Friday, August 10, 2007
"You don't understand peer pressure in universities."
I am a faculty brat who seriously considered going to graduate school and becoming a professor. The problem was, the more I saw of the culture of conformity at the center of academic life, the less I wanted to hang my professional success on, shall we say, peer review. Because we cannot measure a professor by such objective standards as profits and losses or victories and defeats, conformity in the things that matter -- not hair or clothes but basic ideas about the way of the world -- becomes much more important to professional advancement.
Anyway, suffice it to say that I think this post gets it exactly right.
16 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri Aug 10, 02:44:00 PM:
The previous posts by Katz at Power Line about his experiences on The Tonight Show were most entertaining. This one was very thought-provoking. He is obviously a fascinating and intelligent guy.
By , at
Fri Aug 10, 03:42:00 PM:
The obvious problem with his thesis though, is that peer-pressure exists in every organization - it is a function of human nature.
At an extreme, for example, you have the military - which is a far more isolated institution than the press (who actually have to go out at talk to people every day) and one in which some measure of a standard culture is actually enforced.
The Right-Wing blogosphere also seems to exhibit a high degree of peer pressure conformity, with positions on a whole host of issues taken without a lot of thought, but merely because they fit within the logic of the movement, and any questioning is met with instant and brutal condemnation (Andrew Sullivan is a good example of what happens to a truly independent conservative thinker).
It is also rather odd to hear this guy lament the higher educational status of people in the press, compared to the past. Its hard to avoid the sense that he wants his journalists to be "closer to the people" in the sense of being as clueless about the world that is reported on as the average person. Of course, this leads to a totally ineffective press, since the people they report on are certainly well educated.
Its like he has an ideal of the journalist as tne neighborhood guy, firmly embedded in the community, reporting only those things that the powerful want reported. How can journalists ever inform the public about what goes on in the centers of power if they, the journalists, are not playing in the same league, in terms of basic understanding of how that world works?
I found this to be a rather scary perspective. Not surprised that Power Lyin promotes it - they who are the most ridiculously sycophantic hacks in all of the blogoshere.
Rest assured. That perspective will never find wide favor so long as there is an America - the land of the free man who demands information, and will always support those journalists who search out the truth rather than take dictation.
By 
Whiskey, at
Fri Aug 10, 04:13:00 PM:
No anon --
You miss the whole point. Katz laments the social distance between the elite college grads (the Ivy guys) and the rest of the nation.
Like comics giant Frank Miller said, patriotism is a compact between ordinary people who need protection from enemies and the nation and it's institutions.
The rich, smart, privileged elite feel they need no protection so have cast off the ideas of nationhood, nationalism, and patriotism in favor of active loathing of ordinary people ..
AND THEIR INSTITUTIONS that protect them.
Consider the Military: unlike the Academy their are objective goals the Military must meet. In peacetime, training to meet threats, ability of the units to execute as one, coordination, etc. These are leadership attributes found among all sorts of classes so the military is FLAT, relatively speaking.
There is less social distance and cultural gaps between General Petraeus and the lowest private in his command than there is between the newest hire at the NYT and a Major in the Army.
By , at
Fri Aug 10, 04:40:00 PM:
Katz was CIA, can he explain Arlen Specter(as in ghost, spook, boo man, CIA agent) and the Specter in the old spy spoof movies?
By , at
Fri Aug 10, 09:37:00 PM:
I can see this as a problem in the humanities, but in the sciences, things are different. In academia in science, if you have a radical idea, it's true that you may have difficulty obtaining funding that research unless you can get a more senior person to back you up. However, radical ideas are what make people's careers at the really elite level in the sciences.
As for a conformity in political views, a convincing argument for why it is wrong that educated people be overwhelmingly liberal is never presented. The possibility that the people who are educated have uniformly made a more thoughtful or informed choice, seems to be dismissed out of hand.
I have a lot of trouble with the blog post you linked to because it comes dangerously close to glorifying a lack of education as a good thing that makes you somehow "closer to the people." No. Lacking education (which doesn't necessarily equate to going to a good school) makes you ignorant. I, for one, am happy that today's journalists are better informed and more skeptical of what the government tells them, than the journalists of yesteryear.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Aug 10, 10:04:00 PM:
My reaction as a former journalist? I agree with TH: Mr. Katz got it exactly right.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Aug 10, 10:29:00 PM:
This comment has been removed by the author.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Aug 10, 10:39:00 PM:
This comment has been removed by the author.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Aug 10, 10:56:00 PM:
P.S. Schooling and education are not always synonyms.
In the case of writers:
John Steinbeck never finished college.
Ernest Hemingway never went to college.
William Saroyan quite school at the age of 15.
Agatha Christie studied at home. At the age of 16, she went to a school in Paris, where she studied singing and piano.
By , at
Fri Aug 10, 11:42:00 PM:
Phrizz,
Perhaps you should read up on H.L. Mencken. He set the modern standard for newsman 'skepticism' about 100 years ago.
Which I guess is modern, in a relative sense.
Heh.
-David
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Aug 11, 06:57:00 PM:
Is the 35 year old, devout blue collar construction worker in rural Arkansas who dropped out of High School at 17 ignorant?
Or is the child of luxury who graduated High School, went on to college, then onto grad school, and stepped straight into Academia ignorant?
The former has no idea who Rene Descartes was, or the real substance behind prevailing political theories, or maybe even why the sky is blue.
The latter doesn't know the value (or lack thereof) of physical labor, of striving against overwhelming adversity and scraping out living in the harsh, cold, uncaring world, or how to stand up for one-self against a bully in a bar.
The majority of academics are liberal because they live in ivory towers, surrounded by theories and 'should bes' and data and endless analysis of other people's actions, drunk on their own arrogance that they are smarter than everyone around them and there's really no good reason that socialism can't bring about a utopia except that other people are just too short-sighted. (or close-minded, or stupid, or whatever)
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sat Aug 11, 11:36:00 PM:
I think I erased my post. Sigh.
Phrizz, you are correct that it is an Arts & Humanities problem. I thought Powerline should have specified 700 SATV's. Heh.
As to the quick dismissal of the idea that educated people could have all semi-independently come to liberal conclusions, it's a fair cop. There is actually a lot of sophisticated writing on the subject, and people like me who grew up in the Arts & Humanities Tribe but moved out have read a good deal on the subject. I, and others, often do not give evidence for our belief at every turn. It seems tedious. But it is necessary from time to time.
I have posted often on the subject and can set you up with links if you like. However, I think you will find it more entertaining on your own. For now, this was linked at Instapundit just a few minutes ago.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2240427.ece
By , at
Sun Aug 12, 05:39:00 AM:
Always funny how some people think that going to school for a long time and getting a bunch of degress means that person is "educated."
By , at
Sun Aug 12, 06:42:00 AM:
DF82: I'm totally with you up until the second clause of your last sentence. I completely agree that there's more than one kind of "education" you can get; I tried to allude to that by saying "which doesn't necessarily equate to going to a good school," and perhaps I should have been more explicit that I think that life experience in many (most?) cases is just as or even more important than "book learning." I wouldn't want a journalist to be hired right out of high school, and I guess it's not such a hot idea to hire a journalist straight out of college either - they both lack life experience.
"The majority of academics are liberal because they live in ivory towers, surrounded by theories and 'should bes' and data and endless analysis of other people's actions" - sounds plausible, so far so good. But why then is it necessarily true that we are "drunk on [our] own arrogance that [we] are smarter than everyone around [us]...?" It just seems to me like you're assuming bad faith, when really, the majority of academics are intellectually earnest and very open to new ideas. Maybe you only notice the most extreme quotes in the newspaper, but c'mon, that's your observation bias and not our fault.
AVI: Linked article was interesting, thanks - if you have any more I'd like to read them.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sun Aug 12, 11:58:00 AM:
I went to college. That's my *experience*, rather than perception.
I had a history professor once for American History 1865+. I'm a history buff and didn't feel that I needed this lower division class, but it was required by the state. Relatively nice, pretty younger lady. 30, maybe. New Phd. She was one of those cases that I described, of spending her entire life in school and then moving on to teaching. The only thing that I took from her class and kept these years was a brief comment about WWII. (which we spent all of two days on)
"The Americans committed more wartime atrocities in World War II than the Japanese."
...
That's a flat lie. There is no way to make that statement true. Even if you consider every single death caused by an army to be an 'atrocity,' the Japanese still outstrip us, by far, thanks to their antics in China and the various conquered islands and colonies. And this woman was *teaching* history! (to make this relevant to the basic premise, perhaps you notice that I said we only spent 2 days on WWII, the greatest conflict in the history of mankind. Well, that's because we spent the rest of her course hearing about the evils of capitalism, the graphic details of poor immigrant workers' lives, and lynched blacks. She was unabashedly 'progressive' in her thinking)
There are other examples of similar phenomena, like the Middle Eastern Studies professor who deliberately skipped over the (brutal) process and (sordid) effects of the Arabs 'Islamizing' conquered lands and lied when questioned about it, (of course, none of us knew it was a lie at the time, being dumb undergrads who thought we were there for an education) and an Arabic professor who had a master's in political science from a university in Britain who was absolutely dead set against the right to bear arms, but honestly didn't know what the term 'limited government' meant. (we would argue such things in Arabic as a form of language practice)
I probably ought not to have said "majority." I can't honestly back that up, I've only attended two accredited institutions. A number of liberal professors simply follow the bell curve of political beliefs, I'm sure. But I'm equally sure that the numbers of politically liberal ones are inflated because of the, um, insulation that I mentioned. The 1st female one I mentioned honestly thought of herself as a partisan of the working class; it never occurred to her that the actual working class (which I'm from) would despise her ideas. Because she's never encountered them.
I went to college at the University of Texas, Austin, which is pretty liberal for Texas. I can only imagine how much worse this phenomenon is in more liberal places, like Massachusetts, or California.
By , at
Sun Aug 12, 06:24:00 PM:
I will add my two cents to the idea that “liberal” points of view are based on knowing more about the subject. Consider the issue of leftists/guerrillas in Latin America in the 70s and 80s. Consider one issue: were they Nationalists or Soviet Puppets?
I spent about 5 years as a tourist and engineer in Latin America. I worked in a war zone in Guatemala, and knew people in Guatemala and in Argentina who had direct contact with guerrillas.
Progressive liberal university consensus: leftists/guerrillas were Nationalist, not Soviet Puppets.
Reality. While many leftists were undoubtedly nationalists, there were also many who would jump into the laps of the Soviets without any prompting.
1) I had a conversation with a leftist in a coffee shop in Bogotá who defended the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia- “gentle,” he said. 2) I conducted independent research in a university library on the Sandinistas. I found out about Sandinista endorsement of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan only 3 months after the invasion.( Sandinista paper Barricada, Central American Crisis Reader) . De Polonia a Nicaragua is written by a Pole whom Sandinistas jailed for 6 months after arresting him at the border on suspicion of belonging to Solidarity, although he was entering country on valid passport. Carlos Fonseca, one of the Sandinista founding fathers, endorsed the Soviet crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. ( Un Nicaraguense en Moscu)
The latter point shows that the “progressive” university consensus on this issue was not necessarily based on extensive research. The more I researched, the more I changed from a progressive of the left into an evil right winger.
