So now the Academic Bill of Rights is picking up some McCarthyite, stink-like-ass steam. Shame on anyone surprised that conservatives, dissatisfied with their domination of such trifling institutions as the Legislative and Executive branches, have set their sights on quashing academia's opposition to their myopic world-view as well. Perhaps this tasty treat will fade off the radar screen once the Senate finally goes nuclear over judicial nominees
(which it will). But for the foreseeable future, this is going to get some serious play. It's too enticing a prospect for these rabid dickwads to pass up. There's an opportunity to wax indignant and, yet again, shift the focus off the Bush administration's incredible ineptitude. They have lots of quasi-data to manipulate into "reports." It's not as easy to do as just laughing a whole issue off, but they show great proficiency nonetheless. And this quasi-data, other studies show, stinks like ass too. But those studies are probably left-leaning anyway. Almost
Parisian.
Join me below the fold, my little butterflies...
It's quite telling that conservatives are whining about under-representation on college campuses, considering their perpetual panty-bunching over affirmative action. Maybe they could learn a thing or two from their perspective as alleged "outsiders." And after they're done empathizing with all those whiny niggers, faggots and feminazis, perhaps they could take up a similar line of questioning over comparable imbalances in the police force, DOD, FBI, CIA, other government outfits of tremendous significance, not to mention Fortune 500 board rooms.
In Russell Jacoby's article The New PC: Crybaby Conservatives (subscription) in the March 16th edition of The Nation, we are presented with an exceptional overview of the gathering witch hunt against unregulated, liberal academics.
Jacoby thoroughly debunks and renders irrelevant the claim (repeated ad nauseum in the SCLM echo chamber) that...
"Studies show an outrageous number of liberals on university faculties and increasing political indoctrination or harassment of conservative students."
What should most disturb any sentient being is what these reports suggest but don't come right out and say: that a professor that votes Democratic promotes dangerous philosophical tendencies on campus, which must be offset by Republican professors who are free of such "vices."
The "studies" in question have been instigated by groups like Campus Watch, Academic Bias and Students for Academic Freedom (whose MOs are to enlist the assistance of onion-skinned conservative student watchdogs who report dangerously left-leaning conduct, such as thinking). The number of studies is actually quite small and each is "transparently limited or flawed." Although Jacoby does not suggest this, I believe they were likely written in crayon. Definitely a no-no.
"The most publicized investigations amateurishly correlate faculty departmental directories with local voter registration lists to show a heavy preponderance of Democrats. What this demonstrated about campus life and politics is unclear. Yet these findings are endlessly cited and cross-referenced as if by now they confirm a tiresome truth: leftist domination of the universities...no matter how well tuned [which they are not], studies of professional voting habits reveal nothing of campus policies or practices."
These studies identify a bias toward leftist professors in the social sciences and humanities faculties, which have "clearly marginalized" all non-left points of view. Further, the studies all but ignore other fields of study like engineering, medicine, law or science, whose graduates have much greater political and financial (vis a vis "moral") clout than art curators or grade school teachers could dream of. And what exactly would constitute a "non-leftist" point-of-view regarding Medieval Art History or Latin anyway, even if the claim is true?
While they're on the affirmative action kick, shouldn't they also consider other possible biases as well? I would venture to assume that the spread of IQs in the academic ranks does not correlate with overall population. Since colleges are tasked with churning out the growing horde of cube weasels, shouldn't professorial IQ-spread mirror that of the population served? What do these hippies have against dumb people? Might they be attempting to favor only smart kids and make them, well....smarter? Where does that leave the NASCAR kids? Oh yeah, Walmart.
Since the vast majority of students entering college do so because they don't have degrees but want one, shouldn't their professors more closely mirror that reality as well?
And let's not EVEN mention the Jews. Colleges are literally swarming with the Jesus-hating fuckers!
Christ on Crutches, this is almost as fun as microwaving kittens! Now I see the attraction to statistical studies! Let's expand it some more...
I postulate that the population of Baptist preachers is disproportionately theistic. Maybe even Baptist. What about the atheists and rabbis? Further, I hypothesize that the population of high school football coaches is familiar with the rules of the game. What about all us geeks? DISCRIMINATION!!!! It's intolerable I say. Intolerable. We need to do a study. Better yet...call Bill O'Reilly. He saved Christmas. He can save us too.
You give us one Pentagon, one Department of State, Justice and Education, plus throw in the Supreme Court, and we will give you every damned English department you want.
The conservatives really better watch themselves, lest other disenfranchised groups jump on the bandwagon. Where will this slippery slope lead? What happens when a major university (say, Harvard) is charged with under-representation of a fringe group on their staff, like, say....women? Oybah Goybah. Talk about panty-bunching.
And back to studies, I thought conservatives didn't trust studies anyway? As teacherken so aptly reported in this kickass diary, no sooner do REAL researchers from reputable organizations like AFT issue a statistically ironclad report confirming that charter schools blow chunks, the rightist horde descends upon the conclusions to call them nasty names, muddy the waters, and impugn the analyses (e.g. "lie").
Then there are other pesky reports like US Count Votes' recently released analysis regarding the 2004 exit-pool/result disparity. As reported in the Akron Beacon Journal (Ohio), this statistical study calculated a one-in-959,000 chance that exit polls could have been wrong in predicting the outcome of the 2004 presidential election.
Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Kenneth "Suck My Nuts You Commie Whores" Blackwell, deftly bitch-slapped the analysis into the realm of obscurity with this pithy repartee:
"What are you going to do except laugh at it? We're not particularly interested in (the report's findings). We wish them luck, but hope they find something else to do...These (Bush) voters have been much maligned by outside political forces who didn't like the way they voted. The weather's turning nice. There are more interesting things to do than beat a dead horse."
Really? Frankly, I can't think of ANYTHING more interesting than beating dead horses...but I digress.
How about thousands of concurring reports regarding the human fixation on tank-sized SUVs and the subsequent exacerbation of global warming? The illegal torture and murder of brown captives and other heathens? The link between abstinence-only sex education and rampant teen butt-fucking? The spherical shape of the earth?
Their game plan is really quite simple, which I've boiled down into the following steps:
1. Link the research institution to a political enemy. California is good. France is even better.
2. Implicate the researchers in a kiddie-porn ring. Plant Village Voice magazines in their offices.
3. Apply fancy labels to the researchers to further discredit. "Intellectual" or "dork" or "gayboy" are all promising.
4. Guffaw, slap knee, shed mirthful tears. Redirect to more important issues like exposed breasts or feeding tubes. Point to sky and exclaim "look, it's a plane!"
5. Ignore (e.g. moment of silence followed by quaint, patriotic prayer)
6. Attack Iran
In the final analysis, however, I am forced to conclude that they may have a point about the whole academia thingie. There's no harm in agreeing with them either, conditional on their willingness to hold themselves to the same standards.
If we concede that, based on their flawed analyses and anecdotal evidence, that there are more Democrats than Republicans in American colleges and universities, regardless of how irrelevant and ridiculous their conclusions may be...
They MUST concede, based on RELIABLE and VERIFIABLE analyses conducted by thousands of REAL statisticians and researchers: the 2004 presidential election was the largest gang-rape ever perpetrated; their claims about charter schools are utterly without merit; American fossil-fuel gluttony directly correlates to disastrous climactic consequences; our foreign policy actually IS to torture teenagers who shoulda' known better than to be born in Iraq.
We could be generous, and let them keep the CIA and the FBI. For good measure, we can even forbear our disdain if they still believe the earth is flat and that creative accounting really is a great career choice.
If they can't accept that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, they can just shut the fuck up, and wait in line with all the other under-represented groups, all of which have had a couple-thousand-year head start on their crybaby asses.
ciao.