House of Eratosthenes

Imagine, if you can, that slightly more than half of the public voted Democratic in the last presidential election, yet some 80 percent of higher education’s social scientists voted Republican. In that universe, you would expect the left to demand changes in university hiring practices so academia would nurture greater diversity so as to better represent the American community.

Then step back into the real world, where academia has become a solid bastion of the left, as demonstrated by two articles in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Current Review. One article presents a survey of academic social scientists showing 79.6 percent of 1,208 respondents said they voted mostly Democratic over the last 10 years, with 9.3 percent voting Republican. Call that a near monopoly marketplace of ideas.

A second article studied the voter registration of California college professors and found the ratio of registered Democrats to Republicans (among professors located in voting registers) is 5-1.
:
“I think, partly, it is self-selection,” said [Mr. Daniel B. Klein, George Mason University] over the phone Wednesday. He sees “something about intellectuals and hubris and conceit” in academia — with political scientists pumping themselves up as savvy saviors of a public sorely in need of their enlightened views. While liberal professors often think they are open-minded, Mr. Klein believes they also often think “we’re smarter” than those outside academia and have a right to “discriminate against people who get it wrong.”

How do we get to this point? The academia strives to be the place where ideas reign freely, and by the time the academic mind is done torturing itself it is the very symbol of a mind made up, and sealed shut tight.

Is it something in the building? The insulation between the walls, perhaps? Liberalism itself?

I think not. It’s the desire to be open-minded, for no higher purpose than to be simply that and nothing more. The endeavor is the antithesis of itself.

Think it through. You want to be open-minded, and so, pursuing some sort of discipline you come to conclusion X. Your ego is not invested in X, perhaps, but certainly you have invested substantial energy in the discipline that led you to X. Obviously, those who come to a different conclusion, !X, must not have followed the same discipline since if they did follow it, they would believe X just as you do. So they must follow a different discipline.

Is the other discipline as open-minded as yours, moreso, or less so? Your own discipline must be quite useless if someone else can follow an equally open-minded discipline, and come to the conclusion of !X, so your ego takes over here and rules out the first of those options. Just as quickly, and perhaps quicker, the second option is eliminated for the same reason; so by process of elimination, you come to evaluate other disciplines — disciplines you can’t even see — by the conclusions they reach. Ergo, all those who believe !X, must not be as open-minded as you are. Your ego says this is the case, and of course the ego demands, by its very nature, exemption from inspection.

You are open-minded, you believe X, and all those who believe !X are closed-minded. Again, you ego kicks in to support what logic cannot and will not: all those around you who likewise believe X, must be as open-minded as you. And so the last piece is in place. You can gauge the open-mindedness of all sentient and articulate beings, based on their professed beliefs on the question of X. It becomes a litmus test.

I’m sure to the uninitiated, that all looks pretty silly. Well, try this. Debate an academic-minded liberal, and they aren’t too hard to find, on global warming. If you happen to agree with the academic-type on the issue, then take the devil’s-advocate approach.

Or if that’s too tough, pursue the same exercise on intelligent design.

Or capital punishment.

Or stem cell research.

Or gun control.

Or weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Just don’t forget to show true open-mindedness. And keep your eyes peeled…how much open-mindedness is returned from the other side? How much consideration-of-both-sides do you get, before the “closed-minded” label is stuck on your forehead, simply because of the ideas you pretend to advance? Try it. You might learn something.

Anyway, that’s my explanation for how those who make the most noise about being “open-minded,” are the quickest and most competent at becoming anything but. As to why they end up liberal, in our academic circles and in the print media, I suppose that’s a story for another day.

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people say at my academic institution that an “educated person” can come to only one conclusion. Right now that conclusion has to be that the liberals are right and conservatives are wrong. Any conclusion contrary to that, well there’s something wrong with you. Most of these people consider themselves to be scientists, but when I hear things like that their scientific credibility goes right out the window.

Recently some of these “scientists” had a little symposium about war. As an amateur military historian I was attracted to this. Then I read what the speakers were going to talk about, and I never went. No science here, the topics revolved around how to protest against American wars, how to impeach George Bush, the evils of capitalism, and the real “truth” behind the Iraq War.

Lockjaw
- Lockjaw45 | 08/09/2006 @ 08:52

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What Is Open-Mindedness, Anyway?Tuesday, August 8th, 2006

What Is Open-Mindedness, Anyway?
Tuesday, August 8th, 2006