John Thompson, chair of the history department, similarly questioned DCU's usage of
party registrations to make their point. "The interesting thing about the United States
is that the political spectrum is very narrow," he said, noting that other countries,
such as Canada, represent a much broader sampling of political leanings. As such, he
said, the question of political affiliation in the United States becomes relatively
trivial.
This is in response to the fact that his department has 32 Democrats, 4 unaffiliated,
and 0 Republicans! Of course, if Republicans and Democrats are pretty much the same, as
is his claim, the split should be about 16-16. Or, perhaps he is saying that his
faculty are representative of European opinion, but not American, and hence are entirely
leftwing but split between John Edwards types, outright socialists, and communists.
Note, by the way, that when people like Professor Thompson talk about "other countries,"
they always mean "leftwing countries"--- not African countries, with their almost
universal repugnance for homosexuality, or Asian countries, with their quiet
conservatism, or Moslem countries, with their radical medievalism.
And then there is the empirical claim of the philosophy chairman, rather clearer and punchier, as befits his more rigorous discipline:
...
"We try to hire the best, smartest people available," Brandon said of his philosophy
hires. "If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then
there are lots of conservatives we will never hire.
"Mill's analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican party in
our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia. Players in the NBA
tend to be taller than average. There is a good reason for this. Members of academia
tend to be a bit smarter than average. There is a good reason for this too."
Indeed, department chairs said their hiring decisions are based in no way on a
candidate's political affiliations. "I don't know the political affiliation of all of my
colleagues in philosophy, nor do I care," said Robert Brandon, chair of the philosophy
department. "Our last hire was in the history of modern philosophy. We hired an expert
in Kant and Newton. Politics never came up in the interview."
Thus, he claims that so many Americans vote Republican because they are stupid, and
this naturally means there are fewer Republicans in academia (Why then are there more
conservatives in science departments than in the humanities? Well, being good at math
doesn't count as intelligence, perhaps. And doesn't this explanation come dangerously
close to explaining the WASP and Jewish overrepresentation in academia?)
After reading what these two chairmen have to say, can one really believe that they would ever hire a job candidate who admitted to voting for George Bush? The history chairman would say that on the Canadian scale, anyone who voted for George Bush is a member of the radical right. The philosophy chairman would say voting for George Bush is a good sign of low intelligence, and it would be a waste of time to look further at his other credentials.
When Brian Leiter put Prof. Hellie's silly argument that conservatives are liars on his web-log, I thought he was joking. (The argument--- conservatives are out to hurt people, and if they told the truth, people would not support them, so they lie, as a consequence.) His later posts make it clear that he actually thought Hellie had something to say. Combined with Professor Brandon's statement, I really wonder about philosophy professors.
[in full at 04.02.12a.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]
To return to Eric Rasmusen's weblog, click http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/0.rasmusen.htm.