Vanderbilt Law Prof Explains the Challenge of Getting More Conservatives Into Higher Ed
“students need provocateurs to help them engage with unfamiliar ideas”
According to Brian T. Fitzpatrick, the problem is that not enough conservatives want to actually work in higher education. It’s a great point.
He writes at Law & Liberty:
Diversifying the Academy
I have been a member of the law faculty at Vanderbilt University for nearly twenty years. Even though my faculty has grown over that time, there are fewer conservatives now than when I joined. We are down to four—a mere ten percent or so of the tenure-track faculty—and two of the four are nearly 80. Remarkably, that probably makes us the most ideologically diverse department in the entire University.
Everywhere I turn, I hear university leaders saying we need more conservatives in academia. There is little doubt anymore that they are right: scholars need skeptics to point out research weaknesses; students need provocateurs to help them engage with unfamiliar ideas; we all need balanced academic studies to help us make good public policy. But what I do not hear from many of these leaders is how they are going to do it. I have been thinking about this for many years, and I have some bad news: it is going to be difficult. I canvass the possibilities below and propose massive external pressure as the most promising course. But, first, it may be illuminating to break the problem down into its components: supply and demand.
The Supply Problem
The supply problem is that very few conservatives want to go into academia. I don’t blame them. Conservatives are discriminated against at every level. At the bottom, I have seen my colleagues refuse to interview an amazing legal scholar for a job because he went to a very conservative undergraduate institution when he was 18 years old. In the middle, a conservative member of my tenure-track faculty has not led any of our dozen or so academic programs—and that’s where the money is—in over fifteen years. At the top, how many university academic leaders are conservative? To my knowledge, there are none at my university and very, very few anywhere else: a former law clerk to Justice Scalia was made the provost at Harvard—after he left the Republican Party.
It’s not just my colleagues who discriminate. It’s the students, too. They can and do make anonymous accusations of racism or other ills against those who do not toe the progressive line.
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Comments
Why would anybody want to enter a blatantly hostile environment, knowing that they would have zero support?
What a moment of honesty. Now watch him get torched.
just like the police force
when those in charge didnt / dont want certain people they just angle it the way they want it to go
sure,, come on ..sign up maga people
and then fight back
however the universities are expanding their classes>>>degrees
social justice warrior degrees are rubbing stamping themselves in the form of
lawyers doctors airline pilots atc teachers etc
correction:
rubber stamping
A long time ago I taught at Vanderbilt Law School (1976-77). Things have gotten far worse, apparently, since I was a young visiting professor there. I’ll bet I could name the two conservatives in their 80s whom Brian Fitzpatrick mentions. The scary thing, to me, is that Vanderbilt is still probably more conservative than my alma mater (Cornell) or most other prestigious law schools in the east. It is hard to persuade conservatives to enter academia when they are going to be discriminated against at every turn.
Sad to say, the medical school faculty at Vandy is similarly proportioned and the few conservatives “stay in the closet” or bolt for private practice.
I honestly don’t know why anyone conservative would want to be professional faculty anywhere. The deep leftist stench and rot within whackademia is enough to gag a sewer rat. Academic medicine is just as bad as law, and in some cases where some whacko docs are saying they refuse to treat certain patient types due to [reasons], it is even worse than could be imagined. I don’t think the general public knows how horrific it is say, in a lot, and I do mean a LOT, of tertiary care academic medical centers.
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