With kudos to Tom57, lets look at the data: Lead author economist Dan Klein weighs in with two studies slated to appear in Academic Questions http://www.nas.org/aa/klein_launch.htm "[Conservatives] usually deny that disproportionate statistics can be taken as proof of discrimination." Of course it isn't proof, but neither it it evidence - especially since graduate training is an especially arduous and intellectually intimate affair - for a successful free market with open entry! After all, unlike free markets where neglecting real talent results in real economic costs, nothing similar applies to the guild conditions of academe. Taking this agument seriously led philosopher W.W. Bartley, III, ("On Uiversites and The Wealth of Nations") to conclude that progress in knowledge production is best in those academic fields like computers and bio-tech with close connection - least in those fields like the humanities lacking it. This insight is, naturally, utterly ignored in Steven Lubet's San Francisco Chronicle diatribe - an especially egregious oversight since Bartley taught in the Bay area only a dozen years ago until his premature demise! The experience of K.C. Johnson at CUNY, Arthur Herman at GMU, and others, suggests that ideological discrimination by already entrenched leftists against their oppoenentsis partly to blame. Furthermore, the vehemence with which recent attempts to make much vaunted "inclusiveness" on campus more inclusive - ie, to include ideology - have been met implies that this complaint has merit. Finally, the experience of a dozen or so libertarian historians I know of firsthand - none of whom are ensconsed anywhere near prestigious - supports this conclusion. -Orson
I have not read this argument, but its premise seems to be completely ludicrous. How on earth is this philosopher measuring "knowledge production"? You cannot apply the same standard across different fields of discipline. I doubt any full-time professor with an English Ph.D. has invented a more efficient jet fuel propulsion system that saves companies money and benefits consumers. I also doubt any full-time bio-tech research scientist has invented a new, exciting and relevant way to stage a Shakespeare play. Also, when it comes to the perennial complaints about lack of conservative clout in humanities higher education, I think the root causes have litttle to do with conspiracy. It's just that left-wing ideology, from its most mainstream to its most extreme, tends to be more consistent as a system. Right-wing ideology is just wildly inconsistent. For example, what do Ayn Rand and Patrick Buchanan have in common? Conservatives often seem to argue from extremely inconsistent and even contradictory principles. There are many people in higher education in the humanities who can't be described as either left- or right-wing, but have articulated their own internally consistent system that they apply to their humanities studies. As long as someone from anywhere in the political spectrum can do that -- and not do it in a dogmatic way -- then if they deserve academic success and really work hard at it, they can get it. Harold Bloom is a good example.
Wat do Buchanan and Rand have in common? That's easy: both are pro-capitalist (although Pat is less consistently so), pro-military, and pro-American - endorsing American exceptionalism. As for the problem of measuring the production of knowledge, this is indeed the central pre-occupation of Karl Popper's school in the philosophy of science: how does knowledge grow? Only a successful epistemic system can do this. False ones like post-modernism cannot. Charles Murray, in his book "Human Accomplishment," marks metrics and measurement as one of the fundamental (fifteen or so) meta-inventions of humanity - on a par with the novel and the scientific research report. The problem that the modern university poses for measurement of productivity is profound. The alleged best method is the citation - a relative measure that leaves out popular sources and insulates academics from outside judgement. These folks' "publish or perish" for each other - but to what effect for you and me? The incestuous nature of academe results in no assurance that the vast sums (6% of US GDP) devoted to funding their activity is well spent, espcially since most of that funding (and all of it elsewhere in the world) is done at public expense. Therefore, we very much need to know how universities are doing. The ultimate question that results is 'how do we know we are in a knowledge revolution?' Or 'are we in a knowledge decline?' I'm working on this topic. The only definite result I have is that patents are in a long-term decline - as is medicine, and human progress - as we've long understood it - is likely declining too. If true, the next question is 'why'? 'How can we reverse it'? Bartley argues for an economics of epistemology instead of (what's more popularly understood) an epistemology of economics. His point is that knowledge is itself a way of economizing. Time is the ultimate metric here. Interestingly, in journal reviews of "Unfathomed Knowledge, Unmeasured Wealth," nonphilosophers were much more favorable than US philosophers. But then, Bartley was also hugely critical of contemporary philosphy's attachment to pseudo-probems and maintainence of the intellectual cartel they hold where ideas aren't taken seriously. If human lifespans were indefinite, then none of this would matter: infinity can take care of itself! As for Steven Lubet at Northwestern Law School, I emailed him and he graciously acknowledged my points - except that I disagreed with him. Elsewhere on the topic of conservatives in academe, economist Steven Horwitz (St. Lawrence University) gave the best riposte: Liberals often complain about "right-wing think tanks" in Washington, D.C., and every state. There cannot both be an absence of qualified conservative talent in academe and so many highly trained and educated people at those think tanks working for 30K a year! Lubit's argument fails in the face of the facts. -Orson
