Rightwing whining about "liberal" academia is nothing new. But I was particularly struck by this piece in Walker, Minnesota's Pilot Independent, which gripes about the fact that I was invited to speak at the University of Minnesota last October. My appearance is presented as stunning evidence of a liberal bias on campus. But the author fails to draw even the most elementary distinctions in order to support his argument. For example:
1. Invited campus speeches aren't the same thing as in-classroom teaching. Marked political bias in the former may simply reflect the political composition of a campus (and thus who is being invited to speak); marked political bias in the latter should be countered no matter the political composition of a campus.
2. Either way, when it comes to invited speeches, anecdotal evidence (which is all that's provided in the Pilot Independent piece) is insufficient to demonstrate that a university's talks trend liberal. If we're being purely anecdotal, then I could cite this speech by Michael Behe at the University of Minnesota, which had a heck of a lot more people in attendance than my own talk did, as evidence of a conservative/pro "intelligent design" bias on campus. Of course, I wouldn't do so, because that wouldn't be intellectually serious--and neither is the Pilot Independent article.
3. Most annoyingly, this "liberal bias" whining always ignores the fact that some arguments, and some intellectual positions, have more merit than others. If university biology departments teach evolution and not "intelligent design," that doesn't make them "liberal" to my mind. It simply means that they practice quality control. When conservatives demand intellectual "balance" in education, however, what they're often talking about is the brainless sort of balance that treats all ideas as equal regardless of merit. And that's inimical to the very spirit of a university. To be sure, I don't doubt that many university campuses do tilt very liberal. However, I'm also quite confident that distinguished, innovative, and serious conservative thinkers also find a place on such campuses--not for political reasons but because of the merit of their work. Conservatives don't need an affirmative action plan to get themselves better represented on campuses. They need to produce good research and scholarship.
But of course, that's much tougher than whining about "bias." So I think we should expect plenty more whining.
