Beyond Politics of Any Stripe
Kenneth Wagner, Radford University

A friend of mine, knowing my rightward leanings on several issues and my longtime opposition to the liberal orthodoxy reigning on American campuses today, forwarded me an article from the 6 January 2006 Chronicle of Higher Education titled Conservative Group Cites Colleges of Like Mind (subscription required). The report details how the large, influential conservative group the Young America’s Foundation recently published its second annual list of the top ten conservative colleges. The list consisted of Christendom College, College of the Ozarks, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Grove City College, Harding University, Hillsdale College, Indiana Wesleyan University, Liberty University, Patrick Henry College, and Thomas Aquinas College.

One may think with the prevailing left-wing wind howling (as opposed to simply blowing) on most college campuses that such a list should be a harbinger of a modest amount of pluralism on the scene. However, I think upon examination that this list should be greatly troubling to those who would like to see less ideological orthodoxy in our institutions of higher education.

Though it was decades ago that great-man-of-letters Lionel Trilling noted that, among American academics and in our intellectual life, liberalism was ascendant and virtually unchallenged, it has only been in recent decades that extensive social-scientific data has shown the breadth of this prevalence. A recent excellent study by Stanley Rothman, Neil Nevitte, and S. Robert Lichter shows that self-identified liberals outnumber conservatives by a 5 to 1 ratio throughout a sample of 183 universities and colleges. In certain fields, which the astute reader can probably guess, the imbalance is indeed remarkable: 88 percent to 3 percent in English departments, 75 to 9 percent in the social sciences, and in history, 77 to 10 percent.

One naturally fears that a host of academic ills may follow from this lopsidedness: research that fails to see reality through the murky glasses of political values, political indoctrination in the classroom, and the prospect of liberal thought, which has an impressive heritage, becoming flabby if unchallenged. In the face of such fears many reforms have been suggested. National Association of Scholars President Stephen Balch advocates institutional attempts to balance faculties with opposed ideologies. David Horowtiz has proposed an Academic Bill of Rights that would legally protect students from blatant political bias in classrooms. Several legislative bodies have actually begun seriously to examine some kind of action in this area.

Quite naturally, given their minority status, many conservative scholars have joined in warning of the results of political imbalance and written in opposition to the ideological orthodoxy that can easily be found in academe. However, many of these voices often seem less bothered by rampant political indoctrination, lack of critical voices, and ideological orthodoxy in the classroom than they are by the fact that it is not their political values that are being inculcated, not their sacred cows that are being uncritically accepted, and not their ideology that is the basis of hiring, promotion, and pedagogy. The YAF’s listing certainly suggests this conclusion.

While I cannot say that within this list there are not many students, administrators, and faculty who are dedicated to the kind of values for academe that one finds in the 1915 AAUP Statement of Principles or the NAS mission statement (rational discourse, objective research, academic freedom, and critical examination over dogmatic, ideologically driven pedagogy), still, one must note that, as a whole, YAF’s ten institutions are less than emblematic of such values. The vast majority are religious private institutions that, whatever their many admitted virtues may be, are rightly classed as a form of “proprietary school or college designed for the propagation of specific doctrines” mentioned in the AAUP Declaration of Principles and thus are antithetical to disinterested scholarly life.

Several of the ten schools have adopted strict speech codes in the form of Statements of Faith (against which I have argued previously in this forum) that all faculty are forced to sign and adhere to (Patrick Henry College, for example, recently lost an accreditation by foisting creationist orthodoxy on their institution -- a fate that Liberty University faced at one time as well). Many show a partisan skew in their speakers, campus groups, and internship programs matched only by the most extremely Left-dominated campuses.

Telling of these institutions’ dubious commitment to ideologically free education is the fact that several of them have leaped to post on their official websites their ranking from the partisan YAF. Perhaps most concerning, given the rather low rankings of several of the institutions on many measures of academic excellence, is that a reasonable observer would be justified in questioning the commitment to an academic meritocracy of this conservative group. Higher ranked institutions that have a history of being the home to excellent conservative thought, such as the University of Chicago, George Mason University, Pepperdine University, the University of Virginia, etc., seemingly were disqualified because they also have many non-conservative thinkers.

Embracing mediocrity and dogmatism in return for being placed in an ideological comfort zone should not be the standard for conservative groups, or for anyone who wants to see higher education represented by institutions that preserve academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas, on and off the campus, while encouraging rigorous standards in research, teaching, and academic self-governance. The conservative, as well as the liberal or the all-too-rare disinterested scholarly empiricist, should rank among his top ten institutions those that teach Rousseau and Burke, Marx and Hayek, Rawls and Nozick, all competently and with enthusiasm and an open mind.

NAS9:53 AM