When academia attacks

George Will points out in a recent Washington Post column that academia is rife with--can this be true?--liberals. The result? A kind of liberal academic groupthink, he writes. Or, as Wonkette would undoubtedly term it, "an intellectual circle-jerk." (Extra-apt, since 85% of America's full professors also happen to be men.)

As you might imagine, the intellectual circle-jerkers--probably guys a lot like my hippy pinko professor dad--had a lot to say on the Letters page about this topic today. My favorite:

"If academia is becoming more liberal, perhaps it is the free choice of individuals who feel the country would be better off with policy guided by science and study, rather than by faith and dogma. When conservatives discover the Enlightenment, perhaps more of them will find successful careers in academia."

Snap! And now, analysis. What we are debating here is not really whether academia is "liberal," whatever that means, but whether that is a problem. Mr. Will's beef is that a "filtering process" tends to exclude conservatives, and thus conservative viewpoints, from the Ivory Tower; this leads to aforesaid groupthink and a lack of diversity of thought.

Is it a problem if all academics have the same political leanings? Yes, basically. This argument is a little overdrawn, though; there are many types of liberal, just as there are many types of conservative. If by "liberal" all you mean is "interested in openly exploring a variety of cultures and viewpoints" then I say, that's what higher education is all about. If by "liberal" you mean "secular," then I say, there's a reason that there aren't more biblical literalists teaching biology at colleges and universities. That's because they're wrong, based on the best scientific evidence. Why aren't there more Greenbackers teaching economics at our nation's universities? Exactly. In short, maybe the most educated people in the country are mostly liberal because . . . liberals are right?