Iowa's Diversity Test

Below, Ralph mentioned the controversy over the decision by the University of Iowa’s History Department to exclude Mark Moyar from its list of initial interviewees for a position in the United States and world affairs. I’ve known Mark for a long time (he was a student in several classes for which I served as a TF in graduate school) and like him.

I have a different interpretation of JFK/LBJ policy toward Vietnam than Moyar does. But there’s also no doubt that his book on the issue (published by Cambridge) is a serious one. It’s also highly controversial, in that it argues that the United States was winning the war militarily in 1962-1963, before the decision to jettison Ngo Dinh Diem. The book has received strong praise from some conservatives—and, as Moyar himself has pointed out, has generated vehement criticism from some on the left. Moyar’s earlier book, on the Phoenix Program, generated similarly polarizing commentary.

All sorts of factors, of course, go into a final selection for a hire. On the basis of his publication record alone, however, it would seem that someone with Moyar’s qualifications (two books, including one with a prestigious press) would have been likely to have made the preliminary cut in a job search for an entry-level position.

Moyar, however, didn’t receive a preliminary interview. And, in the end, Iowa hired a candidate with a well-received book whose interests conform to the academic status quo. His first academic publication came in Radical History Review, and he says he’ll be teaching courses in “Race, Gender and U. S. International History”; “Transnational America, 1877-1940”; “The United States as Empire”; and “Comparing Racial Formations.” As I’ve noted before, this willingness to cross sub-disciplinary specializations in U.S.-field hiring seems to go in one way only: not too many departments fill their positions in, say, gender history with scholars who specialize in topics such as the political activism of conservative women.

It turns out that of the more than 20 historians at the U of I who have registered by party, every single one is a registered Democrat. Moyar—and Mark Bauerlein—have strongly implied that ideology played an improper role in the decision to exclude Moyar from the list of preliminary interviewees. A U of I compliance officer has affirmed that “associational preference within the University policy has been interpreted to include political affiliation.” As Bauerlein observed, “Think of what would happen if other diversities suffered the same disparate outcome. A department of all men would spark an outcry, and rightly so. But nobody seems to worry about the political skew.”

Perhaps high-quality historians of U.S. international history were so desperate to go to Iowa City—after all, so few departments even offer new positions in the field anymore that the market very much favors those departments who do hire in the topic—that a candidate with Moyar’s qualifications couldn’t make it into the top ten. Yet the statements offered by department chairman Colin Gordon aren’t reassuring.

First, Gordon pled ignorance: “We do not know if an applicant belongs to the Republican Party, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Black Panthers or the Loyal Order of Water Buffalo. We don't ask. They don't tell. We don't discriminate—indeed these protections remove the opportunity to do so.”

So, Professor A had his first publication in Radical History Review and looks forward to teaching a course called “Race, Gender and U. S. International History,” while Professor B, an NAS member, has published books that have received strong praise from conservatives and looks forward to teaching a foreign relations class with a military history bent. It’s possible, of course, that Professor A was a major donor to the Bush campaign and Professor B was a founder of moveon.org. But if the case goes to court, I suspect that Iowa’s lawyers wouldn’t be too comfortable with Gordon’s “ignorance-is-bliss” defense.

Second, Gordon justified the department’s Democratic tilt as natural. The Daily Iowan noted, “The 22 to 0 ratio of Democrats to Republicans made sense to Gordon, who said on Wednesday ‘about two thirds of Johnson County are Democrats.’”

Leaving aside the fact that “about two thirds” doesn’t equal 100 percent, Gordon’s statistical sample would be relevant only if the University of Iowa confined its applicant pool to Johnson County, Iowa. Also, would Gordon want his formula applied nationwide? It would suggest that the History Department at, say, the University of Houston or SMU (located in basically Republican areas of Texas) should be dominated by Republicans. Of course, that isn’t the case.

The Iowa episode has one unusual twist. University affirmative action guidelines, it turns out, require search committees to “assess ways the applicants will bring rich experiences, diverse backgrounds, and ideology to the university community.” In general, I favor pedagogical rather than intellectual diversity (though this case shows how pedagogical diversity on paper can sometimes be made irrelevant in practice). But since Iowa has adopted a policy requiring an assessment of ideology, presumably departments are required to abide by the policy.

Accordingly, Moyar filed a complaint with Iowa’s compliance office. He reasoned, not implausibly, that the requirement to assess applicants’ ideology, coupled with the University’s decision that “associational preference within the University policy has been interpreted to include political affiliation,” should have given him an extraordinary advantage with the History Department’s top-heavy Democratic registration figures. The office dismissed his complaint, noting, “The University does not expect hiring departments to make this type of assessment of every candidate.” Instead, the office informed Moyar, departments were only required to make efforts to assess a candidate’s ideology after the initial screening process had occurred.

Nothing in the guidelines, however, suggest that they only apply once a department has selected an initial list of candidates to be interviewed. Indeed, such an interpretation would be an invitation to discriminate for a department inclined to do so. An all-white department, for instance, could simply ensure that black candidates never made it past the screening process, and therefore would never have to worry about assessing such candidates in terms of their ability to “bring rich experiences, diverse backgrounds, and ideology to the university community.”

Iowa is not required to have a policy mandating departments to assess how applicants’ ideology might broaden the range of opinions among the faculty. (Indeed, such a policy might very well be a bad idea.) But as long as the current policy remains in place, the University can’t simply ignore it when dealing with right-of-center applicants in departments where every professor who has indicated a party affiliation is a registered Democrat.