Grotesquely Long Post

by John Holbo on March 2, 2004

Tom Smith is playing Socrates to my sophistical Polus, if I make no mistake:

Polus: What? May I not speak at what length I please?

Socrates: It would indeed be hard on you, my good friend, if, on coming to Athens, the one spot in Greece where there is the utmost freedom of speech, you alone should be denied it. But look at my side. Would it not be hard on me also, if I may not go away and refuse to listen, when you speak at length and will not answer the question. (Gorgias, 461e)

But then I cannot for the life of me think why Smith does not simply refuse to listen. Perhaps he hereby sets a cunning, socratic riddle for me to solve. He feels I have not answered the question.

Another bite at the ‘conservatives in academe’ apple it is, then. Yes, it has been nibbled by everyone, right down to the core. (Especially liked Harry’s post.) But the core is interesting.

In his second post (in response to my response to his response to my original) Smith writes:

I am struck by the parallels between the sorts of justifications those on the left come up with for the plight of conservatives, with the arguments one used to hear about blacks and Jews. When I see what looks to me as somebody posing as reasonable by saying he doesn’t personally believe conservatives are stupid, it reminds me of someone at an all-white club holding forth oh-so-liberally that he does not think blacks are actually stupid. If I was overly sensitive in getting that impression from the post I reacted to at the examined life blog, I’m sorry. But I am sensitive about it. I am just one of many conservative libertarian sorts who have been excluded from consideration for academic jobs I was well qualified for because of my politics. For example, more than fifteen years ago, the distinguished legal scholar Charles Allen Wright of the University of Texas called my note editor at Yale, Penny Rostow (neice of the distinguished late former dean of Yale Law School) to ask about me and whether I was, as rumored, a conservative. As Penny told me, she “didn’t feel she could deny it.” Professor Wright said that was unfortunate, as in that event my candidacy could go no further. It was just that simple, and I got the feeling Wright genuinely regretted this, but that was just the way it was. I think this is just like their finding out that that some otherwise qualified canditdate was a Jew, although he could “pass,” back in the bad old days at White & Case or one of the other white-shoe Wall Street firms, where they worried about “the cut of a man’s jib.” (Don’t get that reference? A jib is the foremost sail on yacht, shaped roughly like a nose. Its cut is its shape. Not liking the shape of a person’s nose is slang for saying you don’t like him because he’s a Jew. Nice, huh? And the answers to this discrimination have names like Skadden, Arps and Paul, Weiss, which rank well above White & Case in every recent survey of law firms I have seen.)

Seriously, folks. I don’t mean to pick on poor Smith so inordinately. As Empson writes: “Your majesty, my name is Smith/ the Lordliest name to conjure with”. Ain’t it the truth, in an abstract sort of thought-experimenty way? That lordly sense is the one we want here. (What I’m saying is the transcendental Smith is noble, even if the empirical one is sort of a pain.) Fact is: Smith’s report of a very nasty experience of discrimination has a suitably representative quality. Let’s let it represent. There are abstract issues of fairness and tolerance I wish to investigate, in an abstract and fair and tolerant way.

I am of the settled opinion that people ought not to do these things to conservatives, just because they are conservative. Yet – if Smith will forgive me for pinning the butterfly of his plight to the board – it is a bit hard to articulate why it is wrong. (Sorry to sound callous, in sight of such pathetic fluttering, but without some principle to cover the case, we are going nowhere fast. And, although Smith professes to see simplicity, I do not.)

First – let’s get something cleared away here – there is a genuine puzzle about intellectual consistency. There is a class of lefty academics who seem committed, by a lot of vague things they think (or at least feel), to jump to the aid of all persecuted victims of discrimination. Probably with proposals for affirmative action. Except they hate Republicans. So the likes of Smith have them squirming on the hook. On the other hand, I am just not sure Smith himself – and Horowitz; I could go on and on – is entitled. Life is full of unfairness such as Smith has suffered. People are near total bastards. If Smith is genuinely committed to righting all wrongs of this size and shape, consistency dictates he ought to move significantly to his left and start fighting for social justice on about ten fronts. Also, in a recent post he complains about the tendency of the soft left to focus on “feelings, sensitivities, nicenesses, fairnesses and all that other stuff that makes me feel like I’m trapped in a cheap restaurant where the food smells bad and they’ve used too much air freshener.” Not to get all ‘he who smelt it dealt it’ on the man, but sometimes the fresh scent you whiff may be your own. If ‘feelings’ and ‘sensitivities’ are beneath argumentative dignity, you can’t in good conscience answer arguments with a lot of talk about your sensitivities and feelings. On the other hand, as a bit of a soft lefty, I’m sort of supposed to care about such soft things. Fair enough.

At the end of the day, poetic justice is not justice, though it’s sort of catchy. That is, at some point you cut out with the petard hoists already and try to sort out what you think is right. So let’s.

One thing that’s striking about Smith’s story is how flagrant his dismissal apparently was. I am always genuinely surprised by stories like this, but I don’t disbelieve them. I know from experience that they are at least sometimes true. Read the front page horror story today over at Horowitz’ FrontPage Magazine. Then browse here for more Tales of Tenured Terror From the Crypt. I don’t know that it’s all true, of course. In fact, I doubt it. (I think once you encourage people to share these sorts of stories, they probably get a bit embellished in the telling.) But some of it is true. And the amazing thing is: you could fix almost all of it just by stipulating that instructors must treat their students in a respectful, professional, dignified, non-psychotic manner. Seriously. Yet even if all nasty political theatrics were halted – even if those few who go in for it would forego happy hours of spewing personal bile at their helpless Republican student-victims – I don’t think the likes of Smith would be satisfied. Nor should they be, perhaps. Suppose, instead of just ‘conservative? don’t let the door hit your ass,’ it were sugar-coated in faux-respect: ‘well, we just felt that your work wasn’t quite up to our high standards, because there are – frankly – so many devastating arguments on the other side, to which you obviously have no adequate response. Thank you, come again!’ That’s worse, isn’t it? So, although in a sense you could solve these problems by insisting that no one be dismissed or dissed outright for being conservative, lefties could achieve the same results by more high-toned means. So let us counsel lefty profs to behave themselves while admitting we haven’t gotten to the nub of the complaint.

What could be wrong with lefty profs maintaining their iron fist of hegemonic dominance (let’s grant they enjoy it) so long as it wore a velvet glove of civility and superficial respect for conservatives? (You see what I am saying.)

Smith suggests an analogy with persecuted Jews. Problem is: conservatives do not constitute a religion, a race, an ethnic group. Of course, ‘political beliefs’ is often added to lists of this sort. And one might venture that conservatives constitute a cultural group – the whole blue state/red state thing. We think that American universities should ‘look like America’, in some probably not very clearly conceived yet heartfelt sense; and America is rather conservative. But this is troublesome. The political science deparment can hardly ignore political beliefs in making hiring decisions. (Might as well ignore the beliefs of the physicists about physics.) More generally, the conservatism that bangs at the gates of the Ivory Tower, demanding admission, is an intellectual position, or cluster of them. Even if the academy ought to be democratic in some sense, in another sense – intellectually – it had better be aristocratic. The whole point is to discriminate: separate the good ideas from the bad, all that. ‘It is, at present, the consensus in a number of fields that conservative ideas are beyond the frozen limit. Thank you! Come again!’ Of course, this is unsatisfactory, for reasons whose production I leave as an exercise to the interested reader.

At the end of the day, lefties cannot plausibly posture as Platonists who have left the cave and apprehended cognitive truth beyond the ken of their conservative, troglodyte brethren. It’s just that lefties and conservatives don’t agree. Fundamental differences in moral temperament. Hilary Putnam describes the situation well, pondering his fraught relationship to Nozick (from this Mark Kalderon chapter; thanks, Brian):

But what of the fundamentals on which one cannot agree? It would be dishonest to pretend that one thinks that there are no better and worse views here. I don’t think that it is just a matter of taste whether one thinks that the obligation of the community to treat its members with compassion takes precedence over property rights; nor does my co-disputant. Each of us regards the other as lacking, at this level, a certain kind of sensitivity and perception. To be perfectly honest, there is in each of us something akin to contempt, not for the other’s mind – for we each have the highest regard for each other’s
minds – nor for the other as a person –, for I have more respect for my colleague’s honesty, integrity, kindness, etc., than I do for that of many people who agree with my ‘liberal’ political views – but for a certain complex of emotions and judgments in the other

And now the lefty asks, all innocence: ‘If you can’t hate someone because he is contemptible, what can you hate him for?’

And the conservative says: ‘You contemptible little swine! I deserved that job!’

Returning to Smith’s case: why was it wrong for professor Wright to discriminate against Smith on the basis of Smith’s conservative temperament? I personally take it to be wrong. Smith takes it to be wrong. But obviously professor Wright saw things differently. What was his error? Do we think that the university ought to look like America temperamentally? On what meta-view is this an inherently desirable – nay, mandated – goal? Answer: J. S. Mill’s view that we all ought to read Bentham and Coleridge, because there’s a sort of permanent, eternally-poised balance of wisdom between the progessive and the conservative mind.

This is not a problem for me because I sort of think that’s right, most days. (I like Mill and Trilling. I surely do.) Certainly I don’t feel blanket contempt for conservatives – though most of them vex me sorely, and I think they are going through a very bad patch, except for the libertarians. (And Russell Arben Fox, and his five friends, who are stand-up guys.) I need conservatives around to use as punching bags. I think there ought to be more conservatives in lots of corners of academia because they would generally brighten the place up. So there is a perfectly straightforward utlilitarian justification for hiring them. No arguments about their violated rights are necessarily. They get in on the merits, if everything goes smoothly.

But suppose I really didn’t see the utilitarian benefits of conservatives always chiming in with their contemptible judgments. Why should I feel that fairness requires me to give them some professorships? A lot of standard arguments – Kantian ones about respecting autonomy, for example – don’t cut ice from here on out. I can think I have no business paternalistically preventing someone from holding wrongheaded views. That does not mean I am obscurely obliged to give anyone an endowed chair in applied wrongheadedness. (Kantianism – and liberalism generally – mandates respect in a weak sense; it takes more than that to get hired as a professor.)

Commitment to fallibilism? Get serious. Lefties and righties who tolerate each other do not do so because they seriously worry that some advanced discovery in ethical theory might show the other side to be right tomorrow.

The fact that you should only judge people on their intellectual capacities for intellectual jobs? But no one can seriously doubt that temperament, of the sort we are discussing, fundamentally affects – maybe dictates – the intellectual outcome in humanistic endeavors. We can hardly care about intellectual endeavors without caring about their outcomes. So why not care about temperament?

Getting back to Mill: why does he think it’s important to have a healthy ecological balance of conservative/ lefty – or conservative/progressive, as he more sensibly styles this opposition? He has sort of a method-acting theory of the whole business, at least in part. The human mind – or maybe: humanity as a whole – has an innately schizophrenic temperament; and if the philosophical spirit departs from this schizophrenia, spiralling off into undue consistency, it must lose touch with one or the other of its spiritual tap-roots; then philosophy loses touch with life and mind itself, which will always be the same.

Now the Platonist (not to mention Mill in his progressive moods) will not like this at all. The point of thinking about right and wrong is not to engage in endless conservative-progressive isometrics in the cave, by way of ending up exactly where we damn began. The point is not to wallow in our schizophrenic inadequacy and inability to rise above ourselves. The point is to purge wrong elements from our spirits – conservative impulses, say – and emerge into the glorious light of progressive enlightenment. (There is an alternative, conservative version of this program, obviously.)

Yet there is a beautiful cyncism to the thought that, as natural-born spelunkers, we do best to stay where we were put. I quote Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods. The speaker is, of course, a philosopher:

‘Life in this world,’ he said, ‘is, as it were, a sojourn in a cave. What can we know of reality? For all we see of the true nature of existence is, shall we say, no more than bewildering and amusing shadows cast upon the inner wall of a cave by the unseen blinding light of absolute truth, from which we may or may not deduce some glimmer of veracity, and we troglodyte seekers of wisdom can only lift our voices to the unseen and say, humbly,’Go on, do Deformed Rabbit. . . it’s my favourite.’

It is possible to view the request to balance conservative-progressive temperaments as a request to ‘do deformed rabbit’. It’s ugly, it makes no sense – it’s all shadow-play; it just has to be – but its our favorite. So let’s have it.

The thing that makes this less absurd is that it touches on a more positive conception of value. I quote from Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (why? because Lionel Trilling likes it). This is a from a vignette, “The Book of the Grotesque”, in which a rather grotesque old man write a book about grotesque people:

In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful. The old man had listed hundreds of the truths in his book. I will not try to tell you of all of them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful. And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them. It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.

Quite frankly, I don’t see why you should give professorships to people with ideologies you find vaguely contemptible unless you are, in some sense, trying to keep hold of your primordial non-grotesqueness. Or unless it’s the only way to keep everyone from just killing each other.

And yet I don’t believe many people believe in this sort of thing. I mean: a primordial soup of logically incompatible values – conservatism, progressivism, so forth. David Horowitz, for example. He sells T-shirts about how you can’t be educated if you’ve just heard half the story. But I don’t think he actually believes there are two stories, worth telling. He just wants to be the one to wrest that last copy of Eric Hobsbawn – or whoever – from the cold, dead hand of the last tenured weird-beard, in the last pinnacle of the last Ivory Tower. And repopulate it all from the ground up with right-thinking folk. Perhaps I’m being ungenerous. But I just don’t think many conservatives – or lefties, though I hope we are a little wiser – believe in ‘two sides of the story’ as an end in itself. Two sides is a tactical bother that is difficult to overcome, and perhaps therefore worth ratifying into semi-permanence by means of disagreeable treaties. That is all. Don’t know where Smith stands on all this.

This is all related, in subtle ways I can’t tell you about because I don’t yet know what they are, to certain ideas in this interesting paper Brian linked to just yesterday.

This is maybe it for me at Crooked Timber. My week is up. It’s been fun. (I’ll probably be back again if they’ll have me. Maybe Belle and I can be like Green Lantern and Supergirl. You know. Heroes who are only in a few episodes of the Super Friends. But you were always glad when it turned out to be one of those episodes with heroes you didn’t usually get to see. Made for more variety.)

UPDATE: Reading through comments, just thought I would mention one way in which the post has been misread. People are taking me to be in favor of discrimination against conservatives when, in fact, I am quite staunchly against. I think the reason for the confusion is that I say at a couple points that ‘it’s not clear why it’s wrong’. I see how this can cause confusion. It sounds like I’m saying: ‘hey, it looks OK.’ Actually, what I meant was: here is a thing that seems very wrong, but it is surprisingly hard to articulate a principle explaining WHY it is wrong. Looking for that, you sort of experimentally poke at the thing agnostically. Which makes you look like a bastard contemplating discrimination against conservatives. But, no, you are just an inquiring mind. Really. I honestly wish there were more conservatives in the humanities. It would be a better place all around.

{ 79 comments }

1

cs 03.02.04 at 1:31 pm

Very enjoyable John.

2

rea 03.02.04 at 1:53 pm

It seems remarkable that Mr. Smith feels himself the victim of anti-conservative discrimination at the hands of Prof. Charles Allen Wright, possibly the most prominent CONSERVATIVE legal scholar in the country.

3

bob mcmanus 03.02.04 at 1:55 pm

I can’t believe I read the whole thing :)
Thank you.

4

rea 03.02.04 at 2:03 pm

And how the ancient sailing ship expression “cut of his jib” gets transmorgified into an expression of antisemitism is beyond me . . .

5

harry 03.02.04 at 2:08 pm

Great post John, and its been great having you and Belle.

But can I disagree with one interpretation of one thing you said?

bq. I need conservatives around to use as punching bags. I think there ought to be more conservatives in lots of corners of academia because they would generally brighten the place up. So there is a perfectly straightforward utlilitarian justification for hiring them.

I agree with the basic premise. But the conclusion does not follow — or at least it does not follow if it is read as ‘there is a justification for *me* hiring them’. If you see them as, essentially, a public good, that gives you a reason to hope that they get hired, but not a reason to hire them. Same is true of any diversity justification for hiring. We want diversity in our field, because we all benefit from it. But whether we hire a diversity-producing rather than a superior candidate for *this* job will have minimal impact on diversity in the field, but a huge impact on the quality of our departmental environment. You view conservatives the way I view Mini Coopers and VW Beetles — I love seeing them around, because it makes the road less dull; but I’d never buy one myself, because they are excessively expensive for the use I would get from them.

This is only a comment on the logic of the argument, not on the conclusion.

6

Russell Arben Fox 03.02.04 at 2:10 pm

Am I going through a bad patch? Or does the “and” at the beginning of the parenthetical link associate me and my (tiny) gang up with the libertarians, who are not? Is it an ironic statement? I’m confused. Obviously I’m not getting enough sleep.

Excellent post John. Regarding Kant: wouldn’t much of what he says regarding antagonism and enlightenment come into play here? That is, you’re probably correct that Kantian ethics would make a duty out of “weakly” respecting conservatives–borrowing from Perpetual Peace, you might say that Kantian maxims require one to allow conservatives to “resort” to the academy, but do not require any “hospitality” be shown to them. But in terms of his whole natural philosophy, might not Kant say that nature has provided the world with conservatives (and progressives, and…) so that reason may be sharpened and gradually enlightened through interaction? Which might require some additional duties in the academy after all.

The truest point you make is that the academy must be, cannot not be, in some sense or another, aristocratic. I’ve thought and struggled more about making sense of this point–in the context of a social world which has embraced the idea that elite education should be available and (financially) rewarding even in highly non-elite environments–than probably any other. For me, the only really interesting aspect of this debate over conservatives and academia is the degree to which it implicitly or explicitly reflects (as Belle’s “The Story of C.” did) the complicated way class and cultural issues worm their way into the presumptions of higher education.

7

Timothy Burke 03.02.04 at 2:21 pm

As you know, there are many ways in which I’m quite prepared to credit conservative arguments and even more basic cri d’coeurs on this general issue.

But I’m having a hard time getting past Smith’s churlishness and sullenness, which I think is non-ideological and non-germane to the interesting core issues.

8

Tom T. 03.02.04 at 2:23 pm

So the purpose of power is power. You exclude because you can and you like to. I applaud your candor.

You nowhere discuss teaching, however. You may indeed be convinced of the superiority of your opinions such that you have nothing left to learn from variant points of view, but is the same true for the students at a university? Is there really no benefit to students in the clash of opposing ideas? If only that the contrast might better limn the brightness of your thoughts?

9

jholbo 03.02.04 at 2:26 pm

Hmmm, Harry. Perhaps I am just less practical than you. I’m willing to lump the needless expense. No point in being practical about these things. The punching bag thing was too harsh. Sparring partner whom I intend to defeat would be fairer. (But he may clean my clock yet. Certainly it has happened before.)

10

Steve 03.02.04 at 2:26 pm

The obvious response to this post (What’s wrong with discriminating against conservatives in academia?) is that such discrimination is clear hypocricy on the part of the discriminators themselves. The discriminators (liberal academics) proclaim to want ‘diversity,’ and to work in an institution (academia) devoted to the pursuit of truth. Discrimination against conservatives destroys both of these claims, first, by pointing out that ‘diversity’ in their minds means ‘multicolored people who think like me’ rather than ‘diverse people with diverse IDEAS.’ And if half (or at least many) of the ideas in our society are not allowed to be presented in academia, how could academia be the place to ‘pursue truth?’ If I were told that a Catholic University ‘discriminated’ against non-Catholic views and didn’t want ot hire non-Catholic professors (say, for the philosophy department) I may not agree with it, but it would at least be consistent (I’m not claiming any Catholic schools make this claim-I’m simply using ‘Catholic School’ as a hypothetical for ‘school for a doctrinaire purpose’. A reasonable argument could be made that Catholic schools exist to spread Catholic doctrine-not necessarily to search all aspects of ‘truth (and similarly for divinity schools, or any other school that is interested in communicating/exploring a certain doctrine). Is that really what Academia is for? Communicating/exploring a ‘certain doctrine?’
For example: suppose you are visiting the United States from another country. You want to learn everything you can about affirmative action, for and against, in order to become an expert and form an opinion about it. Where would you go to acquire that information? Isn’t it odd that you wouldn’t go to academia to do so? You’d essentially have to study a combination of journalism, academic writings, think tank writings, popular literature, and even active politicians to even get a cursory understanding of both sides. You simply couldn’t do it by researching from within the academy alone.
So problem with academia ‘discriminating’ against conservatives is that such discrimination is bad for academia itself (and, of course, bad for the few conservatives who don’t get jobs). If academia wants to be thought of as an organization for searching for and spreading thought, its got to act like one. If academia wants to be thought of as a doctrinaire cabal of Church elders (the Church of liberal secularism), it doesn’t need to change a thing.

11

jholbo 03.02.04 at 2:28 pm

Russell, just thought you should know that – before you commented, or coincidentally – I modified that particular stretch of text because it occurred to me I had quite accidentally generated a grammaticaly construable slur against your much respected self. Now you are in the clear, good fellow.

12

jholbo 03.02.04 at 2:34 pm

Comments piling up fast and furious. Tom: you have diametically misread my post, I think. It says almost the opposite of what you think it says. Really. It does.

Steve: I agree. Flabby rhetoric of diversity very susceptible to charges of hypocrisy. People who put forth such rhetoric should think hard about the silly stuff emiting from their mouths. University generally open to charges of self-righteous narrowness. Very true.

13

drapeto 03.02.04 at 2:57 pm

And if half (or at least many) of the ideas in our society are not allowed to be presented in academia, how could academia be the place to ‘pursue truth?’

I agree. It has always been deeply appalling to me that there are almost no chairs in astrology or UFOlogy. I mean, think of teh trouble Leonard Jeffries got into for theorizing the devilry of Ice People, which is present in 98% of society afaik.

14

jholbo 03.02.04 at 3:00 pm

Posted too fast in agreement with Steve. He’s right about the hypocrisy. But then he loses it, as per drapeto.

15

Russell Arben Fox 03.02.04 at 3:12 pm

John: Many thanks. You’re a gentleman and a scholar. Now reply to my comment about Kant.

Steve: You’ve just described all three of the universities I attended: Brigham Young University (Mormon), Notre Dame (Catholic), and Catholic University of America (duh). But I’m not sure what you’re (sort of) criticizing isn’t in fact compatible with John’s overall concern. That is, I’m not sure “searching for and spreading thought” and “communicating/exploring a certain doctrine” are so diametrically opposed. Any attempt to make the “search for truth” into a wholly ahistorical “open” endeavor, one which exists entirely in contrast to “propaganda,” just sets you up for lurid Marxist or Foucauldian critiques. There is a constructive, purposive element to what has come to be accepted (legitimately and rightly, I think) as a liberal arts education in the Western world; it has its own presumptions and its own boundaries, any number of which can be criticized (I sure as hell do). But the real crime in ignoring that fact isn’t hypocrisy–for that would imply that there really is a neutral, “non-doctrinal” educational option out there, which foolish acadmics praise but do not live up to. No, the real problem is confusion–a lack of clarity about the appropriateness of defending the rival projects which a school which will rarely hire conservatives, and a school which will hire conservatives, are likely to be engaged in. John is right–there is, and should be, discrimination involved in any education; it can’t be just simply “pursuing truth.” I’m far more interested in making certain there are institutions (arguably like those I mentioned above) which can dissent from and test the way different universities do their work, than hanging up any one of them (or all of them) on some singular education duty.

16

enthymeme 03.02.04 at 3:30 pm

I agree. It has always been deeply appalling to me that there are almost no chairs in astrology or UFOlogy. I mean, think of teh trouble Leonard Jeffries got into for theorizing the devilry of Ice People, which is present in 98% of society afaik.

But claims about UFOs and astrology purport to be empirical or scientific in nature. Claims about the relative merits of ideologies are not. So while it is OK to exclude fields of study based on their debunkable nature, it is not OK to do so for fields in which the question of ‘who is right?’ is not so readily decided.

Steve is entirely right.

17

Rich Puchalsky 03.02.04 at 3:36 pm

I think this is very funny. After a grostesquely long post, jholbo comes around to pretty much my original comment when he brought the issue up on his blog, which was “Geez, just go ahead and discriminate against conservatives already.” I don’t think that any influential liberal has ever claimed that you shouldn’t discriminate, in hiring, on the basis of what ideas the hiree holds. Nor is conservatism a difficult-to-change personal category like race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation — if someone is going to become a professor at a university, they can’t rightly claim that they are so set in their conservative ways and so resistant to rational argument that it would be very difficult for them to change even if rational argument indicated that they should.

The only people who think that liberals should support conservatives in academia because of “diversity” are those same people who have pretty much destroyed the value of “diversity” as an ideal, due to flabby usage. I don’t want to work next to a Stalinist just because that would make my workplace more “diverse”.

Certainly, conservatives don’t think this way; they routinely bar liberals from their own academic insitutions. Prof. Smith refers to how he escaped liberal discrimination by going to a Catholic university. Rather than get sucked in to this “no, I’m not a hypocrite for contravening what *you* think liberalism is” argument, just gleefully promise to discriminate against the next conservative you meet.

18

jholbo 03.02.04 at 3:40 pm

Russell,

Hmmm, Kant, eh? Damn, what? German fellow, hem. Student of that Wolff fellow. Never read Wolff. Student of that Leibniz chap, neh? I must confess: hadn’t gotten even so far as the “Perpetual Peace” stuff myself, in thinking about the ‘weak’ respect K. would think conservatives are due. With your ‘nature has provided’ line you seem to be hinting at something like ‘purposiveness in nature’. Third Critique stuff, if memory serves. (Damn, that’s three asprin I’ll be needing.) And rather cheekily invoked, I suspect, for this kind of thinking does not apply to agents, only dumb matter. (Regulative notions about teleology in nature.) I do not think that Kant would approve of treating conservatives – moral agents – as means to the end of establishing some sort of healthy ecological balance, let alone liberal ascendancy. Tom accuses me, above, of wanting to have conservatives around only as dull backdrop for my sparkle – we all recall the lines from Henry IV, part II, was it? Or part I? But I digress. Kant definitely wouldn’t be on board for that sort of thing. But, on the other hand, that’s not how I meant it anyway.

I think my view is just fundamentally un-Kantian because I think ‘go ahead, do Deformed Rabbit’ is sort of worth thinking about. And Kant would think that was facile. The Sherwood Anderson stuff, which I also find evocative, is more Kantian, because it’s American German Romanticism. Novalis, if he lived in the Middle West. Herder meets the Magnificent Ambersons. Which is Kantian in a sense. But it’s a strained sense, as you well know.

I haven’t anwered your question, have I? I don’t know the answer. That’s why.

I think the problem is: I don’t know what you mean by ‘antagonism and Enlightenment’. There is some corner of Kant that I’m not catching here. No doubt because I am insufficiently well-read in the Kant department. You make it sound as though some time he sounds vaguely like Hegel. Please clue me in, if you feel like going to the trouble.

19

enthymeme 03.02.04 at 3:42 pm

Puchalsky,

I’m still waiting for you to support your claims that conservative ideology is a more “difficult-to-change” ideology than religious ideals. If not, your argument is nothing more than unsupported drivel.

Are you going to back up your assertions?

20

Rich Puchalsky 03.02.04 at 3:58 pm

enthymeme, your inability to read does not mean that I haven’t made an argument. Once again, anyone who is going to be in academia can not claim that conservatism is, for them, difficult to change in the same way that race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is. Academics are supposed to be open to changing their ideas based on new facts being discovered or on new, better theories being proposed. Conservatism is not a personal foible, unconnected to academic matters of law, philosophy, political theory, and so on.

21

nnyhav 03.02.04 at 4:00 pm

Horowitz’s agitprop may fail on its own terms (gov’t intervention hardly a conservative nostrum) but the examination it prompted is long overdue. The academy has been considered by many (left or right) as a sanctuary for leftism rather than liberalism, a venue for indoctrination rather than pedagogy, from the commanding heights of the ivory tower. Liberalism embraces diversity of perspective, including conservative elements; but defenders of the ideals of the marketplace of ideas (for which I see the present danger as monetization, not politicization) are doing themselves no favors by institutional entrenchment. And some of the anecdotal evidence is self-damning: The game is afoot, and we aim low.

22

Steve 03.02.04 at 4:04 pm

“””And if half (or at least many) of the ideas in our society are not allowed to be presented in academia, how could academia be the place to ‘pursue truth?’

I agree. It has always been deeply appalling to me that there are almost no chairs in astrology or UFOlogy. I mean, think of teh trouble Leonard Jeffries got into for theorizing the devilry of Ice People, which is present in 98% of society afaik.”””

Granted-sloppy statement on my part.

I’ll rewrite it.

“And if half (or at least as many) of the REASONABLE ideas in our society are not allowed to be presented in academia, how could academia be the place to ‘pursue truth?’

Now, of course, we can argue about what is a REASONABLE idea. Presumably, you believe ‘against affirmative action,”Republican,’ ‘for free market economies,’ or whatever specific issue we are describing here as ‘conservative,’ is unreasonable, and on the same level as ‘astrology’ and ‘UFOlogy.’ But that really supports my argument, doesn’t it? If academia’s purpose is not the ‘pursuit of truth,’ because such theoretical open-mindedness is impossible (just ask Foucault), then you what is it? Do the liberals academics here really want to admit that academia at large is in principle no different from Brigham Young (they just have a different perspective from which to explore their biased views)? Frankly that’s what I believe, that’s what the ‘conservative posters believe. It is not what liberal academia claims. If you really believe that, maybe we all should change our perspective of academia? (Catholic University of America exists to explore Catholic Doctrine, Brigham Young to explore Mormon Doctrine, and Berkely to explore how best to win the next election for the Democrats). As I said, we all actually, deep down believe this. But is that really what 1) academia’s purpose is, and 2) what you really want academia to be?

Steve

23

Russell Arben Fox 03.02.04 at 4:13 pm

“And rather cheekily invoked, I suspect, for this kind of thinking does not apply to agents, only dumb matter.”

No, more like ignorantly invoked–because you’re right, this purposiveness which Kant depends upon, which he claims arises from “the great artist Nature herself,” doesn’t change the status of agents as ends in themselves. (That’s what separates Kant from Herder, he condescendingly reminds himself.) Yes, Kant believed nature would “help along” what our own reason prescribes to us, but it doesn’t operate on the level of reason itself. Touche.

What am I talking about (even if I applied the idea incorrectly)? Well, Kant’s writings on enlightenment–Idea for a Universal History, What is Enlightenment, etc.–always discuss “public reason,” which he seems to present as something that can only be manifest in or developed out of a free and contested environment of ideas. Thus, as it is our natural end to be rational, and full rationality emerges in the midst of public antagonism and exchange, there may arguably be some moral duty to actually make universal those conditions of intellectual unboundedness. But that assumes you agree with Kant’s understanding of reason, which I don’t. I just thought I’d ask the question. And yes, I think Kant and Hegel and all the rest of the Idealists and Romantics were a lot closer to each other than one might expect.

24

enthymeme 03.02.04 at 4:21 pm

Puchalsky,

“Once again, anyone who is going to be in academia can not claim that conservatism is, for them, difficult to change in the same way that race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is. Academics are supposed to be open to changing their ideas based on new facts being discovered or on new, better theories being proposed.””

Rubbish. On your argument, anyone who is going to be in academia can not claim that religion is, for them, a difficult to change characteristic since they are “supposed to be open to changing their ideas based on new facts being discovered or on new, better theories being proposed”.

But you maintain precisely that – that religion is difficult to change and “not a matter of personal choice” (your crank statemnt, not mine).

So which is it? Stop twisting and turning.

I ask again: are you going to support your claim that conservative beliefs are harder to change than religious beliefs, or not?

25

Rich Puchalsky 03.02.04 at 4:22 pm

So Steve has finally made the transition to differentiating between reasonable and not-so-reasonable ideas. According to Steve, it’s OK to discriminate against the guy who believes in UFOlogy because that’s unreasonable, while a garden variety political belief like conservatism is reasonable.

I’m sure that people can start to see the predictable problems emerging here. Anti-discrimination theory — if discrimination is still what we are talking about — makes no distinction between reasonable and unreasonable members of a class. That is, after all, discrimination. You don’t say that you prohibit discrimination by religion and then say “Oh, except for Christian Scientists — they are unreasonable.” Is UFOlogy really so different than my own example of an idea whose adherents I’d like to discriminate against, Stalinism? After all, both are at base claims about how the world works. Surely you can set up claims about what makes a good or workable society and then falsify Stalinism just as much as you can falsify UFOlogy.

Note: for the purposes of this discussion, I’m assuming that any liberal has pretty much by definition decided that conservatives are wrong. The question is why liberals should not discriminate based on that judgement.

26

Rich Puchalsky 03.02.04 at 4:26 pm

enthymeme, religion is not based on facts or theories. It is based on faith. And that is the last reply that you deserve.

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DaveC 03.02.04 at 4:30 pm

The kulaks really are selfish and impede the progress of the prople.Whatever must be done is justified. I liked the other thread where it was demonstrated that Thomas Sowell must not be used as a source because he is a conservative and as such is stupid. This might be mitigated if he were black, but indeed he is not black, or at least black enough.

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enthymeme 03.02.04 at 4:31 pm

Puchalsky,

enthymeme, religion is not based on facts or theories. It is based on faith.

The same could be said for political ideology. In which case, your argument remains nothing more than unsupported tripe.

And that is the last reply that you deserve.

I take it that you’re not going to support your claims then?

Predictable.

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Dave 03.02.04 at 4:34 pm

I find this whole argument singularly disturbing. I’m a liberal, and I don’t agree with conservative thinking, but I do see the objective merits and self-consistency of the conservative philosophy.

How can any of you compare someone who simply grants more value to personal rights and responsibilities than you do to someone who believes in UFOs and the evil black helicopters? Clearly, if the politics of our nation (and the entire world, for that matter) are any indication, conservative ideas are very widely-held. They’re also not easily refutable. Freedom of conscience dictates that conservatives should not suffer discrimination.

Which brings me to my next point: it’s not hypocritical for people who are against affirmative action to protest when blatant discrimination of any sort takes place. There is a difference between not going out of one’s way to hire conservatives (or Catholics, or blacks) and refusing to hire qualified members of those groups.

Now, it may be that the academic philosophy has become so convoluted that you could actually justify refusing to hire conservatives on the grounds that their views have no value. But in the America I live in, we value the marketplace of ideas. If you’re teaching at a public university, funded by taxpayer dollars, is it too much to ask for you to at least pay lip service to this fundamental American value, and not to overtly discriminate against a mode of thinking used by roughly half of the people who pay your salary?

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Russell Arben Fox 03.02.04 at 4:35 pm

Steve, I may have misunderstood the point of your example; my apologies. Anyway, I’m enough of a moral realist to believe that we can talk about differing educational projects without everyone flying off into their own world, incapable of mutual critique. I think the confusion on the part of many (though not all) liberal academics which I mentioned before is also shared, in simply an inverted way, by many conservatives and others who dissent from the academy. There is a defensible common end and purpose here; humane learning, in the classic sense, is a reality. But that common end doesn’t, I think, exclude appropriate contestation over the duties involved in pursuing that end. I’m not troubled by the constestation, only by the epistemological sealing off engaged in by many contestants: that’s bad discrimination. Good discrimination is saying, always tentatively, “This is what we’re about here,” and following through. In my experience, there are some mainstream “liberal” institutions which do this well and some which don’t, just as on the flip side I think there are “conservative” institutions all along the continuum. (For example, as much as I like and will defend both schools, CUA’s balancing of its particular project and academia’s common purpose is, I think, clearly superior to BYU’s.)

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Dave 03.02.04 at 4:35 pm

Of course, I assumed we are talking about U.S. colleges, but the same would apply to England, I’m sure.

32

jholbo 03.02.04 at 4:48 pm

Dave, I think you have somewhat misunderstood the argument. First of all, it is generally agreed (I think) that the whole point of the university is to figure stuff out, not to flatter the electorate. So it isn’t that folks in the university are generally regarded as being obliged to agree with the folks who pay their salary. (This aristocratic view may be challenged, but basically there is something aristocratic about universities.) The folks who pay professor’s salaries didn’t hire them to agree with them.

Aside from that, the problem is really classic: why should you think that tolerating views that you regard as wrong is a good thing? Why shouldn’t you draw the magic circle of reasonableness in such a way as to exclude conservatives – if you don’t believe they are reasonable? Of course, if you do believe they are reasonable, or that their views are of positive value – as I do – then there is really no problem. But many people don’t think this. The marketplace of ideas doesn’t cut it as a reason because a marketplace doesn’t oblige you to buy something in the market that you think is bad.

Your ‘pay lip service’ argument does work, but it’s weak. I certainly don’t deny that one could pay lip service to something, if one couldn’t think of any better thing to pay it – say, brain service. My question is really whether there is a good argument for doing more than paying lip service. I think there sort of is. A Millian view. But I don’t think many people will actually buy it. So they’ll just keep paying no more than lip service.

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Rich Puchalsky 03.02.04 at 5:10 pm

dave writes: “If you’re teaching at a public university, funded by taxpayer dollars, is it too much to ask for you to at least pay lip service to this fundamental American value, and not to overtly discriminate against a mode of thinking used by roughly half of the people who pay your salary?”

I agree with Dave that overt discrimination is probably not a good idea at a public university, for the political reasons that Dave alludes to. So, continue on with the covert discrimination. Isn’t that basically what this argument amounts to?

I have to admit that it is a very conservative argument, in that it prioritizes the importance of keeping up appearances over nondiscrimination as opposed to actually doing anything about discrimination.

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rd 03.02.04 at 5:24 pm

If its reasonable not to employ people whose political views you think are wrong and harmful, then clearly conservative state governments should purge their universities.

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chun the unavoidable 03.02.04 at 5:29 pm

Visualize unsupported tripe. It’s better than Kirby Puckett or Jason Alexander nude for duration.

36

Sebastian Holsclaw 03.02.04 at 5:32 pm

“If ‘feelings’ and ‘sensitivities’ are beneath argumentative dignity, you can’t in good conscience answer arguments with a lot of talk about your sensitivities and feelings.”

That is a strange argument. If I argue against a Christian anti-abortion bomber, I can say that the church frowns on such activity even if I don’t believe in God.

And the continuing confusion in the threads about the difference between trying to stop discrimination, and asking for preferences is truly vexing. They aren’t the same thing.

You race too quickly over the race, relgion, ethnicity analogy. The basic moral problem is judging people unfairly by (often artificial) groupings. That quite clearly happens against conservatives in academia.

The problem of leftists in the academy is fairly simple. They claim to dislike power structures of exploitation and domination, but when they are in power they employ all of the structures which they claim to dislike.

There is certainly nothing wrong with conservatives pointing out this disconnect between reality and theory–it not only makes the leftists look bad personally, it is also an excellent argument for why the leftist philosophical blindness to human nature is incorrect.

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Joshua W. Burton 03.02.04 at 6:22 pm

Simple fairness _demands_ that we obstruct both justice and injustice, equally.

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Tom 03.02.04 at 6:27 pm

“Berkely to explore how best to win the next election for the Democrats”

You’d be surprised.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1077690807830&p=1066565585931

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baa 03.02.04 at 7:30 pm

John, I fear an equivocation in your distcussion is causing confusion. At one point you suggest that the difficulty lies in articulating why discriminating against people on the basis of temperament is wrong. At another, however you suggest the core concern is “why should you think that tolerating views that you regard as wrong is a good thing?”

These seem clearly different. The first, frankly, seems willfully dense. Are you really uncertain why an employer shouldn’t discriminate based on temperament? Perhaps a case can be made (no introverted used cars salesmen, etc.) but it’s the discrimination that seems to requires justification, not the reverse. If someone is *really* uncollegial, fine. But that’s not what’s being alleged here, at all.

You’re on firmer ground with the second point. And, in fact, we aren’t obligated to tolerate views we find wrong. But what does this have to do with hiring, again? If someone tells me natural law prohibits birth control, I won’t tolerate him, I’ll argue with him. But if I didn’t *hire* him for that reason I’d be breaking the law, first of all, and and obvious dick, second of all. And this is true if I run a biotech company or if I run an English department. Of course, if I’m hiring for moral philosophy, and they give a bad defense, I can take the controversial view as evidence of incompentence. But in the vast majority of academic jobs, politics and temperament will eb just as irrelevant to performance as religion or race.

Right?

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Dave 03.02.04 at 8:01 pm

Okay, say that academic liberals have appraised conservatism and found it to be “wrong”. They shouldn’t be forced to hire wrong-thinking individuals to teach at their institutions, so it’s okay for them to exclude conservatives.

But it is also true that many conservatives feel liberalism is objectively wrong.

Isn’t it just an accident of history that the liberals have gained complete control and are excluding the conservatives? Couldn’t it just as easily been the other way around? And if it were, wouldn’t the very same liberals who are trying to justify excluding conservatives be coming up with arguments as to why they themselves shouldn’t be excluded?

As for whether or not “keeping up appearances” is worthwhile… This is precisely why people think academics are out of touch with reality. *Of course* appearances are important! I hope I don’t have to remind you how much control state and federal legislators have over public higher education?

Everyone has to play politics. In light of that, having a stated position of “not only are you wrong, but you’re also stupid” towards everyone right of Ralph Nader is, well, stupid.

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enthymeme 03.02.04 at 8:05 pm

The basic moral problem is judging people unfairly by (often artificial) groupings. That quite clearly happens against conservatives in academia.

Exactly. The ostensible rationale behind anti-discrimination laws is that, when a characteristic of a person has no bearing on her ability to discharge the function of her job (say, to teach literature), then there ought not to be systemic discrimination against people with that characteristic (religion, or political beliefs, for instance).

In other words, people should not be unfairly penalized for their beliefs unless these beliefs are (i) decidedly and demonstrably more harmful than middle of the road political beliefs (for e.g. racist or racialist political beliefs) or (ii) get in the way of doing the job.

Discrimination against conservatives as such – in one case (political affiliation) but not another (religion) – is sheer hypocrisy.

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Rich Puchalsky 03.02.04 at 8:19 pm

Actually, baa, when we discussed this at jholbo’s blog, we identified only 4 U.S. state jurisdictions where it is illegal for a private employer to hire or fire on the basis of political affiliation. In addition, at least one of these, and possibly more, were really protecting political activity, not “affiliation” as the type of personal characteristic typical of anti-discrimination law.

I doubt whether there is any place in the U.S. where it would be illegal for a non-unionized private employer to fire someone based on a belief in natural law, unless this was used as a proxy for firing someone based on religion. Remember, the business world is run by conservatives, and *they* have no wish to let discrimination laws keep them from hiring and firing at will. It has been possible for liberals to override this for certain difficult-to-change personal characteristics, but it doesn’t cover the ideas that you espouse any more than it covers the color of your tie.

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Rich Puchalsky 03.02.04 at 8:32 pm

dave: “As for whether or not “keeping up appearances” is worthwhile… This is precisely why people think academics are out of touch with reality. Of course appearances are important! ”

Dave, no academic that I know of has stated that they are going to start openly discriminating against conservatives. (Well, I suggested it, in an attempt to cut through the sanctimonious BS, but I’m not an academic.) They are all keeping their discrimination, if any, safely under cover, and the only evidence for it is either anecdotal or pseudo-statistical (in the form of people noticing that liberals or leftists seem to be overrepresented in certain fields.) There, now are you happy?

To repeat, the only evidence for discrimination is the same evidence that conservatives roundly reject when applied to minority races, or to women. In these cases, conservatives reject observations in imbalance in actual jobs and say that as long as there is no obvious discrimination, there’s no problem. So what’s the problem?

44

baa 03.02.04 at 9:25 pm

Rich, I just asked my HR director if we could legally discriminate against Kucinich supporters. She said “no” in tone that suggested not “what an interesting fine point of law,” but rather “are you out of your mind?” Even *asking* about political affiliation in an interview would be regarded as highly suspect. And yes, as a dread conservative boss, I do want to be able to fire at the drop of a hat. That’s how I’m employed. But the idea that being an ‘exempt’ worker innoculates my employer from a discrimination suit, however, is wrong flat out. If they give me glowing performance reviews, and fire me because I subscribe to Commentary: settlement bonanza!

But let’s just stipulate (which I do not) that it *is* legal to fire based on political affilation, but not religious affiliation. Can anyone justify to me why this as a good idea, or decent employment practice? Again, I’d argue that a boss who behaved that way is a moral monster. There may be some beliefs so repugnant (Nazism, Stalinism, white supremicism) that we don’t want to support adherents in any way. But surely that’s not the way republicans and democrats should view each other? Again, I would have thought that’s a lay-up.

Dale Carnegie has a wonderful suggestion for business etiquette: “avoid matters of public controversy.” Does anyone doubt that this, not “persecute ideological deviants” describes good employment practice? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills just arguing this point.

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enthymeme 03.02.04 at 9:34 pm

Actually, baa, when we discussed this at jholbo’s blog, we identified only 4 U.S. state jurisdictions where it is illegal for a private employer to hire or fire on the basis of political affiliation.

“We”? Excuse me Puchalsky, _I_ was the one who identified the 4 state jurisdictions when you made the absurd claim that there were no laws _at all_ against discrimination based on political beliefs.

Now, you speak as if this is some kind of evidence that it is somehow acceptable to discriminate against conservatives. Of course, this argument gets things completely ass-backwards: it is not the law that justifies the moral case for anti-discrimination; rather, it is the moral case for anti-discrimination that justifies the law.

This is nowhere more obvious than in the fact that laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation is similarly incomplete (12 states). Does the relative paucity of anti-discrimination laws with regards to homosexuals justify the moral case for discrimination against homosexuals? Of course not. So what are you blabbering about?

In addition, at least one of these, and possibly more, were really protecting political activity, not “affiliation” as the type of personal characteristic typical of anti-discrimination law.

Yeah, big fat difference that makes. As if political activity is not constitutive of political affiliation.

It has been possible for liberals to override this for certain difficult-to-change personal characteristics, but it doesn’t cover the ideas that you espouse . . .

Unsupported bilge.

46

enthymeme 03.02.04 at 9:39 pm

To repeat, the only evidence for discrimination is the same evidence that conservatives roundly reject when applied to minority races, or to women. In these cases, conservatives reject observations in imbalance in actual jobs and say that as long as there is no obvious discrimination, there’s no problem. So what’s the problem?

Duh. Hypocrisy, that’s what.

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Rich Puchalsky 03.02.04 at 9:47 pm

baa, I don’t know what jurisdiction you work in, or who for. But a “discrimination suit” for subscribing to Commentary? You know there is no Federal anti-discrimination law covering political affiliation, right? But maybe you really mean some other kind of law. Please educate me, if so. The last guy who chimed in on this was a lawyer who talked a lot of trash about it but ended up admitting that he relied on California law — one of those 4 state jurisdictions I mentioned earlier.

As for whether it’s *decent* to do so, of course that’s a different question. I personally find the idea of conservatives boo-hooing that they are discriminated against, while dismissing every other discrimination claim that is based on similar types of evidence, to be indecent. But maybe that’s just me.

Philosophically, I see no difference between justifying discrimination against the Stalinist and against the conservative. As mentioned upthread, once you start to introduce “reasonability” as a criterion, you’re just discriminating again.

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enthymeme 03.02.04 at 10:09 pm

You know there is no Federal anti-discrimination law covering political affiliation, right?

This is false. And either you’re lying, or you have a crippling inability to understand English.

As I’ve twice pointed out to you before, see § 2302(b) of title 5 of the United States Code: “. . . a federal employee authorized to take, direct others to take, recommend or approve any personnel action may not: discriminate against an employee or applicant based on race, color . . . or political affiliation.”

Dishonesty is not the best policy, Richard.

49

bryan 03.02.04 at 10:23 pm

“If someone tells me natural law prohibits birth control, I won’t tolerate him, I’ll argue with him. But if I didn’t hire him for that reason I’d be breaking the law, first of all, and and obvious dick, second of all. And this is true if I run a biotech company or if I run an English department. ”

No, it’s maybe true in both cases if you run an English department, I suggest it’s highly unlikely to be true if you run a biotech company. Why? Well because I’m supposing that first off, biotech company might make stuff that violates natural law then, second, biotech company might do business with lots of companies that violate natural law, thirdly biotech company might have already hired a bunch of people that have helped create products in past employment that violated natural law.
Now if you, as the head of biotech firm, went ahead and hired this natural law birth control fellow, I suppose we could all look forward to having a wonderful discussion on how hiring those people and then being upset about them blowing up labs seems somewhat dimwitted.

Which of course brings us to a point that John neglected, mainly because he seemed to focus on Conservatism as temperment(tempermentally I suppose I’m a conservative, the problem is of course that I tend to view Democrats as stupid and well-meaning, and Republicans as stupid and Evil.) The problem with hiring a ‘conservative’ for a particular position is not necessarily their temperment but what kind of conservative they are.

Are they the kind of conservative that wants to provide textbooks arguing that the grand canyon is a few thousand years old, and comes from around the time period of the flood? Well I don’t think we want this person teaching anything really (I say that this person should not even be allowed to teach English literature based on the example of an High School English Literature teacher I had who claimed that A.D meant After Noah, and B.C meant Before Christ, I don’t know that she was a conservative of any sort, but I have suspicions.)
So in the example given the question was asked if the prospective employee was a conservative, it could very well be that the poor muddle headed liberal, having come to associate conservatism with some awful people he met trying to get mentions of evolution and slavery and whatnot removed from textbooks, and god put in whenever possible, just considered it impossible to hire anyone that was ‘conservative’. If Smith had qualified this conservatism, the nature of which is nowhere satisfactorily explained, by saying “yes, I’m something of a Burkean conservative” it might all have gone rather well. But he didn’t and we really are no closer to understanding what grounds were the basis of his not being hired, other than he claimed to be a member of a group the associations of which can be many and broad.

50

rea 03.02.04 at 10:31 pm

Enthymeme, 5 USC 2302(b) does not, on its face, apply to private employers.

51

baa 03.02.04 at 10:34 pm

Right, so we’ve come down to the nub: “no difference in discriminating against the Stalinist and the conservative.” I’ll take it that we can subsitute “nazi cannibal” for “stalinist” and “guy who supports George Bush” for conservative. It’s nifty that that’s your position. But I suspect it isn’t John Holbo’s. I was merely suggesting while on can concede the existence of beliefs so vile one wants no involvement with it whatsoever, most would not extrapolate from that to good *moral* grounds for using [abusing] one’s position to hire and fire based on poltiical preferences. Again, this seems like a lay-up. If it seems strange to you, I’m sorry.

Second, it seems like ‘there’s no law that specifically lists X as prohibited’ and ‘you’ll be sued like there’s no tomorrow if you X’ are easily compatible. But it doesn’t look like you’re doing so well on the “there’s no law” point, as referenced by enthymeme above. I suspect that if I fired an employee, and gave as my reason “because they supported Dennis Kuchinich,” he could sue me and win easily. Even if my jurisdiction wasn’t MA.

And again: who cares. You seem to have a bug about the evil that conservatives do, and how indecent it is to think that sometimes discrimination exists and sometimes it doesn’t. I am sorry that this irritation with conservatives seems to have convinced you that employment discrimination is OK unless there’s a law against it. Actually, many people think discrimination is wrong, simply, and believe a common moral understanding motivates oppostiion to employment discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or ideological affiliation. Again, that’s not rocket science. And I’m puzzled that anyone would find that position hard to understand.

52

enthymeme 03.02.04 at 10:38 pm

rea,

5 USC 2302(b) is a “Federal anti-discrimination law covering affiliation”.

The claim that “there is no Federal anti-discrimination law covering political affiliation” is, on it’s face, plainly false.

53

enthymeme 03.02.04 at 10:38 pm

rea,

5 USC 2302(b) is a “Federal anti-discrimination law covering political affiliation”.

The claim that “there is no Federal anti-discrimination law covering political affiliation” is, on it’s face, plainly false.

54

enthymeme 03.02.04 at 10:44 pm

I am sorry that this irritation with conservatives seems to have convinced you that employment discrimination is OK unless there’s a law against it.

Clearly it’s not OK. Was slavery “OK” before it was outlawed?

55

baa 03.02.04 at 10:51 pm

Obviously correct, enthymeme. Or i would have thought obviously before this weirded-out thread. This whole conversation has an otherworldly flavor…

56

Rich Puchalsky 03.02.04 at 11:01 pm

baa writes: “But it doesn’t look like you’re doing so well on the “there’s no law” point, as referenced by enthymeme above. ”

ethymeme is a loonytune. I quote myself from earlier in our discussion: “Actually, baa, when we discussed this at jholbo’s blog, we identified only 4 U.S. state jurisdictions where it is illegal for a private employer to hire or fire on the basis of political affiliation.” And yes, when I later mentioned “no Federal anti-discrimination law”, it was still in the context of private employment. The law that enthymeme loves to cite does not cover private employers, and was motivated by good-government rather than anti-discrimination concerns.

Oh, and as for your invocation of Godwin’s Law — no, I don’t find your position hard to understand. I do find it to be either simpleminded or ingenuous. Why, “sometimes discrimination exists and sometimes it doesn’t” –to be precise, it exists (according to conservatives, and according to the evidentiary standard that they propose) when it is directed at them, and does not exist when it is directed at black people, women, gays, Marxist professors, etc. What a wonderful criterion if you happen to be a white male heterosexual conservative.

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Jim 03.02.04 at 11:14 pm

It’s rather amusing to be reading this long thread interspersed with this article about whether Baylor students will be punished for speaking in favor of same-sex marriage. But seriously, folks …

Let me put on this unfamiliar Libertarian Hairshirt(tm) <<ow! how do people wear these things?>> and ask, Couldn’t we let the Market decide?

Maybe schools (or departments) should just be open about what their biases are. Baylor sure is, BYU sure is … what we’re really talking about isn’t “should schools have a bias” but “should schools that have a liberal bias have a bias.” Let them be proud of it! (“Come to San Francisco State, we put the ‘Liberal’ in ‘Liberal Arts!'”)

If enrollment at Berkeley dropped precipitously as all the Republicans sent their children off to the deep south, well, Berkeley might not be able to hire so many more instructors (given the impacted state of Berkeley applications, that’d take a while, but …). If enough biology grads from Godbothering U. found themselves unemployable because their degrees were perceived as worthless, well that would be sad but they’d only have themselves to blame because they knew their choices upfront.

At least people who wanted their children to remain pig-ignorant and unquestioning would know where to send their offspring and we wouldn’t have to hear so much whinging. And vice-versa.

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baa 03.02.04 at 11:58 pm

This discussion doesn’t do much to raise one’s hopes for the value ability of debate to get us to consensus. But here’s one more go. Rich, I so don’t care whether or not it’s illegal for an employer to discriminate against Kucinich supporters in all 50 states, or only if the government does it, or whatever. Let me just concede concede concede that point to you.

And I think I understand why you believe discriminate against conservatives isn’t important: because you despise them. But look, I expect you don’t despise libertarians, or liberals, or Kucinich supporters; nor would you want employers to fire them because of their beliefs, I expect. So here’s the question: as a matter of principle do we think it is moral to discriminate on the basis of political affiliation. No, right? Right? Or is your position that since it’s OK to discriminate agaist the “truly vile” and there’s no principled way to distinguish the truly vile from garden variety political affilation, all discrimination is OK. If the latter, let me suggest it is you who appear a bit simpleminded about moral reasoning. We make those distinctions all the time. A person who can’t distinguish a supporter of rent control from a supporter of Pol Pot (or teachers unions from terrorists) — that would be a real looneytune.

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enthymeme 03.03.04 at 12:06 am

The law that enthymeme loves to cite does not cover private employers, and was motivated by good-government rather than anti-discrimination concerns.

Nor did I suggest it covers private employers. The fact remains that such anti-discrimination laws exist, contrary to your claim that they do not, which is flat-out wrong. I wouldn’t have bothered to point this out, and in fact, would have given you the benefit of the doubt had you not _repeatedly_ and dishonestly tried to argue from that false premise to the conclusion that we should discriminate against conservatives.

And of course, this smoke-screen completely fails to address baa’s main point: that the non-existence of anti-discrimination law does not constitute justification for discrimination. No more than the non-existence of a law against slavery justifies slavery.

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Rich Puchalsky 03.03.04 at 4:14 am

I don’t think you’re getting my point, baa. All right, let’s say that you don’t like philosophical argument, and prefer simple moral agreements that we shouldn’t be mean to each other. Is this happy happy joy joy state of being really occuring?

Well no, of course it isn’t. There is no agreement from conservatives that we should not discriminate. Conservatives routinely kick people out of the Army for being gay, advocate kicking Marxist professors out of universities because they are Marxist, and routinely deny jobs to people because they aren’t white. Don’t believe me on that last one? Well, the evidence for the claim is just as good as the evidence for the claim that anyone is keeping conservatives out of academia (actually, it’s better, since it is based on numbers and not casual observation). What’s more, your argument that only if I point out that people can be fired for political belief or activity will liberals actually be fired on that basis is silly. Liberals are already getting fired, legally or illegally — have you tried organizing a union at Wal-Mart lately? Note the repeated claims here that the problem with liberal discrimination is “hypocrisy” — meaning that it isn’t a problem for conservatives since they don’t believe in non-discrimination anyway.

Now, given this, why should liberals not discriminate against conservatives? Conservatives benefit from discrimination, advocate policies that result in discrimination, and resist policies to remedy past discrimination. Wouldn’t it be simple justice that there should be some payback? Perhaps society would be better if there were no employment discrimination, but there is, and why should one side unilaterally renounce it? Conservatives have already polarized the country, after all. The whole conservative brouhaha about discrimination in academia is part of a campaign to get more conservatives into academia and liberals and leftists out. Should we just let them?

Having said that, I should add that I don’t believe that liberals really are discriminating against conservatives in academia in any organized way. But, if they could get away with it, I certainly think that they should be.

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baa 03.03.04 at 4:56 am

Thanks Rich, that’s clarifying. It won’t surprise you to learn that I think you err in assuming that all conservatives endorse discrimination, and err further in thinking it makes sense to deliver ‘payback’ to a broad group in response to the sins of a few. This seems like a terrible moral mistake to me, and very much of a piece with other bigotries you reject. But I expect there’s little I can say to convince you of this.

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enthymeme 03.03.04 at 6:06 am

Note the repeated claims here that the problem with liberal discrimination is “hypocrisy” — meaning that it isn’t a problem for conservatives since they don’t believe in non-discrimination anyway.

And so it is hypocrisy. Stop trying to muddy the issues. Clearly, liberal inconsistency on the issue of discrimination has _nothing_ to do with what conservatives do or do not believe. If a liberal advocates non-discrimination against male homosexuals, but advocates discrimination against lesbians, he is being inconsistent, and a hypocrite, fullstop. The liberal’s beliefs are _internally inconsistent_. Obviously, internal inconsistency does not involve the beliefs of others. Internal inconsistency and hypocrisy has to do with the internal incoherence of your beliefs, not anyone else’s. Ergo, conservative beliefs have nothing to do with the issue of your hypocrisy. Capiche?

Now, given this, why should liberals not discriminate against conservatives? Conservatives benefit from discrimination, advocate policies that result in discrimination, and resist policies to remedy past discrimination. Wouldn’t it be simple justice that there should be some payback?

Duh, what a dumb argument. If one were to follow your ‘reasoning’, we could argue that Christians and/or the Church have benefited from discrimination, advocated policies that result in discrimination, and have resisted attempts to remedy past discrimination – and therefore one would be forced to conclude that Christians should be discriminated against. After all, loony Puchalsky logic dictates that it would be “simple justice that there should be some payback”. Ergo, we should discriminate against Christians.

Yet earlier on, you said that there ought to be no religious discrimination. So which is it? Either your simpleton logic is wrong, in which case you fail to support the case for discrimination against conservatives; or you’re being inconsistent yet _again_ by contradicting your earlier stance that there should be no religious discrimination. In other words, more hypocrisy.

Continue to press the self-destruct button, Richie.

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bryan 03.03.04 at 8:16 am

‘ If a liberal advocates non-discrimination against male homosexuals, but advocates discrimination against lesbians, he is being inconsistent, and a hypocrite, fullstop’

no, actually if a liberal advocates non-discrimination but discriminates against lesbians he is being a hypocrite. Or if a liberal advocates non-discrimination against lesbians but discriminates against lesbians he is being a hypocrite. If a liberal advocates non-discrimination against male homosexuals and discrimination against lesbians then it would be necessary to know more specifically what the arguments were in order to define if in fact they were being hypocritical and inconsistent.

By the way, it does seem like a rather weird example doesn’t it? After all, it seems to be a conservative thing to advocate discrimination against gays. So what you’re saying is, if a liberal advocates discrimination against lesbians he’s being a conservative, but if he advocates non-discrimination against male homosexuals he’s being a liberal. A house divided against itself cannot stand!

As it happens I don’t advocate discrimination against either group. However if it should turn out that someone applying for an academic job were the kind of conservative that would make such an argument, I would probably suggest they should pursue a business career, where they can grouse about wooly-headed intellectual academic liberal boogeymen.

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enthymeme 03.03.04 at 10:32 am

Mr Bryan,

If a liberal advocates non-discrimination against male homosexuals and discrimination against lesbians then it would be necessary to know more specifically what the arguments were in order to define if in fact they were being hypocritical and inconsistent.

I assumed it was obvious. If liberals believe in sexual equality in academic hiring, they should believe in sexual equality in academic hiring even for people of alternative sexual orientations.

So what you’re saying is, if a liberal advocates discrimination against lesbians he’s being a conservative, but if he advocates non-discrimination against male homosexuals he’s being a liberal. A house divided against itself cannot stand!

Nope that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that if someone professes to be a liberal and he (hypothetically) advocates discrimination against lesbians but not male homosexuals, then he is being knowingly inconsistent, and hypocritical.

Anyway, one of the things that is being obscured by this debate is the question of merit. Everyone seems to assume that an academic’s conservatism necessarily has something to do with the quality of his work. This is, on the face of it, preposterous. Someone may obviously be an excellent physicist, but harbour conservative political beliefs. I fail to see how one’s view of politics necessarily has anything to do with one’s work in quantum electrodynamics, or computer science, for that matter.

Any such divined connection is contrived. Take for example the lame argument that conservatives are more “close-minded” and hence unsuited to academia. Surely this is a stretch? There are ideologues and dogmatists on both sides of the political spectrum. And in religion too, given that religion is dogma. Yet nobody suggests that Aquinas or Plantinga are shit philosophers just because they are “close-minded” when it comes to religion.

Now here’s where Puchalsky sounds like an idiot. First, he claims that conservatism is not a “difficult-to-change” belief. Very well. It suited his argument then (even though he had about zero evidence for that assertion). Yet later on, he conveniently changes his tune and claims that conservatives shouldn’t be allowed in academia because, well, they’re close-minded! (Such is the duplicity of Mr Puchalsky.) So presumably, if close-mindedness is a trait of conservatives in general, how could it be “not-difficult” for them to shed their conservatism? Don’t close-minded folks find it difficult to, well, be open-minded? Does Puchalsky even know what he’s croaking about? At any event, doesn’t his complete and utter failure at changing the minds of baa et al. suggest that conservatives might have genuine difficulty changing their minds? Or taking him seriously for that matter. But perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on the man: apparently he has some difficulty processing reality, seeing that the above is lost on him (“unhinged”, as they say).

Anyway, moving on from Aquinas and Plantinga – and on to Hegel. Hegel was perhaps the arch-conservative of his time (in the broadest sense that he was for the status quo and the existing social order). As was the (arguably) regressive Plato – yet today, both are bigass philosophers assured their places in the pantheon of philosophical greats and no one would think otherwise. No one serious is going to suggest that they shouldn’t be there on account of their “conservatism”. Nor does anyone figure that Hayek and Friedman are crap economists just because of their political leanings. How about Eugene Volokh? Presumably UCLA shouldn’t have hired him because he’s conservative? Or Richard Posner? Even if you disagree with my examples, I think it is not especially difficult to conceive of outstanding academics who – had they been discriminated against and unfairly excluded as they embarked on their careers – would have constituted a loss to academia. Needless to say, I see even less of a connection between a person’s political convictions and say, his competence as a mathematician, as a philosopher of mind, or as an English professor. Where there may be a connection, e.g., in law, economics, or political science – surely the merits of an academic’s work should speak for itself rather than be dismissed out of hand as some cranks suggest!

Indeed, political considerations are quite irrelevant to a person’s academic merit. So why should academia damage itself by excluding academics based on irrelevant considerations? The main business of the university is the pursuit of knowledge. If political beliefs are irrelevant, and if universities exclude based on that, then there could be a very real danger of excluding the meritorious because of some consideration irrelevant to furthering the ends of knowledge.

It is the equivalent of an ad hominem attack: an attack on the man instead of the merits of his work. If this is bad argumentative form, it should be bad hiring form as well. In both contexts, the aim is the pursuit of knowledge, and the academic, qua pursuer of knowledge, owes it to himself, academia, and his students to pursue truth and the growth of knowledge regardless of considerations extraneous to that activity. Universities do themselves a disservice and would be in grave dereliction of their epistemic duties were they to do otherwise.

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enthymeme 03.03.04 at 11:08 am

Oh, and before anyone stamps foot, thumps table, and insists that conservatism is somehow correlated with a lack of academic merit – he or she should deign to explain why U Chicago, that purported bastion of conservatism (at least in law and economics, if not the humanities) is a university of singular academic distinction?

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Belle Waring 03.03.04 at 11:15 am

Wow, enthymeme; you’ve been hanging around with John so much that your comments are getting as long as his posts. You’re winning the argument, though. Maybe you and rich to take it to…the Battle Zone!

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Rich Puchalsky 03.03.04 at 12:49 pm

baa, of course I don’t believe that it’s appropriate to discriminate against an individual for something they did not choose. But conservatism supports discrimination, whether you think so or not, and every conservative personally chose to be a conservative. So I don’t see the problem.

Bellw Waring, if you really think that ethymeme is winning, then I wonder whether you really have read his posts. Now he’s claiming that conservatives find it hard to change from their beliefs because they are close-minded. I already pointed out that a close-minded professor is not likely to be a good professor. Actually, in a fit of generosity I previously agreed that if ethymeme convinced us that conservatives were too stupid to be able to change their minds about the political views they had grown up with, even in the face of competing data, then I’d change my mind about discriminating against them. After all, I’d hate to discriminate against the mentally handicapped. enthymeme can’t have it both ways; either conservatives are competent adults like anyone else, who make their choices and give others the right to react to those choices, or they are helpless victims of an innately set mental temperament, one which would disqualify them from academia in any case.

Needless to say, I favor the first of these, and the list of conservatives who are academics only confirms it.

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Rich Puchalsky 03.03.04 at 2:12 pm

I wanted to add one thing to my reply to baa. baa contends that not all conservatives support discrimination, and that therefore it would be unjust to discriminate against all of them “for the sins of a few”. All right, imagine the following thought experiment: you are a non-conservative senior academic interviewing a conservative applicant for some important step in the applicant’s future academic career. You interview this applicant to find out whether they really do support discrimination. The applicant agrees that they hold the following personal beliefs; they think gays should be pushed out of the military, should not have civil union type rights, and should have no protections against being fired from their jobs for being gay. Let’s stipulate that none of these beliefs affect the applicant’s field of study — perhaps they study pure mathematics. Should you discriminate against this person? After all, all of this is irrelevant to their performance as an academic and their ability to generate knowledge.

Now let’s say that, in addition, the applicant is a racist, and believes that black people are genetically inferior. He assures you that this would not affect his own decisions and academic relationships. Still willing to hire him? If there was any change, why the difference? If the answer is that you find racism personally more troubling than homophobia, why should this matter to you or your gay colleagues?

Now let’s say that the applicant claims to be a conservative, but denies any of these beliefs. Even though the applicant regularly votes for people who implement discriminatory policies, when these policies are a known part of the platform of the candidate in question, the applicant himself disavows them. Do you believe him? Let’s say that, through close questioning of the type that your HR rep would go into fits about (but this is a thought experiment after all) you determine that the applicant in fact has voted for the more conservative candidate in every Republican primary, where the difference between the more and less conservative candidate is primarily the degree of hostility towards blacks and gays. Still believe them?

Now, if you’re willing to say that of course you hire the guy regardless if his academic credentials are good, congratulations, you’re with enthymeme’s position. But the same slippery slope applies that you invoked Godwin’s Law for earlier. Why not just hire the Stalinist who applies similarly?

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bryan 03.03.04 at 3:38 pm

‘I assumed it was obvious. If liberals believe in sexual equality in academic hiring, they should believe in sexual equality in academic hiring even for people of alternative sexual orientations. ‘

Well, I saw your earlier comment, not referencing any liberal belief, as an example of how one might try to define hypocricy given a good case study. As I found the case submitted, without you having pointed out its obvious basis, to be poorly argued I responded.

‘ if you really think that ethymeme is winning, then I wonder whether you really have read his posts. Now he’s claiming that conservatives find it hard to change from their beliefs because they are close-minded’

I was under the impression that he claimed this was a claim that you had made Rich, and he derided this claim.

‘Yet nobody suggests that Aquinas or Plantinga are shit philosophers just because they are “close-minded” when it comes to religion’

no, but I believe it has been suggested that Aquinas made logical mistakes based on his need to resolve certain parts of religious doctrine, thus no doubt weakening his philosophy.

There was no response to my earlier comment on the biotech scenario. Now there is a similar scenario posited by ethymeme that ‘Someone may obviously be an excellent physicist, but harbour conservative political beliefs.’
again I would respond they may be an excellent physicist depending on what in the hell a conservative political belief is, conservatism is a big field, with lots of room for wackos. Is this excellent physicist one of the conservatives who believe that the Grand Canyon is a few thousand years old at best? That the age of the earth can be found out from the bible? That is to say, is this a person who mixes their political agenda with the religious agenda? Are they concerned with using the political wing to push the religious position? If so I think I wouldn’t want them teaching physics, because I suppose that just as they are pushing the religious agenda with something I believe shouldn’t be used to push it, they will want to push it with something else that shouldn’t be used for that purpose – that is, the educational pulpit. If on the other hand when questioned, what kind of conservative are you, they reply, I’m a libertarian, I don’t think there should be any problem.

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Rich Puchalsky 03.03.04 at 3:52 pm

bryan, enthymeme has difficulty reading what other people write, and that’s probably the source of your confusion. If you had the masochistic impulse to look back over the thread on both blogs (which I do not really advise) you’d see that enthymeme originally claimed that there was no difference between discrimination on the basis of political belief and discrimination on the basis of religion, and that therefore discrimination on the basis of political belief was liberal hypocrisy. I developed an argument that liberals oppose discrimination based on “difficult to change characteristics”, and included religion as one of these, since it depends on faith that is not really susceptible to logical argument, and is usually developed in childhood. enthymeme then repeatedly challenged me to prove that conservatism was not a “difficult to change characteristic”, and I replied that I didn’t beleive that it was, but that if it was, it was a valid reason to reject people from academic employment, since closed mindedness about matters of fact and theory is not compatible with academia. Since then, enthymeme has simply been running out the clock, figuring that if he writes abusively for long enough, everyone will get confused about what has been said and give up.

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Sebastian Holsclaw 03.03.04 at 8:55 pm

“But conservatism supports discrimination, whether you think so or not, and every conservative personally chose to be a conservative. ”

Huh? Conservatives, at least in the states, don’t support discrimination. We just don’t support reverse discrimination as a method of correcting discrimination. Your argument makes sense only from your amazingly wrong premise.

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bryan 03.03.04 at 9:28 pm

‘Huh? Conservatives, at least in the states, don’t support discrimination. ‘

Well, Sebastian, when we say conservatives here do we mean Republicans? I’m supposing that we do, that these two terms nearly synonymous in the states. Now I don’t think that all Republican’s support discrimination, and I don’t think that you do, but surely you can see how people might get the impression that groups within the Republican party do so.

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Rich Puchalsky 03.03.04 at 9:36 pm

Sebastian, I am willing to believe that you, personally, don’t support discrimination, or at least don’t think that you do. But someone supports, to take only the most recent example, discrimination against gays in the form of an amendment to the Constitution. If the people supporting this aren’t conservatives, who are they? They sure aren’t liberals or libertarians. And every conservative that claims that they don’t personally support this kind of thing, but who votes for people who do, is effectively supporting it anyway.

I’m not even going to bother going into conservative ideology and why it really is an ideology of inherited social position, one in which people are supposed to know their place, and which depends on some form of discrimination by inherited background. Presumably you’d deny that is your ideology. But when you look at who really does support all the forms of current employment discrimination — racism, sexism, firing anyone who looks like a union organizer, etc. — those are all part of the conservative “Southern strategy” in the U.S.

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Sebastian Holsclaw 03.03.04 at 10:19 pm

“I’m not even going to bother going into conservative ideology and why it really is an ideology of inherited social position, one in which people are supposed to know their place, and which depends on some form of discrimination by inherited background. Presumably you’d deny that is your ideology.”

Wow, you got me there. I guess I don’t get to make arguments because you have a sterotypical idea of ‘conservative’ which is resistant to facts. Or perhaps the word ‘conservative’ means precisely whatever you want it to mean. It worked for Humpty Dumpty.

As a conservative I might be expected to know something about conservative ideology (at least in the US). And I can say with some confidence that your charge “who really does support all the forms of current employment discrimination…” is frankly false. To my knowledge conservatives in the US do not support any type of employment discrimination that you mention. Once again I suspect (though obviously cannot prove) that you are conflating opposition to affirmative action with supporting employment discrimination. I normally avoid asking for sources, but you will have to provide some if you are to convince me that my personal experience with conservatives on a day-to-day basis, and my extensive reading in conservative circles has somehow missed this support for job discrimination.

But I can do much better for your side. Evidence that leftists are willing to defend employment discrimination is found by the existance of this very post and its comments. Many in the comments have argued that the discrimination is an affirmative good. I defy you to find a similar conservative expression on anything nearly as mainstream as this website….. unless you would care to conceed that this website is as far to the left as a NAZI organization is to the right?

I didn’t think so.

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enthymeme 03.03.04 at 11:22 pm

Belle,

I try to write like John sometimes. He’s a got great style and just draws you in. But more importantly, he’s a liberal who’s _reasonable_ and refreshingly unprone to histrionics. Always a joy to read – even if we er, don’t always agree.

Puchalsky,

But conservatism supports discrimination, whether you think so or not, and every conservative personally chose to be a conservative. So I don’t see the problem.

The “problem” has been pointed out to you time and again, Puchalsky. Every Christian chose to be a Christian too. Do you deny that religion is a matter of personal choice? Should we discriminate against Christians since the Church has supported discrimination for millenia?

Deafening silence.

Even if one grants that conservatism “supports discrimination” (which I don’t), two wrongs do not make a right. But it certainly makes for hypocrisy, and you’re guilty as charged.

Now he’s claiming that conservatives find it hard to change from their beliefs because they are close-minded.

No that’s not what I’m claiming. I claimed that they had difficulty changing their beliefs, whatever the reasons. It was *you* who suggested that conservatives be excluded from academia because they were close-minded and do not change even when “rational argument” is adduced. You said: “Academics are supposed to be open to changing their ideas based on new facts being discovered or on new, better theories being proposed” – implying that conservatives are NOT open to changing their ideas and thus are close-minded. But if they have precisely such a difficulty as you charge, how is conservatism “not-difficult” to change?

You’re contradicting yourself. Do they or do they not have such a difficulty?

Mr Bryan,

no, but I believe it has been suggested that Aquinas made logical mistakes based on his need to resolve certain parts of religious doctrine, thus no doubt weakening his philosophy.

The same could be said for many philosophers of genius. Or anyone who subscribes to some ideology or other for that matter. Are left-leaning ideologues any less susceptible than the right? Puchalsky doesn’t seem to be changing many minds for now. What does that suggest? It is a myth to suppose that (a special class of) persons are free from doctrinaire influences. The Marxian economist may work according to his bias, as may the libertarian economist – again, why exclude out of hand, without examining the merits of his or her work?

Is this excellent physicist one of the conservatives who believe that the Grand Canyon is a few thousand years old at best?

Like I said, as and when his beliefs _are_ intimately connected to his work, then it would be OK to exclude him. That is not adverse discrimination. If he’s a biologist, you’re excluding him on the basis of merit or lack thereof – because creationist science isn’t science. Because it’s been repeatedly debunked. You’re not excluding him _because_ he’s a conservative.

If he’s a physicist who has some odd ideas about evolutionary biology, but is brilliant to a fault in say, experimental condensed matter physics, than why should his oddball ideas be held against him where it is irrelevant? Is Leibniz’s invention of calculus any lesser on account of monads?

What Puchalsky is advocating is wholesale discrimination against conservatives irrespective of his or her merits in the relevant field of expertise. If a creationist applies for a job as a classicist, how is his creationism relevant? At any event, creationism is not _solely_ a conservative belief. It is a _Christian_ belief. It is conceivable that there are liberals who are also creationists. Are you going to discriminate against liberals or Christians then, just because _some_ of them are creationists? No? So why discriminate against conservatives if not all of them are creationists? Isn’t that precisely the essence of discrimination? Tarring a class or group of people with a broad brush instead of examining each person on his merits?

That is to say, is this a person who mixes their political agenda with the religious agenda? Are they concerned with using the political wing to push the religious position? If so I think I wouldn’t want them teaching physics, because I suppose that just as they are pushing the religious agenda with something I believe shouldn’t be used to push it, they will want to push it with something else that shouldn’t be used for that purpose – that is, the educational pulpit.

Everyone has an agenda, more or less. It’s just whether you agree with his or her agenda or not. Where the agenda is irrelevant, there’s nothing to stop you from excluding the creationist _biologist_ on the grounds that his or her work is not up to par – and if s/he does not subscribe to the theory of evolution, which is the bedrock of modern biology, then it is likely that the work won’t be up to par. And you can exclude on that – on the merits.

I believe that knowledge grows because people disagree, set out to refute that which they disagree with – and whether successful or not, we get as an end product either some new theory that has shed the weaknesses of the old one, or we get a strengthened, reinforced and more _corroborated_ theory of old. And if some of that disagreement is politically motivated, so be it. The genesis of criticism is irrelevent to the merits of that criticism. And this is why academic freedom is so important – and why a politically straight-jacketed academia is inimical to the pursuit of the growth of knowledge. It’s not just a matter of aesthetics: orthodoxy is the death of intelligence. And homogeneity as such is bad news for academe. Accordingly, a degree of heterodoxy is _essential_, and people whom you disagree with are useful for just this reason.

Mr Holsclaw,

I normally avoid asking for sources, but you will have to provide some if you are to convince me that my personal experience with conservatives on a day-to-day basis, and my extensive reading in conservative circles has somehow missed this support for job discrimination.

Don’t bother. This joker _never_ provides sources, nor does he support his assertions with factual data. If you look over at Dr Holbo’s blog, you’ll note that every single iota of information provided was sourced by me or the Cali lawyer. Puchalsky just bloviates.

Puchalsky,

I developed an argument that liberals oppose discrimination based on “difficult to change characteristics”, and included religion as one of these, since it depends on faith that is not really susceptible to logical argument, and is usually developed in childhood. enthymeme then repeatedly challenged me to prove that conservatism was not a “difficult to change characteristic”, and I replied that I didn’t beleive that it was, but that if it was, it was a valid reason to reject people from academic employment, since closed mindedness about matters of fact and theory is not compatible with academia.

In other words, you could not support your assertion when challenged. Indeed, “you didn’t believe that it was” the case, meaning *you* believe that your own argument was specious. You have no argument and you self-imploded, as you here admit. So what are you complaining about? QED.

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Rich Puchalsky 03.04.04 at 1:41 am

Sebastian, you said precisely nothing (other than yet another Godwin’s Law invocation — what is it with you conservatives)? Once again I ask, who is supporting the attempt to amend the Constitution in order to discriminate against gays, if not conservatives? You don’t get to disavow current efforts of your own political group with a 1984-style claim that they simply aren’t taking place.

“But I can do much better for your side. Evidence that leftists are willing to defend employment discrimination is found by the existance of this very post and its comments. Many in the comments have argued that the discrimination is an affirmative good.”

“Many in the comments have argued that discrimination is an affirmative good” only if “many” is me. Go on, find some others. You’ll see that every other liberal or leftist here has safely and cannily mouthed the proper platitudes about how we should all just get along. Which I agree is probably the best thing for them to do. So they don’t discriminate at all — just as, according to you, blacks aren’t discriminated against at all by conservatives, because the conservatives take care to say that they aren’t doing it.

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enthymeme 03.04.04 at 4:12 am

Sebastian Holsclaw:

And I can say with some confidence that your charge “who really does support all the forms of current *employment* discrimination…” is frankly false. To my knowledge conservatives in the US do not support any type of *employment* discrimination that you mention.

Puchalsky:

Once again I ask, who is supporting the attempt to amend the Constitution in order to discriminate against gays . . .

And the proposed FMA has to do with employment how? Aren’t we talking about *employment* discrimination?

Puchalsky has difficulty reading what other people write, and that’s probably the source of his confusion.

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bryan 03.04.04 at 2:19 pm

‘Everyone has an agenda, more or less. It’s just whether you agree with his or her agenda or not. Where the agenda is irrelevant, there’s nothing to stop you from excluding the creationist biologist on the grounds that his or her work is not up to par – and if s/he does not subscribe to the theory of evolution, which is the bedrock of modern biology, then it is likely that the work won’t be up to par. And you can exclude on that – on the merits.


when you say Everyone has an agenda, more or less
it sounds sort of like you think there might actually be differences between these agendas, some agendas are more and some are less. More or less what, I suggest that they are more or less likely to interfere with the teaching process.
For this reason I would reject them, on the merits, pretty much in any academic field involving science.
As I noted earlier, creationists spend political influence to make sure their literal interpretations of the bible get spread.
One of the main foundations of their interpretation of the bible involves a chronology that is more bible-friendly and I would argue less science-friendly. Time is a pretty important quality in physics as well, and I don’t think a belief in the earth being a few thousand years old, and having been created in 7 days will be likely to make anyone a good physicist.

now you also said:
‘If he’s a physicist who has some odd ideas about evolutionary biology, but is brilliant to a fault in say, experimental condensed matter physics, than why should his oddball ideas be held against him where it is irrelevant?’

Fine enough, however I think it’s clear that one makes rules for excluding people not to get rid of the ones that are brilliant to a fault, but to get rid of the ones that are average to a virtue.
I have no problem making exceptions to my exclusionary policies if I find someone brilliant to a fault, the genius who wants to do research in their field always has a place, and the fact that they believe some stuff that we don’t want them telling students because it will probably not help make those students brilliant to a fault, but only succeed in driving them down from average to a virtue to the less desirable stupid to a waste (the average creationist level) is not especially important in the case of the brilliant researcher, cause we’ll be keeping him away from the students (to a certain extent).

Now as I said earlier my point against the creationist breed of conservative is that they will use the political to push the religious, part of this usage has been shown in the past to be messing around with the content of textbooks to get what is the currently best understood fact to either be described as arguable or left out entirely, this I think makes them unacceptable in an academic environment. If they will do it to the textbook they will do it to the class. Knowledge is strange, one never knows when a bit from one field becomes interesting in another, Coleridge for example in his Biographia Literaria makes mention of an idea commonly accepted by educated folk that men are descended from some lower animal rather than created; I suppose that bit should need to be excised.

This puts me in mind of an anecdote from my own life I mentioned in my first response to this post: in my high school British Literature class the teacher told us that A.D meant After Noah, and B.C meant Before Christ, obviously she was no creationist, but only a fumbling stupid person. I think her conflation of different chronological systems should have been enough to keep her from teaching anyone, on the merits, and I think that a creationist, being just as stupid, but likely not to be fumbling about it but rather organized, should also be kept from, not just academic posts in the sciences, but most academic positions, on the merits.

As John’s original post never exactly managed to specify closer what was meant by conservative in the instance described I argued that it could have been “So in the example given the question was asked if the prospective employee was a conservative, it could very well be that the poor muddle headed liberal, having come to associate conservatism with some awful people he met trying to get mentions of evolution and slavery and whatnot removed from textbooks, and god put in whenever possible, just considered it impossible to hire anyone that was ‘conservative’. If Smith had qualified this conservatism, the nature of which is nowhere satisfactorily explained, by saying “yes, I’m something of a Burkean conservative” it might all have gone rather well”

If however people wish to be taught by the creationist stripe of conservative they can always go to any of the fine institutions of higher learning that discriminate against non magical belief systems, such as BYU, Bob Jones U. or what have you.

P.S: Have I beaten John and enthymeme in the length dept. yet?

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bryan 03.04.04 at 3:51 pm

finally, on the subject of certain types of conservatism and education:

http://www.thetruthforyouth.com/standard/main.htm

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