A wonderful discussion and it is so great to hear from a reasonable voice on these issues.
When I entered college in 1971 the protests and outrageous demands of students make what we have seen the past couple of years look like weak tea. The occupation and disruption of campuses was common. Nevertheless teaching and learning went on for most students. Arguments for and against the war took place in classes where such discussions were appropriate. Professors were reffing and guiding discussions trying to channel the passions into civil discourse.
My own part of the academic world was dominated by the conflict between cultural conservatism and the emerging cluster of postmodern ideologies. The cultural conservatives were not much engaged in conservative politics. Those of us on the postmodernist track were definitely more politically engaged and usually from the left.
I don't think the "preferential option for the left" was planned but graduate students are groomed by professors, and when those students become professors they groom the next generation, and so on. So the postmodernist triumph over cultural conservatives in the humanities was not principally political but it certainly narrowed the political field of vision within the community.
The Economics department might be filled with lefties but I doubt the business departments are. I don't know what kind of political litmus test could be applied in STEM.
If a conservative is able to present and teach the New Criticism of T.S. Eliot and the literary criticism of Jacques Derrida competently and objectively because students need to be able to understand both then welcome aboard. But if he (it's almost always a HE) starts from the premise that Derridian analysis is simply disposable...
A wonderful discussion and it is so great to hear from a reasonable voice on these issues.
When I entered college in 1971 the protests and outrageous demands of students make what we have seen the past couple of years look like weak tea. The occupation and disruption of campuses was common. Nevertheless teaching and learning went on for most students. Arguments for and against the war took place in classes where such discussions were appropriate. Professors were reffing and guiding discussions trying to channel the passions into civil discourse.
My own part of the academic world was dominated by the conflict between cultural conservatism and the emerging cluster of postmodern ideologies. The cultural conservatives were not much engaged in conservative politics. Those of us on the postmodernist track were definitely more politically engaged and usually from the left.
I don't think the "preferential option for the left" was planned but graduate students are groomed by professors, and when those students become professors they groom the next generation, and so on. So the postmodernist triumph over cultural conservatives in the humanities was not principally political but it certainly narrowed the political field of vision within the community.
The Economics department might be filled with lefties but I doubt the business departments are. I don't know what kind of political litmus test could be applied in STEM.
If a conservative is able to present and teach the New Criticism of T.S. Eliot and the literary criticism of Jacques Derrida competently and objectively because students need to be able to understand both then welcome aboard. But if he (it's almost always a HE) starts from the premise that Derridian analysis is simply disposable...