Well, me and everyone like me.
As I understand the conservative "revolution," about 30 or 40 years ago there was a broad movement to start getting Republicans elected to school boards and other local offices, in order to cultivate a hothouse of new seedling candidates ready to advance up the trellis of state and local government. (Metaphor too heavy-handed?) It was enormously successful. Eisenhower railed against the creation of the military-industrial complex; even Nixon was one of the most environmentally-progressive presidents we've ever had. And yet these views would seem far left today, when the Republican party is dominated by ultra-conservatives. More important, the (federal) government is dominated by the Republican party, with the executive and both houses of Congress in conservative hands. Even the Supreme Court is being pushed toward the conservative.
I think we can call their governmental strategy a success.
During this period, conservatives began to organize think tanks that could package their ideas into parsimonious visions to guide the movement. This gave them intellectual traction.
In the late 80s, we saw the first incursion into the media, as hard-right blowhards started to occupy the radio dial and create a following of folks concerned about the country and previously confounded by the complexity of political discussion. That early presence, of course, exploded in the 90s, reaching its zenith with the ascendance of Fox News and other networks' rush (no pun) to install imitators.
A crucial element of the conservative strategy in media has been its vociferous complaint that the media are stridently and unswervingly leftist. Books have been written and advocacy groups founded to highlight the instances of "liberal bias." And this has been phenomenally effective in two ways: first, of course, it creates public skepticism about anything reported by media that didn't bear the seal of approval. No longer should we believe what's told to us by NBC or CNN or (gasp!) the New York Times. So we are left rudderless in the effort to gauge truth, or even reliable reporting.
More insidiously, it caused members of the media themselves to second-guess their coverage and to bend over backwards to demonstrate a lack of liberal bias. As such, I contend, it facilitated the rise in conservative bias. The run-up to the Iraq War was perhaps the most vivid (and egregious) example of the media's failure to do anything resembling their job, as they tumbled over themselves to avoid seeming to challenge the president and his conservative views.
I will acknowledge that the media have recently shown signs of life again. But it's really too late. We now have a vast populace of people who do not evaluate news or knowledge based on science, fact, quality of reporting, or even their own independent investigation of what is reported. Instead, we have people who identify with a particular opinionist, and accept everything he says without question. This means that any dissenting view is immediately rejected, and it is rejected as a matter of rejecting the source--the person offering it--rather than the content of what is said. There is no weighing the relative merits of different views. Instead, if Rush says I shouldn't believe it, well hell, I don't.
Doesn't this seem a fantastic argument? I am literally suggesting that people do not think at all in any critical manner, but instead could be manipulated as blatantly as in 1984. Yes, I am saying that. I see this in my students. I have these people among my own family and closer acquaintances. And I know of others who have them, as well.
OK, I'm getting there. Now that government and the media are all sewn up (and I don't think we needed to question whether "the church" would climb on board--what's shocking is how much the conservatives even court churches with traditionally unsympathetic congregants), it is time to move to...
...the universities. David Horowitz, oddly appealing-looking for someone for whom I have great antipathy, is releasing a book guaranteed to make my job title the new slander against Liberal Elites: The Professors. (Think "the trial attorneys," "the media"... .)
I first became aware of the new targeting of universities last year, with the coincidence of the Ward Churchill story and a bill in the Colorado Legislature to impose sanctions on professors who were keeping conservative viewpoints out of the classroom. News coverage at the time (will link when possible) quoted students saying that they were disturbed by having to listen to material that they did not like in semi-required classes. (Rejoinder: if you don't like hearing it and I say it, that is not bias. If there is science and reason to back up statements made in a classroom setting, that is not necessarily bias. Too many conservatives want to create a Fox News-like cocoon around their entire lives, and not be threatened by mere exposure to a different worldview. Here's an example of the type.)
Horowitz is energetic. His fingerprints are all over this movement. And his latest touch came in the LA Times, which published his opinion piece promoting bills for "academic freedom"--which, essentially, establish the legislative foundation for taking outside control of universities through legal action.
As evidence that there is a problem requiring such legal redress, he offers the following:
...the one-sided nature of university faculties has now been the subject of several academic studies. A 2003 study by professor Daniel Klein of Santa Clara University, for instance, found that around the country Democrats outnumbered Republicans about 30 to 1 in the field of anthropology, about 28 to 1 in sociology, and about 7 to 1 in political science.
Another study, conducted by professors at Smith College, the University of Toronto and George Mason University, looked at data from a large national sample of professors and found that professors of English who identified themselves as leaning left outnumbered their conservative-leaning colleagues by 30 to 1; professors of political science by 40 to 1; and professors of history by 8 to 1.
These are the only actual data provided. So we are to assume that the imbalance in numbers is sufficient to create raging bias in classrooms. First, this presumes that no one can identify with a political orientation and not suffuse all their activities with that orientation. Second, this presumes that the professors in question were politically identified first, and then went into academia to proselytize. What about the alternative hypothesis that academic work, with its emphasis on empiricism and logic, tends to lead to conclusions more associated with liberal politics? In psychology, certainly, the field is ruled by the scientific method. And while individual politics may, I agree, influence the questions studied and the methods chosen for the study, we simply see over and over that the results of our studies do not comport with an ideologically conservative view of the world. Many of us identify as "liberal" simply because that is the political group that recognizes what our science suggests is more accurate.
(Of course, science itself is so under attack now that I recognize why this is no defense in the eyes of conservatives.)
The same week that Horowitz's piece appeared, we saw an article about a new organization that is looking for examples of leftist teaching at UCLA. (A targeted professor responds here.) The group was paying current students to turn in taped lectures and incriminating information about professors seen as too liberal, and these were in turn posted on the group's website. (I won't link to it here because I don't want to increase its impact counts, but the group name is "Bruin Alumni Association" for those who want to google.) nb, the kid heading this venture used to work with--you guessed it--David Horowitz.
In short, the conservatives have done an exceptional job of shaping and maintaining the American public's view of reality. The government and right-wing media provide a seamless story about truth. Unfortunately, science and education have continued to emphasize empirical inquiry and the ascendancy of reliability and validity, not ideology, as tests of truth. So now science and education must be brought in line. That's why I am the next target.
1 comment:
Yours is a stunning depiction of the problem. But what is the solution? It seems to me you're saying there is none, and I think I agree. The conservatives are just too good at what they do, and the American public too vulnerable to their manipulations. So do we just lay down our swords?
-George W. Bush, President of the United States of America
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