You can also see the discrimination in the way certain fields of inquiry that have traditionally attracted more conservative thinking are marginalized. History departments have for decades been shedding folks who look at economic history, military history, and diplomatic history, and replacing those positions with others more attuned to left of center ideological perspectives. In the name of diversity they have created nothing but echo chambers.

The way most academics talk even begets the lie. Even your own comments about the conservative student you know sound like Stephen Colbert talking about his “black friend.”

It isn’t merely in the humanities/social science either. When academics started talking about “climate deniers” and charging people with “crimes agaisnt humanity” for not following the left-of-center line on Anthropogenic Global Warming, the silence from acaemia was deafening.

And as for the University of Chicago, is this the same one where the faculty have been trying to shut down a free market institute named after Milton Friedman? Oh yeah, they are a real bastion of conservatism!

I really do feel that GOP has run out of ideas. And my theory is that alienating academics, where, for better or worse, large fraction of intelligent people congregate, is a mistake. Being democrat of course doesn’t add to your IQ. But the stereotypes of “east coast elite”, for example, reduces the amount of intelligent people in GOP.

Now for the discrimination thing. It is quite disturbing to me to read the replies to my post (and yes, it’s hard to deny discrimination and not sound like a Southerner bigot)

I have worked on quite a few campuses (Rutgers, Chicago, Brown, Florida State in no particular order) and really never been exposed to any of what’s described.

The jokes at lunch would be very partisan, true.
Yet we had a graduate student who was rabidly right-wing, and he ended up as an advisee of the most rabidly liberal professor we had…

I imagine one could take Mwalimu’s last paragraph to say that there are good departments and bad departments. There are probably better universities and worse universities. In any case (coming back to the original comment by Horton), blanket statement that Obama’s supporters in academia are bigots is unwarranted. And university of Chicago, in particular, has a strong record of conservative thought, mind you!

I grew up in a university town and was what we like to call here a “faculty brat”. My father was a professor (in science), and my mother worked for the university which I will call Redneck U (to conceal my identity). I also attended Redneck U and have a pair of degrees from there.

It’s not just in the political realm where intolerance and narrow-mindedness can be found at universities, although IMO that is one of the most odious parts. While there are notable exceptions (and I was fortunate to have them in my college career), many of the faculty at my alma mater are pompous, arrogant SOBs. If you cross them on any issue – politics, religion, research, use of the copy machine – they will endeavor to squash you. Unless you outrank them, in which case they will flatter you to death.

All can be summed up in a joke that I heard as an undergraduate. Q: How many Redneck U professors does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: One. He holds it up, and the universe revolves around him.

That is why I found yuri’s description of academic life so funny. There are departments at Redneck U where there is a free flow of ideas and opinions, but in most cases you will find a stifling conformity instead. Far from being islands of reason and intellect, many departments are like dead zones, intellectually speaking. To me it’s no accident – because people hold academics in such high esteem there are some departments and professors who take it as a license to do as they please and punish dissenters. How could political correctness not flourish under such circumstances?

Mwalimu’s ancedote captures perfectly the atmosphere amongst the average academic these days. Your arguments are the equivalent of saying “Oh we dont need Republicans or Conservatives around because they are basically illiterates anyway.” (An argument I’ve actually heard academics make in more than one setting.)

Yuri maybe you actually dont feel that way…but then again you might just have to be open to the possibility that you might not be an average academic.

Case in point: our former head of school once opened a staff meeting by saying that she had just met with a parent who was active in local Republican politics, but that she was not worried “because the smell will wash off.” The laughter was tumultuous. At the time there was another non-Democrat teacher on staff along with me, and we both later admitted to each other that we had pretended to laugh so as not to draw attention to ourselves. Nor was this the only bigoted comment that I heard from her during her tenure. I also have a part-time job at a local community college where the atmosphere is even worse.

I am still trying to figure out yuri’s bizarre comment about wanting to be governed by “smart” people. Does being a Democrat automatically add 20 points to your I.Q. or something?

GOP, in my view, had committed an ideological suicide: it pushed out intellectuals as “elitists”. This predictably led to deficit of new interesting ideas, and “leaders” like W and Palin… They may be good to have a beer with, but I prefer my country to be led by smart people.