An excellent article. Critical thought is not well-served by a lack of viewpoint diversity in higher education. There may be whole swathes of opinion and perspectives which students will never encounter during their study due to sectarian, territorial and ideological teaching. Recruitment processes which lead to ideological conformity need looking at.
‘Defenders of an employment status quo typically move from finding that there is little discrimination to a claim that any differences are the result of underlying group attributes. Many scholars who are repelled by such claims in the case of racial minorities are remarkably comfortable making them when it comes to conservatives. Some make the case that conservatives are, to put it bluntly, stupider than those to their left. A more sophisticated argument is that while raw mental ability may not explain the absence of conservatives in academe, conservatives are — almost by definition — lacking in the psychological characteristics that predict high achievement in academic subjects, such as openness to experience and a willingness to question received understandings. Conservatives are, after all, biased toward conserving knowledge, whereas academe tends to reserve its laurels for creative, conceptually path-breaking producers of new knowledge.
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First, academic institutions seeking to create greater ideological balance among their faculty members would be wise to send visible, credible signals that they are not discriminating against conservatives. The more public these signals are, and the more costly they are to send, the more credible they will be. If academic leaders were to go to places where young, intellectually oriented conservatives are found (such as the numerous summer programs run by the American Enterprise Institute, the Hertog Foundation, Hudson Institute, and others) and make clear that their institutions want (indeed, need) them to be part of their intellectual community, that could make a difference. While academic leaders should not directly involve themselves in graduate admissions and training, it is wholly within their purview to ask their departments and schools to reach out to potential applicants who are likely to have right-leaning beliefs, and to ensure that their graduate-training culture is not ideologically exclusionary.
Second, if this model is correct, it suggests that conservatives themselves have an important role to play in addressing their own absence from academe. When conservatives complain — with some merit — about discrimination in higher education, they need to be aware that young people are listening. To some degree, the belief that the social sciences and humanities are profoundly discriminatory has become a feature of conservative identity. Even if that belief were true (and I think, in a simple sense, it is not), there are real costs to encouraging young people to believe it.’
#POV
The university’s ideological narrowing has advanced so far that even liberal institutionalists — faculty who believe universities should be places of intellectual pluralism and adhere to the traditional academic norms of merit and free inquiry — are in decline.
Political science professor Steven Teles explores how this has come to be and what can be done about it.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
https://ow.ly/5cGn50SLQ52
President, NADOHE - Equity, Inclusion, Dismantling Systemic Racism consulting and advising
1moExactly! Thank you elevating this article, the research, and the role diversity professionals play in advancing strategies that support student success.