Governor Walker vs. the Eggheads

It's a curious thing. Higher education in the US has expanded dramatically since WW II. About 2.3 million Americans were enrolled in 1947 compared to 20.6 million in 2012. In terms of the percentage of total US population, a move from 1.6 to 6.6% (National Center for Education Statistics). But this expansion seems to have done little to reduce anti-intellectualism in this country--what Richard Hofstadter called a “...resentment of the life of the mind, and those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition to constantly minimize the value of that life" (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, 1963, p. 7). We could add a resentment of scientific findings that contradict cherished beliefs and material interests. Another strain is the campaign, with us since the creation of land-grant colleges in 1862, to confine higher education to churning out better workers, managers, and technicians to staff our economy.

Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, and his allies are proponents of that campaign. In the latest budget for the Wisconsin university system, Walker proposed a cut in spending by $300 million over the next two years, the equivalent of a 13% cut. Quite a hit, though not really surprising given Walker's anti-public sector stance.

Cagle.com

More disturbing, to me anyway, was that the budget proposal also included new language in the state code governing the university system. Here's how Inside Higher Ed summarized the proposed change:

In that draft of the governor's budget, gone from state code was the commandment that the university “search for truth.” Gone was the exhortation to “improve the human condition.” Gone was the charge to “extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campuses.” 

Instead, Walker, a Republican, inserted a new benediction: “meet the state’s workforce needs.”

At https://02varvara.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/
wisconsin-on-verge-of-blowup-due-to-tea-party-ignorance/

Way back when, we're talking about a century ago, there were many Wisconsin Republicans associated with the Progressives (such as Robert La Follette)--a movement to make government cleaner (that is, refashion government and politics to make them free of early 20th century equivalents of the Koch brothers), and make government more effective. This "Wisconsin Idea" meant that one of the central missions of the state's university system was to produce "specialists in law, economics, and social and natural sciences [who] would produce the most effective government" (Wisconsin Historical Society).

This Wisconsin Idea in the realm of academia, the notions of a constant search for truth, and that government should and could improve the lot of all under its purview, is what Governor Walker tried to quell. But he's backed off, after much pushback, One of his spokespersons said it was simply a "drafting error," though Walker had previously touted his revisions (see Politifact on this reversal).

Why is reducing the overall mission of the Wisconsin university system's mission to “meet the state’s workforce needs" ill-advised? In pragmatic terms, it implies the eventual transformation of institutions like the University of Wisconsin-Madison from a top-tier research universities to vocational mills. Moreover, it disregards how many graduates of the system will leave the state for jobs elsewhere (common in the Midwest), and the number of out-of-state or international students enrolled its system. State academic systems are not isolated. They are interwoven with regional, national, and international patterns of university or college enrollment. To say that the state's higher education should be about the "state's workforce needs" reveals an ignorance (perhaps willful, or feigned) of the nature of academia today.

At http://www.tildee.com/UlwKij

On idealistic grounds, well, we're back to the old argument of the purpose of higher education (there's a nice summary of this debate here). Is it to focus on skills associated with current labor market demands, or improve the cognitive abilities of students, or is it to produce critical thinkers with the capacity to keep on questioning and learning after graduation? I don't think these are mutually exclusive missions.

For example, my university requires students to take general education courses, trying to ensure that students get exposed to a variety of inquiries, content, and approaches to learning. A while ago I worked with GVSU alum who had majored in Spanish. He recalled taking a philosophy class, and thinking at the time that it was a waste of his time. He now was glad he had taken it--it had made him more aware of the social and intellectual origins of his own beliefs, and also more understanding of those who might not share his beliefs. Most of the students in my introductory course on Latin American Studies are majoring in pre-professional programs (Biomedical sciences, Engineering, etc.). And we have surprisingly lively and thoughtful discussions about the poetry of the Aztec ruler Nezahualcoyotl, 19th century paintings of trains in Mexico and what they might be telling us about notions of progress and modernity, about movies dealing with Argentina's traumatic "dirty war," topics that may be distant from their future careers. I have no idea of how much of this material will stick with them after graduation (I'm musing about all that I don't remember from my undergraduate days). Hopefully, though, work in my course has carved some new cognitive pathways in their brains that may used for learning about the cultural heritage and historical foundations of different peoples (with an assuredness that such learning is crucial).

Back to Governor Walker. Why would he have such a narrow vision of higher education? There is his instinctive hostility to the public sector, noted earlier. And he is part of a GOP faction inimical to the production of knowledge that doesn't sit well with its predispositions--such as former Senator Jim DeMint, who worked to cut funding to National Public Radio, or Senator John Cornyn's repeated efforts to slash National Science Foundation funding for social science research.

At http://ianchadwick.com/blog/anti-intellectualism-the-new-elitism/

Perhaps he is also working out issues from his own college experience--an acrimonious campaign at Marquette for student government president his sophomore year, ending in defeat. And then dropping out with a year to go, with an unremarkable GPA of 2.59, and never finishing his degree. Maybe he shouldn't have attempted a triple major in political science, philosophy, and economics. Maybe it was an acute case of senioritis (Politifact).

Lord knows I'm aware of the many problems in US academia, from skyrocketing tuitions, or the exploitation of adjunct professors, to its apparent function of replicating rather than reducing socioeconomic inequality. So we need to continue this conversation about university reform. Unfortunately, it seems Governor Walker doesn't want a conversation, just a radical reduction by fiat of higher education's complicated mission.

Arizona, Ever Weirder II

    As I described in my last posting, an Arizonan GOP Senator has proposed to place all instructors in public education under FCC guidelines for obscenity, indecency, and profanity.  But there is another danger out there threatening the body politic: liberal faculty.  It seems college faculty with conservative political or religious views have barely been holding onto their academic careers in the face of rampant discrimination. Freshman Republican State Representative, and chair of the Higher Education, Innovation and Reform Committee, Tom Forese, proposed HB 2770, a bill amending existing law regarding university and college hiring and promotion practices:

A. A UNIVERSITY OR COMMUNITY COLLEGE SHALL HIRE, FIRE, PROMOTE AND GRANT TENURE TO FACULTY ON THE BASIS OF THAT FACULTY MEMBER'S COMPETENCE AND APPROPRIATE KNOWLEDGE IN THE FIELD OF THAT FACULTY MEMBER'S EXPERTISE AND, IN THE HUMANITIES, THE SOCIAL SCIENCES AND THE ARTS, WITH A VIEW TOWARD FOSTERING A PLURALITY OF METHODOLOGIES AND PERSPECTIVES. A UNIVERSITY OR COMMUNITY COLLEGE SHALL NOT HIRE, FIRE OR DENY PROMOTION OR TENURE TO ANY FACULTY MEMBER ON THE BASIS OF THAT FACULTY MEMBER'S POLITICAL OR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
B. A UNIVERSITY OR COMMUNITY COLLEGE SHALL NOT EXCLUDE A FACULTY MEMBER FROM TENURE OR SEARCH COMMITTEES OR HIRING COMMITTEES ON THE BASIS OF THAT FACULTY MEMBER'S POLITICAL OR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 

    Forese says he ran for office to "change the world. I'm a small government guy so I believe that the role of government is to protect our life, liberty and property and then get out of the way." Apparently, though, he does want the government to get in the way of a problem that he cannot prove even exists.
    As Higher Ed reported, Forese wasn’t aware of anyone in Arizona willing to publicly claim that type of discrimination, telling the Verde News they fear retribution and must “pretend to think or believe in a different way in order to fit in.”
    How convenient, evidence that no one can confirm. And along with hitting that fear button, he resorts to what is now a standard practice, invert a liberal cause into a story of conservatives victimized by liberalism.  Affirmative action is reverse discrimination.  Homosexuals don't want equal rights; they want extra rights.  Or, in this case, Arizonans need a measure "to end what. . .amounts to a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy at universities and community colleges--at least for political and religious conservatives."  Right, like conservative faculty have suffered the same plight as homosexuals in the military; as if there's outings of conservative faculty who then get the academic equivalent of a dishonorable discharge. What a crock.
    The Center for Arizona Policy (CAP), a conservative organization dedicated to "the values of life, marriage and family, and religious liberty," has more to say about this legislation than the Rep. Forese.  According to its Family Issue Fact Sheet

Over the past several years, many instances have emerged of teachers and professors facing discrimination as a result of their religious beliefs. The examples include educators at colleges and universities who have either been terminated, refused a promotion, or denied tenure simply because of their religious beliefs.

    The "Fact Sheet" cites no study revealing widespread or systematic discrimination against college and university faculty but does give four examples of discrimination, though none from Arizona.  Predictably, each of its cases leaves out a lot of the story:

• Ken Howell taught courses on Catholic theology at the University of Illinois, and his adjunct position was not renewed after an anonymous student complaint about "hate speech"--Howell had lectured on the Catholic Church's position on homosexuality, and made it clear that he agreed it was immoral.  CAP claims that the Alliance Defense Fund (a conservative group that takes on cases of alleged discrimination against religious conservatives) secured his reinstatement.  More likely, it was a secular outfit, the American Association of University Professors, that convinced the university to rescind what I agree to be a knee-jerk decision (see news coverage here).

• CAP declares Mike Adams was denied promotion to full professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington due to his religious beliefs, that "his conversion to Christianity in 2000 was seen unfavorably by Mike’s department chair."  Adams lodged a suit against his ex-colleagues claiming the failure to promote was due to religious discrimination, violating the Civil Rights Act, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments.  The court ruled against him, and the ruling reveals that the decision not to promote was not about his religion, but about his increasingly pugnacious behavior in the workplace, including his self-described Ann Coulter style blog, which he listed as relevant scholarly material in his bid for full professor.

• CAP's next victim, Jon Oller, a professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.  CAP states as fact that his work on creationism "ultimately [led] to his removal from the classroom and censorship of materials he had published." Well, actually, that's what his recent lawsuit against his department alleges.  CAP neglects to mention he's under fire for teaching and advocating the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism, along with the faux theory of creationism and intelligent design, though he has no professional training in either immunology or evolutionary biology.

• CAP finishes with an unnamed person denied tenure at Delta College, a community college in Bay City, Michigan.  CAP says "she was unfairly discriminated against solely on the basis of her religious beliefs." Her name is Stephanie Balyasi, and she has filed a lawsuit against Delta making the same claim.  But CAP does not note that while at Delta, Balyasi was "
campaigning to incorporate creation science as part of the curriculum."  And as someone currently going through the tenure process, I know there could be any number of reasons why she did not get tenure; it depends on Delta's criteria for teaching, scholarship, and service.

    In short, CAP not only has little evidence to back its claim that Arizona needs to provide extra protection for politically and religiously conservative faculty, it misrepresents the few cases it has, not to mention that its "sources" for its findings are press releases from its partner, the Alliance Defense Fund.  Maybe CAP folks should have a sit-down with Oller about "communicative disorders."

    Anyway, a CAP attorney basically admitted there's no hard evidence by calling the bill "proactive," implying that CAP and its legislative allies anticipate discrimination down the road.  Here's some real evidence that suggests there's little to anticipate.  According to a self-described conservative Republican, Matthew Woessner, 

Looking at survey data from all of higher education’s primary constituencies, I began to realize that Republicans and conservatives, while vastly outnumbered in academia, were, for the most part, successful, happy, and prosperous. Fewer than 2 percent of faculty (Republican or Democratic) reported being the victims of unfair treatment based on their politics. Only 7 percent of Republican faculty believed that discrimination against those with “right-wing” views was a serious problem on their campus, compared with 8 percent of Democratic faculty who expressed concerns about discrimination against those with “left-wing” views. Asked to consider what they would do if given the opportunity to “begin your career again,” 91 percent of Democratic faculty and 93 percent of Republican faculty answered that they would “definitely” or “probably” want to be a college professor. Similarly, few rightleaning students or administrators claimed to have been the victims of political mistreatment. Like their Democratic counterparts, most were satisfied with their experience in higher education.

    The actual issue is not discrimination against conservatives, but the predominance of liberals in academia.  For example, according to a 2008 study of 38 private colleges, far more faculty self-identify as liberal or far left than conservative or far right:

	Far Left	Liberal	Moderate	Conservative	Far Right
English	12.8	58.4	19.2	9.1	0.5
History/Political Science	10.7	57.7	20.5	11.1	0.0
Social Sciences	10.0	52.3	26.9	10.5	0.3
Humanities	8.4	49.1	31.8	10.7	0.0
Total	6.4	46.5	30.6	16.1	0.3

From Table 3 in Mariani & Hewitt, "Ideological U? Faculty Ideology and Changes in Students' Political Orientation" PS: Political Science and Politics, 41:4, October, 2008, p. 777.

    These findings mesh with those of other studies of all types of colleges and universities, though some researchers note that when professors are asked about particular hot topics (abortion, gay rights, etc.), many who identify as liberal or conservative turn out to be moderate.  They also note that the ideological balance varies quite a bit--health sciences and business faculty, for example, are evenly split between liberals and conservatives, and community and non-liberal arts colleges have far lower percentages of liberals than other kinds of academic institutions (you can find summaries of these reports here).

    Still, liberals dominate US academia.  Why?  There seems to be an emerging consensus that self-selection is the main factor.  Those with liberal ideals are more likely than those with conservative ones to chose a career in academia.  But, as Peter Wood (president of the National Association of Scholars, an advocacy group defending traditional scholarship and conservative faculty) notes, the self-selection thesis begs the question of why liberals are more likely than conservatives to enter academia, and self-selection doesn't necessarily cancel out the role liberal bias may play in academic hiring and promotion decisions.

    It's definitely a puzzle, but I don't think the outcome--predominance of liberals among faculty--is on its own evidence of bias.  If so, is bias at work in other outcomes such as the predominance of conservatives in the military and enforcement agencies?  It seems reasonable to suppose, especially since there's supporting data, that occupations get typecast, get associated with certain values (rightly or wrongly), and therefore draw people who feel they fit the type, who agree with those values.

    But the puzzle is irrelevant to the faction of conservative Republicans who frame the predominance of liberals in academia as a threat, particularly faculty in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts.  It's odd that the proposed Arizona law shows no concern for the many other disciplines, and because the law targets disciplines with higher percentages of liberals, it appears to be more about constraining those unruly liberals than it is protecting conservative faculty (there are, after all, conservatives in other disciplines).

    Moreover, the law reveals an incomprehension of how academic disciplines work.  It suggests that by constraining those allegedly biased liberals,  the law will foster "a plurality of methodologies and perspectives."  PhDs, if their programs are any good, study a variety of methods and perspectives relevant to their fields, and departments will house faculty with a variety of research interests and approaches.  Political ideology may contribute to those interests and approaches but is hardly the sole determinant.  Anyone that bothered to acquaint her or himself with academia would know that the battle lines within a department are not political ideologies, but research methods and types of inquiries (e.g. rational choice vs. constructivism).

    This Arizona law, then, is not based on any thorough or careful understanding of academia, but is just another example of a broader ad hoc campaign by some conservative Republicans against academics, from the slaps at "eggheads" during the Eisenhower years, to "nattering nabobs" in the Nixon years, to the evil "secular humanists" during the Reagan years, to GOP efforts to strip the social sciences of NSF funding, on up to the jibes by current GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum at academia. During the Florida primary, Santorum went so far as to claim that

We’ve lost our higher education. That was the first to go a long time ago. It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college. The indoctrination that occurs at American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America — and it is indoctrination.

    What tripe.  If true, universities must be really incompetent indoctrinators.  According to the 2010 General Social Survey, 9% of 18-22 year-olds identified as Strong Democrats compared to 17% of the entire population; and 25% of the college-age youth identified as Independents compared to 18% of the entire population.  Or, according to the Mariani & Hewitt study cited earlier, only 1.1% of those identifying as Conservative or Far Right their freshman year reported being Far Left their senior year.  2.8% of Far Left freshman identified as Conservative their senior year (see Table 5, p. 778).

    I'm surprised Santorum trails Romney in Arizona primary polling, 31 to 39%.  Maybe he needs to push harder on that narrative of the specter of liberal indoctrination.  It should work among those many Arizona Republicans who seem to revel in fear of so many things, from people who don't speak good American to articulate but left-wing professors.

Arizona, Ever Weirder I

Apparently, there has been a plague of wardrobe malfunctions and R-rated talk in Arizona public schools and colleges.  So Republican state legislators are coming to the rescue.  As Inside Higher Education recently reported, the Arizona state legislature is currently considering a measure that would place all public classrooms under FCC guidelines for obscenity, indecency, and profanity.

GOP Senator Lori Klein sponsored what has been nicknamed the "G-Rated" bill.  Klein made a little media splash last summer by insisting on bringing her "cute" little loaded pistol into the Arizona Senate chamber a couple of days after the mass shooting in Tucson.  She later aimed the .380 Ruger at a reporter's chest to demonstrate its laser pointer.  On a different note, as state chair of the  Herman Cain for President committee, she dismissed the allegations of sexual harassment that would end up derailing his campaign, explaining that in politics, "we want a virgin to do a hooker's job."  This sounds like a legislator who really knows all about obscenity, indecency, and profanity.

The bill, SB 1467, establishes penalties for speech or conduct that violates FCC guidelines--a short suspension for first-time offenders, a longer suspension for a repeat offender, and termination for those evidently habitual offenders.  I can't find any explanation for why Klein would introduce such legislation, but it jives with previous Arizona Republican efforts to make the state a haven for white conservative Americans by banning ethnic studies programs or rooting out teachers who don't speak proper American (see Bad Combo of Fear and Desperation in Arizona for more on these measures).

The bill, as others have already pointed out, is unconstitutional, along with being just plain ridiculous (see Lukianoff's take here, or Safier's here).  Let's see, how would my courses fare according to the FCC guidelines on obscenity?

"An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest."  We'll just skip for now the issue of how one might determine "community standards," and assume that the films in my Latin American Cinema class that included nudity and graphic sexual scenes would have offended a swath of people in the Grand Rapids area.  Under this law I would have been an habitual offender, and therefore terminated.  I guess I could have selected movies using some sort of Leave it to Beaver standard, but then I wouldn't have performed my job of introducing students to a representative sample of current Latin American cinema.

"The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law."  I think my courses pass muster on this one, unless someone were to take issue with the human rights reports I occasionally use that reference or describe rape.

"The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."  I might be in trouble on this count, but it depends on who gets to decide what material has value.  We're already seeing school boards banning classic works that board members happen to find distasteful, or that don't conform to their hagiographic approach to history.  And this gets us into the issue of operationalizing and enforcing the law.  Would I have to pass my syllabi through some community board for approval?  Would there be a hotline students could call if they were upset with the language of a lecture, the content of a poem, or if a movie got them all hot and sweaty?

Equally troubling, the language is so broad that the teachers could be in violation of FCC guidelines outside of the classroom: "If a person who provides classroom instruction in a public school engages in speech or conduct that would violate the standards. . ."  The law doesn't confine the censorship to only the classroom, it leaves it wide open.

I suppose that language could easily be fixed, but the premise remains flawed, and hypocritical.  For a party that's always calling for limited government, Arizona Republicans sure seem to want a great deal of government control over what constitutes knowledge, and how that knowledge gets taught and learned.

Oh, those beleaguered straights.

InsideHigherEd.com today reports on efforts in the Texas state legislature to "require any public college with a student center on 'alternative' sexuality to provide equal funding to create new centers to promote 'traditional values.'"

Proponents have framed the measure as an effort to get equal time for heterosexuality on public campuses where, apparently, straight folks barely get the time of day. A political interest group, the Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT), worked with State Representative Wayne Christian in crafting the legislation, but its goal was to not to carve out equal resources for heterosexual programming and support, but to get universities to defund centers serving GBLT students.

The YCT doesn't think universities should be funding the promotion of any kind of sexuality or values. Sounds egalitarian, doesn't it? But YCT Vice Chairman, Tony McDonald lets us know what this move is really about: "It is clear that our public universities are funding centers which promote a radical political and social agenda in favor of normalizing homosexuality and expanding homosexual rights."

Basically, the YCT and fellow travelers have fallen back on the litany of privilege that we have heard before from whites and males arguing against affirmative action, or straights fighting civil rights protections for GLBT people: the minority group aggressively promotes and agenda while the dominant group simply wants to 'live and let live;' the minority group gets all these extra rights while the dominant group is victimized. It's another round of "reverse discrimination," but this time for those poor straight people, who apparently can't cross campus without "pansexual" weirdos waylaying them, or gays sneakily luring them into deviant lifestyles. It is one of the whines of privilege--your existence on the same field with me is an affront to my tender identity, so stop complaining (you've never had it so good, anyway).

I'm all for carefully reviewing university budgets, and, frankly, I'd like to see more resources dedicated to the classroom rather than student services--but US universities have long had functions besides transmitting and generating knowledge--they are mechanisms of social mobility and socialization, they are laboratories of social change, and since the tremendous expansion of higher education after WW II, they have become this place where parents send their children to practice adulthood--hence all the support services for young adults trying to navigate the world outside their homes, as well as their often tumultuous internal worlds.