A Conservative Critique of “Intellectual Diversity”

In the inaugural lecture of the Janus Forum lecture series, “Ideology in the American Academy,” Mr. James Piereson and Professor Stanley Fish squared off in a discussion on the issue of intellectual diversity in academe. Piereson is president of the William E. Simon Foundation, a private grant-making foundation with broad charitable interests in education, religion, and problems of youth. He is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University. He is a frequent contributor to the Chronicle of Higher Education and to the op-ed page of the New York Times.

Each speaker had thirty minutes to state his views on the issue, followed by a thirty-minute question and answer session. Professor Fish spoke first, conceding that there are major problems with the ongoing politicization of academia. Yet he wholeheartedly rejected intellectual diversity, defined as an effort to bring politically conservative professors, speakers, and administrators into the academy, as a viable solution to the issue. Rather, Fish advocated a much narrower vision for the role of politics in academia. He called on professors and students alike to “academicize,” that is, approach issues, political or otherwise, through the lens of intellectual inquiry. To illustrate the point, Fish provided an example. If a professor asked the question in class, “Is George W. Bush the worst president in US history?” Fish argued that rather than allowing the discussion to descend into a political debate, the question could instead be “academicized” by inquiring into America’s proclivity to rank everything, the criteria for judging presidents, observations on how presidents rank themselves, and ultimately, a reasoned examination of President Bush’s place in history. Fish had a direct message for academics that politicize the classroom, “If you want to save the world, do it on your own time.”

Piereson, by contrast, supported the integration of intellectual diversity into various realms of academia, arguing for a stronger conservative presence in classroom curricula, faculty and administrative composition, and guest speakers on campus. Piereson appealed to the benefits of pluralism and democracy, suggesting that the overwhelming dominance of leftist ideology has a negative impact on both the left and right. He further noted the fact that leftist consolidation of the academy in the latter half of the twentieth century has seemingly correlated with a waning of leftist influence at the national level. Unlike Fish, however, Piereson did not advocate removing politics from the classroom, recalling that one of his favorite classes in college was taught by a politically partisan professor whose enthusiasm engaged the class. Nor did he suggest that conservatives should necessarily seek to take over academia from the left. Rather, Piereson simply backed a concerted effort on campus to expose students to a greater variety of viewpoints and create a culture of political tolerance.

The conservative critique of academia as an institution overrun by harebrained leftists is not a new one. William F. Buckley, Jr. for instance, launched his career by inspiring a generation of conservatives with his book God and Man at Yale in 1951, criticizing Yale University for its collectivist secularism. This was before the academy’s more radical turn in the 1960s and 1970s. For those on the right, the argument is a relatively easy one to make: leftist professors far outnumber conservatives at most colleges, academic departments such as Women’s Studies, Peace Studies, and Postmodern Studies have proliferated across academia, and core curricula are increasingly being replaced with academic flexibility. Controversial comments by professors such as Ward Churchill only fuel conservative antagonism.