Think Tanks: The Educational Counter-Establishment
Kenneth Wagner, Radford University

A recent article in American Conservative by Austin Bramwell laments the fact that while conservative ideas and thinkers have become more common and popular, they have lost qualities that mark a proper intellectual movement. Bramwell explores the rise of a “conservative counter-establishment” in which promising thinkers of a conservative bent are funneled into think-tanks where they “contribute to projects long under way” or if in journalism they “defend an established editorial line.” Gone are the days of healthy internal debate, of such greats as Leo Strauss, Richard Weaver, Willmoore Kendall, Eric Voegelin -- each working to articulate a comprehensive conservative intellectual tradition.

This “conservative counter-establishment” is often cited in the many discussions of the vast chasm between “Blue” and “Red” state communities. A young conservative today can in some sense insulate himself from “liberal” sources of intellectual thought, encountering them only through the filter of journals with “established editorial line(s)” such as National Review and the Weekly Standard. If in college, a rising proportion of conservative sources available to him will be from think tanks such as The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute, or The American Enterprise Institute.

The growing presence and influence of this intellectual conservative counter establishment is notable. The Washington Post notes that in 2003 left-of-center think tanks spent $75 million while right-of-center organizations had “$170 million in spending, along with state-based policy centers' $50 million and campus-based conservative policy organizations' $75 million to $100 million.” How much have think tanks taken on the voice of conservatism? In examining the well-cited list of the most influential “public intellectuals” compiled by conservative thinker Richard Posner, one finds that a full 20 percent of right-of-center thinkers are employed by think tanks compared to 2 percent of non-right-of-center public intellectuals.

This cannot be good for conservatism or for intellectual debate in general. Increasingly conservative voices in intellectual debate are those of ‘”hired guns.” Think tanks promote an established line of thought, hiring is based at least in part on ideological agreement with the organizations’ mission. While academe often falls short of its promise of fostering intellectual diversity, they are still nowhere near as ideologically motivated as think tanks (whether of the right or left for that matter). The absence of an “official” party line (though the unofficial ones are certainly pernicious), rigorous peer review, the rotation of professors in teaching assignments, and the sheer size and number of academic institutions in comparison to think tanks contribute more to keeping ideas and research honest and disinterested in academe than in think tanks.

Now, who is at fault for this unfortunate phenomenon? It seems obvious that it is the tendency, growing since the 1960s, of academe to promote a liberal orthodoxy on university campuses. The above noted thinkers were all employed by academe. But today more and more conservative thinkers find themselves repulsed from academe (examples are frequent, one need only browse the journal Academic Questions) for ideological, not intellectual reasons. These thinkers must find a home somewhere, and the ones who remain in the “marketplace of ideas” often find one in think tanks. The very counter-establishment that liberal academics lament is of their own making. Opening up their minds and departments to qualified conservative thinkers would not only be fundamental fairness and intellectually honest, it would sharpen public debate.

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