The conservative intellectual William F. Buckley famously said that he would “rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard university”.
Buckley’s words reflect not only scepticism of ‘intellectuals’, but also a perception on his part that the views of Harvard faculty were not in line with his own. A recent survey by The Harvard Crimson (a student newspaper) suggests that if Buckley were alive today, he would not have changed his tune.
476 members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences were asked how they would characterise their politically leanings. The distribution of responses is shown below:
82% of respondents said “liberal” or “very liberal” (which in the US means “left-wing”). An additional 16% said “moderate”. Only 1.5% said “conservative”. And not a single respondent said “very conservative”. This means that conservative faculty at Harvard are outnumbered by roughly 55 to 1.
The Crimson survey is consistent with similar surveys from previous years, and with vast amounts of other data showing that academics in Britain and America lean substantially to the left.
Incidentally, the massive left-wing skew of Harvard faculty can’t be explained by those with left-wing views having higher intelligence. According to the General Social Survey, about 30% of Americans who score in the top 4% of IQ have conservative views. So if Harvard faculty were selected only on IQ, you’d expect about 30% to be conservative (and about 25% to be moderate).
The lack of political diversity at places like Harvard creates several problems. For example, research ends up focussing disproportionately on topics that interest ‘liberals’ (like racism and sexism). And faculty discussions devolve into echo chambers, where certain assumptions cannot be questioned (such as that ‘diversity’ is good or that gender is a ‘social construct’).
Unfortunately, there are no good solutions.
Affirmative action for conservatives is intrinsically unappealing, and it’s hard to see how it would work in practice. People could just tick the conservative box on the job application, regardless of their actual views. Indeed, there’s already evidence students do this for race, and political views are even easier to fake.
Asking nicely isn’t going to work either: surveys show that a sizeable fraction of ‘liberals’ simply don’t want to associate with conservatives.
In the end, conservatives may have to accept they’re not going to have much influence through universities. Consequently, taking money away from subjects other than STEM may be their least bad option.
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Are there any Conservatives left anywhere?
There are among the general public, though most of them are asleep or have been hoodwinked into feeling bad about it.
I suspect similar results would be obtained from many work sectors – teaching for example.
I’d suggest it’s every part of the Public Sector.
Hello!
I fancy myself as a social liberal (in the original sense, not virtue-signalling sense) and a fiscal Tory. So, no party for me, certainly not at the moment.
Milton Friedman’s ideas.
The article was discussing conservatives. They don’t have Conservatives in the IUSA and the ones we have over here are certainly not conservative.
I think it was Einstein who talked about the shortest distance between 2 points being a curve? Certainly in my view politics is not linear, more like a circle. At the top is well balanced reasonable Government, at the bottom is authoritarian fascism, you can slip down to the bottom on either the left or right hand side but without continuing checks and balances as sure as eggs is eggs down to the bottom you will slide.
With covid, climate etc. we currently seem to be well on the way to the bottom by going down the left hand route.
Call it what you will but what we need at the moment are people who value individualism, self reliance, self determination, National Identity, strong borders, a proper childhood for our youngsters and generally small Government. There are people who are tending a little in that direction, Ron Desantis, Georgia Meloni, Harriet Hageman, these are all far from perfect but maybe a little step in the right direction?
Yes indeed. What you set out basically describes the early years of the USA, and is probably most closely approximated there still, albeit very patchily, in Republican states.
So, the news here is that there are at least 469 people at a Faculty of Arts and Sciences in Harvard who didn’t want to attach the label conservative to themselves when being asked to pick a label. What’s that now precisely supposed to communicate?
That at the very least any conservatives that do exist there prefer not to admit it, which in itself would be significant. Most likely though they have gone to colleges where conservatives still thrive.
My personal theory of that is that – even during surveys – people answer such question based on what they’d like to be seen as. And obviously, nobody (or at least only a few people) thinking of an academic career would want to be seen as swimming against the political mainstream of the organisation he belongs to. This would mark the faculty in question and/ or Harvard in general as anti-conservative environment.
OTOH, this survey doesn’t seem to be particularly representative to me. And “our enemies have taken over culture, hence, we must become barbarians!” (ie, defund anything non-technical) doesn’t seem sensible to me, either.
They would indeed not want to be seen as swimming against the mainstream and this may well affect their answers, and some have and/or will vote with their feet and go somewhere else or leave academia and other liberal dominated sectors. Don’t think there are many conservative Universities in the UK – more in the US.
Not sure defunding is the answer though certainly any academic institution taking public money ought to be forced to defend freedom of speech.
I’m no expert but the vast majority of “educated” “intelligent” “intellectual” people I know personally are WAY more liberal than I am, and almost all covidians to boot. Perhaps I’ve been unwise in my choice of friends and acquaintances.
People judge themselves by what they say they will do. Others judge them them by what they actually do.
A good friend in Chicago mentioned companies are becoming progressively uninterested in hiring university grads in the USA. Kids who can barely string a few words together, cannot spell, critical think, or have any initiative. These same companies are considering hiring kids out of high school and training them to do a job. That way they know exactly what they are getting. Universities may have a few less students in the future, and they only have themselves to blame.