The Sunday Review section of The New York Times carried a surprise on the front page. It was a column by Nicholas Kristof titled “A Confession of Liberal Intolerance: We’re big on diversity, but not when it comes to conservatives in academia.”
Times deputy metro editor Michael Luo extended that thought on Twitter: “Newsrooms should grapple, too.”
Kristof began:
WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives.
Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.
O.K., that’s a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical.
“Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black,” he told me. “But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”
I’ve been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.
“Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false,” said Carmi.
“The truth has a liberal slant,” wrote Michelle.
“Why stop there?” asked Steven. “How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?”
To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal arrogance — the implication that conservatives don’t have anything significant to add to the discussion. My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.
Kristof will no doubt receive a wheelbarrow or more of grief from people who agree with the notion that you add nothing by adding “troglodytes” to academe. One critic on Twitter shot back: "This article is #old and #ignorant. Liberals like ppl who THINK. Not memorize...not let god do It 4 them."
They will lament his citation of studies demonstrating there are more Marxists than Republicans teaching on campus. Then Kristof really reaches to offend his friends and allies. He laments “liberal privilege.”
This bias on campuses creates liberal privilege. A friend is studying for the Law School Admission Test, and the test preparation company she is using offers test-takers a tip: Reading comprehension questions will typically have a liberal slant and a liberal answer.
Some liberals think that right-wingers self-select away from academic paths in part because they are money-grubbers who prefer more lucrative professions. But that doesn’t explain why there are conservative math professors but not many right-wing anthropologists.
It’s also liberal poppycock that there aren’t smart conservatives or evangelicals. Richard Posner is a more-or-less conservative who is the most cited legal scholar of all time. With her experience and intellect, Condoleezza Rice would enhance any political science department. Francis Collins is an evangelical Christian and famed geneticist who has led the Human Genome Project and the National Institutes of Health. And if you’re saying that conservatives may be tolerable, but evangelical Christians aren’t — well, are you really saying you would have discriminated against the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.?
Perhaps they would argue that if he had lived, King would have been much more Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton than George Yancey.
Kristof argued that a university should include a wide variety of opinions, but he rejects the need for "affirmative action" for conservatives or Christians, since they would oppose it. But he concludes progressives aren't living up to their own ideals: "Universities should be a hubbub of the full range of political perspectives from A to Z, not just from V to Z. So maybe we progressives could take a brief break from attacking the other side and more broadly incorporate values that we supposedly cherish — like diversity — in our own dominions."
It would be nice if they had that discussion in the nation's largest newsrooms.
