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The Wages of Anti-Intellectualism
Jonathan Chait writes that the reason you find so few Republican academics isn't discrimination, it's that the GOP has become so self-consciously anti-intellectual. The argument involves making the important point that even in the hard sciences one finds few Republicans, and, in light of the present administration's endless assault on science, one hardly expects that to change in the future. The flipside is that American liberalism has increasingly ceased to be a strongly ideological movement and has instead adopted an ethic of technocratic managerialism underpinned by a vague consequentialism.
December 10, 2004 | Permalink
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Comments
Jeez, why get so philosopical about it? There's no big money in academia, so of course fewer Republicans are interested in it.
Posted by: Tim H. | Dec 10, 2004 11:58:20 AM
the GOP has become so self-consciously anti-intellectual
That's crap, the imbalance has existed at least since I was in college, when Bush I was president.
Posted by: Ugh | Dec 10, 2004 12:00:23 PM
Uh huh. Right. And the reason so few accountants and engineers are liberals is that liberals can't add.
Posted by: ostap | Dec 10, 2004 12:09:28 PM
I think it's a combination of both:
1. The GOP (and the right in general) has lots of well-endowed quasi-academic institutions that cater for those who might otherwise be crappy professors at crappy colleges. (Hi, Glenn Reynolds! You're the exception! You're that crap!)
2. Working as an AEI/Heritage fellow has all the advantages of academia with none of the stigma. Oh, and better perks.
So the GOP can actually have it both ways: the quasi-academic think-tankers and columnists can disingenuously complain about being excluded from the academy, while remaining immune to the kneejerk anti-intellectual elements.
Posted by: ahem | Dec 10, 2004 12:11:33 PM
Uh huh. Right. And the reason so few accountants and engineers are liberals is that liberals can't add.
Just because Denny Hastert said it doesn't make it true. I'm an engineer, and I and my fellow engineers at this company voted for Kerry. Of course, that's no more a random sample than those who are Hastert's friends.
Oh yeah, if you really want to insult an engineer, act as though the kind of math done by engineers is in some way comparable to the that employed by accountants.
Posted by: The Bobs | Dec 10, 2004 12:20:23 PM
Engineers and Accountants are rich, hence their GOP leanings. Shit, I'm a senior in college and I'll be making a very good salary when I start my accounting career this upcoming summer.
Posted by: heh | Dec 10, 2004 12:22:46 PM
underpinned by a vague consequentialism
Don't you mean meritocracy? Which is a nice idea by the way. And that is exactly the kind of concept Democrats should use to frame (in a Lakoff manner) the debate. We should beat the Republicans over the head with their cronyism.
Posted by: ScrewyRabbit | Dec 10, 2004 12:28:06 PM
Being an engineer or an accountant isn't really the "intellectualism" that Republicans villify. My father - a Democrat, as it happens - oft, when in self-desparaging humour relates the folk wisdom of his engineering professor that "engineers, unfortunately, are not educated but trained."
Posted by: theogon | Dec 10, 2004 12:33:06 PM
I think there is definitely a point to be made here about the shrinking numbers of loyal Republicans in the hard sciences. For quite a long time, there were lots of them, probably even more than in the general population. Some of the shrinkage may well have been due to who decided to go to grad school and (not-so-well-paid) occupations in the sciences in the 60s and 70s, but not all of it. I think many scientists began to feel marginalized in the 80s, not because Reagan was Reagan, but because he quite frankly blew off work that everybody of all political persuasions knew was quality stuff. I believe Bush Sr. tried to rebuild some of those relationships with scientists, but his son has completely trashed any hope of an alliance in the near future. When they write the history books on this, I think the budget CUT in the NSF this year (in the middle of a previously announced plan to double NSF funding this decade) will go down as one of the most senseless gestures made by an administration or Congress to scientists. Bush has also blown off pretty much any and all informed economic advice, to the point where qualified people *will not* take jobs in the administration, even if their politics are impeccably correct by current GOP standards. Any similar refusal among top natural scientists won't be nearly as visible, but suffice it to say that there is little clamor to become White House science advisor these days, while that was considered a plum when Bromley took the job for W's father.
Posted by: Jonathan King | Dec 10, 2004 12:33:22 PM
"Jonathan Chait writes that the reason you find so few Republican academics isn't discrimination, it's that the GOP has become so self-consciously anti-intellectual."
I'm must say that person is severely fecal matter impacted...
Posted by: dicebucket | Dec 10, 2004 12:35:52 PM
"in the hard sciences one finds few Republicans"
Republicans who got technical degrees are busy making money, so there is a disproportionate number of Republicans in the private sector and Dems in the public. Those who can't do, teach, especially in the hard sciences.
Same is true in other fields. Those who would be liberal arts professors go to law school or get MBAs to make money. Really, what incentive is there for a conservative who scored highly on both the LSAT and the GRE to go into hostile territory and try to make it in academia rather be a lawyer and rake in the dough. Its a no brainer, and thats the choice I made. I can pursue my academic interests as a hobby once I retire at 55.
Posted by: Reg | Dec 10, 2004 12:36:59 PM
Several of the commenters here apparently didn't bother to read Chait's column: "Republicans don't particularly want to be professors. To go into academia — a highly competitive field that does not offer great riches — you have to believe that living the life of the mind is more valuable than making a Wall Street salary. On most issues that offer a choice between having more money in your pocket and having something else — a cleaner environment, universal health insurance, etc. — conservatives tend to prefer the money and liberals tend to prefer the something else. It's not so surprising that the same thinking would extend to career choices."
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw | Dec 10, 2004 12:42:55 PM
Didn't realize you were so vapid, Reg.
Many of my friends in the hard sciences (in uni) are having a hard time distinguishing their academic jobs from corporate ones. Interesting..
Posted by: SAO | Dec 10, 2004 12:45:12 PM
Republicans began their descent into anti-intellectualism with Nixon's Southern Strategy. You can't play with the tar babies of racism and antinominanism and come out with the same number of brain cells you went in with. As a result, a huge number of Republicans aren't playing at racism and ranting: they're racists and ranters. Weasels by choice and inclination.
Posted by: Jeffrey Davis | Dec 10, 2004 12:46:45 PM
I can pursue my academic interests as a hobby once I retire at 55.
Uh, no you can't. Because you'll have 30 years of catch-up to do, and your brain won't be structured for doing all that catch-up. 55 is the age for applying what you know already, not for absorbing a new body of knowledge. (Yes, there are some exceptions.)
I don't mean this as a political comment, but as personal advice. You should reconcile yourself with the choices you've made in life.
Posted by: Paul Callahan | Dec 10, 2004 12:48:30 PM
Those who can't do, teach, especially in the hard sciences.
You might want to speak to some "hard scientists," first. Actually, in the hard sciences, the top people stay in academia because of the wide latitude and freedom given to them to pursue their research interests. Later in their career, after they are established in their field, they may decide to depart for a well-paid position industry where they would take a position as a senior research director. Or they may decide to keep their academic position and just do consulting on the side.
There are more opportunities to make good money in the sciences in industry, but the opportunities to generate important, original research are more prevalent in academia. Thus, the best and the brightest stay in the latter area.
There's also a class dynamic at work. Liberals are more happy to be seen as middle class (regardless of actual salary), which is what scientific and academic positions entail. Elite right-wingers, on the other hand, prefer to take positions in which they are perceived to be members of the upper class, such as investment banking.
Posted by: Constantine | Dec 10, 2004 1:06:16 PM
"The flipside is that American liberalism has increasingly ceased to be a strongly ideological movement and has instead adopted an ethic of technocratic managerialism underpinned by a vague consequentialism."
This is an excellent point but I don't see this as a negative. My intellectual origin is classical liberal, but I have a keen love for reality and hard thinking outside of ideological predespositions.
The minute american liberalism abandons pragmatism it's the minute it becomes a populist movement; a movement as anti-intellectual and wrong as the current Republican party.
Posted by: Nick Kaufman | Dec 10, 2004 1:22:24 PM
Bruce,
Chait posit two reasons that there aren't many conservatives in academia: (1) they are greedy and (2) they are disdainful of being smart.
Matthew isn't required to respond to both points; here, he only deals with the second.
What I find funny is that so-called "liberals" make these arguments, when they deride any implication that (say) blacks and women are excluded from upper echelons of business for any reason other than discrimination.
Posted by: Al | Dec 10, 2004 1:24:52 PM
The minute american liberalism abandons pragmatism it's the minute it becomes a populist movement
...and the minute when (gasp!) we might start winning elections.
Posted by: Paul Callahan | Dec 10, 2004 1:28:34 PM
There are multiple causes for the short supply of pro-Bush academicians.
Rather than address the problems and fix them, Republicans prefer to cry reverse discrimination and then take by force what they could not earn.
Posted by: homeward bound | Dec 10, 2004 1:29:47 PM
The universities have always and everywhere been more liberal - at least in the cultural sense - than the broader communities in which they exist. The type of person who is attracted in his youth to the pursuit of a life of the mind, who is eager to grow intellectually and expand his limited intellectual perspective, whose mind is sufficiently tolerant of what is intellectually strange, alien or novel to be a fertile ground for such growth, and who wants social institutions that do not place barriers in the way of his own freely directed inquiry, is by natural disposition a liberal.
This was even the case in the Middle Ages, when the chruch did constant battle with novel and threatening ideas that were always emerging in the universities - consider the Condemnation of 1277 for example, and its campaign against the "radical Aristotelians" or "Latin Averroists" at the University of Paris.
Also, as we have just seen with Tommy Thompson, Republicans like to make a lot of money. They tend not to go into teaching.
The depressing anti-intellectualism and anti-scientism of contemporary conservatives is in the long run good news for cultural liberals. The coming century will likely see enormous growth in the bilogical and medical sciences and the industries they spin off. And economic power always brings political power. By embracing the backward views about biology and evolution characteristic of the cultural right, the rightists are handicapping their kids' ability to participate in these emerging industries. Eventually, since the smart ideas pay better than the dumb ones, the dumb ones will die a withering natural death.
Posted by: Dan Kervick | Dec 10, 2004 1:42:22 PM
quote:
"The flipside is that American liberalism has increasingly ceased to be a strongly ideological movement and has instead adopted an ethic of technocratic managerialism underpinned by a vague consequentialism."
Does that mean something? I can't decode it.
----
In a "hard science" field, you have to distinguish science from technology. Industry is almost completely uninterested in science -- research must have immediate practical applications to be supported.
To the guy who says he will do he interesting stuff when he retires at age 55: dream on.
Posted by: jkubie | Dec 10, 2004 1:44:40 PM
Discussions of the liberal dominance of academia tend to get the direction of cause and effect wrong. Academics are overwhelmingly liberal because academics, and people socioeconomically and culturally similar to them, have for decades defined what "liberalism" is. And it has changed a great deal over time, in concert with the preferences and perceived interests of that cohort.
(I elaborate here.)
Posted by: Dan Simon | Dec 10, 2004 1:47:42 PM
The minute american liberalism abandons pragmatism it's the minute it becomes a populist movement; a movement as anti-intellectual and wrong as the current Republican party.
That's a baffler, alrighty.
"Populism" isn't a fixed commodity. Republicans have tapped modern populism with its appeals to the fundies. What on earth would a modern Democratic populism of that elk look like? Your post sounds like something, but in the end all I get from it is a snark hunt.
Posted by: Jeffrey Davis | Dec 10, 2004 1:55:30 PM
"The flipside is that American liberalism has increasingly ceased to be a strongly ideological movement and has instead adopted an ethic of technocratic managerialism underpinned by a vague consequentialism."
I appreciate Matt including this bit. It seems that much of the left these days conflates several concepts into one Frankenstein monster of an ideology they call the 'reality based community'. A respect for science is not identical with a respect for technocratic solutions, and part of the analysis of reality is recognizing that postulated consequences have large error bars. Regardless of what the meme du jour would have us believe, the liberal makes choices based on faith just as often as the conservative does. The faith of each group is expressed in the way it assigns probabilities to various outcomes.
Posted by: Jason Ligon | Dec 10, 2004 2:12:58 PM
