I found you after reading your paper on Tribal Equalitarian Discourse until I got to a reference to a Bo Winegard paper - hadn't realized your thesis was based his his work. The pieces began to click as as I saw where y'all were coming from. But it was hugely telling because he's a fool. And now this from you on poor scholarship. I've essentially come 'round to the harsh view that conservatism is essentially a worthless worldview based on nothing really that you can't get out of liberalism, and everything else is a sad justification for petty grievance and other personality issues (many of which the ideology creates). The most glaring evidence is that it has no real quality scholars of its own who do anything really but apologetics for RW ideas - no real universities of its own. Certainly no quality journalism aside from rags. Because it literally can't. It's constipated by its own illiberalism, which all goes back to Burke's refusal to accept enlightenment into politics and religion or morality. Which may have been arguable 200 years ago but is laughable today, and essentially why we have technofascists, MAGA, a white nationalist administration today.
There is indeed a long standing of conservatism in academia - with which I mean: we cannot/willnot change the system, which you nicely summarised in your many points. We suggest change both within and outside of mainstream academia. We have decided to start outside and have started Academia Libera Mentis to teach social sciences in an alternative way. For detail see our substack post: https://liberamentis.substack.com/p/episode-1-a-new-mould-for-education?r=21o3ms
However, my post had nothing to do with discrimination. It had to do with the question of what percentage of "left" or "activist" or "woke" professors there are in U.S. academe. There's been a fair amount of ranting on this thread and that is not of tremendous interest to me. Some folks may have experienced the equivalent of academic or corporate PTSD over DEI over-reach and their responses may reflect that experience. At the same time, I have experienced enough in academia and heard enough anecdotes from colleagues and friends to feel confident that perhaps quite a lot of discrimination has existed over the last couple of decades. But I have no idea how much. I'd love to know where you get that 80%+ figure. Is this a projection based on anecdotes and your feelings or is there a real study behind it? If there' a real study behind it, please send the citation so I can review it.
To the "It’s not That Bad" deflections I would add straightforward statistics about the absence of white males in tenure-track positions in prominent universities, which everyone in academics immediately understands. Unless you believe, as Ibram X. Kendi puts it, that the "only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination," the fact that white males are underrepresented to a fraction of their demographic presence is undeniable discrimination.
"Off the record," most academics agree that DEI has been a disaster. But yes -- most academics ARE cowards. They need to go with the administrator flow. But at the same time, many times they recognize this flaw in themselves. When I confront them with stats on white males, they immediately concur, sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with rationalizations and justifications, sometimes with anger (pro and con). But it's always the start to a real conversation, which is what we need.
This transfers to business. I run a small data firm and hire regularly. I would say 80+% of qualified job seekers are young white males, because they are equally discriminated against in the corporate world as in academia. The only choice many of them have are SMBs and startups.
This is long and probably harsh. First, thank you for refusing the excuses for your colleagues.
I will never forget watching Claudine Gay testify that the context was important when considering whether chants to kill Jews everywhere (globalize the intifada) violated student conduct rules.
I’m not an academic, but I care very much about academia cleaning up your mess. It’s nice to read some honest statements.
Everything is not theoretical. Here are some real things: The Khaybar graffiti (a Muslim massacre of Jews 628 CE) and the arson at the Hillel at SFSU, where my B.A. is from, were real world harms that were, in part, caused by teaching lies about Jews, lies about Israel, and lies about Palestinian Arabs. And implicit encouragement of violence (telling students that Israelis are colonists and Jews come from Poland? And decolonization by any means necessary?) Muslim Arabs conquered and crusaded all the way to Spain. Why not teach that?
Why does it take two years and a committee to stop teaching lies? Why would professors or lecturers teach lies at all? Students aren’t paying to be lied to.
Jewish students being corralled into the library “for safety” or hiding in dorm rooms afraid? Those incidents should have been a five-alarm fire for those schools.
Why are there astroturf “Palestine” student groups at all? And why would they be protesting when Israel was still cleaning up bodies and body parts? Don’t universities have some obligation to course correct when it’s clear you’re creating Fanon-bots, psychopaths?
You all do know that all this Palestine crap is mostly based on Soviet infiltration of 60s peace movements, right?
Finally, and this might be the most damaging thing US higher ed has done. The kids you’ve graduated are now teaching. And they are teaching settler-colonialism, “Palestine”, Israel is a white oppressor, intersectionality, critical theory.
No, those ideologies aren’t taught at college level. They are transmitted outside approved curricula. But they are being taught and they’re being taught in K-12. It’s well-documented.
Your ideologues and utopians have built a self-perpetuating Marxist-Leninist Jew-hatred machine. These people actually believe that the Jewish people are the last obstacle to a global borderless utopia where all differences will be erased. Jews want to remain a people, so we must be eliminated or forced to full assimilate.
That’s basically what Hitler wanted to, but without the utopia. He wanted to erase Jewish law, which is based on ethics.
It seems to me that you guys would want to pick up the speed, and also figure out how you’re going to undo what you’ve done to K-12. It’s not that different from Hitler Youth.
Every Jew, who hasn’t been persuaded by her education to turn against the Jewish state, is terrified now. We are being excluded from social activities we used to participate in - no Zionists. A Zionist is a Jew.
I absolutely think Congress should step in and fix the problem. I don’t think anyone whose teaching or writing led to the disgraceful college pograms has any business claiming to be “pursuing truth or knowledge”.
You are obviously the good ones, but where is the horror over what you’ve done? The urgency?
I just think most of you have failed to understand that ideas can be dangerous, that universities do not get to erase people or history, and that your graduates continue to transmit the dangerous ideas and continue to rewrite history and erase people after graduation.
I doubt that the US will be a place for Jews in a few years. It’s almost unbearable now.
Thanks for trying. I hope this isn’t too much to direct at the good ones.
It's pretty impressive that college presidents truly believe they can't do the thing that is right in front of them, but somehow that makes them more capable of the higher-level task. "I may not be able to excise the festering Jew-hate from my campus but I can fight Fascism." Okay, sure.
I find the 40% figure not credible. My conclusion is based on the survey evidence with which I am familiar plus papers that I and one of my former students have written based on lengthy interviews with 100 faculty on one of the most left-of-center research university campuses in the country. I will send links to this work. It is true that the proportion of very left faculty is higher in some disciplines - even approaching 50% in ethnic studies and gender studies, according to HERI. But these are not large departments. I will send you the 2022 xtab that I received from UCLA (political ideology by academic field). It's true that UCLA's sample is more inclusive than Nate's sample, but I guess (without knowing with certainty) that they have corrected for over-sampling religious institutions since 2013. Unfortunately, I don't have data for research university faculty from UCLA but again it would greatly surprise me if Nate's figures are even remotely correct. Of course, I'll keep an open mind about this until the issue is definitively adjudicated.
Steven, here's my comment to Lee which I hope you'll consider:
To the "It’s not That Bad" deflections I would add straightforward statistics about the absence of white males in tenure-track positions in prominent universities, which everyone in academics immediately understands. Unless you believe, as Ibram X. Kendi puts it, that the "only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination," the fact that white males are underrepresented to a fraction of their demographic presence in the U.S. is undeniable discrimination.
"Off the record," most academics agree that DEI has been a disaster. But yes -- most academics ARE cowards. They need to go with the administrator flow. But at the same time, they recognize this flaw in themselves. When I confront them with stats on white males, they immediately concur, sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with rationalizations and justifications, sometimes with anger (pro and con). But it's always the start to a real conversation, which is what we need.
This transfers to business. I run a small data firm and hire regularly. I would say 80+% of qualified job seekers are young white males, because they are equally discriminated against in the corporate world as in academia. The only choice many of them have are SMBs and startups.
Professional society is in shambles, college major is among the most regretted, entire substantive research areas have become corrupted, field has no interest at all in open science or replication crisis, rampant race and sex discrimination in hiring, declining public confidence, the list goes on, but no, we must be absolutely sure to know the exact % of professors identifying in a particular way!
"[T]his post is about self-inflicted obstacles to reform. It is about the denialism that there even is a deep problem. It is about attempts to deflect attention from addressing the problems. It is about the handwringing, pearl-clutching timidity among some of those who, with one hand, claim to want reform, and, with the other, are constantly explaining why it can’t be done, or why now is not the right time to do it, or why the real concerning problem is something else entirely."
Excellent--albeit depressing--analysis. I've heard all these excuses many times, often from sensible colleagues.
Here is my op-ed, translated from Russian, which touches upon some of the points you made:
Started in grad school 1997, focusing on Early Modern Literature. Classes & teaching styles were dominated by Marxism, post modernism, social justice, and esp. topics on 'the body' - in particular sexuality. Foucault was practically a god. We also seemed to be poaching innumerable other department's fields with impunity (and without expertise). By the time I needed to start on academic research for my dissertation, social justice and 'queering' texts dominated the field of potential topics. I chose to focus on a rhetorical analysis of early modern medical texts, and managed to avoid the politicization aspect as best I could. PhD earned, I happily remained in the teaching track. That makes me a failed academic, but that's ok with me.
I have very high regard for what Kevin is doing as editor of Theory & Society, and I have very high regard for Lee's efforts to expose biases in the social sciences. (Also for the excellent young scholars who he has mentored.) Here's the but: I find some of this post to be over the top. I have looked for evidence about faculty political views and, according to the most recent UCLA faculty survey, no more than 20 percent of US faculty describe themselves as "far left." That's a lot but not the 40% cited here. Many other faculty members, I agree, are silent in the face of outspoken colleagues. But that is changing now. We'll see if that is temporary. It could be. Citing the Trump Administration and legislation in conservative states is described here as a deflection from the problems of academe. I don't agree. If academe cannot reform itself - and that seems to be the implication of this post - then the recourse is to the power of the state. What other force do the authors suggest could do the job? None, because there is no other force waiting in the wings except state governments controlled by dominant political parties. And of course they are already active. Discussing the Trump Administration is not a deflection. If we cannot reform ourselves, we have to look at the consequences of state interventions - and perhaps especially at the consequences of right-wing state interventions - and ask whether the "cure" is worse than the disease. As the authors suggest, the preferred course is to cure the disease from the inside, but they imply (heavily imply) that this will not be possible. I agree that this will inevitably be slow going until a tipping point is reached. But it is the only way to preserve the prospect of academic freedom and institutional autonomy. No professor should want politicians, left or right, deciding on topics or taboos. I will freely admit that even as it is hobbling universities and restricting free inquiry, the Trump Administration is providing leverage for internal reformers. Even so, we have to ask whether the benefits of this leverage are worth the cost of the hobbling.
Hi Steve. Good points worth making, adds to the convo. I am commenting just to make a couple of points about faculty surveys.
1. The last HERI survey I could find (that's the UCLA faculty survey, I think) collected data in 2016-2017. Do you have more recent data? I ask because the trajectory has been ever-further-left for a long time, so the numbers are likely to be more extreme now.
2. That survey included about 30% respondents at religious institutions! I mean, that's fine, but I have no doubt that, on avg, faculty at religious institutions skew less far left.
3. Compared to the 40% extremist number (which I will get to in a minute), HERI's sample is much larger and broader, including four year colleges (which I presume means no graduate programs but this was not clear). Here is what they wrote:
"Overall in 2016–2017, 0.4% of faculty identify as far right, 11.7% as conservative, 28.1% as
middle-of-the-road, 48.3% as liberal, and 11.6% as far left."
4. The 40% figure comes from a much smaller survey (but still pretty large, Ns ~1800, Honeycutt's dissertation) of R1 (elite) & R2 (just sub-elite) universities. These are the "thought leaders" and the big scholarship-producers -- the institutions likely having the greatest influence on the future of academia and on the culture/society. Its not yet published (but it is under review), though the data are summarized here:
Also, the political q was asked differently. HERI: far right, conservative, middle, liberal, far left.
Honeycutt gave faculty over a dozen labels and they simply chose the ones that they thought applied to them. 40% chose at least one from among "marxist," "socialist," "radical," or "activist."
Bottom lines: The sets of results are different because they have targeted different populations and asked somewhat different questions. They are not mutually exclusive. In the real world, I'd be far less concerned about a far left monoculture at a Christian school such as Baylor or a deep red state such as Arkansas. I'd be much more concerned about it at an elite Ivy/Ivy-like private school or elite state U (e.g., UCLA, UMich) and probably at just-below elite state U's such as Rutgers, UMass, most UC campuses, UWash, etc.
Why does it matter which school? The damage is at state schools, too. And downstream into K-12, where horror stories abound, especially in my native SF Bay Area… Jewish children being corralled into one part of a room, while the other students pretend to be Palestinians, in some kind bizarre and traumatizing exercise.
Please focus on the real world harm the ideologies have caused. Maybe that will make the other reformers move faster.
It really seems like reform is going to have to be imposed.
Steve, thank you for the feedback. The respect is absolutely mutual.
With all due respect, and there is much respect due, I think you are underestimating the severity and scope of the problem we face as concerned social scientists.
It is one thing to ask how many faculty self-identify as "far left," (and other studies put that figure much higher, see citation below) but it is another to document and be honest about the extent of decades of (both concerted and unintended) left-wing political (as well as general anti-science) bias in scholarship, teaching and hiring. There are, for example, very commonly used measures and concepts and theories which import unchallenged ideological bias into ostensibly non-political papers (we discuss some above, but many many more could be listed).
The bias is embedded, and deeply so. Entire literatures now exist on racism, sexism, gender identity, capitalism, and so on which rest upon dubious assumptions and unchallenged interpretations, such as presuming that any gap in outcomes between groups constitutes evidence of discrimination. There is, in other words, an intellectual infrastructure, built steadily in fits and starts since the 60s, which reliably skews many facets of the intellectual life of social scientists today.
The challenge for reform--and for regaining the public trust--is to be honest about the extent of the damage to truth seeking which has been done, and not just point the finger at the most public and vociferous offenders (i.e., the self-identifiers).
Lest it need saying, I'm not implying (and neither is Lee) that the problem is insurmountable. If I thought it was, I wouldn't care. But I care a lot.
Horowitz, M., Haynor, A., & Kickham, K. (2018). Sociology’s sacred victims and the politics of knowledge: Moral foundations theory and disciplinary controversies. The American Sociologist, 49(4), 459-495.)
Related to your observations, I spoke to a group of heterodox-academy curious professors last week, they'd invited me to talk about the possibility of starting a chapter of HxA due to their concerns about the direction of the academy. Some did so partially because they had for the first time experienced directly the antisemitic undercurrent that has permeated for years.
There wasn't so much denial, but all of the deflections you pointed out here were in full force during that conversation. The conclusion of the meeting was that they might join individually (and only if their names were concealed behind a login), but not start a chapter because it was too risky from a social capital standpoint.
I think something that was not mentioned here that I've been hearing in my capacity as priest to these and other academics, is the sheer (in my mind, cowardly) terror they have about being affiliated with something that might be perceived as right-wing/MAGA, such as a heterodox community. This in spite of the fact I challenged them to find a statement issued by HxA that would suggest it was "MAGA" versus reformist, and they had nothing. Something else just to point out is their sincere belief that right wing authoritarianism is worse than left-wing authoritarianism. One participant said they were "hiding their Jewishness" and hoping they "passed." When I pointed out "could things really be worse with reform from outside than hiding your religion"? there was no good response.
Bravo for turning the spotlight back on the concerned and laying out so clearly and humorously the deflections and denials.
Sure, almost no one (I know) thinks it can't be reformed. But the dividing point is over whether reform can come from inside academia or needs to be imposed from without.
If anyone says that “while Trump is President is not the time to fix these things”, just ask them what they personally were doing to fix them while Biden was President. I’m willing to bet they were actively making these problems worse.
Now for some data. Communist China, as leftwing as anything in the world can be, now leads research in 90% of crucial technologies, see nature, a well regarded publication,
Actually, there is pretty good evidence that there is little support for communism/marxism in China (though there is support for the CCP, which is not quite the same thing, especially since the CCP has, over the last 4 decades, instituted massive market reforms and practices).
So I'd rate Eugine's analysis as "certainly supported by evidence, though not quite definitively established." There are issues of credibility of responses for Chinese surveys -- however, those would actually work in favor of Eugine's analysis here in either of two ways. 1. Chinese respondents who fear the govt may express more support for communism than they believe, but if this is the case, their level of support for markets is striking; 2. Chinese may understand and appreciate the CCP's market policies, indicating that, while they support the CCP (or are afraid to express opposition) they recognize the value of CCP policies that violate marxist/communist principles.
There is a long history of authoritarian regimes temporarily outperforming democratic ones. German 1930s military technology. Soviets & Sputnik. The mistake in this analysis is assuming that the overarching political system has a one-to-one correspondence with the freedom and support scientists receive. Sometimes it does, but not always.
I asked ChatGpt how China makes science funding decisions. Here was its response:
*China’s research funding criteria focus on academic and political criteria—not DEI
*Chinese government research funding programs (e.g., National Natural Science Foundation of China, university innovation team support, city science plans) emphasize:
*scientific merit and innovation
*academic quality and rigor
*political reliability (e.g., proper ideological and political standing)
*disciplinary excellence and research experience
This was all merit, except for the obvious "political reliability" -- so I probed what that meant. Here was its response:
*In Chinese policy language, political reliability (政治可靠 / 政治立场正确) generally means that a researcher or institution:
*Accepts the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
*Does not challenge core state positions (e.g., sovereignty, Party legitimacy)
*Aligns with national development priorities
*Avoids research framed as politically destabilizing, subversive, or “incorrect”
*It is about regime loyalty
So, as long as you do not challenge the Party's authority, you can do pretty much anything you want, contingent on merit-based criteria. Here is what ChatGpt stated about differences in the intensity of the political criteria across different fields:
* History, ethnic studies, political theory Very high
This helps explain their leaps in STEM, but also why Chinese scholarship is probably the lat place you should look for objective, fact-based, critiques of authoritarianism (especially on the left, its probably fine to criticize fascists and nazis), communism, the depravities of the Chinese Communist Party, and the histories of Tibet and the Uyghurs (among others).
Regardless, if your argument is that "science being saddled with political demands, like DEI statements, citation justice and decolonization" has been a net benefit to US science, I'd like to see the evidence. We know all that comes with a cost (eg, the time and effort to write up a DEI section of a grant proposal), so, its only possible for that to be even neutral if there is some known, empirical-demonstrated benefit that at least equals the value of the costs.
Which there isn't.
------------------------------
P.S. It was democratic Athens that sentenced Socrates to death. As far as I know, Sparta never executed its own intellectuals. Point being that a democratic system is better (on this narrow issue) only if it actually provides more freedom and resources and that some democratic systems can be as or more repressive than authoritarian ones.
This is known as The Tyranny of the Majority, which is generally toxic to scientific advances.
It is interesting that the lead paragraph of the article following the intro does not mention DEI. It does mention "left wing idealogical corruption", see the excerpt below.
"THE problem within academia that has gotten us in so much trouble: left-wing ideological corruption of theory, methods, hiring, teaching, grant-making and publishing. Solving this problem is going to be very difficult."
It's well into the article before DEI is mentioned. It seems DEI is quite the bugbear to some.
Now let's have chatGPTs battle it out since that door was opened. So I asked "I want a list of specific harm done to individuals in academia by DEI programs." ChatGPT provided documented individual cases where DEI did harm, here they are:
1. Dr. Matthew Abraham — Alleged committee exclusion after questioning DEI practices
2. Rochelle Hoffman — Former DEI staffer alleges racial hostility, settlement $265k
3. Professor in De Piero v. Pennsylvania State University — Claimed hostile environment
4. Dr. Owen Anderson — Lawsuit over mandatory DEI training
I further asked chatGPT "is this all?"
"Short answer: for proven, individualized harm (clear adverse action to a named person, with documentation beyond opinion), this is close to the full set.
That scarcity is itself an important factual finding."
That's according to chatGPT. Maybe chatGPT is now woke? Whatever that is? It does not seem that DEI (although very objectionable to some) actually does anyone much harm. Perhaps some may have better info.
Exactly how the switch was done in the article from attacks on the left (and China is definitely left) to attacks on DEI isn't clear.
Merit is often cited as a key part in academic hiring and selection. Who can argue with merit? Well into the 20th Century conservatives were firmly against a meritocracy and preferred a system based on race, gender, religion, and class in the UK. What exactly is "merit and innovation" and when in history was it and the other indicators most important. Please provide the date and rationale, quantitative if possible.
It would be interesting to see if authoritarian regimes or democratic ones do better in the the long term. This analysis could be done, but I won't do it.
"White men may still be 55 percent of Harvard’s Arts & Sciences faculty (down from 63 percent a decade ago), but this is a legacy of Boomer and Gen-X employment patterns. For tenure-track positions—the pipeline for future faculty—white men have gone from 49 percent in 2014 to 27 percent in 2024 (in the humanities, they’ve gone from 39 percent to 21 percent)."
Now, one might argue that the nonwhite applicants were "just better." Uh, no. Quite the opposite:
"Berkeley commissioned regression analyses to identify which quasi-legal strategies would produce the fewest number of white male job offers."
Of course, Berkeley is not Harvard. But the point of the Compact article is that such shenanigans were pervasive -- which just about anyone with experience within academia over the last 15-20 years knows.
This is your periodic reminder that racial discrimination in the U.S. is illegal. Its illegal even if it is engaged in "for social justice" because the reasons for discrimination do not render it legal, being that discrimination per se is illegal.
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
DEI has definitely been corrosive to exactly the type of merit that could maximize our international competitiveness. But it is not just DEI. It is full-on political corruption of academic science on politicized topics, it is teaching biases so severe they constitute de facto indoctrination of students, it is the promotion of full-on myths unhinged from evidence. This is why most academics, and most liberals, will tell you there is more evidence of hiring biases against women, even though the evidence is overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. This is a mere tweet, but it includes links to the underlying peer reviewed research:
Lay conservative men have more accurate views of sex bias in hiring than do academics, raising more questions about who is more "anti-science" and about the value of academic "expertise" but, even more important, demonstrating the persuasive power of propaganda masquerading as "scholarship."
But now we are going in circles, because the evidence for all that is relentlessly linked in the essay.
Maybe that's what chatGPT answered but it was asked for specific instances of people who were hurt by DEI and there are just a very few. Perhaps a differently worded question would provide a different result. BTW, is asking chatGPT questions till the desired answer is obtained legit? The legal landscape is interesting and complex but probably only a handful of justices away from being completely different. Nobody else has provided any additional examples or data, but there is lots of excellent rhetoric about generalized harms to society, research, etc. from political conformity, leftist polices, wokeness, etc. most of which China has. The point about the changes in Harvard's faculty is not clear but the changes in US demographics may account for much of it and opening up positions to qualified female candidates as well.
I found you after reading your paper on Tribal Equalitarian Discourse until I got to a reference to a Bo Winegard paper - hadn't realized your thesis was based his his work. The pieces began to click as as I saw where y'all were coming from. But it was hugely telling because he's a fool. And now this from you on poor scholarship. I've essentially come 'round to the harsh view that conservatism is essentially a worthless worldview based on nothing really that you can't get out of liberalism, and everything else is a sad justification for petty grievance and other personality issues (many of which the ideology creates). The most glaring evidence is that it has no real quality scholars of its own who do anything really but apologetics for RW ideas - no real universities of its own. Certainly no quality journalism aside from rags. Because it literally can't. It's constipated by its own illiberalism, which all goes back to Burke's refusal to accept enlightenment into politics and religion or morality. Which may have been arguable 200 years ago but is laughable today, and essentially why we have technofascists, MAGA, a white nationalist administration today.
There is indeed a long standing of conservatism in academia - with which I mean: we cannot/willnot change the system, which you nicely summarised in your many points. We suggest change both within and outside of mainstream academia. We have decided to start outside and have started Academia Libera Mentis to teach social sciences in an alternative way. For detail see our substack post: https://liberamentis.substack.com/p/episode-1-a-new-mould-for-education?r=21o3ms
C Braford,
Thanks for your response.
However, my post had nothing to do with discrimination. It had to do with the question of what percentage of "left" or "activist" or "woke" professors there are in U.S. academe. There's been a fair amount of ranting on this thread and that is not of tremendous interest to me. Some folks may have experienced the equivalent of academic or corporate PTSD over DEI over-reach and their responses may reflect that experience. At the same time, I have experienced enough in academia and heard enough anecdotes from colleagues and friends to feel confident that perhaps quite a lot of discrimination has existed over the last couple of decades. But I have no idea how much. I'd love to know where you get that 80%+ figure. Is this a projection based on anecdotes and your feelings or is there a real study behind it? If there' a real study behind it, please send the citation so I can review it.
Steve Brint
To the "It’s not That Bad" deflections I would add straightforward statistics about the absence of white males in tenure-track positions in prominent universities, which everyone in academics immediately understands. Unless you believe, as Ibram X. Kendi puts it, that the "only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination," the fact that white males are underrepresented to a fraction of their demographic presence is undeniable discrimination.
"Off the record," most academics agree that DEI has been a disaster. But yes -- most academics ARE cowards. They need to go with the administrator flow. But at the same time, many times they recognize this flaw in themselves. When I confront them with stats on white males, they immediately concur, sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with rationalizations and justifications, sometimes with anger (pro and con). But it's always the start to a real conversation, which is what we need.
This transfers to business. I run a small data firm and hire regularly. I would say 80+% of qualified job seekers are young white males, because they are equally discriminated against in the corporate world as in academia. The only choice many of them have are SMBs and startups.
This is long and probably harsh. First, thank you for refusing the excuses for your colleagues.
I will never forget watching Claudine Gay testify that the context was important when considering whether chants to kill Jews everywhere (globalize the intifada) violated student conduct rules.
I’m not an academic, but I care very much about academia cleaning up your mess. It’s nice to read some honest statements.
Everything is not theoretical. Here are some real things: The Khaybar graffiti (a Muslim massacre of Jews 628 CE) and the arson at the Hillel at SFSU, where my B.A. is from, were real world harms that were, in part, caused by teaching lies about Jews, lies about Israel, and lies about Palestinian Arabs. And implicit encouragement of violence (telling students that Israelis are colonists and Jews come from Poland? And decolonization by any means necessary?) Muslim Arabs conquered and crusaded all the way to Spain. Why not teach that?
Why does it take two years and a committee to stop teaching lies? Why would professors or lecturers teach lies at all? Students aren’t paying to be lied to.
Jewish students being corralled into the library “for safety” or hiding in dorm rooms afraid? Those incidents should have been a five-alarm fire for those schools.
Why are there astroturf “Palestine” student groups at all? And why would they be protesting when Israel was still cleaning up bodies and body parts? Don’t universities have some obligation to course correct when it’s clear you’re creating Fanon-bots, psychopaths?
You all do know that all this Palestine crap is mostly based on Soviet infiltration of 60s peace movements, right?
Finally, and this might be the most damaging thing US higher ed has done. The kids you’ve graduated are now teaching. And they are teaching settler-colonialism, “Palestine”, Israel is a white oppressor, intersectionality, critical theory.
No, those ideologies aren’t taught at college level. They are transmitted outside approved curricula. But they are being taught and they’re being taught in K-12. It’s well-documented.
Your ideologues and utopians have built a self-perpetuating Marxist-Leninist Jew-hatred machine. These people actually believe that the Jewish people are the last obstacle to a global borderless utopia where all differences will be erased. Jews want to remain a people, so we must be eliminated or forced to full assimilate.
That’s basically what Hitler wanted to, but without the utopia. He wanted to erase Jewish law, which is based on ethics.
It seems to me that you guys would want to pick up the speed, and also figure out how you’re going to undo what you’ve done to K-12. It’s not that different from Hitler Youth.
Every Jew, who hasn’t been persuaded by her education to turn against the Jewish state, is terrified now. We are being excluded from social activities we used to participate in - no Zionists. A Zionist is a Jew.
I absolutely think Congress should step in and fix the problem. I don’t think anyone whose teaching or writing led to the disgraceful college pograms has any business claiming to be “pursuing truth or knowledge”.
You are obviously the good ones, but where is the horror over what you’ve done? The urgency?
I just think most of you have failed to understand that ideas can be dangerous, that universities do not get to erase people or history, and that your graduates continue to transmit the dangerous ideas and continue to rewrite history and erase people after graduation.
I doubt that the US will be a place for Jews in a few years. It’s almost unbearable now.
Thanks for trying. I hope this isn’t too much to direct at the good ones.
It's pretty impressive that college presidents truly believe they can't do the thing that is right in front of them, but somehow that makes them more capable of the higher-level task. "I may not be able to excise the festering Jew-hate from my campus but I can fight Fascism." Okay, sure.
Lee,
I find the 40% figure not credible. My conclusion is based on the survey evidence with which I am familiar plus papers that I and one of my former students have written based on lengthy interviews with 100 faculty on one of the most left-of-center research university campuses in the country. I will send links to this work. It is true that the proportion of very left faculty is higher in some disciplines - even approaching 50% in ethnic studies and gender studies, according to HERI. But these are not large departments. I will send you the 2022 xtab that I received from UCLA (political ideology by academic field). It's true that UCLA's sample is more inclusive than Nate's sample, but I guess (without knowing with certainty) that they have corrected for over-sampling religious institutions since 2013. Unfortunately, I don't have data for research university faculty from UCLA but again it would greatly surprise me if Nate's figures are even remotely correct. Of course, I'll keep an open mind about this until the issue is definitively adjudicated.
Steve
Steven, here's my comment to Lee which I hope you'll consider:
To the "It’s not That Bad" deflections I would add straightforward statistics about the absence of white males in tenure-track positions in prominent universities, which everyone in academics immediately understands. Unless you believe, as Ibram X. Kendi puts it, that the "only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination," the fact that white males are underrepresented to a fraction of their demographic presence in the U.S. is undeniable discrimination.
"Off the record," most academics agree that DEI has been a disaster. But yes -- most academics ARE cowards. They need to go with the administrator flow. But at the same time, they recognize this flaw in themselves. When I confront them with stats on white males, they immediately concur, sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with rationalizations and justifications, sometimes with anger (pro and con). But it's always the start to a real conversation, which is what we need.
This transfers to business. I run a small data firm and hire regularly. I would say 80+% of qualified job seekers are young white males, because they are equally discriminated against in the corporate world as in academia. The only choice many of them have are SMBs and startups.
Professional society is in shambles, college major is among the most regretted, entire substantive research areas have become corrupted, field has no interest at all in open science or replication crisis, rampant race and sex discrimination in hiring, declining public confidence, the list goes on, but no, we must be absolutely sure to know the exact % of professors identifying in a particular way!
"[T]his post is about self-inflicted obstacles to reform. It is about the denialism that there even is a deep problem. It is about attempts to deflect attention from addressing the problems. It is about the handwringing, pearl-clutching timidity among some of those who, with one hand, claim to want reform, and, with the other, are constantly explaining why it can’t be done, or why now is not the right time to do it, or why the real concerning problem is something else entirely."
Excellent--albeit depressing--analysis. I've heard all these excuses many times, often from sensible colleagues.
Here is my op-ed, translated from Russian, which touches upon some of the points you made:
https://hxstem.substack.com/p/donald-trump-vs-academia-a-war-on
It was written before your essay, otherwise I would have referred to it.
Started in grad school 1997, focusing on Early Modern Literature. Classes & teaching styles were dominated by Marxism, post modernism, social justice, and esp. topics on 'the body' - in particular sexuality. Foucault was practically a god. We also seemed to be poaching innumerable other department's fields with impunity (and without expertise). By the time I needed to start on academic research for my dissertation, social justice and 'queering' texts dominated the field of potential topics. I chose to focus on a rhetorical analysis of early modern medical texts, and managed to avoid the politicization aspect as best I could. PhD earned, I happily remained in the teaching track. That makes me a failed academic, but that's ok with me.
I have very high regard for what Kevin is doing as editor of Theory & Society, and I have very high regard for Lee's efforts to expose biases in the social sciences. (Also for the excellent young scholars who he has mentored.) Here's the but: I find some of this post to be over the top. I have looked for evidence about faculty political views and, according to the most recent UCLA faculty survey, no more than 20 percent of US faculty describe themselves as "far left." That's a lot but not the 40% cited here. Many other faculty members, I agree, are silent in the face of outspoken colleagues. But that is changing now. We'll see if that is temporary. It could be. Citing the Trump Administration and legislation in conservative states is described here as a deflection from the problems of academe. I don't agree. If academe cannot reform itself - and that seems to be the implication of this post - then the recourse is to the power of the state. What other force do the authors suggest could do the job? None, because there is no other force waiting in the wings except state governments controlled by dominant political parties. And of course they are already active. Discussing the Trump Administration is not a deflection. If we cannot reform ourselves, we have to look at the consequences of state interventions - and perhaps especially at the consequences of right-wing state interventions - and ask whether the "cure" is worse than the disease. As the authors suggest, the preferred course is to cure the disease from the inside, but they imply (heavily imply) that this will not be possible. I agree that this will inevitably be slow going until a tipping point is reached. But it is the only way to preserve the prospect of academic freedom and institutional autonomy. No professor should want politicians, left or right, deciding on topics or taboos. I will freely admit that even as it is hobbling universities and restricting free inquiry, the Trump Administration is providing leverage for internal reformers. Even so, we have to ask whether the benefits of this leverage are worth the cost of the hobbling.
Hi Steve. Good points worth making, adds to the convo. I am commenting just to make a couple of points about faculty surveys.
1. The last HERI survey I could find (that's the UCLA faculty survey, I think) collected data in 2016-2017. Do you have more recent data? I ask because the trajectory has been ever-further-left for a long time, so the numbers are likely to be more extreme now.
https://heri.ucla.edu/monographs/HERI-FAC2017-monograph.pdf
2. That survey included about 30% respondents at religious institutions! I mean, that's fine, but I have no doubt that, on avg, faculty at religious institutions skew less far left.
3. Compared to the 40% extremist number (which I will get to in a minute), HERI's sample is much larger and broader, including four year colleges (which I presume means no graduate programs but this was not clear). Here is what they wrote:
"Overall in 2016–2017, 0.4% of faculty identify as far right, 11.7% as conservative, 28.1% as
middle-of-the-road, 48.3% as liberal, and 11.6% as far left."
4. The 40% figure comes from a much smaller survey (but still pretty large, Ns ~1800, Honeycutt's dissertation) of R1 (elite) & R2 (just sub-elite) universities. These are the "thought leaders" and the big scholarship-producers -- the institutions likely having the greatest influence on the future of academia and on the culture/society. Its not yet published (but it is under review), though the data are summarized here:
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-radicalization-of-the-american-2d2
Also, the political q was asked differently. HERI: far right, conservative, middle, liberal, far left.
Honeycutt gave faculty over a dozen labels and they simply chose the ones that they thought applied to them. 40% chose at least one from among "marxist," "socialist," "radical," or "activist."
Bottom lines: The sets of results are different because they have targeted different populations and asked somewhat different questions. They are not mutually exclusive. In the real world, I'd be far less concerned about a far left monoculture at a Christian school such as Baylor or a deep red state such as Arkansas. I'd be much more concerned about it at an elite Ivy/Ivy-like private school or elite state U (e.g., UCLA, UMich) and probably at just-below elite state U's such as Rutgers, UMass, most UC campuses, UWash, etc.
Why does it matter which school? The damage is at state schools, too. And downstream into K-12, where horror stories abound, especially in my native SF Bay Area… Jewish children being corralled into one part of a room, while the other students pretend to be Palestinians, in some kind bizarre and traumatizing exercise.
Please focus on the real world harm the ideologies have caused. Maybe that will make the other reformers move faster.
It really seems like reform is going to have to be imposed.
Steve, thank you for the feedback. The respect is absolutely mutual.
With all due respect, and there is much respect due, I think you are underestimating the severity and scope of the problem we face as concerned social scientists.
It is one thing to ask how many faculty self-identify as "far left," (and other studies put that figure much higher, see citation below) but it is another to document and be honest about the extent of decades of (both concerted and unintended) left-wing political (as well as general anti-science) bias in scholarship, teaching and hiring. There are, for example, very commonly used measures and concepts and theories which import unchallenged ideological bias into ostensibly non-political papers (we discuss some above, but many many more could be listed).
The bias is embedded, and deeply so. Entire literatures now exist on racism, sexism, gender identity, capitalism, and so on which rest upon dubious assumptions and unchallenged interpretations, such as presuming that any gap in outcomes between groups constitutes evidence of discrimination. There is, in other words, an intellectual infrastructure, built steadily in fits and starts since the 60s, which reliably skews many facets of the intellectual life of social scientists today.
The challenge for reform--and for regaining the public trust--is to be honest about the extent of the damage to truth seeking which has been done, and not just point the finger at the most public and vociferous offenders (i.e., the self-identifiers).
Lest it need saying, I'm not implying (and neither is Lee) that the problem is insurmountable. If I thought it was, I wouldn't care. But I care a lot.
Horowitz, M., Haynor, A., & Kickham, K. (2018). Sociology’s sacred victims and the politics of knowledge: Moral foundations theory and disciplinary controversies. The American Sociologist, 49(4), 459-495.)
Thanks for writing this detailed and informed essay. ❤️
No. 🔥 all
Related to your observations, I spoke to a group of heterodox-academy curious professors last week, they'd invited me to talk about the possibility of starting a chapter of HxA due to their concerns about the direction of the academy. Some did so partially because they had for the first time experienced directly the antisemitic undercurrent that has permeated for years.
There wasn't so much denial, but all of the deflections you pointed out here were in full force during that conversation. The conclusion of the meeting was that they might join individually (and only if their names were concealed behind a login), but not start a chapter because it was too risky from a social capital standpoint.
I think something that was not mentioned here that I've been hearing in my capacity as priest to these and other academics, is the sheer (in my mind, cowardly) terror they have about being affiliated with something that might be perceived as right-wing/MAGA, such as a heterodox community. This in spite of the fact I challenged them to find a statement issued by HxA that would suggest it was "MAGA" versus reformist, and they had nothing. Something else just to point out is their sincere belief that right wing authoritarianism is worse than left-wing authoritarianism. One participant said they were "hiding their Jewishness" and hoping they "passed." When I pointed out "could things really be worse with reform from outside than hiding your religion"? there was no good response.
Bravo for turning the spotlight back on the concerned and laying out so clearly and humorously the deflections and denials.
Thinking that it is not reformable is catastrophizing and helps no one. One has to have hope.
Sure, didn’t we reform Nazi Germany? But first they had to lose WWII.
Sure, almost no one (I know) thinks it can't be reformed. But the dividing point is over whether reform can come from inside academia or needs to be imposed from without.
If anyone says that “while Trump is President is not the time to fix these things”, just ask them what they personally were doing to fix them while Biden was President. I’m willing to bet they were actively making these problems worse.
Now for some data. Communist China, as leftwing as anything in the world can be, now leads research in 90% of crucial technologies, see nature, a well regarded publication,
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04048-7
Somehow they have overcome their communist leftwing biases to achieve this. The article does not say if the social sciences are considered crucial.
Frankly, at this point much of Western academia is effectively to the left of post-Deng China.
What evidence do you have for that?
Actually, there is pretty good evidence that there is little support for communism/marxism in China (though there is support for the CCP, which is not quite the same thing, especially since the CCP has, over the last 4 decades, instituted massive market reforms and practices).
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/694255
And, there is evidence that 40% of U.S. faculty self-describe as radicals, marxists, socialists and activists:
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-radicalization-of-the-american-2d2
So I'd rate Eugine's analysis as "certainly supported by evidence, though not quite definitively established." There are issues of credibility of responses for Chinese surveys -- however, those would actually work in favor of Eugine's analysis here in either of two ways. 1. Chinese respondents who fear the govt may express more support for communism than they believe, but if this is the case, their level of support for markets is striking; 2. Chinese may understand and appreciate the CCP's market policies, indicating that, while they support the CCP (or are afraid to express opposition) they recognize the value of CCP policies that violate marxist/communist principles.
There is a long history of authoritarian regimes temporarily outperforming democratic ones. German 1930s military technology. Soviets & Sputnik. The mistake in this analysis is assuming that the overarching political system has a one-to-one correspondence with the freedom and support scientists receive. Sometimes it does, but not always.
I asked ChatGpt how China makes science funding decisions. Here was its response:
*China’s research funding criteria focus on academic and political criteria—not DEI
*Chinese government research funding programs (e.g., National Natural Science Foundation of China, university innovation team support, city science plans) emphasize:
*scientific merit and innovation
*academic quality and rigor
*political reliability (e.g., proper ideological and political standing)
*disciplinary excellence and research experience
This was all merit, except for the obvious "political reliability" -- so I probed what that meant. Here was its response:
*In Chinese policy language, political reliability (政治可靠 / 政治立场正确) generally means that a researcher or institution:
*Accepts the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
*Does not challenge core state positions (e.g., sovereignty, Party legitimacy)
*Aligns with national development priorities
*Avoids research framed as politically destabilizing, subversive, or “incorrect”
*It is about regime loyalty
So, as long as you do not challenge the Party's authority, you can do pretty much anything you want, contingent on merit-based criteria. Here is what ChatGpt stated about differences in the intensity of the political criteria across different fields:
*Differences by discipline
*Discipline Political screening intensity
*Natural sciences (physics, chemistry, engineering) Low
*Medicine, biotech Moderate
*Economics, law, sociology High
* History, ethnic studies, political theory Very high
This helps explain their leaps in STEM, but also why Chinese scholarship is probably the lat place you should look for objective, fact-based, critiques of authoritarianism (especially on the left, its probably fine to criticize fascists and nazis), communism, the depravities of the Chinese Communist Party, and the histories of Tibet and the Uyghurs (among others).
Regardless, if your argument is that "science being saddled with political demands, like DEI statements, citation justice and decolonization" has been a net benefit to US science, I'd like to see the evidence. We know all that comes with a cost (eg, the time and effort to write up a DEI section of a grant proposal), so, its only possible for that to be even neutral if there is some known, empirical-demonstrated benefit that at least equals the value of the costs.
Which there isn't.
------------------------------
P.S. It was democratic Athens that sentenced Socrates to death. As far as I know, Sparta never executed its own intellectuals. Point being that a democratic system is better (on this narrow issue) only if it actually provides more freedom and resources and that some democratic systems can be as or more repressive than authoritarian ones.
This is known as The Tyranny of the Majority, which is generally toxic to scientific advances.
It is interesting that the lead paragraph of the article following the intro does not mention DEI. It does mention "left wing idealogical corruption", see the excerpt below.
"THE problem within academia that has gotten us in so much trouble: left-wing ideological corruption of theory, methods, hiring, teaching, grant-making and publishing. Solving this problem is going to be very difficult."
It's well into the article before DEI is mentioned. It seems DEI is quite the bugbear to some.
Now let's have chatGPTs battle it out since that door was opened. So I asked "I want a list of specific harm done to individuals in academia by DEI programs." ChatGPT provided documented individual cases where DEI did harm, here they are:
1. Dr. Matthew Abraham — Alleged committee exclusion after questioning DEI practices
2. Rochelle Hoffman — Former DEI staffer alleges racial hostility, settlement $265k
3. Professor in De Piero v. Pennsylvania State University — Claimed hostile environment
4. Dr. Owen Anderson — Lawsuit over mandatory DEI training
I further asked chatGPT "is this all?"
"Short answer: for proven, individualized harm (clear adverse action to a named person, with documentation beyond opinion), this is close to the full set.
That scarcity is itself an important factual finding."
That's according to chatGPT. Maybe chatGPT is now woke? Whatever that is? It does not seem that DEI (although very objectionable to some) actually does anyone much harm. Perhaps some may have better info.
Exactly how the switch was done in the article from attacks on the left (and China is definitely left) to attacks on DEI isn't clear.
Merit is often cited as a key part in academic hiring and selection. Who can argue with merit? Well into the 20th Century conservatives were firmly against a meritocracy and preferred a system based on race, gender, religion, and class in the UK. What exactly is "merit and innovation" and when in history was it and the other indicators most important. Please provide the date and rationale, quantitative if possible.
It would be interesting to see if authoritarian regimes or democratic ones do better in the the long term. This analysis could be done, but I won't do it.
Heh. Sounds like ChatGpt answered "who has initiated a lawsuit?" which is a very very very narrow sliver of those harmed by DEI.
Massive anti-White discrimination throughout academia can be found here:
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/?ref=compact-newsletter
Just one of many examples in the article:
"White men may still be 55 percent of Harvard’s Arts & Sciences faculty (down from 63 percent a decade ago), but this is a legacy of Boomer and Gen-X employment patterns. For tenure-track positions—the pipeline for future faculty—white men have gone from 49 percent in 2014 to 27 percent in 2024 (in the humanities, they’ve gone from 39 percent to 21 percent)."
Now, one might argue that the nonwhite applicants were "just better." Uh, no. Quite the opposite:
"Berkeley commissioned regression analyses to identify which quasi-legal strategies would produce the fewest number of white male job offers."
Of course, Berkeley is not Harvard. But the point of the Compact article is that such shenanigans were pervasive -- which just about anyone with experience within academia over the last 15-20 years knows.
This is your periodic reminder that racial discrimination in the U.S. is illegal. Its illegal even if it is engaged in "for social justice" because the reasons for discrimination do not render it legal, being that discrimination per se is illegal.
See, https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/propaganda-scholarship-and-orwellian, where, among other things, you will find:
"The 1964 [civil rights] act continues:
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
DEI has definitely been corrosive to exactly the type of merit that could maximize our international competitiveness. But it is not just DEI. It is full-on political corruption of academic science on politicized topics, it is teaching biases so severe they constitute de facto indoctrination of students, it is the promotion of full-on myths unhinged from evidence. This is why most academics, and most liberals, will tell you there is more evidence of hiring biases against women, even though the evidence is overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. This is a mere tweet, but it includes links to the underlying peer reviewed research:
https://x.com/PsychRabble/status/2000578101105864945
Lay conservative men have more accurate views of sex bias in hiring than do academics, raising more questions about who is more "anti-science" and about the value of academic "expertise" but, even more important, demonstrating the persuasive power of propaganda masquerading as "scholarship."
But now we are going in circles, because the evidence for all that is relentlessly linked in the essay.
Maybe that's what chatGPT answered but it was asked for specific instances of people who were hurt by DEI and there are just a very few. Perhaps a differently worded question would provide a different result. BTW, is asking chatGPT questions till the desired answer is obtained legit? The legal landscape is interesting and complex but probably only a handful of justices away from being completely different. Nobody else has provided any additional examples or data, but there is lots of excellent rhetoric about generalized harms to society, research, etc. from political conformity, leftist polices, wokeness, etc. most of which China has. The point about the changes in Harvard's faculty is not clear but the changes in US demographics may account for much of it and opening up positions to qualified female candidates as well.