Groupthink
Thomas C. Reeves, The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

Mark Bauerlein is an English professor at Emory University and director of research at the National Endowment for the Arts. In the 12 November 2004 issue of The Chronicle Review, he published an interesting piece called Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual. Bauerlein's thesis is recognized easily in the article title: It takes no courage or thought to go with the flow on campus. Indeed, the intellectual life of academia is impoverished when practically all of the humanities and social science faculty follows a lockstep line on any and all topics. The author cites major studies pointing to leftist domination, and he illustrates his thesis with personal experiences.

"Without genuine dissent in the classroom and the committee room, academic life is simply boring," Bauerlein writes. "Panels on issues like Iraq, racism, imperialism, and terrorism that stack the dais provide lots of passion, but little excitement. Syllabi that include the same roster of voices make learning ever more desultory. Add a few rightists, and the debate picks up." In short, intellectual diversity in academia is a good thing for all concerned. Especially for students, I would add.

However laudable the argument, Bauerlein's article contains three flaws that seriously weaken it. In the first place, he interprets conservatism largely as an economic and political system of belief. He laments the absence of such scholars as Friedrich A. von Hayek and Leo Strauss from college reading lists. But he also notes the importance of Thomas Sowell and Gertrude Himmelfarb, observing indirectly that conservatives also deal with race and history. What is slighted is the moral dimension, without which modern conservatism would remain, as it was for many decades, the property of small groups intent merely on keeping government small and taxes low.

The glory of the modern Republican Party is that it has embraced serious Christians and others of religious and traditional conviction who are intent on resisting the assault on faith, family, and country that is the agenda of the Left in our time. The author might have tapped the often formidable bibliographies of those who call themselves conservatives and who care little about tax breaks for industry or slashing welfare costs.

Secondly, Bauerlein contends that in faculty recruiting "blackballing is rare," and that the process of eliminating conservatives from academia commences long before scholars apply for jobs. Whole disciplines have a "political orientation," he contends, that excludes conservatives almost from the beginning of one's graduate training. That point is well taken. But the often subtle blackballing that goes on during the hiring process cannot be dismissed. For forty years I observed the process from the inside and am confident that conservatives are discriminated against routinely and deliberately. Add "Catholic" and "white male" to the description, and the candidate is by definition unemployable on virtually all highly respected campuses, and on most of all the others. This topic cries out for serious research.

Thirdly, the author contends that conservative ideas can't flourish in academia by command. "That would poison the atmosphere and jeopardize the ideals of free inquiry. Leftist bias evolved within the protocols of academic practice (though not without intimidation), and conservative challenges should evolve in the same way." But how are these conservative challenges to be introduced and evolve in an atmosphere owned and operated by their opponents, people who often have very little interest in free inquiry? Only when forced by legislatures, college boards of regents, benefactors, and others on the outside will intellectual diversity be able to flourish on campus. The efforts by David Horowitz to engage state legislators in the fight seem to me to be exactly on target.

I might add that it was good of the people at the Chronicle of Higher Education to publish this piece. It shows an awareness of the ideological restrictions on campus that is too often ignored in establishment publications.

NAS1:40 PM