Ideological Bias in Academic Hiring Addressed at Duke...

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Orson, Mar 7, 2004.

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  1. Orson

    Orson New Member

    Duke University conservatives have advertised the absence of political diversity among departments in the humanities. http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-450298.html
    The resulting controversy inspired the administration fo convene a panel on the subject, "The Politics of Academic Freedom: Does Political Affiliation Matter?" http://www.chronicle.duke.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/03/02/40447f42c6c5f
    Former AAUP president, and Duke law prof, Willam Van Alstyne - an expert on academic freedom - was the first to speak directly on the topic. I except his remarks below.

    "[Finally, I] come to a provocative remark for the balance of the panel and that's this visual aid. This is a funny-looking table. These are seven departments in a given university. They're unidentified. This is a department that has 14 members overall. In one column, its 14 and in the other zero. This is the staffing profile, these are the totals. In the left hand column we've got 14 of this kind, 11 in this department, 32 here, 11 here, 12 here, nine here for a total of 89 of this kind in those departments.

    "Among those six departments combined under this other label, we have zero. I've added one other department, the seventh department. It has a total of 19 members. So only 18 are of one kind and one is of the other kind. Looking just at the two crude columns, one has 107, the other has one. Now I'll label the columns. First, I'll label it "M" for men. That's the column -- no women. Put "W" for white and then we'll put "B" for black.

    "One could say, 'That's interesting but it doesn't prove a god-damn thing.' [More information is needed to assess relevance.]
    . . .
    "Why have I done this? It's to be provocative. In fact, it's in this perverse way to issue a genuine complement to the Conservative Student Union because these are the figures. This is Duke. This is not a mythological university. These are seven of the departments taken from the particular table, as a matter of fact. And as you go through them, these are the total figures, not by men and women, not by white and black, but by party affiliation. It is not to suggest that anyone's party affiliation was ever asked at or put down or made a subject of conscious inquiry. It is merely a civil, modest suggestion that ideology may very well be playing a role within a given discipline at a given university. And that competence is as competence is perceived to be partly along a kind of ideological axis. So if you find that worthwhile in the other areas [like race and gender] when people are asked to inscribe categories when they apply for something. It is not for me now to suggest the propriety of listing party affiliation -- not at all. Not at all. It is, rather, just the chastening observation...[to] give someone sober second thought and ought to introduce at least a cautionary note in any institution of academic self-respect, to look within itself and see whether or not they are unconsciously or otherwise tilted in such a way that their affectations of ideological diversity are somewhat affected and pretentious."
    http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/acfreedom/van_alstyne_comments.html
     

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