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.
What has changed in recent years, however, is the nature of conservatives’ efforts to counter the left on campus. Assimilating the rhetoric of the left, “intellectual diversity” has become a rallying cry for campus conservatives in their efforts to increase the presence of conservative ideas. David Horowitz in particular has fueled the effort by pushing universities and state legislatures to adopt the Academic Bill of Rights, a set of principles designed to defend “free inquiry and free speech within the academic community.” To date, the tactic has largely been successful. At Brown University for instance, hardly a bastion of conservatism, President Ruth Simmons has repeatedly acknowledged the need for greater intellectual diversity on campus. To fulfill this mission, she has created the Kaleidoscope Fund to provide financial support in the effort to bring more conservative speakers to the university and has supported Professor John Tomasi’s Political Theory Project, an initiative to drive “beneath the familiar and easy ideological labels” to discuss three main themes: “The American Experiment; Market Society and Social Order; and Globalization and Development.” The initiatives have changed the paradigm of political discourse on campus and have generally created a culture of greater tolerance on campus for conservatives. Moreover, it has motivated many disgruntled alumni to once again take part in projects on campus. A similar story can be told of universities across the country.
The intellectual diversity mantra has proven particularly successful for two reasons. First, it is extremely difficult for the left to counter calls for “intellectual diversity,”“under-representation,” and “tolerance and inclusiveness.” Not only do these ideals appear to be principally benign, they appeal to the very heart of leftist orthodoxy. For the left to suddenly abandon “diversity” is seemingly tantamount to a concession of intellectual failure. Moreover, it simply provides conservatives with further ammunition to blast the academic left perched atop a hill of its own hypocrisy. The dilemma has worked out particularly well for the Brown College Republicans, for instance. Brown’s Third World Center, the beacon of multiculturalism on campuswhich, until recently, hosted an orientation program exclusively for minority students, has begrudgingly given the College Republicans money to bring speakers such as Dinesh D’Souza and Rich Lowry to campus in the name of intellectual diversity. (Ironically, the Third World Center gave D’Souza, an Indian immigrant, $25, while contributing $50 to bring Lowry).
Second, the current generation of college students, while on balance politically liberal, is relatively conservative compared to both the current crop of university professors as well as previous generations of college students. Many commentators have noted, for instance, the prevalence of “South Park conservatives,” socially liberal students who nevertheless sympathize with conservatives in their critique of political correctness and support for freemarkets. Moreover, the perceived intellectual stagnation which often results from political one-sidedness has made intellectual diversity an appealing idea to many students and professors on the left. The allure of intellectual diversity has reached beyond conservatives to supporters of vigorous debate and scholarly inquiry.
Yet for conservatives, the concept of intellectual diversity should raise at least as many worries as it provides hopes. Indeed, in committing itself to the tenet of intellectual diversity, modern conservatism could potentially sow the seeds of its own destruction. Inherent in the goal of intellectual diversity is the notion that a variety of viewpoints is a laudable end in itself. Based on a pure market model, this vision of academic discourse appeals to the liberal ideal that the best ideas will emerge naturally from a potpourri of theories. While appealing in theory, this view of education logically commits conservatives to a set of conceptions which are profoundly anticonservative. In virtually every academic field there is a multiplicity of ideas which have or continue to guide the belief systems of rational people. Stalinism, Nazism, and white supremacy, for all their obvious flaws, represent ideologies which have guided the actions of influential leaders. Under the logic of intellectual diversity, don’t these theories deserve an equal place in the classroom? Critics may correctly point out that these theories are today so thoroughly discredited that they are no longer relevant to contemporary discussions. But what about theories which hold adherents in today’s society? Should creationists teach biology? Should Marxists teach economics? Should conspiracy theorists teach history? Should Islamic radicals teach Judaic studies? Intellectual diversity’s answer to these questions is a resounding yes.
In truth, conservatives do not really want intellectual diversity, and rightfully so. The proper conservative model of education is one which emphasizes classical liberal values, teaches a traditional canon of literature, and inculcates in students the principles of America’s ordered liberty. A true conservative education is fundamentally incompatible with intellectual diversity. In the intellectual diversity debate raging in academia today, the stakes are particularly high for conservatives. Diversity’s seduction of the left led to academia’s descent into the morally, culturally, and intellectually bankrupt institution it is today. While the right’s conception of diversity is certainly different from that of the left, schemes to socially engineer outcomes at the expense of merit and truth are ultimately theories of intellectual backwardness. For conservatives to rally around the cause of intellectual diversity represents at best, political opportunism, and at worst, a profound deviation from the principles which make conservatism worth defending in the first place.
