Confusing Parties with Ideas: Overwrought Fears about Academic Leftists

-
Pope Center analyst George Leef again proves that ideological fear-mongering using political party identification as a surrogate for actual arguments is just silly. See Leef's essay, "College Faculties are Mostly Leftist and Becoming More So." I post my response here:




Anyone who thinks that Democrats are by definition "left of center" suffers from a rather pronounced form of partisan tribalism. My very long experience in the academy suggests that most professors, both Democrats and Republicans, are conservative and liberal centrists, and that there are precious few who can be described as "leftists" or "rightists".


As for the claim that only 8% of economists believe in "free market principles," I suspect that is because economists actually understand what free market principles are, and they know that they don't really work in practice. Market economies are most productive and most innovative when government policies are targeted in ways that encourage innovation and productivity. The arguments among 92% of economists is over what that mix of policies entails -- not about whether "free enterprise" is a viable economic theory. (The conceptual and philosophical confusions in paragraph 9 are howlers).
What economists (and many of those who work in other disciplines) also know is that most people who (perhaps like George Leef?) say they support "free markets" usually confuse a handful of platitudes ("less regulation!", "privatize government activities!") with free market principles. On closer examination, it almost always turns out that "free market" means "the government should allow me do the things I like, but don't take away government support for the things I know to be essential public goods, but don't fit in my ideological rants, you know, like, central banking, child labor laws, minimum wages, police and fire protection, federal investment in agriculture and industrial research, federal and state tax breaks for industries, a robust military, etc. etc."). This isn't about free enterprise at all: it is just another mix of government policies, call it "Leefism," that is paraded under the banner of "free enterprise."
The test of course is that Leef and others at the Pope Center are perfectly happy with all kinds of government interventions in the Marketplace of Ideas when the ideological "products" they sell can't compete in the rough and tumble world of intellectual competition. And in fact for every "leftist outrage" on campuses, there are plenty of neo-liberal activities that Leef and others support (like, for example, 95% of what goes on in Business Schools?). That's why so much of what passes for analysis at the Pope Center turns out to be little more than ad hominem attacks informed by ham-handed categories of differentiation. As difficult as this may be to believe, it is simply not true that everyone who disagrees with the odd concatenation of themes and positions articulated at the Pope Center is a flaming leftist. Some of us are conservatives, too -- and, believe it or not, we don't always vote Republican.
Party tribes are not organized for philosophical consistency; if they were, George Leef might be tarred as a white supremacist or white nationalist because there are neo-fascists who vote Republican. Of course he isn't, but neither is every Democrat a Maoist or Marxist-Leninist, or even a democratic socialist. Analysis informed by sloppy categories doesn't prove much except the categories have been badly conceptualized.

Popular posts from this blog

-
  The Right Changes for UNC Steven Bachenheimer and Stephen Leonard The UNC Strategic Planning process has always been an occasion to recommit ourselves to the ideals for which public higher education in North Carolina was established. Today, it appears to have become the occasion for implementing radical changes favored by a handful of individuals in the state legislature, on the UNC Board of Governors, and in various Washington and Raleigh think tanks. Against all evidence to the contrary, and against the long and venerable tradition that has made public higher education in North Carolina a model for the nation and the world, the changes being promoted suggest that the widely available, broadly accessible, and readily affordable system of higher education we have is an extravagance North Carolina does not need. For example, Board of Governors member Fred Eshelman, described by pundits at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy as “leading the charge” for radical change,
Read more

How Not to Cogitate on Disciplinary Identity

-
Image
  Alex Contarino once again demonstrates why history and facts are critically important things for talking about the academy -- and especially when cogitating about the state of the academic disciplines. There is something odd about contemporary (so-called) conservative attitudes toward history: they are all for understanding the past, but they always interpret the past in presentist terms.  Lamenting the absence of "balance" in UNC Chapel Hill Economics courses, Contarino makes the all-too-common student mistake of confusing their myopic experiences in college with an authoritative view of what universities -- and especially big, complicated research universities like Chapel Hill -- have to offer. Apparently blinkered by his aversion to courses in the other social disciplines, Contarino takes the Economic faculty to task for not teaching what he wants. What he should have been doing is looking for what he wants in other departments, and if he doesn't like the partic
Read more

The Silent Sam settlement snafu

-
Image
The conflicts over the Silent Sam settlement are all over the place, and this posting will have to be updated later on, but it is worth remembering a couple fundamental governance points about this issue. First: while the Legislature and the BoG have lawful authority here, in this case both the cause of these difficulties and their resolution entail unlawful (and arguably unconstitutional) acts of failure on the part of the BoG. I will be brief.         The initial failing is that the Board did not sue the legislature for remedy when the monuments legislation (NCGS 100) was enacted. The purpose of the enacting legislation for the University and the authority of the Board (NCGS 116) is to enable the realization of the  education provisions of the NC Constitution (NC Constitution Article IX) and by legal precedent the equal protection provisions of the US Constitution (14th Amendment). By failing to remove the confederate monument the BoG followed NCGS 100 and did not protect t
Read more