Berube: The Talking Dog Interview

Far behind on my reading, I still gotten to my review of What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? In the meantime, Michael has an interesting interview chez the Talking Dog, which is particularly relevant in light of the most recent embarrassment to befall the hapless David Horowitz. Michael’s point here is, I think, particularly important:

It’s important to attend to how the shell game is played, first. The fact that liberals outnumber conservatives on campus– by a ratio of roughly 2.6 to 1– is indisputable. What the culture-war right derives from this fact, however, are two highly disputable conclusions: one, that the ratio can be explained only by active collusion among liberals (note that Horowitz makes this suggestion in the NRO interview)– a belief that, in my opinion not only expresses a good deal of right-wing projection but also provides convenient cover for the fact in the arts and humanities as well as in some of the sciences, there simply aren’t very many smart young conservatives in the academic-market pipeline to begin with. (In other words, it allows them to say, “well, we would be more numerous on campus– we’re simply told that we’re not wanted.”) Two, that this preponderance of campus liberals actively discriminates against conservative students as well as potential conservative colleagues. As I note in the book, this second charge– the most incendiary one, for most parents, alumni, trustees, legislators, and bystanders– is supported by exceptionally weak and anecdotal evidence, much of it provided by students themselves in an almost comically self-undermining manner. The first charge is something I take more seriously, because, as I argue in the book, domination of certain academic fields– like mine– by liberals is good neither for those fields nor for liberals. (I can’t believe that conservatives are complaining about a dispensation in which they run the country and we teach the American Novel survey.)

So because Horowitz has almost no evidence about anyone’s actual classroom behavior, he goes after the public statements of professors instead. (Which also means, by the way, that when he says he doesn’t do this, he is lying.) And he does so partly because he has nothing to bring to the table when it comes to serious discussions about classroom matters, and partly because it’s a convenient way for him to attack people like me and Gitlin– and Navasky, and Eric Foner, as liberal-leftists at large. I might add, under this heading, that Horowitz has exceptionally thin skin and takes perceived slights very personally, so some of the entries in his book– like his attacks on a handful of notable black scholars– stem from nothing more than an unhealthy obsession or two.

This distinction isn’t made often enough. The objection to Horowitz’s argument is not that it’s wrong to say that there are more liberals than conservatives in academia, which isn’t any more surprising than the fact that there are more conservatives than liberals among Fortune 500 executives. The problem is that this doesn’t, in and of itself, constitute evidence of systematic bias in hiring or treatment of students, and on the narrower but more important issues the evidence of alleged bias is thin-to-non-existent.