Volume CXXXIII, Number 12 January 30, 2004

No big deal

To the Editors:

I wish to comment on the annual boilerplate "there are not enough Republican professors" article that appeared in the last Orient. When I hear this argument I always wonder: is there a glut of Republican professors who are unable to find employment because they are discriminated against? I'm not talking about ideological blowhards like David Horowitz or Ann Coulter, but rather genuine academics-professors and researchers-who happen to be conservatives. THERE JUST AREN'T THAT MANY! I suspect that the reason for the disproportionate ratio of Republicans to Democrats in liberal arts faculties is that there are more Democratic-leaning Ph.D.s in the pool of candidates. If I am wrong and the pool of applicants to positions in economics, English, history, philosophy, political science, and Sociology (the departments singled out in the survey discussed in the Orient article) at Bowdoin is evenly spread between Republicans and Democrats, and if there is a support group for these unjustly persecuted individuals whose job interviews are terminated upon the first fumes of conservatism they exude, I invite Professor Potholm or anybody else to let me know about it. I encourage the Republican professors to write to the Orient or organize a symposium to share the stories of their comrades who cannot find work because they vote for Republicans. Indeed, if candidates are asked about their choices on Election Day during interviews, there is something inappropriate going on.

Second of all, Daniel Schuberth's notion that "it is about time that Bowdoin recognizes (sic) that the ideological makeup of the faculty must resemble the ideological makeup of the student body" is absolutely bogus. Why should this be so? It is the work of intellectuals to be critical of society, to challenge students' minds, and to encourage them to qualify their own predispositions to demagoguery; it is most certainly not their job to reflect students' political opinions. When I was living in France last year, I noticed that a great deal of French intellectuals sit firmly on the political right.

This makes perfect sense in a country in which the public historically has strong left-wing tendencies (Can you imagine a place where even the unemployed go on strike?). In America, where the population tends to be overwhelmingly conservative, the intellectuals tend to be left leaning. Again, it is the job of intellectuals to be critical of the societies in which they live.

Finally, the Bush administration is doing things that intellectuals ought to be questioning. Aside from establishing new and dangerous precedents in foreign and domestic policy, the Bush regime has been astonishingly deceitful and dishonest, about everything from tax cuts to the invasion of Iraq-behavior professors especially ought to be critical of. Bush also employs an ominous Orwellian doublespeak: "The war in Iraq is really about peace." I further suspect that many professors scoff at the anti-intellectual current in America that Bush represents. The President admits that he doesn't like to read, that he relies on aides to explain things to him without seeking information himself, and that he doesn't like to grapple with difficult ideas? By contrast, Nixon, Bush Sr., Clinton and, to an extent, even Reagan all were well informed about policy and read extensively about the issues they took on. I don't want to sound like an elitist here: I'm not saying that those who make it a point to be informed should turn their noses up at those who don't. I merely contend that voters tend to support those with whom they identify most, and professors identify with politicians who demonstrate an understanding of issues instead of those who flaunt their anti-intellectualism as a virtue.

Moreover, the very idea that intellectual diversity on a college campus is represented by a Democrat to Republican ratio is symptomatic of what I would call the "foxnewsization" of the idea of ideological diversity: the supposition that any issue only has two sides and that the Democratic and Republican parties' official platforms represent all thinkable alternatives. Intellectuals should go further and create alternative scopes of thought about issues, outside of the planks of the major American political parties. That is real intellectual diversity. And it has nothing to do with one's choices at the ballot box.

Sincerely,

Ashby Crowder '04

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