Horizon

Perhaps you could say a little more about your reservations.

Seems to me that this whole "intellectual diversity" debate, at least where Horowitz is involved, has turned into a very technical (in the sense of relying on technique) rhetorical battle and I think this accounts for Fish's limited and slightly nit-picky essay. Fish is very good at this and not many people have managed to successfully stand up to Horowitz other than him, as far as I have seen.

In any case, I think his ultimate point is strong: that standards based on something called "intellectual diversity" (which, really, is a euphemism for ideological diversity, isn't it?) are bound to be politically exploited whatever anyone's initial intentions. He neatly avoids saying anything that even a blusterer like Horowitz could fly off the handle about, and that is perhaps Fish's most virtuosic move, depriving Horowitz of the righteous outrage that seems to be his and his followers' sole motivation.*

(*If you think that's unfair, and if you haven't already, I would recommend looking around his blog.)

I'll have an article in Vox Clamantis soon about this.

Perhaps you could say a little more about your reservations.

I'll have a think about this (though I want to try to avoid pre-empting the discussion of Post-Ethnic America).

Just as a kick-off; one of the problems with this dispute is that the battleground tends to be misrepresented on both sides. The 'imbalance' in academia is not really one of party politics; although the number of registered Democrats in faculty positions is disproportionately large, I don't think explicit partisanship on party lines is really as big a problem as some people suggest. No, the division is literally academic: one of subjects and methods, and the dichotomy between the 'progressive' and 'conservative' adherents of both - a division which does not neatly translate into Left vs. Right. Academic traditionalists are not, I think, principally concerned about differences over public policy; they are concerned that their areas of interest and modes of study are marginalized by (as they see it) a faddish establishment that turns up its nose at 'antiquarian' approaches.

When universities are largely state-funded, the question of what they will teach inevitably becomes political. We then have the grotesque spectacle of two sides of an ideological battle, each trying to present itself as impartial and its opponent as ideological.

I agree. I was astonished when Horowitz et al produced voter registration records (mostly Democratic at many schools) as proof that political bias was rampant in universities. Considering that H's habitual examples are the actions of obviously very radical left-wing zealots, it always seemed odd and a little desperate to back up his assertions with evidence of a majority of Democrats.

But although the debate within the academy may be about local questions of method, I think that Fish's side is appropriately responding to what they correctly perceive as the very partisan political motives of at least some of those in the "intellectual diversity" movement.

I agree. I was astonished when Horowitz et al produced voter registration records (mostly Democratic at many schools) as proof that political bias was rampant in universities.

Leaving aside the question of active bias per se, I do have to wonder though how healthy it is in the long term for civic institutions like universities to be so misrepresentative of the opinions of the general public. Heck, even undergraduates (who are on the whole more right-of-center than the people who teach them) often seem frustrated by this reality gap. (Much the same complaint could be made of institutions like the army, of course).

I don't think it's ideal, but it's hardly a crisis, hardly worth introducing a standard of ideological diversity (which in practice always seems to mean more people of your own persuasion) into academic hiring decisions.

It's interesting what you say about undergraduates. In Berkeley I would actually say that the situation is reversed. A large portion of the undergraduates at Berkeley are far more leftist than most of the professors. Of course that's just my impression.

You'd think everyone could agree that in a free country it shouldn't matter how or if a professor is registered to vote.

A question to which I truly don't know the answer -- perhaps someone could supply it: when Mr. H announces that he has in his hand a list of members of the Democratic Party, etc., is he listing members of departments whose classes actually study aspects of political opinion, or does he include, for example, computer scientists and musicians?

Could his effort have the effect of politicizing academic fields that are not ordinarily politically inflected?

And how important has this whole kerfuffle become in the academic humanities anyway?

As for the claim about professors being wild-eyed leftists, I'm wondering if this is the same academic establishment that's discussed in this article as being increasingly beholden to military work.

As for the claim about professors being wild-eyed leftists, I'm wondering if this is the same academic establishment that's discussed in this article as being increasingly beholden to military work.

DARPA is really the provenance of science and engineering, however, while the 'bias' debate is (though usually unstated) more about the softer sciences and humanities.

Actually, I have seen H. and others quote voter registration statistics that include departments like Computer Science, where it's hard to imagine exactly what "intellectual diversity" would entail.

This entry from Cliopatra comes close to the point I was trying to make, not very articulately, earlier.

Hm. Yes, the example of Vinay Lal's syllabus is a bit extreme, but is anyone therefore claiming that Lal's problem has something to do with being a Democrat? Or, if diversity is the issue, would it be alright if UCLA had another professor at the same time with a syllabus equally oriented toward the far right? And if that wouldn't help, what does hiring have to do with it?

Honest question: What does the example of Vinay Lal's syllabus really prove, what is the real problem to be solved, and how, exactly, would something like the Academic Bill of Rights address it?

Surely it's a bit dishonest for this writer to refer to Fish's "case against intellectual diversity," when Fish's case is really against the attempt of one non-academic political activist to impose his own program on universities. A casual reader could be led to think that Fish is against the free exchange of divergent views, when in fact that is precisely what he is defending.

Also, I would submit that this article (as is typical in this debate) misrepresents its source. Robert Johnson reports that the syllabus says:

"Though many commentators have unthinkingly rehearsed the cliché that after 9/11 all is changed," Professor Vinay Lal contends, "nothing has changed, insofar as the US remains on course in exercising its ruthless dominance over the rest of the world."

Sounds pretty shocking. The part of the syllabus Mr. Johnson refers to says:

Though many commentators have unthinkingly rehearsed the cliche that after 9/11 all is changed, our other principal text comes from one of the most respected scholars of American history, whose relatively recent inquiry into the meaning of the Vietnam war in American life suggests that nothing has changed, insofar as the US remains on course in exercising its ruthless dominance over the rest of the world.

Doesn't sound nearly so bad to me. He's presenting the part about ruthless dominance as a "suggestion" arrived at in one of the texts to be read for the class. Not a model of impartiality, but I think Johnson's elision is significant and symptomatic of the kind of argument that's surrounded this issue.

Surely it's a bit dishonest for this writer to refer to Fish's "case against intellectual diversity," when Fish's case is really against the attempt of one non-academic political activist to impose his own program on universities.

Well, Fish's article does criticize the notion of intellectual diversity as an end of itself for academia.

A casual reader could be led to think that Fish is against the free exchange of divergent views, when in fact that is precisely what he is defending.

Well .. up to a point, Lord Copper. As Alan H says, Fish appears to be arguing that the free exchange of divergent views is useful as a means to certain ends, but not necessarily valuable as an end in itself.

I think you may be assigning views to Stanley F (who can be an odd bird) that he would not thank you for.

The Lal syllabus is a side issue, and probably not a very important one. This is the part of the article I thought most significant:

My real concern regarding intellectual diversity and the History profession, however, comes in issues relating to the curriculum—where the data is much murkier than political registration (explaining why Horowitz and his ilk have avoided it) but nonetheless suggestive, particularly regarding the small proportion of Americanists specializing in fields perceived as “traditional”: political, diplomatic, legal, and military history.

For an exercise, I’d invite people to take a glance through the 15 courses in post-1865 US history being offered this term at UCLA. I pick UCLA not because it’s atypical—around 20% of its US history faculty have research interests in political, diplomatic, legal, and military history, about the average at large state universities—but because it, alone among departments I have encountered, posts most of its syllabi on the web. Two of the 15—offerings on 20th century American foreign relations and the historical effects of Watergate—address mainstream themes in diplomatic, political, or constitutional history; neither course, ironically, is taught by a full-time member of the department. The department’s survey has readings heavily weighted toward social history, while UCLA also features a gender history course masquerading as an offering in inter-American relations. Ten others are social or cultural history offerings: global feminism; recent African-American urban history; U.S. intellectual history; contemporary American Indian issues; history of the American West; American Indian history since the Civil War; popular culture and society in 20th century America; history of the Chicano peoples; monuments and national identity; and a course called “Introduction to Funk Studies.”

Part of the problem with this debate is that many people are engaging in it for very different reasons. If what we are really trying to talk about here is the lack of courses (history or otherwise) on traditional subjects, then Horowitz's Bill, and the thousands of students complaining about being exposed to left wing points of view in their classes (many of these complaints are, I think, frivolous), are irrelevant, aren't they? As you said, this distinction between traditional and non-traditional subjects does not necessarily have anything to do with political persuasion.

The example of Lal's syllabus (and of Johnson's interpretation of it) may seem like side issues to you, but as far as Horowitz and (many of) his supporters are concerned, this is precisely the problem. Seems to me there is a disconnection between what really angers Horowitz and the solution he is offering, which looks suspicious to me.

I don't think Horowitz's bill is particularly well conceived, no.

Do we know how much Mr. H has to do with this proposal in Colorado that's mentioned at the end of Fish's article?

Just ran across this indignant student newspaper opinion piece about the Colorado bill. Is there anything to the student's claims that it would outlaw moral commentary by teachers of history?

I don't have time to look up the information right now, but I believe there is a direct connection between Horowitz and the Colorado proposal. H. gets around and many of the institutions that back him up, provide his dodgy statistics and crazy anecdotes, etc., are actually controlled in some way by him. He's quite the schemer.

Quite the schemer seems to be apt. I was blown away by his reparations grandstanding, back in 99 and 2000. He published an interesting piece in Salon called something like "10 reasons reparations are a bad idea", with some mildly controversial but levelheaded and respectfully worded arguments. After about six months, he condensed and rephrased these into the most inflammatory version possible and tried to get them run in campus newspapers.

The brilliant thing about this is that he could use bait-and-switch in the resulting outcry to paint himself as a martyr being hounded by campus extremists. There are angry letters written about "whadday cryin for, you got welfare, doncha?", and he presents these as if they were reactions to "if the problem is really poverty, the money would be better spent increasing social spending and funding existing programs".

Simply amazing, and I suspect a very effective fundraising strategy.

Exactly. He's been doing the same thing in this case, but reversed. He recasts his usual inflamatory rhetoric into a wet-noodle, good-citizen plea for diversity and waits to be attacked by opponents who are understandably alarmed by the sort of stuff they see in his magazine and his various organizations' websites.

And as soon as they do, he says, in effect, But the Bill of Rights doesn't say that! Why can't you understand? Are you some kind of raving ideologue? Do you have some kind of hidden agenda?

The perplexing thing is that it seems to work. That amazes me.