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[Forums Moderator]

Conservative advocacy groups regularly accuse colleges of left-wing indoctrination, while many academics call political conservatives anti-intellectual. But at the state level the relationship between public colleges and political conservatism is more complex -- and perhaps friendlier -- than most people think. Is that simply a result of effective public relations? Or are administrators at those colleges playing it safe by steering clear of policies that might annoy lawmakers? Do liberal faculty members in conservative states feel stifled? And what happens when a conservative college finds itself in a liberal state?
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[Mark Lusk-faculty-Oregon State]

I used to work at the University of Georgia and I did not find it to be a particularly liberal place. Athens is certainly more cosmopolitan that the rest of Georgia and the students at UGA are among the nation's smartest. That many in Georgia describe the university as liberal just shows you how far to the right the state's residents are. The nation has drifted so far to the right that a place that is full of bright and talented thinking people is automatically suspect. A key element of contemporary American conservatism is its deep anti-intellectualism.

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[Reality Check]

 "A key element of contemporary American conservatism is its deep anti-intellectualism."



Mark, can you spot the irony in this statement?

[Randy, uemployed edcuator]

Sirs:

Having graduated from UGA, I am certain that the
issues are not conservative/liberal there.  I take
great pride in the fact that our students, especially
political science majors, embrace political issues
as republicans, democrats, or independents.

As I see it,  the topic entices respondents
to accept the political alignments of british
or other parlimentry entities. Why would one
want to do that?   Is there incremental pressure
led by who knows who to change our political
and/or governmental system to who knows
what?

By the way,  the campaign sign waving in the
photo was probably not meant to be allowed
at Georgia games.  That banner  was probably
just a publicity stunt or something instigatory.  

Most "dawg" fans respect the rights of all
to enjoy good athletic competition and a
convivial atmosphere without intrusion of
partisan politics. However, I do admit that
pre-game and post-game "politics in the
parking lot" are a tradition as old as the
Georgia-Auburn rivalry.

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[Colorado]

 This is a problem in Colorado as well.  The Boulder campus in particular is intensely hated by the right-wing powers that be in our state. The campus took 75 million in budget cuts in the last few years and cut about 500 faculty and staff positions. Now the campus wants to raise tuition to a mere $4500 for in- state students. (And they can pay at least some of this tuition with a voucher program that the Republicans created.) The governor and his appointees respond to this by calling  the campus a bloated bureaucracy. They've refused to tell the public the truth, which is that higher education is expensive and someone has to pay for it.  If the state isn't going to pay for it, then the students pay for it.  They also don't mention that in-state students are heavily subsidized by wealthy out-of-state students.

The university has certainly  brought many of its public relations problems on itself in the past year, in has been very defensive in dealing with the media frenzy that surrounded the University. But the hostility was there long before that.  As a result, the  regents' and administration's decisions have been motivated more by these political realities than by a desire to be a great university.  For example, they just hired a Republican politician (who has  some academic experience) to be interim president, and some regents want him to stay permanently without undertaking a serious national search.  Maybe this Republican is indeed the best person for the job, but he was not hired for his potential to lead the University academically. The priorities of the regents seem clear: politics is a higher priority than excellence.  Because of the Ward Churchill situation, the administration has undertaken a review of tenure and promotion processes.   They freely admit that the time and money spent on this is the result of political pressure: If the university doesn't undertake such a review itself, the state legislature will.  Churchill may indeed be a fraud, but there is a very simple reason he was given tenure: he had written numerous books, was a popular teacher, and the allegations that he was a fraud had not yet emerged.  It's that simple, and it is common sense.   There's no need to undertakd an extensive review process to determine that! And, instead of hiring someone from a peer University, or a university system that we want to emulate (Michigan, California, etc.)  to head the committee and determine whether our standards meet the national standards, they hired a retired general who was well known in the state to chair this committee! Other than political clout, I don't know what his qualifications are. Yes, the political pressures faced by universities in red states are real, and, at least in Colorado, detrimental. (And in case spies from Gov. Owens' office are reading this, I'm not writing it on a university computer, nor am I connected to the Internet through the university's dial-up service! Just try to nail me for exercising my right to free speech! I will have the ACLU all over you. Yes, I am paranoid,  for reasons that those in blue States cannot begin to imagine!)

[Randy (seasonal park guide)]

In the article and in responses the terms red states/
blue states, conservative/liberal keep appearing.  In
regard to political activity on campuses, we should
not even be talking republican/democrat, etc.

Campus administrations should be concerned with
"permissive/non-permissive" attitudes.  Are political
efforts disrupting or intruding on events or gatherings
that others have a genuine non-partisan reason to
attend?  If one chooses to allow those with ulterior
motives and selfish tact to gain undue attention at
campus activities, I say that that is the choice of a
"permissive" administrator.  Some are able to infringe
on the rights of others by the inaction of the uncaring.  

Conversely, if an administrator exercises
reasonable restraint of political detractions,
then he or she could be said to be "non-permissive."   Perhaps our school leaders need to try to be "less permissive" for a while.   Such a change in attitude
will probably allow social and political activities at
institutions to flourish as displays of "extreme"
partisanship lessen.

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[history anon]

As a red-state Democrat, I have to say that, thankfully, there are still plenty of intelligent, principled conservatives who value education, and sympathetic Republicans can be a college's best friends--they're well connected, wealthy, and can usually stave off the worst effects of the anti-intellectualism of the troglodytes in their party.   I teach at a public liberal arts college that has a well-deserved reputation for liberalism, but most of our most important benefactors and advocates at the state level have been conservative Republicans.   They like us because they recognize the quality of the education we provide, the national recognition that we bring to the state through the awards our students and faculty win, and not a few of them have had children or grandchildren graduate here.   Colleges need to look beyond the red-blue divide in their alliance-building, and stress the positive things we have to offer.

[Reality Check]

"(And in case spies from Gov. Owens' office are reading this, I'm not writing it on a university computer, nor am I connected to the Internet through the university's dial-up service! Just try to nail me for exercising my right to free speech! I will have the ACLU all over you. Yes, I am paranoid, for reasons that those in blue States cannot begin to imagine!)"



Yes indeed, you are very, very, very, very paranoid. I guess you missed that part of the Churchill review where even the most stupid and uninformed remarks he made were deemed constitutionally protected? Sheesh. Hysterical paranoia doesn't help anything, and it certainly doesn't advance any mature exchange about public universities' accountability to the taxpayers that fund them.

[Kurtis/Student]

This conversation wouldn't happening if there were no tax payer funded "public education" in the first place.

[Colorado]

I was exaggerating the paranoia a bit for dramatic effect, and it was something of a joke. I don't really believe that Owens will come after me for posting that, but it isn't unrealistic to think that they would want to know if I was using the University's computer, or even that they would investigate to find out. No, of course I didn't miss that part, or any part, of the Churchill review. You had to go out of your way to miss it if you were anywhere near the Boulder campus. Yes, they decided Churchill's "stupid and uninformed" remarks (most folks can agree that they were so)  were protected, but in fact they had to undertake an extensive review lasting several weeks to determine that the first amendment did indeed apply in this case! And there was absolute panic when they realized they couldn't find all the loyalty oaths we had signed when they hired us because they were misfiled somewhere. These things are bound to create a climate of paranoia.  Personally I am glad I work in a field that is completely unthreatening to Owens's appointees. I can almost assure you that if Churchill were not tenured the university would have found a reason to cancel his courses, effectively firing him, all the while denying that that was their reason for doing so. Of course Churchill didn't do any favors for the University in its public relations efforts, but generally academic freedom doesn't become an issue when speech is uncontroversial.

History anon, I wish that the moderate Republicans you describe were the ones with the power here. I'm not opposed to moderate Republicans, and have even voted for a few!

[Douglas Lewis]

"Churchill may indeed be a fraud, but there is a very simple reason he was given tenure: he had written numerous books, was a popular teacher, and the allegations that he was a fraud had not yet emerged. "

If this is a fair assessment, we now know what tenure investigations have no chance of uncovering.

[Lola Butcher]

Hi--I'm a reporter in Kansas City, Mo., trying to learn whether any state universities have been or are in process of being privatized or removed from state university system. This seems somewhat on point with the discussion thread....can anyone point me to good sources of information? Thanks in advance for any leads.
Lola Butcher

[Midwest Liberal Arts]

A few schools come to mind:

UMass, the flagship school of the Mass system has flirted with this idea for a number of years.  The Presidents problems (he is the brother of a mobster....seriously) has slowed this.  

Miami of Ohio is in a never, never land on this topic.  

U Michigan...again, looking at the idea.  

Citidell and VMI both studied the idea and decided against it.  Realize, their consideration was driven by the forced integration of the schools.  

I imagine I will think of a few more as well.


FYI, the other big trend is this area is already private colleges going completely private.  That is, following the Hillsdale model and refusing any government assistance of anykind.  The book "God on the Quad" has some brief comments on this issue and might lead you to a place to look at this topic.  

As the KC Star ever ended its hardcore anti-Catholism?  Has a repuation for being a real No-Nothing Paper.  Is it still?

Midwest Liberal Arts

[senior professor]

The conservative taxpayers wind up paying the salaries of leftist-american-hating professors who spit on everything this country was founded on.

Don't think so?  Ever heard of ward churchill???

[concerned grad student]

I certainly agree with Randy that administrators should not allow activities that disrupt academic discourse on campus to proceed; free speech must mean free speech for those with whom we disagree.  However, unfortunately Randy's entry is deeply flawed, because disruptive behavior is only a small part of the current problems at our universities.

Randy hopes to abolish talk of partisanship from the debate about appropriate expression on campuses, writing, "In regard to political activity on campuses, we should not even be talking republican/ democrat, etc."  This formulation fails to understand the serious problem of politicization that already exists on our campuses.    

Recent statistics have shown that faculty members in the arts and sciences on U.S. campuses are overwhelmingly on the left of the political spectrum.  I would argue that the effects of this imbalance are very harmful and concern even many of us who are liberal. Many classes and institutionally sponsored panel events on campuses across the country are presenting partisan perspectives when current political issues are raised.  In addition, as many students have testified, some faculty members are using the classroom for political persuasion.  Those who raise policy issues for discussion are sometimes constricting the range of views discussed in a partisan manner.  Institutionally sponsored campus panel events often skew to the left or far-left, meaning that students are being denied a chance to hear the full range of reasonable arguments on a number of important issues; frequently omitted views include conservative and pro-Israel ones.

Randy's solution is ultimately no solution at all, for by forbidding the discussison of "conservative" and "liberal" on campus, he would take away the means of conservatives to complain about their exclusion from the campus discourse.  The 50% of the U.S. population who are Republicans have reason to be concerned that institutions are often not presenting their good arguments when political debates are raised.  Not only is the campus marketplace of ideas impoverished at present by the exclusion of good conservative arguments, but I believe that conservative graduate students are at a strong disadvantage in many fields.  In my experience they often won't find like-minded professors with whom to work.  I also think that the current faculty imbalance affects graduate admission and funding decisions.  And as Mark Bauerlein has recently argued, some classes and sub-fields are grounded on partisan (left or far-left) assumptions, and so some classes will appeal almost entirely to those on the left.  

I wonder if Randy has met any of the many conservatives who speak of having had their academic careers cut short by the political bias of their academic colleagues.  For such people, Randy's effort to allow academic "politics as usual" to proceed with no serious changes would be both superficial and grossly unjust.  

It is becoming increasingly clear that intellectual diversity is needed on our campuses to include worthy people and ideas who are currently excluded from campuses.