How Not to Fix Higher Education
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The National Association of Scholars is investigating whether liberal professors are disproportionately assigning liberal texts in their classes. Writes Peter Wood at NRO:
We … want to be above reproach in building lists of authors and works of comparable importance in their respective traditions. The final lists may include both high-brow and mass-market authors, as long as they are suitable for college curricula, and provided the mix is the same in all categories.
“Provided the mix is the same in all categories” — there’s the rub. NAS wants to show that liberal books are being assigned disproportionately, but what if liberal books are disproportionately “suitable for college curricula,” while conservative books are more likely to be written by “mass-market authors”? Consider the tentative list Wood provides:
John Rawls, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, J. S. Mill, J.-J. Rousseau, Howard Zinn, Robert Nozick, Ayn Rand, Russell Kirk, Paulo Freire, C. Wright Mills, Ludwig von Mises, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Oakeshott, Eric Voegelin, Albert Jay Nock, Reinhold Niebuhr, Charles Reich, Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davis, Alasdair MacIntyre, William F. Buckley, Barbara Ehrenreich, Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, John Kenneth Galbraith, Charles Taylor, F.A. Hayek . . . Who is missing?
Try to imagine whether some of these books can reasonably be expected to qualify for inclusion in an undergraduate course. The question here is not whether these books are worth reading, nor even whether they are better or worse in an overall sense than things that might be assigned. I’m second to none in my admiration of Nock, but how would you even classify his work? He’s not an economist, not a political theorist (even Frank Chodorov thought Nock’s politics derivative, which is mostly true). The only context in which I could imagine an undergraduate being assigned his work is in a class on early 20th-century literature or politics. But Nock called himself a “superfluous man” for a reason — he’s not a representative 20th-century writer, not even among conservatives. This is not a criticism of his worth, but an objective judgment about his place in the Western canon. Few enough undergraduate courses might assign John Reed or Edmund Wilson, both of whom are more important than Nock for understanding the 20th-century mind.
Bill Buckley? One might include him in a course as an example of mainstream 20th-century conservative writing. But Buckley was not at all a scholar or theorist; he was a journalist. Not a lot of journalists who flourished in the mid-20th century are assigned in undergraduate courses these days — liberal Murray Kempton is even less likely to make the cut than conservative Buckley.
Eric Voegelin was a scholar who made lasting contributions to his field. Yet here the bias is not a political one: most university philosophy departments are devoted to analytic philosophy. Voegelin was not an analytic philosopher. Rawls, on the other hand, was, and a very important one at that. Nozick qualifies, but he’s had less influence on his profession than Rawls; in an undergraduate survey one would expect more Rawls than Nozick, quite apart from any question of political bias. Oakeshott too is somewhat out of the mainstream for his field for reasons that have little to do with politics. He’s certainly appropriate for an upper-level undergraduate course but probably not for a survey, and again one would expect much more Rawls.
Burke should, and in my experience does, make the cut for intellectual history surveys that also tackle Rousseau, Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Marx (depending on how one periodizes the survey). Even here, one would expect less of Burke than, say, Rousseau, again for conventional reasons — Rousseau and his epigones were more of a driving force in the late 18th and into the 19th century. And as worthwhile as European reactionaries such as Bonald and Maistre are, it would make little sense to assign them in a survey course in place of the likes of Paine or Wollstonecraft.
I’m giving a lot of weight to academic convention, but even if you oppose the conventional canon — if, like me, you think that Oakeshott is more profound than Rawls — you still have to be familiar with the intellectual center of gravity within a given field. Are philosophy departments also exhibiting liberal bias by assigning John Locke but not Robert Filmer?
NAS’s project smacks of nothing so much as attempts of left-wing grievance groups to show that there’s a bias in the canon against blacks, women, and homosexuals. There is a sliver of truth to the complaints on all sides, and a little good to be achieved by being more inclusive, but at root some books are just more important than others. The right way to reform the canon, it seems to me, is by carefully showing that individual overlooked works or authors make contributions to their fields as significant as those of more established names. Putting serious thinkers into crude categories and then demanding some ratio of every group be taught amounts to just another kind of political correctness.
Filed under: academia
You discuss the project on its merits, but I think it’s a bit much to say that this is just identity politics reversed for conservatives. Taking a survey of assigned ‘liberal’ texts is not mandating an equal conservative voice, at least not how I read the request by NAS.
The central problem is that students are intellectually corralled into a singular way of looking at critical events in history. Major debates and discussions are ignored, so much so that in the students I run into, even many otherwise well versed in the particulars of history, have no idea that there were counter-Enlightenment thinkers, that there were anti-Federalists.
Which isn’t to take away from your expert analysis of the value of many of these authors, but it is to say that the wrong that NAS is trying to correct is a very real one, and the documenting of assigned books is a good first step to addressing major problems in the academy. Most conservatives aren’t focused on the battles in the classroom, opting instead for trite displays of dime-store patriotism, ‘mass market author’ speakers on sunday, and ‘panels’ that discuss slightly controversial ideas while still genuflecting to the altars of ‘tolerance’ ‘diversity’ and all that other junk.
So, turn off the TAC conservative movement critical theory for a moment and appreciate that the small step that this is, can ultimately promote a real good: encouraging center-right ideas, principles, philosophy and history where they are so often purged.
The NAS has been existed since the late 80’s and has accomplish remarkably little. They are neoconservative and timid at the same time. In my experience, they exist so that they may continue to exist and that is all. A weak reed indeed.
“Are philosophy departments also exhibiting liberal bias by assigning John Locke but not Robert Filmer?”
RESPECT FILMER! My ghost is still writing at Conservative Times ya’ know.
I agree with Thomas that NAS tends to be neoconish. Much more so than ISI which plays a delicate balancing act.
No disrespect intended! I have a somewhat Patriarcha inspired piece in the new issue of the print mag, in fact.
As someone who teaches political theory at a small liberal arts college in the northeast, I am naturally interested in this discussion. Frankly, I rarely recognize my field or colleagues in most conservative accounts of higher ed. Take my own courses. My department head asked me to teach an intro section of International Relations this semester. The main reading assignment will be Joseph Nye’s IR textbook. Does that make me a Harvard liberal? It’s a student-friendly text that covers the basics – but, yes, I could have assigned a more conservative text. For shame! I’m also teaching a course on Conservative Political Thought. The assigned authors include Burke, Oakeshott, Hayek, Friedman, and a bit of Smith and Hume. Shouldn’t a self-described conservative be teaching this course?! NAS staffers could easily find something to complain about in almost any program.
And Kent, the 15 undergraduates you reach are likely not reflective of the 15 million others out there.
Giving NAS, neocons or not, the ability to compile book lists and compare the findings is valuable information. TAC has become the refuge of fuddy-duddy conservatism that snubs its nose, now, at anything conservative. Let’s remember who our opponents are, and it’s not those who are seeking to push more conservative thoughts. Soros couldn’t buy better dissent than what you five have already voiced.
Let’s take the easiest example, as MIT has recently, bravely, decided to post their curriculum online:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm#History
The link is to the history offerings. Obviously, MIT is not known for history, but it’s the easiest example. Look at their courses, look at the unique offerings. Are they giving students a well-rounded picture? Even within the specific courses, are they assigning texts that match the coursework?
Leftist professors have operated in an information vacuum for decades, they have indoctrinated without opposition.
You may find that your college or field of interest has no deficiencies, and is taught perfectly. More likely, though, I think one will be shocked at the results.
We shouldn’t pooh-pooh NAS before they make their lists, before they compare the booklists, and we should keep perspective of who the real political opposition is, and isn’t.
Ben, my post made the point that there are considerations other than political bias that might skew what books are assigned in classes. Political bias is real enough, but this doesn’t seem like a particularly sensible way to measure it. On the contrary, this seems like an experiment whose results have been determined in advance. We’ll see, though. Peter Wood is an honest scholar and a good man, and he’s not a neoconservative, so perhaps NAS will do better than I expect. But if we want to take scholarship seriously and not just be political hacks, we need to take account of more than just the nefarious biases of the Left — they’re real but they’re not the whole story.