Thu 7 Oct 2004
“Bush or Kerry? A Debate with Dinesh D’Souza and George Marcus” is the title of tonight’s debate. Why is this pathetic?
1) Not because the College has invited a prominent outsider to campus. Even though such speakers cost money, it is good for the College to bring them to Williamstown. It is also nice to see speakers from a range of ideological viewpoints.
2) Not because Professor Marcus is participating. It is good to see professors take an active role in campus dialogue. Marcus deserves credit for taking the time and trouble to participate in a public forum.
Answer: Because the College couldn’t find — or didn’t try to find — a conservative faculty member to debate Marcus. It is fine to bring in two outsiders for a debate. It is fine to have two professors debate. It is suspect to bring in an outsider to debate a professor.
Although I hope that I am wrong in drawing this inference [knowledgeable readers with better information are invited to comment], I can’t help but conclude that there is no faculty member at Williams who a) Plans to vote for Bush and b) Is willing to debate George Marcus on the topic. Given the political donation patterns of the faculty, this is hardly surprising.
So, what is to be done in the short term? What other choice did the Gaudino folks — sponsors of tonight debate — have to importing a conservative so that someone over the age of 22 might publically support Bush? Easy. They could have invited an alum, prominent or otherwise. There are many conservative Ephs who would relish such an opportunity, who would even pay their own expenses.
The homepage for the Gaudino Memorial Fund seems somewhat orphaned. If anyone knows who these sorts of suggestions/rants should be sent to, please pass them along.
October 7th, 2004 at 4:52 pm
So what is the suggestion, Dave? Affirmative Action based on something as ephemeral as ideology for Williams professors? While I wish that there were more conservative voices, especially in the humanities, I am not sure what we do about this. Nor am I certain why we single out academia. I’d like more liberal voices among those extracting our oil, for example. I have yet to see any evidence that consevrvative students are not getting jobs at the same rate when they apply for them from grad school, though I do see far fewer grad students who are conservative. Posit a solution now that you’ve identified the problem.
dc
October 7th, 2004 at 5:33 pm
I think your inference is wrong. The college is bringing D’Souza in because he is prominent in his field, not because they needed a conservative to debate tonight. D’Souza lectured last night, and is debating tonight, so it’s incorrect to even claim that they only brought him in to debate.
October 7th, 2004 at 6:24 pm
When are you getting off this hobby horse? Derek is right. Where does the supply of conservative professors come from? Conservative graduate students. Where are those conservative graduate students? My guess is MBA programs, law school, and business.
October 7th, 2004 at 8:31 pm
Tonight’s debate was organized by Gaudino Scholar and political science professor James McAllister. Last year, McAllister debated Bill Darrow on the war in Iraq.
According to the Record: “He firmly argued that the international community should side with President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in condemning Saddam’s weapons programs and commit to ending the threat, if necessary, by war.”
David, isn’t it strange that an alum of 16 years ago feels so comfortable just throwing out blanket statements about which professors are racist, how many are Bush voters, and what the housing situation is on campus? It’s astounding.
October 8th, 2004 at 7:34 am
1) The first step is to recognize that there is a problem. Are there too few non-liberal professors at Williams? If yes, is this a problem? I am not sure if there is anything that can fix this (pace Derek), but my real beef is with people who deny that this is even an issue.
2) In the case of this debate, I think that the College should have invited a conservative alum to debate Marcus, or should stage another debate — perhaps under the aegis of the WCDU — featuring student/professor-or-alum pairs on both sides.
3) I never denied that there were professors (or at least one) who publically supported the war. Indeed, McAllister’s speech was blogged about here (not by me). I speculated that “there is no faculty member at Williams who a) Plans to vote for Bush and b) Is willing to debate George Marcus on the topic.” If that speculation is incorrect, please let me know.
October 8th, 2004 at 12:16 pm
“I speculated that “there is no faculty member at Williams who a) Plans to vote for Bush…” If that speculation is incorrect, please let me know.”
While your handy little link tracking Billsville political giving may give some rough indicator of voting patterns, what you’re talking about is whether professors have announced voting intentions (for Bush) or if anyone has seen them voting for Bush (probably impossible). Given that most Williams profs are discreet (except when… making inflammatory statements in faculty meetings?) I think the chances are low that your question has any real answer.
Why don’t we talk about why professors have said they aren’t supportive of Bush, if they have indeed said so, instead of trying to simply categorize all of them so broadly? It’s not only boring to line them up in blue and blue and blue and red, it degrades the importance of this election. These profs aren’t idiots, I’m sure they all have good reason for feeling like they do — and this is the sort of thing that people can actually ‘report’ on.
I know that professor Dew (HIST) has exactly one quote on his office door, one that I have remembered since freshman year. It goes something like this:
“The death knell of the nation hath sounded when its young men are conservative.”
(attribution forgotten by me)
Professor Mutongi (HIST) ALSO has exactly one quote on her door, and has since about 2 years ago. It says:
“Africa is a nation with many problems.”
- George W. Bush
I respect these quotes, they made gave me pause over the years.
I’ve been waiting to see prof. Dew again to give him a Churchill quote I heard the other day, to see what he thinks:
“Any man who is under 30 and is not a Liberal has no heart; and any man who is over 30 and not a Conservative has no brains.”
(…this sort of quote apparently has a long and varied pedigree:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5952/unquote.html )
October 9th, 2004 at 12:55 am
Mike Eros writes “I think the chances are low that your question has any real answer.”
Well, no offense, but you’re wrong. I’ve just finished a nice e-mail exchange with Professor McAllister and he confirmed that it would have been nice to have another professor debate Professor Marcus, but that it is tough (at least for him — and everyone else that I know of) to identify a member of the faculty who is both voting for Bush and willing to serve for his side in a debate. If you have any suggestions, please let us all know.
Of course, it could be that McAllister doesn’t know what he is talking about, that the faculty is teeming with Bush supporters who would love nothing more than to debate Professor Marcus.
Sure.
October 9th, 2004 at 9:57 am
Is *McAllister* even voting for Bush? I have heard someone on campus (a neoconservative, former editor of the Record) say he does not believe McAllister is going to vote for Bush…
October 9th, 2004 at 10:56 am
Um, if that somebody is me — and as I’ve said before on Ephblog, I’m only a neoconservative in the sense that I’m Jewish and conservative — then that comment is just plain out factually incorrect (what some on the left might call a LIE!!!).
I would not portend to know who Prof. McAllister is voting for, and if I did know I would not be telling people. Certainly not anonymous posters on Ephblog.
If you know something I don’t then feel free to post it under your name. Else, don’t drag me into anything.
October 9th, 2004 at 7:43 pm
Not you, Mike. Not a former editor in chief… and somebody that still goes to Williams.
October 10th, 2004 at 8:48 am
I think, on the one hand, it’s clear that most of academia, including those at Williams College, has a liberal bias — but I don’t see it as a dramatic problem for them to have an anti-Bush bias. After all, unlike, more and more, the Rove, a, Republican party, the Democrats actually appeal to intellectuals, while the Republicans with each passing year feature a more pro-faith, anti-intellectual bent to their platform, image and rhetoric. I mean, just watch Bush’s methods of speech and interaction — he’s turned stupidity into political advantage. Bemoaning the lack of conservatives in academia today is sort of like bemoaning the lack of democrats in the Southern Baptist ministry.
That’s an exaggeration of course, indeed, the one (and only) area that I preferred law school (at UChicago, which is supposed to be conservative but is, in reality, split 50-50) to Williams was, the genuine political balance and resulting level of intelligent discourse at the school. Yet, I would hazard a guess that many of the conservatives at Chicago Law, as well as many other intellectual conservatives (including one lifelong Republican in academia I know) refuse to support Bush.
Lots of conservatives are still environmentalists. Bush administration has systematically dismantled environmental regulations and enforcement. Lots of conservatives find the party’s growing emphasis on religion in public discourse and anti-gay rhetoric and platform to be distasteful, if not outright scary. Lots of fiscal conservatives are disgusted with out-of-control spending and the huge deficit created by the Bush administration. Lots of conservative intellectuals find the GOP’s scorn of taking a nuanced position on an issue (e.g., if you are against the war, you are unpatriotic) to be contrary to the spirit of thoughtful inquiry. And lots of conservatives, including Pat Buchanan, are far more reluctant to wage an aggressive war than this administration has been. I also know plenty of conservatives who think listening to scientists when crafting public policy isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lots of conservatives think trying to disenfranchise blacks, or at least discourage them from voting, isn’t necessarily good for American democracy.
So, would I bemoan the lack of conservatives at Williams, in the classic sense of the word? Absolutely. Would I bemoan the lack of Bush supporters? Absolutely lot — I take it as a sign of thoughtfulness and intelligence, not to mention self-identification with a group that receives the outright scorn of the current administration: public intellectuals.