Conservatives in Academia “have been purged not so much by firing, but by not hiring”
“It took decades to get to where we are now. If you look back 30 years ago, it was not this skewed. Conservatives have essentially been purged from academia, and they have been purged not so much by firing, but by not hiring. There has been almost no hiring of open conservatives in academia, certainly at elite academia, in 20 to 30 years.”
I appeared this morning on Varney & Co. on Fox Business to discuss the status of academia in the context of the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay.
My segment started after a lead in by a news report on L’Affaire Gay.
The interview was short and to the point, no wasting time!
Transcript (auto-transcribed, may contain transcription errors)
Varney (00:00):
Come on in Cornell University law Professor William Jacobson. William, how long will it take to change the dominant liberal culture in our universities?
WAJ (00:11):
I think it’s going to take decades. It took decades to get to where we are now. If you look back 30 years ago, it was not this skewed. Conservatives have essentially been purged from academia, and they have been purged not so much by firing, but by not hiring. There has been almost no hiring of open conservatives in academia, certainly at elite academia, in 20 to 30 years. It’s going to take a long time.
Varney (00:34):
Do you believe it brings down the quality of education at these elite universities?
WAJ (00:40):
I think there’s no question about it, because students only get exposed to one viewpoint, to one world outlook, and it’s gotten a lot worse in the last three, four years with the extreme emphasis on so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion and critical race theory. So what was a bad situation, is now much worse. So it is doing a disservice to the students because they don’t hear opposing viewpoints on campus.
Varney (01:08):
Does anybody talk to you in the faculty lounge,
WAJ (01:11):
<laugh> Well, I don’t go to the faculty lounge very much. I would say that there’s a cold peace for me. I try not to bother people in the building and hopefully they try not to bother me. But I am not fully integrated into the faculty. I think mostly because of my political viewpoint does not align with most people.
Varney (01:33):
Well, you are a free speech guy and you’re welcome on this program, and we want you to come back soon because this is an ongoing situation. We want to hear from you, professor William Jacobson. Come back soon. Thank you, professor.
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Comments
And they did it to themselves by pretending that liberals would play by the same rules.
Conservatives insisted on PRETENDING that merit mattered, and they hired both conservatives and liberals.
Meanwhile liberals were out there hiring ONLY other liberals. They’ve done this in a hundred different industries, companies, and organizations. Given time, the organization is staffed exclusively with liberals and never changes.
“and they [conservative teachers] have been purged not so much by firing, but by not hiring.”
A similar tactic has been used by media for decades upon decades. Called spiking,
“Spiking is the act of withholding a story from publication for editorial, commercial, or political reasons. Its facts and grammar may be valid, but its content is deemed to be at odds with the interests of the paper, or the paper’s interpretation of what is good for its community.”
The aim for what has happened in colleges and in the media is the same – only one point of view will be allowed. And that point of view is for bigger and bigger government until there is total control.
It must really annoy the lefties to no end that a remnant exists, namely us, bearers of the Old Guard. If only they could get rid of us.
Our mortality will get rid of us.
What about litigation, or population is about 50-50 lib or conservative, yet employment in many areas is 90% lib. It seems there is a good case for litigation.
They’ll just get a friendly judge, or declare that they aren’t 90% lib, that most of them are ‘independent’.
Unfortunately, in most office politics the nice guy finishes last. The snake, double dealer, fanatic and liar that gets the attention and the benefit of the doubt. If X hates Y and repeat his hate the first instinct of coworkers is “What did Y do to make X upset?”. If you live and let live, you will be the one that won’t live.
And academic politics and egos are the worst. Thin egos, a need to show their rank — the whole point is to assert one’s ranking order (hence why so many grad students hate the system). So anyone not hiring their own is not building alliances to survive. Left gets that, the right often does not.
Glad to see that despite Tucker being gone you are able to be on Fox on one of the few shows worth watching
This is Fox Business. Pretty much all of the hosts but Klayman and Cavuto are Trump supporters.
By intimidation, more likely. If it’s like corporations.
White males are already close to being fired regardless.
Always walking on eggshells, knowing that there will be no tolerance for you if you say something horrific and evil such as, “Men can’t become women and women can’t become men.” Or worse, “All lives matter. Even Jews.”
The problem isn’t academia being invested by one political PoV; It’s academia being invested with thoughtless advocacy and group-think, for the comfort of the weak-minded.
For the rest of society, academia is a place we make for iconoclasts: they’ll find uncomfortable new things for us.
The problem is that the foot soldiers in The Progressive Project are on an intolerant mission from god, wherever they embed themselves.
The “not hiring” thing has been going on for a long time and is sure to get the same outcome with the preferred people in place to continue it. The thing is that you are seldom told why you didn’t get the job and unless you are willing to sue a company to find out the hiring demographics you will never know.
30yrs ago I was told straight out at a college job interview that although I was the best candidate that showed up I was not going to be hired because they had to hire a woman or minority. Sucked but I got on with my life.
Yup. One of my former law partners had the skills, academics, and credentials to be a law school professor, which probably would have been the highest and best use of his talents. But when he went through the “meat market” process in the late 1980’s, he repeatedly was told “five years ago, we’d have hired you in a heartbeat. But now we’re under pressure to ‘diversify’ the faculty, so straight white guys like you are just out of luck (unless you have something extraordinary like a SCOTUS clerkship + SG office experience).”
It’s only gotten worse since then, which is a lot of the reason why much of legal academia has become a bad joke.
The woke hive mind virus is lab generated to be gain of function, resulting in group think.
I have a legal question. How is it that most gov agencies, S, F, and L, are comprised of liberals/socialists/marxist/communist/authoritarian by numbers that usually exceed 90%? Is a class action in order? I’d think millions have ”standing”.
This is exactly correct. How did these schools get a 90-10 left-right split? By cheating. There are 100 ways to rig the hiring process, and the left has used them all, with no penalty or accountability.
This is a well=known phenomenon.
Hiring committees at universities are composed of existing professors. If your political opinions are adverse to theirs, they will refuse to hire you.
Erronius
The exception is that politically conservative faculty will hire “progressive” faculty because conservatives enjoy a good argument. Not so the progressives.
I’m afraid the only solution is to decolonialize higher ed from the progressive colonizers..
“… and they have been purged not so much by firing, but by not hiring.”
Excellent point by Professor Jacobson. I saw it happen.
The building takeover era at Cornell in 1969 also resulted in the departure of disgusted and harassed conservative professors. The rest were replaced by attrition.
Again with the word “elite” in terms of academia! Just what constitutes “elite” academia? My grandfather was on medical faculty at five university-based medical schools in Texas, all public and all quite respected. None of them ever labeled themselves “elite” because they would have been laughed out of the state. What is it with you Yanks and the use of the term “elite” anyways?
It’s not “us Yanks” that are assigning these labels. Certain universities and their alumni are declaring THEMSELVES to be elite. Most of these are Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale and Ivy League equivalents like Stanford and UC Berkeley. More and more normal people are seeing these institutions as frauds who’s graduates are spreading intellectual poison far and wide.
The word “elite”, in terms of academia, is rarely used in the South. Yes, we have good institutions of higher education, but we don’t use that word to describe them. Down here, it’s pronounced “eee-light”!