Vol. 5 No. 4
August 2006
Uncommon Denominator
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything
without losing your
temper or self-confidence."
– Robert
Frost
CONTENTS
Talking Points: A snapshot of American colleges
Wit and Wisdom: Letterman and Stewart
Quoted! An Army sergeant on the
Eye on the Right: Racist publishing
Featured Article: "The
Happenings: Monthly round-up
Endorsements: Nancy Pelosi
Get Involved: Spread the word; become a contributor
The ongoing debates over higher
education in
Fortunately, a new mountain of fresh
data has just come into view. Last week, the Chronicle of Higher Education
released its 2006-7 Almanac of Higher Education, which
provides national and state-by-state data on colleges and universities and
their students, faculty, staff members, and finances. The information
contained in this report allows us to draw some interesting, and well-grounded
conclusions, about the nation’s institutions of higher learning.
The findings of particular interest here
concern the values, attitudes, and political views of faculty and students.
What do they think about the major issues of the day? Is the American professoriat really such a bastion of liberalism, as
conservatives charge? Are students really as apathetic or careerist as some
fear?
The question at the front of the
national debate concerns the political orientation of the faculty, so let’s
address that first. The Chronicle survey, covering almost 41,000
full-time faculty members at both 4-year and 2-year institutions, found that
51% identified themselves as "liberal" or "far left," while
20% identified as "conservative" or "far right" and 29%
identified as "middle of the road." Female professors proved slightly
more liberal than the men, while there was no significant difference between
private and public schools. These statistics are roughly in line with what
previous studied have reported.
Clearly, the numbers indicate that
American faculties are predominantly liberal in orientation, and significantly
more so than the general population. But how should we interpret that?
Conservative critics are waging a political campaign intended to demonstrate,
first, that conservatives have been unfairly frozen out of the academy by their
left-wing counterparts, and second, that the universities have become
incubators for left-wing ideology. Neither claim, in fact, holds much water. In
the first instance, what we should remember is that the vast majority of
universities, by their nature and their mission, are places of free inquiry,
cultural tolerance, intellectual exploration, cosmopolitan values, and secular
standards of scientific investigation: qualities which require and reward a
worldview that happens to accord more closely with political liberalism than
with political conservatism. The comparative scarcity of conservative
professors on college campuses therefore reflects not a conspiracy against them
but their own disconnection from the standards required to succeed in academia.
Moreover, given the fact that for over 30 years, many conservatives have
exploited anti-intellectualism for political gain, nobody should be surprised
if they are not well represented at institutions devoted to intellectual
pursuits. For these reasons, among others, legislators should sharply reject
the movement for an "Academic Bill of Rights," which would mandate a
greater number of political conservatives on university faculties. (For the
most cogent and comprehensive critique of this proposal, see the statement of
the American Association of University Professors at http://www.aaup.org/statements/SpchState/Statements/BillofRights.htm).
In any event, a simple comparison of
liberal and conservative leanings gives only a rough measure of faculty
members’ political attitudes. The Chronicle study includes questions on
specific issues that provided a more detailed portrait. What we find is that
the supposedly liberal professoriat actually holds
views that are consistently middle of the road. Fully
55%, for example, believe that "Western civilization and culture should be
the foundation of the undergraduate curriculum" – an opinion often
associated with political conservatism. Similarly, a bare minority (43%) think
that "the spiritual dimension of faculty members’ lives has no place in
the academy," while a surprisingly high 30% agree that "colleges
should be concerned with facilitating undergraduate students’ spiritual development."
Such numbers suggest that the notion of aggressively irreligious or
anti-Western professoriat does not withstand
scrutiny.
Still, the faculty survey revealed that
political liberalism is alive and well on campus, with majorities endorsing
progressive approaches to specific issues. An overwhelming 90%, for instance,
believe that "a racially/ethnically diverse student body enhances the
educational experience of all students," and 53% agree that "racial
and ethnic diversity should be more strongly reflected in the curriculum."
More importantly, however, the liberalism of professors expressed itself in
terms of the role of the university in society. Higher education is seen more
as a crucial means of promoting the public good than as a way to advance one’s
private interest. Only 30% responded that "the chief benefit of a college
education is that it increases one’s earning power." By contrast, 85%
believe that "colleges should encourage students to be involved in
community-service activities"; 81% think "colleges have a
responsibility to work with their surrounding communities to address local
issues"; and 64% agree that "colleges should be actively involved in
solving social problems."
One sobering statistic deserves mention.
A shocking 41% of the surveyed faculty agreed with the statement that
"most of the students I teach lack the basic skills for college-level
work." This number only confirms something that those in higher education
have long understood – that our country has a long way to go toward providing
good education in the middle-school and high-school years. This is not the
place to get deeply into it, but the pre-college grades have suffered badly
because of a combination of chronic underfunding,
poor teacher training, and cultural factors such as media saturation and, yes,
anti-intellectualism. In light of such statistics, conservatives will point to
the No Child Left Behind Act as a way to raise
scholastic standards. Standards certainly do need to be raised and enforced,
but that can only be done fairly if our society commits to providing the
resources necessary for students to meet those standards.
And what of the
college students themselves? What attitudes and values did they report?
The Chronicle study, which surveyed freshmen at 4-year colleges in Fall 2005, turned up some encouraging trends.
First, the incoming students represented
a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. As we might expect, the middle and
upper-middle classes were well represented; about 44% of students came from
families with incomes between $60,000 and $150,000. About 17% had families
earning more than $150,000, while the remainder, 39%, came from families
earning less than $60,000. In this last category, the incomes were fairly well
distributed across all the brackets, including the "under $10,000"
category. These findings accord with other studies showing expanding
middle-class and working-class access to higher education, and not just at the
community college level, despite the generally increasing divide between
America’s rich and poor. Yet these gains are not necessarily permanent,
particularly given the budget deficits under which state governments continue
to labor, and so we must remain vigilant in preserving the tax-incentives,
low-income scholarships, and financial aid commitments that have allowed an
unprecedented number of American kids to attend college.
Moreover, many of these students plan to
continue their education beyond the baccalaureate. While 24% reported planning
to stop after their bachelor’s, 42% say they want to get a Master’s and 31% say
they want to get a Ph.D., M.D., J.D. or other graduate or professional degree.
And this is where the expansion of access to college reveals its greatest
importance, because it serves as an indispensable gateway to the careers that
will help to shape the future of the country.
In political terms, the 2005 class of
American freshmen was slightly more centrist, at least in how they identify
themselves, than their professors. About 31% identified as liberal or far left;
23% identified as conservative or far right; and 45% identified as middle of
the road.
On specific issues of public policy,
however, the students expressed attitudes that were consistently more liberal
than conservative, suggesting that many, unfortunately, wanted to avoid the
stigmatized "L-word" in favor of "middle of the road."
Their views, however, can hardly be called conservative. Clear majorities think
the federal government should do more to control the sale of handguns (79%);
believe that the federal government is not doing enough to fight environmental
pollution (77%); support a national health-care plan (74%); believe that
dissent is a critical component of the political process (63%); support
same-sex marriage (58%); think that the wealthy should pay more in taxes (58%);
and believe that abortion should remain legal (55%). At the same time, only 34%
thought that military spending should be increased; only 21% thought that
racial discrimination is no longer a problem in America; and only 20% thought
that women’s activities should be limited to home and family.
Moreover, the reasons students reported
going to college were reassuringly broad. Certainly majorities cited the desire
for a good job or financial security. Yet the top reason given for wanting to
attend college was "To learn more about things that interest me"
(78%), while 65% wanted "To gain a general education and appreciation of
ideas" and 52% wanted "To find my purpose in life." As for
"essential" or "very important" objectives, sizable numbers
of students cited "Helping others who are in difficulty" (66%),
"Improving my understanding of other countries and cultures" (49%),
and "Developing a meaningful philosophy of life" (45%), along with a
variety of other communally oriented or socially responsible goals.
The picture that emerges is of a
generation that seems realistic in its understanding of college’s importance to
financial security and the fulfillment of personal ambitions, but also idealistic
in its larger perspective on things. How important it is, then, to have faculty
who can encourage that idealism! Three decades of conservative efforts to
undermine higher education have taken their toll, but the signs remain
promising.
"
"Let’s
also begin tonight with quick updates on two men with that have more in common
than you might think. Each is an outspoken defender of his religion. Each
embroiled in heated negotiations. And each is tiny [on screen: Tom Cruise and
Iranian Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad].
The difference, of course, is only one denies the Holocaust ever happened. The
other simply believes the galactic overlord Xenu flew
humans to Earth in DC-8s and then hydrogen-bombed them into volcanoes. What's
next for the two men? Well, Cruise will be soon heading up his own independent
production company, while Ahmadinejad will soon have
a nuclear weapon." – Jon Stewart
"No one
wants to be here [in
"If you’re
not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin,"
– U.S. Representative Katherine Harris (R-Fla.),
Florida’s Secretary of State during the 2000 election crisis and a current
Senate candidate, as quoted in the Florida Baptist Witness.
Ever since the Republican Party, in the
1960s, embraced the "Southern strategy" of appealing to middle-class
and working-class whites opposed to the Civil Rights Movement, modern
conservatives have had something of a race problem. That problem is Anglo
Christian bigotry. Certainly, high-profile conservative leaders have made of
point of eschewing racial language and denouncing overt prejudice. Political
prudence explains this, to a degree, but so does, in many cases, a genuinely
enlightened egalitarianism. The conservative "race problem," however,
continues to reveal itself in two primary areas. First, there’s the fact that
conservative economic policies have been hard on the lower income brackets and
therefore disproportionately hard on African Americans. Moreover, the
hard-right proposals on immigration reform in the House of Representatives
promise to be equally hard on Latinos. Second, there’s the occasional
embarrassing comment or episode which serves as a reminder of the dark
association between conservative politics and racial intolerance. Mel Gibson’s
anti-semitic tirade and George Allen’s insulting
remark directed at an Indian campaign worker are just the most recent examples
of this.
A less remarked area of conservative
racial politics is the fringe of white Christian bigots (or self-styled
"nationalist-racialists") who have developed something of a cottage
publishing industry for their work. With a few shady scholars in their ranks,
or claimed as fellow travelers, and a growing list of quasi-academic books to
their credit, the white racialist movement aspires toward intellectual and
social respectability. Their "scholarship" tends to dress itself up
as a courageous effort to get the truth out in the face of oppressive political
correctness, but once you start poking around in the stuff, it’s like exploring
the recesses of a long-neglected refrigerator: All sorts of anaerobic, foul,
vaguely connected rottings turn up.
One of the more malignant publishing
houses is a place called New Century Books, which works under the aegis of the
New Century Foundation in
The dead give-away to the fundamentally
disreputable nature of the new racist scholarship is the fact that its
practitioners form a kind of closed loop, a tight-knit cadre, praising and
publishing each other’s work, and not responsive to the professional standards
of the broader academic community (which they disingenuously dismiss as
ideological standards). Jared Taylor and Philippe Rushton
provide blurbs for Michael Levin’s Why Race Matters (New Century Books,
2005; orig. Praeger 1997); Rushton,
Levin, Sam Francis, and other usual suspects contribute essays to
The publisher Praeger,
in addition to Levin’s Why Race Matters, is responsible for a number of
other malignant offerings, including Lynn’s Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration
in Modern Populations (1996) and Eugenics: A Reassessment (2001),
and MacDonald’s "Culture of Critique" trilogy: A People That Shall
Dwell Alone: Judaism As a Group Evolutionary Strategy, With Diaspora Peoples
(1994; Writers Club Press, 2002); Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an
Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (1998; Authorhouse,
2003); and The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish
Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements
(1998; Authorhouse, 2002). Praeger
does have in print a number of legitimate titles, but perhaps it found the
possible profits from this work on race irresistible
Kevin MacDonald is actually a borderline
case, and deserves a bit more discussion. One of the more visible figures in
this motley crew, MacDonald is a full professor of psychology at Cal State Long
Beach, whose respectable work is in child development, and whose more recent
work he presents as evolutionary psychology applied to group behavior in
Judaism. The drift of much of his work is to "explain" anti-semitism as simply a normal reaction to such Jewish
"traits" as "hyperethnocentrism"
or "aggressiveness," rather than as the scapegoating
of a vulnerable population. In Separation and Its Discontents, for
example, MacDonald defines anti-semitism as
"negative attitudes or behavior directed at Jews because of their group
membership" – a strange definition that places causal responsibility for
this bigotry on its targets. Combined with his testimony on behalf of holocaust
denier David Irving, in
Even if MacDonald, as he claims, is not
anti-semitic, then he certainly has a lot of
explaining to do when it comes to Understanding Jewish Influence: A Study in
Ethnic Activism (Washington Summit Books, 2004), a collection (introduced
by Sam Francis) of three essays previously published in Occidental Quarterly.
The book, which tries to argue that "the current situation in the
Moreover, MacDonald knew who he was
publishing with, and when one looks into Washington Summit Books and the Occidental
Quarterly, it becomes hard to believe either his proclamations of scholarly
seriousness or his disavowals of racist intent. Washington Summit Books, which
lists only a P.O. Box in
Occidental Quarterly, meanwhile,
is an openly national-racialist "journal" that claims to have emerged
from "paleoconservatism" and rejects the
politics of neoconservatism. The journal holds that
"The political and personal freedoms of the American order—including our
rights of free expression and association—are in jeopardy from ethnic and
ideological enemies and must be preserved." And who would those enemies
be? Immigrants and Jews. In its statement of
principles from 2003, OQ calls for European-only immigration to
This dreary survey of some of the
fox-holes of Anglo Christian bigotry could go on much longer, but for now,
there’s just one other outfit that needs to be identified. AuthorHouse,
which has reprinted MacDonald’s work, published Robert Griffin’s One Sheaf,
One Vine: Racially Conscious White Americans Talk About Race (2003), and
lent its name to much other suspect work, is not a serious publisher. It allows
authors to self-publish whatever they want, printing their books and helping
distribute them to retail outlets, including Amazon. In the absence of quality
control, any old crackpot can get published there, and so all sorts of weird
crap has ended up on their list. Vanity publishing may
be harmless when it comes to novels or memoirs, but beware the social sciences
section, since these are the books that pretend to have truth value. An array
of forces – from blogs to anti-elitism – is at work today eroding the concept
of professional gatekeepers. That may have some salutary benefits, but we
should also be clearly aware of its potential costs, one of which is the
greater ease with which bigots can present their work as legitimate.
The nineteenth century left us a legacy
of intellectualized, professionalized racism that cynically invokes the
language of enlightenment, free inquiry, and rational tolerance, in the
interest of demonizing particular ethnic or religious groups. We’ve come a long
way since then, but there’s still a long way to go. While it may be tempting to
ignore the new racist publishing, or dismiss it as harmless, such a response
would be folly. The new racial scholarship must always be resisted, identified
for what it is, and not allowed to disguise itself.
The following is an excerpt from André Glucksmann’s
"The Jerusalem Syndrome," which appears in the August 10, 2006
issue of Sign and Sight.
"The outrage of so many outraged
people outrages me. On the scales of world opinion, some Muslim corpses are light
as a feather, and others weigh tonnes. Two measures,
two weights. The daily terrorist attacks on civilians in
"Perhaps the reason why the deaths
in
Read the whole article at http://www.signandsight.com/features/894.html.
Op-Ed – Senior Writer Ian Finseth’s
commentary "Frederick Douglass and the Legacy of Mount Misery" was published
in the Baltimore Sun on Sunday, August 20. Noting that Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld now owns (as a weekend
retreat) the house where Douglass first began his climb out of slavery, the
essay calls for the estate to be made available to the public as a monument or
museum.
Yahoo News – CI Fellow Dave Johnson, who has been contributing
regularly to the Huffington Post, has been featured
in the opinion section of Yahoo News. His article "Just Get Rid of
Government?", which appeared August 14, is online
at news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20060814/cm_huffpost/027180
"In these
challenging times, we need an advocacy think tank like Commonweal Institute to
communicate our principles and programs in ways that will resonate with the
broad public and empower citizens to take a more active role in our democracy.
Commonweal takes a strategic approach to advancing issues in a way that will
help decision-makers be proactive in confronting the challenges of the
future." – Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-San
Francisco, 8th CD-CA, Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives.
If you agree
with Nancy Pelosi (see above), there are a number of ways you can help the
Commonweal Institute achieve its goals.
Right now, as
you read, you can simply forward the Uncommon Denominator to
friends and family who might be interested in learning about the Commonweal
Institute. Getting the word out is crucial.
You can also join
our network of donors building the Commonweal Institute. Your
tax-deductible contribution is vital to making the Commonweal Institute an
effective organization. $100 would help so much! Even a contribution of $10 or
$20 will make a difference because there are so many moderates and
progressives. Click
here to contribute online. Or call 650-854-9796. Your support is essential.
© 2006 The Commonweal Institute
To subscribe to this free
newsletter, send a blank message to: ci-newsletter-subscribe@svpal.org.
– or –
To subscribe at an email address
other than your regular one, go to http://mailman.svpal.org/mailman/listinfo/ci-newsletter,
and then enter your name and email address and click on "Subscribe."
Privacy Policy: The Commonweal Institute does not share subscriber
information with any other organization or individuals.
Commonweal Institute
650-854-9796 (voice), 650-854-8132 (fax)