As some here may know, my "day job" involves exposing an increasingly anti-American, and anti-Enlightenment cult within academia. I recently took part in an informal project that, in part, compared academia to the blogosphere. We analyzed the results of Google searches on the internet sites of the top 100 colleges and universities in the nation, wanting to observe how frequently the word "diversity" came up, in comparison to the more conventional ideological and political terms: "liberty", "freedom", "equality", and "democracy". We figured this would give us a rough idea of how preoccupied academia has become with some of the faddish counter-enlightenment concepts of the "left of the left" that Howard Dean seems to think will soon redefine politics in America.
And since we wanted to see how academia measured up against the rest of the society we conducted the same search engine analysis for a number of other institutional sectors: political parties, trade unions, business associations, churches, mainstream media, and the blogosphere. Although this wasn't a rigorous analysis, what we found was surprisingly consistent and provocative.
The findings are summarized in this press release and detailed in the report: Words to Live By: How Diversity Trumps Freedom on University Websites.
What might be of special interest to the blogosphere is that even if we include both the left and right hemispheres of the "new media", bloggers are still less enthralled by the diversity mantra than is any other sector, with the possible exception of the electoral committees of the political parties. In other words "diversity", although it enthralls academics, doesn't seem to have much appeal for sectors of the society that have any kind of direct accountability to the public. The more accountable, the less likely they are to refer to such terms of art.
Again, I don't want to characterize this as a "slam dunk" indictment of academia. Rather, it supports a robust hypothesis that inspires further analysis. But if these findings are born out then the academy has drifted pretty far from the main stream of society, and they'd better start giving some thought to how they're going to find their way back, before they end up permanently in the wilderness, awaiting their own version of the second coming.
What Does Academia Celebrate on Independence Day?
At our house, having sent both the kids to sleepaway camp the previous day. Whether that means we go to the fireworks or stay home and create our own hasn't been decided.
"As some here may know, my "day job" involves exposing an increasingly anti-American, and anti-Enlightenment cult within academia. "
Wow, Scott. I can see your conspiracy theories are not just limited to Liberals and politics.
What is laughable is your pretense of applying academic methods to an unscientific (and foolish) hypothesis. You're promoting anecdotes and selective sampling as providing "robust" support for your kooky ideas.
My only coment is that you should have paid a lot more attention in science class.
I'll bet you are believer in "Intelligent Design" also, right? Agnostic about Global Warming?
Michael Berube destroyed you in the last exchange you engaged on this subject. My suggestion to you is to keep fighting this foolish War against Rationality among like minded syncophants, because if you have to justify your crazy conspiracy theories to rigorous thinkers, they'll be exposed, like every other purveyor of similar nonsense has been in the past.
What is this, logical fallacy day Walter? Did you have a rebuttal to the analysis or did you just want to get your trollish digs in and then wait for someone else to do all the dirty work of actually reading the report and commenting on its content.
This kind of knee-jerk reactionary commenting is something that I thought only the Bush-bot defenders engaged in. Am I rite?
Walter's:
I should think that if you intended to make a point about method you'd do so by saying something specific, instead of just railing on. So what's your point, that in reality academia isn't more enthralled with multi-culti than, say, the rest of the nation?
As for Berube, as usual it's a matter in your mind of who starts out as politically correct, not who has the better argument. Berube claims partly that academia isn't profoundly biased toward the left, or (the fallback) that if it is it's just natural. I'm surprised he doesn't just claim (as AAUP implied recently) that they're more left-leaning because, well... they're just smarter than everyone else. I mean isn't that basically what you believe? Seriously, now?
The results of this informal Google canvass were actually quite robust. You'd know that if you read the report. For instance there were only a handful of school (3 actually) that didn't have more references to diversity than to "liberty," and less than a third actually had more references to "freedom." The latter term has a lot of meanings that are rather iconic, or that don't refer to ideology at all. Still, it simply doesn't compete with "diversity". That's not the case with any other sector, and it's rarely the case with any other organization.
Finally, there are plenty of rigorously statistical studies demonstrating the bias of academe (see Stan Rothman). You seem to be able to dismiss those with a waive of your hand, so your reaction here isn't much of a surprise.
Again, this is an informal rather than a rigorous study. The basic assumption is that the number of hits for an ideologically tinged word will have some relationship to the fascination for it's underlying concept. Where this isn't the case (for instance, where "diversity" refers to bio-diversity, or something) we acknowledge the limitation. But over all of the institutions canvassed the basic assumption is rather robust.
And, of course, it's also simply common sense.
OK Andrew, though you're an academic you're not academia. There are two things one can probably say with a good deal of confidence about July 4th celebrations by academics: 1. There are certainly some who will celebrate enthusiastically; but 2. most will not.
I'm surprised he doesn't just claim (as AAUP implied recently) that they're more left-leaning because, well... they're just smarter than everyone else.
I wish I had a dime for every time I've heard this BS argument. It usually does no good to bring up such right wing morons as WB Yeats, TS Eliot, Alisdair MacIntyre, Aristotle, or Edmund Burke (to name a few right off the top of my head). But I suppose someone determined to wear his or her goofy politics as a badge of moral and intellectual superiority will do so in the face of any facts.
Demosophist
I don't believe that your claim can be validated in regards to the celebration of July 4th and Academics within Academia. Most = 51% or greater, by my cursory glance at your paper, I didn't get the impression that you could draw this type of conclusion.
I think there is a valid point in making the distinction between the professorship within a school and the Administration which tends to make policy and put out literature about the institution.
A common sense position would be to say that Freedom is a given within the United States, same with Democracy and Liberty and Diversity, all of which are hallmarks of the US population and general national culture and ideology. Colleges promote “diversity” in because they believe that it is a core factor in learning, while they may not promote Freedom, Democracy or Liberty because those things are taken for granted as part by the citizenry as undisputed aspects of our culture.
One more thing, I'm not sure the terms used to make the comparison are necessarily similar in their contexts. Comparing "liberty" and "democracy" which are similar in concept is valid, buy comparing "diversity" and "democracy" doesn't appear to hold much in common. If anything, I would think this is where your piece fails to persuade.
My first hand experiences within the Academic world have colored my perceptions of course, and I do believe there to be a very strong liberal bias in nearly all learning institutions, but I don’t think your paper bolsters this hypothesis.
AJL: TMI
Scott said: "I should think that if you intended to make a point about method you'd do so by saying something specific, instead of just railing on. "
I guess you missed it in my post, somehow, so here it is again:
"You're promoting anecdotes and selective sampling as providing "robust" support for your kooky ideas."
Scott also said: "I mean isn't that basically what you believe? Seriously, now?"
My reply: I believe that if academia leans "left" politically, it is insignificant to the profession. For example, no one has, to my knowledge, ever demonstrated how it harms the Chemistry, Biology, or even Geology/Climatology professions that practictioners voted for Bush, Kerry, or Lyndon Larouche for that matter.
But I'm pretty sure you already think you know the answer to your own question, and will continue to mount baseless attacks against a phantom enemy/problem. That's just what Right Wing Republicans do.
I agree that the paper doesn't support it, and I might be wrong. I guess it depends on what one means by "enthusiastically celebrate". Moreover, a lot of the celebration is just attending parties, and lord knows academics do enough of that. I guess I'd have more empirical confidence in the notion that fewer would celebrate, by any definition, than is typical for Americans as a whole. So, good point.
Part of this argument has occurred to me; that is, the notion that they don't mention it even though they support it because they just take it for granted. There's almost certainly some truth to that. But (a big but) they're educators, so they can't assume that taking something for granted means that their charges are educated about that topic. If they did that, they'd not be very good at their craft.
But more to the point, if you take a closer look at those "diversity" hits, you'll find that they dispute the core aspects of the culture plenty.
Besidse, if they believe "diversity" is a core factor in learning that's certainly not because there's any evidence for such a claim. Rothman and Lipset wrote a fairly convincing paper on that topic. There's no evidence that "diversity" has any relationship at all to performance.
I'm not sure what you mean by "context" in this sense. They're both words with ideologically-tinged meaning. If there tend to be more programmatic instances of "diversity" because there are more diversity "programs" then that still says a great deal about what academia holds dear. And of all times in history where there might be some attention paid to these core concepts of liberty, freedom and democracy, now is the time.
Finally, you'll note that in general the least popular of all the terms is "equality." This suggests that equality is being replaced by diversity as a lexigraphic icon of the left, and that alone is quite significant. By the way, diversity references vastly outscore references to "academic freedom". You'd think there might be a program devoted to academic freedom here and there in academia, after all.
Well and finally, you just don't see this pattern in any other sector of the society. At least not yet.
Walter's:
I'm sorry, but I still don't see anything substantive in your argument. But just to clear the air a little, it's perfectly acceptable to use what you call "anecdotes", especially if there are enough of them, to build a case for a robust hypothesis. Typically this is what an ethnographic study does. But we do go beyond anecdotes, to actually count references to the terms. And we're using "selective samply" only the sense that we've sampled the top 100 universities. So your point is that only the better universities in the country are fascinated by multi-culti, and we're just not giving the lesser schools a chance to show their patriotic stuff?
For the life of me I can't figure out what your answer has to do with my question. But as a practical matter the impact of bias is a separate issue. The point here is that the educational mandate is being systematically violated by these instutitions, as you can tell by simply going to their websites and reading what they, themselves, say about their own activism and advocacy.
So, are they just smarter than the rest of us, or what?
Actually I'm not a Republican. I've been a Democrat most of my life, except for a brief stint as a Republican in Oregon so that I could vote against Denny Smith in a primary. And I'm not "right wing" either, unless it's in relation to what's now typical in academia. Nor are my attacks "baseless", both because I'm not making baseless accusations and because they're not necessarily attacks. My concern is that there's so little cognizance of the extremity that academia has placed itself in that when the inevitable reckoning comes the baby will get tossed out with the bath.
Walter's,
Ideology does matter in scientific fields to the degree that it plays into decisions on what research to conduct, fund, and publish. Research into IQ and gender differences, for example, are highly affected by ideology, particularly racial activism in the former case and feminism in the latter. But even assuming ideology played no part in science departments, those are not the only departments on campus. In the arts, humanities, philosophy and social sciences, diversity of point of view is both necessary and desirable but sadly lacking in the current academic climate.
#12
Well then it is inaccurate to use the all-encompassing term "academia" to describe this alleged problem, isn't it?
Sigh...
Walter's:
Go to almost any Sociology Department in the country and you can read numerous mission statements to the effect that they intend to introduce more gender parity in the sciences, and intend to influence the very practice of method in such a way that it's more "diversity friendly."
Let me reiterate, in case you missed that. They think proper method in the natural sciences demands and requires advocacy.
And, well... they're serious. That's what the Summers bruhaha was all about.
So the bottom line is that they don't agree with you. They think ideology is very important to science, and they want to ensure that it's their ideology that has the influence.
Interesting methodology there. And it gave me an idea.
Why not apply the same methodology to Winds of Change posts? As you may have noticed, I sadly believe that WOC has moved from a serious blog of intelligent writers discussing mainly foreign policy and defense issues, to a partisan political blog pretending to be serious about foreign policy issues.
And since we have a nifty search engine for WOC that will even exclude comments and concentrate just on posts, I think we could duplicate the methodology of your "study" here.
So, on to the results!
First a search among posts only for the word Moonbat. Now, you'd expect to find a lot of comments using this phrase, but surely there's no reason for a serious non partisan post on foreign policy or defense to use such a silly phrase right?
Sadly, apparantly there is. The search returns 26 separate posts that included the word. I guess it's hard to resist.
OK, how about another search. Let's try the opposite derisive term "wingnut". Surely we could expect similar results. Unfortunately no. The search returned exactly half the number of posts (for those keeping score that's 13).
Then again, this is all pretty silly right?
With your day job, I hope you are familiar with www.frontpagemag.com for assistance with your research. They are a valuable resource; I appreciate their efforts in this area.
Scott;
Since you've already done the "research", can you please provide a few links to natural science departments that use such phrases in the context you claim. Should be pretty trivial for you to do this.
I have an associate who teaches Politics who is at a funeral right now, but who I'll point here asap. He studies ideology, and has composed what he calls "the LEO test," using very similar tools.
He hasn't managed to computerize it yet, which is a darned shame, but I believe that in the last few years, simply by working with word choice, he has only failed once to predict the testee's presidential votes, and what's more, the reasoning behind it. He'd probably be a valuable sounding board, given that experience.
Being a grad student/future academic, I want you to know that my wife and I have decided to stop celebrating July 4th, as 'freedom' and 'democracy' only represses the poor and needy.
Instead, we now celbrate the birth of Karl Marx on May 5th. This year we celebrated with 2-buck chuck from Trader Joe's and Tofu dogs, and some beer from a local microbrew (they only use organic hops, and pay above minimum wage). As the night waned on, we formed a crying circle for the dying earth, with particular mention for the dying ozone layer and the frogs of the rainforest.
Our guilt freed, we began a long chant to the ghosts of darwin, in which we instilled our Lord to crush the lesser christian gods (but we prayeded for the hindus and muslims, after all they make great restaurants around our universities). We started a fire and burned the fragments of our ancestors, a small monkey, a rat, and a dinosaur bone stolen from our paleontology department.
Finally we had a big orgy, where we shared both male and females without discrimination.
I mean really, how can the 4th of July compete with that?
Russ:
Thanks. It'd certainly be helpful get some perspective on the semiotics.
Walter's:
I'm inclined to just ignore you, since you clearly don't even bother to read what I write. But I said Sociology Departments pretty clearly. Mostly women's and gender studies, attempting to impact the way natural science and other disciplines conduct their research. I think there's a reference to a "women in science" program in the study. Should be a trivial matter for you to look it up yourself. There's even a link there, as I recall.
And there's the rather dramatic flap created by Nancy Hopkins from MIT, who contracted a bad case of the vapors when Summers mentioned the possibility that there might be more men at the top of the distribution in science than women (as well as more men at the bottom, which is the way variance works). I'm sure I don't have to look that up for you.
There are also a number of natural science departments that specifically promote "gender equity." I didn't use those in the piece, but Colorado University comes to mind. (Might be mistaken about that reference.) And here's an article by Richard Zare, Chair of the Dept. of Chemistry at Stanford. He has apparently "taken the gender equity pledge" so he's right in the back pocket of those gender studies departments I referred to, in case you think they aren't having an impact.
Well I've read 13 mission statements from sociology departments of major universities so far. No luck yet.
Should I keep looking or do you have an example handy? Especially in reference to "intend to influence the very practice of method in such a way that it's more "diversity friendly." "
Davebo:
Because it's an individual organization, and not an entire sector. If you're going to study an individual circumstance sociographics (sometimes called ethnographics due to its origin in the study of ethnicity) is probably the way you should go. Assuming you were serious, and you know how to conduct an ethnographic study, of course.
As for your observations about WoC, well we're pretty much what we've always been. Trent was always sorta conservative, for instance. Maybe we just look conservative to you now because of your angle of view? If there are changes it's pretty much in response to the fact that the world itself is changing. And, you know... that's the name of the blog. Maybe you should just "go with the flow", or something?
Alchemist:
Hence the name, right?
OK, Scott, we get it: you won't provide support for your claims because there aren't any.
From the "top 100" universities (please define your ranking methodology).
And is it only Sociology Departments that were considered in the "analysis"?
By falling back on the old "you do the google search" canard, you're endangering your entire argument because you cannot easily supply the links to the pages and statements you claim exist.
Yes, I can waste my time looking into this myself, but it's your claim, allegedly backed up by your research, which you're posting here. So it's important for you to define what you mean clearly.
Here's your big chance to argue your case with a skeptic. This is something every scientist and professor who publishes studies is used to doing.
You ignore this challenge at your own peril.
Otherwise, a word for this type of behaviour come to mind, and it's "lying".
Is not the burden of proof on the claimant? It is generaly held in scientific circles, that claimants who wish to reject an established claim are obliged to explain why their rejection should be accepted.
He made his methodology available in the report, now if you believe his results to be bogus, the burden of proof is upon you to make your case.
If its "a waste of your time" then it must not warrant your attention.
Wow 10 seconds worth of work yeilds so much if only one would try:
Illinois State
Vassar
University of Florida
University of Alabama
University of Kansas
Thats only a few out of the 10,200,000 hits I got for :social sciences college mission statement diversity
Very interesting. I had to confirm it with my own little sample, chosen for idiosyncratic reasons.
The theory that diversity makes education work better is obviously false, else why would both boys and girls perform better in single-sex classrooms? But the fact that a theory is preposterous cannot stop it from being implemented throughout all of academe by a sufficiently committed and ideologically united cadre of ed-school graduates. And so with divestment from Israel, and Global Warming...
Anyhow... Some of my measurements revisited schools you tested, though the numbers appear to have changed since your survey. For instance, Auburn must have made major changes to its website. And the University of Alabama, not in the USN&WR Top 100 ranking, and recovering from a tradition of very public bigotry, has amazingly high diversity/liberty and diversity/freedom ratios.
Ohio State University
12.24 5.9 18.67 12.41
Bryn Mawr
27.42 1.52 33.92 31.34
Swarthmore College
35.63 1.17 12.57 20.17
Haverford College
2.92 1.04 2.61 1.8
Goshen College
3.42 1.06 3.32 3.88
Auburn University
32.65 3.17 48.65 63.38
Auburn University (Montgomery)
7.48 2.39 8.29 4.3
University of Alabama
62.38 2.13 57.96 63.45
Troy State
4.9 1.69 4.45 3.5
By the way, the anti-spam filter is now stopping gmail dot com email addresses.
I'm sure the statistics about diversity-words are true, but they overlook the fact that diversity & such are just verbiage on official academic websites. There are people in university bueaucracies who can pour out well-meaning politically correct gobbledigook like a firehose, without really meaning a word of it. It's all text.
PS. I won't be celebrating Independence Day, I'm in Britain. As you might guess from the anti-American slant at the BBC and other places, we're still sore about it.