Why Intellectuals Prize the Intellect
Ezra Klein takes a swipe at this site for a recent post that pondered, again, why university professors are so uniformly leftist or liberal. Writes Klein:
So in places where intelligent, informed people work, many of them turn out to be liberal. At the places the most intelligent and informed people work, even more of them turn out to be liberal. And so we scratch our heads and wonder about bias? Why?
In its simplism, this statement is truly awe-inspiring. It is a Gothic cathedral of arrogance.
Klein’s argument rests upon the premise that there is some ideal vantage point from which observers can claim a hold on Truth–and that university professors just happen to be in this happy position. Later, he makes a different argument: That the incompetence and unforced errors he and others see in this Administration are responsible for the poor image of conservatism and Republicanism generally. (Brad DeLong makes a much better, and far more convincing, stab at this argument here.)
I think my readers are sophisticated enough to understand why the “vantage point” argument is simply untenable. Professors are not separate from the world, they are bound up in it, and have their own beliefs and interests separate from their intellectual work that influence how they see the political world. In particular, professors as a class tend to lack managerial experience and perform according to expectations and norms that are radically different from the outside world. Posner is only the most distinguished commenter to point out that academia is full of social misfits. More to the point, professors are rewarded less for results and more for arcane matters. A gas station manager may not know Kant, but he does know how to meet payroll; a professor will probably be in the reverse position. Which skill should be more highly valued by society? So Klein’s assertion that professors are liberals because they’re smarter is wrong and unfair.
But the DeLong Hypothesis that intellectuals are afraid to admit to being Republican because the administration and the House leadership are either mendacious or uninformed about major policy issues is harder to dispute, especially after the events last week in the Terri Schiavo matter. The spectacle of people arguing that just because someone’s brain is liquid doesn’t mean they’re not alive, or that just because the family had had fifteen years of appeals didn’t mean that due process had been served, was ridiculous, a Scopes Trial for our time. And if identifying with the GOP means that people assume you agree with Randall Terry clique, then it’s understandable why intellectuals would be hesitant to do so.
Some of us have been following Terri for years. If there is anything mendacious it would be the MSM coverage of something that became “news” to them and their bias was to the culture of death. Years of legal proceedings reflect more on the shortcomings of that “profession” than on the merits of Terri’s case. By an extraordinary law Congress, by demanding de novo, cut a Gordian knot. It was a very conservative manner of procession-truth hurts no one.
Welcome back, Paul. I’m happy to see you haven’t lost your edge.
Yeah, good to see some writing from Paul … is the drought finally ending? His blog seems to warn of another week of famine.
“And if identifying with the GOP means that people assume you agree with Randall Terry clique…”
I agree that this is a cheap, facile, unfair assumption.
But I’ve seen it in another form, paraphrased as
“identifying with the Democratic Party means that people assume you agree with Michael Moore”
Equally cheap, facile and unfair. I will desist in saying that Randall Terry represents all conservatives when you desist in the “but you embraced the evil that is Moore with open arms at the convention” blather . We can tag team each other’s winged idiots in equal amounts to the point of nothingness. It gets us nowhere but further apart. Most reasonable progressives, however, will no longer unilaterally disarm on this. I imagine you will not either.
So, you will be wearing Terry like you’ve insisted we wear Moore.
Another point:
“A gas station manager may not know Kant, but he does know how to meet payroll; a professor will probably be in the reverse position. Which skill should be more highly valued by society?”
Which should be? Probably the skill of meeting payroll, as you seem to be implying. Which skill is actually more highly valued? Market says: knowing Kant. It may be inefficient, but the “market” tells us quite strongly which skill is more highly regarded.
And, I agree with your overall contention about the arrogance and circular reasoning of Klein’s basic argument.
Re: “But the DeLong Hypothesis that intellectuals are afraid to admit to being Republican because the administration and the House leadership are either mendacious or uninformed about major policy issues is harder to dispute…”
I think that my point was stronger than that. It’s not that people are afraid to admit to being Republican, it’s that people are disgusted with the prospect of being Republican. It’s not the party of Abe Lincoln anymore.
Either take it back, or bail…
Brad, I think Paul is speaking of his own experience as a conservative intellectual here. If he were to bail, where would he go? Certainly not to the Democrats, and with how loony the Libertarian Party is of late, he can’t easily call that a home either. If only the dilemma were so simple as you claim, but “take it back or bail” just isn’t a realistic set of options.
Klein simply says informed & thoughtful. It’s several steps too far to claim that this entails a “vantage-point epistemology”. In fact, I could just as easily be an epistemological nihilist and still recognize that some people are more thoughtful or well-informed (which I read as “educated”) than others. Accordingly, I think your counter-argument largely misses the mark.
Hang on - I’m provisionally taking my comment back until I can think it through. Blast my typing before thinking!
Since when do you have to be a member of, or even affiliated with, any political party? Independents - and independent moderates, who are not necessarily the same - do exist (along with people with only weak party affiliations), though they tend to be ignored in debates over intellectuals and politics.
I’m not on the left, not on the right, not a libertarian of any kind, not sure I’d ever want to be a Democrat, pretty sure I don’t want to be a Republican if that party remains as it is today. Would I like to join a party? - Of course. But, especially since I am not an activist, I can’t see a reason to join any of the ones now in existence.
The world is “multivalent”, complex, shaded in grays. The intellect tries to remain open to the world’s complexities and at the same time to account for what is substantial and what is not. ‘Intellectuals’ by this definition try to give better and better accounts of the world as more information is available, as medical advances develop. However, in our actions the world is binary. Either you may pull the feeding tube, or you may not. Either you support the decision to pull, or you do not. I suggest that political activists can both take a strong position on a binary choice and still recognize the complexity of the world. People who wind up on opposing sides of the binary choice tend to villainize the other side, with varying degrees of fairness.
This give rise to the possibility that some may be right for the wrong reasons, and some may be wrong for the right reasons. One even may have to hold one’s nose, as it were, and agree with a pro-life advocate, in the specific case of Terri Schiavo. That is to say, to not be swept up in the rhetoric, the passions, the tendency to scapegoat, and to support the feeding of Terri.
Posner is only the most distinguished commenter to point out that academia is full of social misfits.
Well to be expected. Social “misfitness” is highly correlated with intelligence.
More to the point, professors are rewarded less for results and more for arcane matters.
Insertion of personal bias as to what does and what does not constitute “results” and the inherent virtue of “results” irrespective of what those “results” consist.
A gas station manager may not know Kant, but he does know how to meet payroll
Anyone who knows how to pay a bill “knows how to meet payroll.” Payroll is an expense, like a mortgage, a gas bill, or a credit card statement. There’s nothing special about being able to “meet payroll” anymore than being able to “meet your mortgage” is special.
greg
Nash, your statement, “identifying with the Democratic Party means that people assume you agree with Michael Moore” is not the case. Michael Moore is equivalent to, maybe, Ann Coulter. We’re not talking about some media whore here when we say that identifying with Republicans is intellectually embarrassing. Paul mentioned Randall Terry, but Bill Frist, Tom DeLay and President Bush are equally guilty in pushing incoherent ignorance on economics, science and medicine, to name a few things. These are the official public leaders and policymakers of the party we’re talking about.
Profs Gone Wild, From Iowahawk
Iowahawk has done it again.
Which skill is actually more highly valued? Market says: knowing Kant. It may be inefficient, but the “market” tells us quite strongly which skill is more highly regarded.
The system of higher education in America is hardly subject to market behavior. I imagine if it were, those “intellectuals” who spend a great deal of time on things like Kant’s work would find it vastly more difficult to find employment.
So Klein’s assertion that professors are liberals because they’re smarter is wrong and unfair.
Oh, and another point: The smartest of college professors — those in the most rigorous fields, such as engineering and physical sciences — tend to be the least liberal.
“Within American higher education there are disciplines whose members are predominantly leftist and liberal in orientation, some whose members are generally middle-of-the-road politically, and some where conservative tendencies dominate… The social sciences are the most liberal, followed by the humanities, law, and the fine arts. Several areas occupy a middle ground: physical sciences, biological sciences, education, and medicine. Business, engineering, and ‘other applied fields’ are generally conservative.” — From the journal Social Forces, March 1993, article titled “The Politics of the Professors: Self-Identifications.”
“Oh, and another point: The smartest of college professors — those in the most rigorous fields, such as engineering and physical sciences — tend to be the least liberal.”
The quote that you cited does not support such an interpretation, unless you believe that the applied sciences are more rigorous than the pure sciences. Not to mention the example of business, which, if we’re going by your ludicrous linear scale of “smartness”, would probably be below any of the sciences.