PROFESSOR Ward Churchill, until recently the chairman of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, came under fire this month for spouting some grotesquely insipid remarks about America's relationship to terrorism. In condemning American economic and foreign policy, he referred to the civilian victims of the World Trade Center attacks as "little Eichmanns" -- a callous reference to the infamous war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who planned and oversaw the extermination of millions of Jews in Nazi Germany. Churchill also gushed about the "gallant sacrifices" of Al Qaeda's "combat teams," leaving most of us to scratch our heads in bemusement at how such a morally crass dimwit ever managed to get a chairmanship at a major university.
But as much as we would like to write off these demented ramblings as the products of a single man, such quick dismissal is sadly unwarranted. We must face the harsh reality that Churchill's venomous outburst is only a symptom of the pallor of uniformity and intellectual laziness that have come to pervade practical political discourse in academia today.
It's no secret that our nation's university faculties teeter farther to the left than a gang of drunken pirates in a westerly cross-wind. Among humanities and social sciences professors at Churchill's own University of Colorado, one survey calculated the liberal-to-conservative ratio at around 32 to 1. Further studies have suggested, and common sense confirms, that similar disproportionalities faithfully recur in academic departments and new tenure lists throughout the country.
This means that as our universities spend millions of hours obsessing over "diversity" in terms of skin color, their faculties are becoming more and more ideologically homogenous. Over time this trend will lead us inexorably toward a future of placid campuses in which everyone might look different but most people will think the same.
At any institution that prizes the life of the mind, this conformity of political opinion is harmful for everyone involved. Most obviously, students are deprived of vital learning experience by failing to hear arguments given with equal force and conviction from both sides of the political divide. But liberal students and professors can also suffer by sinking into a sort of ideological complacency, with few antagonists around to challenge their views. This might be comforting in the short term but, as John Stuart Mill most famously observed, unchallenged opinions quickly languish.
On top of this, professors in monolithically liberal academic departments often seem adversely affected by what legal philosopher Cass Sunstein, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, has called "the law of group polarization." This law operates when small contingents of isolated and like-minded people positively reinforce one another's convergent opinions, free from external criticism. As a result of such insular interaction, the shared views of such groups tend to become more and more extreme, as Churchill's case nicely illustrates.
Predictably, though, leftist professors have not been at a loss for lame excuses and dubious rationalizations of academia's slanted status quo. Just last semester, two of our very own anthropology professors, Lise Dobrin and Ira Bashkow, wrote a letter to The Cavalier Daily claiming that the dearth of conservatives in academia can be explained by the fact that "academics become politically liberal in the course of immersing themselves in the pursuit of knowledge and the practice of critical inquiry." They further contended that, "Because university faculty are less likely to be misinformed, they are also less likely to support a political agenda that depends on such falsehoods for its legitimacy."
Such nonsense exhibits a classic triumvirate of immaturity, pretension and defensiveness. It is a basic part of growing up to realize that intelligent people can reasonably disagree with you on the views and values that you hold most dear. It may be reassuring to sneer at your political rivals and dismiss them all as ignorant or dishonest, but to do so is almost always an act of callow self-deception.
By flattering themselves with the platitude that true critical inquiry can only support their side of the political spectrum, it is all too easy for Dobrin and Bashkow to rationalize away the orthodoxy of thought that they help to maintain in their ivory tower. Here, like Churchill, our dear professors could benefit greatly from some candid exposure to just a few of our nation's many thoughtful conservative scholars.
Yet today's problems of academic bias and extremism cannot and should not be solved with heavy-handed censorship programs or hiring preferences for conservatives. In the interest of open debate, free speech protections must be vigorously upheld, even for Churchill's despicable ilk. And, as always, if our colleges are to shine as brightly as possible, faculty must be hired and fired solely on the merits of their scholarship.
This means, however, that universities must be more vigilant to ensure that conservative scholars are not discriminated against in hiring and tenure procedures. Allegations of such discrimination abound, and they should be treated with utter seriousness. After all, it is incredibly naïve to suggest that the huge ideological imbalance in today's professoriate can be entirely explained away with the condescending quip that conservatives are simply too stupid or too disinterested to pursue academic careers. Now, if only naiveté weren't so wildly fashionable in higher education these days.
Anthony Dick's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at adick@cavalierdaily.com.
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