leftist, but I push my students hard and as anyone who knows me from Brooklyn sandlot sports can tell you, I play to win!