Could it Happen Here; Is It Beginning to Happen Here? (April 5, 2005)

    "[R]egistered Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives make up only a small minority of professors at elite [US] universities. But what should we conclude from that? "

So opens Paul Krugman's most recent op-ed piece for The New York Times.

Krugman is professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and contributes twice weekly to the NYT. Previously he has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. If such like Paul Wolfowitz are archetypical neoconservatives, Paul Krugman could be classified as a neo-Rooseveltian New Dealer.

In this latest piece the outspoken Princeton academic goes on to say, "Conservatives see it as compelling evidence of liberal bias in university hiring and promotion. And they say that new "academic freedom" laws will simply mitigate the effects of that bias, promoting a diversity of views. But a closer look both at the universities and at the motives of those who would police them suggests a quite different story." Krugman points out that departments of humanities and social science studies are most often in the gun, "where judgments about what constitutes good scholarship can seem subjective to an outsider," but he the tells his readers that the analyses that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that they are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. One reason given, "The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering."

Warming to his topic Krugman refers to "Dennis Baxley, a Florida [state] legislator who has sponsored a bill that - like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states - would give students who think that their conservative views aren't respected the right to sue their professors." It appears that Mr Baxley believes that professors who act as "dictators" and turn the classroom into a "totalitarian niche," must be called to account. What sort of academics?  First on Baxley's list -- those professors who claim that evolution is a fact. And Krugman goes on, "Republicans like Representative Chris Shays [Republican, Connecticut]  concede that [the Republican Party] has become the "party of theocracy."

Moving right along, "Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe dismisses the vast body of research supporting the scientific consensus on climate change as a 'gigantic hoax.'"

And Paul Krugman sums matters up damningly, "...today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science, or scholarship in general."

And perhaps it's worth considering that although the evidence collected over 150 years overwhelmingly supports the theory of the evolution of living organisms, according to US President George W Bush, "the jury is still out."

Added April 7, 2005.

    The April 7 issue of Nature carries an account by Emma Marris reporting "Academics are fighting right-wing 'bills of rights'."

According to Marris, "Critics say that these 'Academic Bills of Rights', which are written to make sure that each side of an issue is presented in lectures at public universities, could in fact stifle academic freedom — and disrupt the teaching of science in contentious fields such as evolution and global warming.

Although the bill was written primarily with the humanities in mind, it would apply to all academic disciplines. On 22 March, Dennis Baxley (Republican, Ocala), who is backing the bill, said that it would make sure that alternatives to evolution are not shut out of universities."

"I do believe it has implications for the hard sciences," says Auxter [Tom Auxter, president of the United Faculty of Florida, the state's main academics' union]. "It will waste a lot of time in the classroom because you will have to spend time covering a bunch of extraneous stuff — every crazy idea out there."

The American Association of University Professors believes Florida could be the first state to pass the bill. Dennis Baxley, a close ally of Governor Jeb Bush, says the outraged reception is evidence that academics are too inflexible. "I've been called an ass in the school newspaper at the University of Florida," he says, "and that demonstrates exactly what I am talking about."

Similar bills have been introduced in the legislatures of Georgia, Colorado, Maryland and Washington as well as several other states. None has passed so far, but Colorado dropped the bill only when major universities agreed to adopt its language at the administrative level.