CounterCulture at Northwestern

Last week I went to Northwestern to hear conservative scholar and author Dinesh D'Souza speak. We were there a bit early, but there were a few protesters there already, chanting "Dinesh is a bigot". Charming. I found out from other students they were the local feminists, so I went back and asked them if they were aware that in Iran they sentenced rape victims to death by stoning? Momentary silence. If they had read his book? Were they planning on coming in to listen? They started chanting again, Dinesh is a bigot. So I took a picture and went back in. Their signs had to do with affirmative action, a pressing issue of the day.

That same night the Republican Club's request for funding for another speaker was turned down by the Northwestern Student Senate. The Rainbow-PUSH coalition apparently won the day, claiming the Republicans were divisive. Want to welcome us into your big tent, Rainbow PUSH? I thought not.

The Republicans are funded at $12,000, the Democrats $71,000. The last 3 events, the Northwestern College Republicans went from 30 participants, to 75, to 148. (Maybe some sympathetic alums or readers can make a donation to help the College Republicans host their next speaker.)

The American Enterprise Institute, as part of its conference on Reforming the Politically Correct University, has issued two papers documenting leftist bias and groupthink in our universities, which comes as a surprise to no one, except, perhaps, the leftist profressoriate. Summary of the findings:

In their survey of quantitative evidence on the ideological profile of university faculty, professors Daniel Klein of George Mason University and Charlotta Stern of Stockholm University find that conservatives and libertarians are outnumbered by liberals and progressives by roughly two-to-one in economics, more than five-to-one in fields such as political science, and by more than twenty-to-one in disciplines like sociology and anthropology. Klein and Stern base their findings on survey research--accumulated since the 1960s--of the ideology, policy views, and voting behavior of faculty, as well as on all reliable voter-registration studies of university professors.

In a companion essay, Klein and Stern found that this bias is likely explained by a psychological phenomenon known as "groupthink." According to groupthink theory, organizations tend to choose and reward only those people who are similar to the organization's dominant members. This becomes a self-reinforcing mechanism resulting in increased homogeneity and self-validation. Since the predominant academic orientation is liberal or progressive, university faculties have become less, not more, ideologically diverse over time.

I would suggest, given the prevailing campus groupthink, the Republicans should receive more funding to overcome the prejudices of the majority. After all, Republicans are a significant minority on campus and the power of the powers that be, the incumbent liberal philosophy could use a brisk challenge.

Fostering a little more of the intellectual thinking I heard that night inside the hall would be healthy. Hey, it's the counterculture up here!

And Northwestern University might give some thought to their donations. Having passed the protesters on his way in, D'Souza quipped, "For the record--hate--I'm against it", and recalled a remark by President Reagan, as protesters gathered before one of his speeches and chanted, "We are the future". Reagan: "I'll sell my bonds!"

Related post: Our Friends the Saudis, Mickey Mouse Academics