David Plotz

Something has changed at the Columbia Spectator. A year ago, former College Republicans President Dennis Schmelzer was the only identifiably conservative writer among the ten regular opinion page columnists (in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I was one of those columnists). Now as many as five of the ten columnists are arguing positions that are relatively conservative, at least by Columbia standards. It is hard to believe that this is a coincidence, given a staff editorial (Sep. 20) declaring “ideological diversity” to be a worthy goal outside the classroom. The next day, columnist Chris Kulawik, himself a beneficiary of this new affirmative action, pushed the argument even further, demanding that Columbia “stop championing superficial differences over ideological ones” in the hiring of its faculty. About half of the current crop of columnists have made some version of Kulawik's argument.

Jeff Waksman, another of the new columnists, recently condemned traditional race-based affirmative action, stating bluntly that to the Administration, “diversity means more women and minorities” (10/6). By the same token (no pun intended), “ideological diversity” is a code word for hiring more conservatives. None of its proponents in the Spectator make any attempt to hide this. It is depressing to think that conservatives, who have a long history of rejecting identity politics, have gotten so good at playing the role of victims. Pity the poor oppressed conservatives. They couldn't help it; they were born that way. How dare Columbia not treat their ideas as if they are exactly equal to those of every other student?

Indeed, the entire concept of conservatives supporting ideological diversity reeks with irony, because conservatives have a long history of attacking moral and cultural relativism. The mere phrase “ideological diversity” implies a blurring of the distinction between right and wrong. To hire a professor because of his or her political views is to reinforce the notion that all political views are ultimately the same. It implies that anarchists, socialists, communists, and liberal democrats are all “liberals” whose views can only be effectively balanced by “conservatives,” the latter presumably describing people who can intellectually justify supporting the reelection of President Bush.

The trouble with this is that professors are not politicians, and with few exceptions they are not here to teach politics. The fact that hardly any of them would dream of supporting Bush means neither that they are radically to the left nor that there is some anti-Bush conspiracy; it simply means that Bush has scarce appeal to academics. And why would he? The president has at various times expressed his contempt for basic tenets of science, for journalism, for intellectuals, for reading, and for nuanced thought. With the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, he even expressed his contempt for the conservative intellectual elite that has spent five years apologizing for him. That a political movement exists, or even that it is popular, does not give it intellectual legitimacy, and certainly does not indicate that those who follow it deserve automatic representation at elite universities.

This is not to deny that there is a rich conservative intellectual tradition, nor that most Columbia students probably remain ignorant of its existence. Indeed, it might be interesting to have a class on major texts in modern conservatism, presumably taught by a conservative, which could introduce students to the work of Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, William F. Buckley, Jr., and other luminaries of the right. Perhaps it would lead some liberal students to reconsider their views. (Perhaps it would even lead some Bush supporters to reconsider their views, given the current administration's apparent ideological incoherence.) In any case, there are plenty of critical disciplines in which conservatives can and do thrive. In particular, business and economics are founded on conservative principles (in Europe these would be called classical liberal.) And there is no reason why ideology should affect the teaching of math and science at all.

Perhaps there is a reason that conservatives are underrepresented in the humanities. Professor William Harris drew ire from conservatives when, in a letter to the Spectator (Nov. 4, 2004), he asked rhetorically, “Is it possible that serious scholarly study of history tends to lead a person toward the left?” Some have interpreted Harris' point as arrogant and closed-minded. Maybe so, but in the interest of ideological diversity, let's consider it anyway. I don't believe that Harris meant to suggest that conservatives are stupid or intellectually unserious, although he may in fact believe that. More likely, he has it backwards: it isn't that a serious study of history leads a person to the left, but that being on the left can lead a person to a serious study of history.

Try, if you can, to imagine a course on the history of the effects of colonialism on African societies taught by a conservative. More to the point, try to imagine a conservative scholar choosing to devote his life to a serious study of colonialism from the African perspective. No doubt such people exist, but is it really so surprising that African history tends to be taught by liberals? What about Latin American history? Middle Eastern history? To understand the underpinnings of a foreign civilization generally requires suspending a narrow concept of human nature based on the European Enlightenment. Obviously there's nothing stopping conservatives from doing just that, but there's nothing inclining them towards it either.

A major exception to this tendency is the study of Russia and Eastern Europe, my own major, which attracts a considerable number of conservative scholars. This is not surprising. The Soviet Union was a nominally left-wing, anti-intellectual, totalitarian state, and therefore an easy target for criticism from the right. At the same time, left-wing academics of a certain age often failed to challenge the Soviet Union's public image aggressively enough, creating an opening for their right-wing counterparts. But in general, powerful left-wing governments are not very common, which means that in most of the world the conservative tendency is to defend those already in power. And how much serious scholarship does it take to do that?

The whole basis of academic acheivement is inquiry, which means that the most successful academics tend to be those who are interested in questioning established hierarchies and common assumptions — and by common, I mean common in the real world, not on college campuses. Conservatives are not crazy when they perceive college campuses as being insular and liberal. But beyond the narrow confines of academics, the conservative contention that they are challenging an entrenched, all-powerful liberal elite doesn't hold water. In reality, liberal academics have largely failed to wield considerable influence over either ordinary people or the levers of power. The fact that they are publicly ignored and politically ineffective doesn't make them wrong, it just makes them lonely and frustrated.

That said, it would be interesting to see some genuine conservative intellectuals make inroads into traditionally left-wing fields. If a right-wing academic is able to break new ground on the study of, say, African-American slave narratives, there is no reason why his or her work would not be taken seriously. If conservatives want to see more of their own in the humanities, they should get more involved in the humanities. Playing the victim might win over the Spectator editorial board, but conservative students had better enjoy the experience of being welfare queens while they still can. Once they graduate into the real world, they'll never know the pain of being an oppressed minority again.