Here's What's Left

Say it ain't so

Wow, so I guess Sandy Berger did do something wrong:

Former national security adviser Sandy Berger will plead guilty to taking classified material from the National Archives, a misdemeanor, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Berger is expected to appear in federal court in Washington on Friday, said Justice spokesman Bryan Sierra.[...]

OK, well, fair's fair.  Guess we were wrong about that one. 

NYTimes has a good piece too. 

-- Michael

questions about bias

Sam Nelson at Catching Flies has an interesting question about the liberal professors study.  You should read his whole post if you're interested:

OK, their data comes from a survey completed in 1999 where they find 72% of professors are "left/liberal" and only 15% "right/conservative."  About 13% must be something else.  They compare this to a Carnegie report from 1984 showing a 39 - 34 % split between liberals and conservatives and this is the basis for their claim that there has been a shift.  Well, a shift in the ideological orientation of faculty is ONE explanation of this data, but it is not the only one.  This would be a huge shift in merely 15 years, but it could just as easily be an indication that their 1999 data is seriously flawed and their results atypical.  What happened in those 15 years to explain a shift like they suggest?  While there was significant replacement in  most faculties during the period 1984 to 1999, a lot of the people who were around in 1984 were still on faculties in 1999.  Did they suddenly become liberal, or did only conservatives retire?  A change this large has to be explored and a variety of  explanations considered before we can draw the kinds of conclusions Rothman et al draw.

In other words, there's more than one explanation for the difference between the 1984 data and the 1999 data.  The authors of the study need to address that. 

Heather will have more to say about the whole study later.

If you're really interested, you should go read the article at Inside Higher Ed and the comments on the article.  They present a very interesting discussion.

-- Michael

Maybe the satellites are Democrats

I'm sorry, I can't help wondering what the Bush admin's response to this will be:

Growing populations and expanding economic activity have strained the planet's ecosystems over the past half century, a trend that threatens international efforts to combat poverty and disease, a U.N.-sponsored study of the Earth's health warned on Wednesday.

The four-year, $24 million Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found humans have caused heavy damage or depleted portions of the world's farmlands, forests and watercourses.[...]

The study was compiled by 1,360 scientists from 95 nations who pored over 16,000 satellite photos from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and analyzed statistics and scientific journals.

It seems to me that they can't get away with the "bad science" line like they did on global warming.  I can't imagine that a "UN sucks" line would work either.  Partisanship?  Maybe all 1,360 scientists are liberals.

Or perhaps they'll be forced to acknowledge that the results of the study are worth taking seriously.  I'm not holding my breath. 

-- Michael

dammit, there is no fucking bias

Ya know how I said below that the problem with the liberal academia debate is that it's a fake debate?  Well, it's a still a fake debate.  Paul at the Agora responded to what Ezra had, correctly, said ("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?").  Now, granted Ezra doesn't offer any evidence for this claim (it's not even really a claim, just a suggestion of a claim), but he's probably just theorizing, and it's not an unreasonable thing to say.  So if you're going to argue against it, you should probably, like, address it or something.  Paul says about Ezra's statement:

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.[...]

Let's start with just that much, because this is what I'm talking about when I "fake debate."  There is no such premise.  You don't need "an ideal vantage point from which observers can claim a hold on Truth" to be well-informed or poorly informed.  If you think that evolution isn't true because it's a "theory" and "theories" are things that haven't been proved, that shows that you are poorly informed.  It shows that you don't understand how science works, and you don't understand what "theory" means in that context.  Paul continues:

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.

No one said professors are separate from the world.  Indeed, if you pay attention to Ezra's basic point, you'll find that professors are necessarily, perhaps definitionally, not living in a seperate world, because they are "intelligent and informed."  Now, if you want to argue that they're not intelligent and informed, go ahead.  Let's see it. 

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.

"expectations and norms that are radically different from the outside world," eh?  What happened to professors being bound up in the world, huh?  How could you juxtapose two contradictory sentences?

Now we're off the deep end.  One person said that academia is full of social misfits, and that is supposed to mean something to us?  "Professors tend to lack managerial experience?"  Really?  How do you know?  What about those academic scientists who have to run labs with graduate students, undergraduates, participants in studies, who have to make paltry grants go along?  Those academics lack managerial experience, they don't know how to meet payroll?  Maybe we should have gas station owners come and teach them something. 

But there's something in that paragraph you might have missed that you should read again:

More to the point, professors are rewarded less for results and more for arcane matters.

Wow.  I'm speechless.  Anyone who has even the vaguest clue what an academic's life is like knows this is untrue.  So common, in fact, is the demand for results that there's a pithy statement associated with it ("publish or perish").  Professors are rewarded for doing good research, in short, for results, and are not rewarded for "arcane matters."  What the fuck is an "arcane matter" anyway? 

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.

Oh, right, right, that makes sense, because everyone knows that "smarter" means "more highly valued by society."  I guess that means George W. Bush must be the fucking smartest person on the face of the planet.   

This is a fake debate.  Conservatives, please, let's have a real one.  Show us some evidence for something.  Please don't tell me you've all gone the way of Powerline. 

-- Michael

no fucking bias

Here's the problem with the liberal academia debate.  It's a fake debate.  It's full of straw men.  A study appears, and the study is a survey of the political views of college professors.  And here's what we get from the conservative media.

Washington Times:

Said Mr. Lichter [one of the study's authors]: "This is the richest lure of information on faculty ideology in 20 years. And this is the first study that statistically proves bias [against conservatives] in the hiring and promotion of faculty members."

No.  Not true.  The study doesn't "prove bias."  Mr. Lichter seems to be lying about his own study.  The study isn't publically available (good job guys), but the abstract says this:

A multivariate analysis finds that, even after taking into account the effects of professional accomplishment, along with many other individual characteristics, conservatives and Republicans teach at lower quality schools than do liberals and Democrats. This suggests that complaints of ideologically-based discrimination in academic advancement deserve serious consideration and further study.

Let's have that again. It "suggests" that something deserves "serious consideration" and "further study."  If something were proven, it wouldn't mean that it deserved further study, now, would it? 

Now, why would a scholar be untruthful about their own study?  You tell me.  I'm curious to know

-- Michael

still no bias

Lemme clarify something about the post below.

I think that Ezra is right when, in his update, he says:

What I do believe, or am at least considering, is that the heavy consumption of information tilts consumers towards the liberal end of things.

Similarly, Brad DeLong is right when he says:

A good deal of it, in economics at least, is that you simply cannot dare not--not if you want to look others in the eye (or yourself) adopt the line of the Bush administration.

I don't know if liberals are smarter or not, but I think they we all agree that the more information you have, the more reality you deal with, the farther left you're gonna tilt.  That's why we call ourselves the reality-based community.

My supplementary point, though, is that when having a national debate about whether it's a problem that there are liberals in universities, whenever we say things like what Ezra, Brad, and I all think, the right-wing hears this: "we think we're smarter than you." 

In this debate, which is a debate that is not going away, this is not a helpful thing to say.  It's not going to change any minds, and will reinforce an impression in those that already hold it.  It fits right into the conservative "liberal elitist" frame and it distracts from the real debate, which is "does matter that academics tend to have center-left political views?"

Conservatives who talk about liberal professors assume that liberal political views=liberal bias in the classroom=a blacklist against conservatives in academia=thought codes on campus=those libruls are brainwashing our younguns.  And none of this is the case.  And that needs to be said over and over again.

To that end, I seems to me to be more strategically sound to emphasize the aspects of the debate that I wrote about below, not something that inevitably will sound to conservatives like elitism.

-- Michael

UPDATE: OK, let me make this as clear as possible.  I don't think Brad, Ezra or anyone else is saying that liberals are smarter than conservatives.  I'm only saying that when we say that knowledge seems to lead people towards liberaldom, conservatives think that we're saying that we're smarter.   And that their misinterpretation leads them to confirm in their mind their "liberal elite" preconception.

there is no bias

Howard Kurtz has a truly hacktackular piece in the WaPo that's doomed to reopen a debate that conservatives would love to have:

College faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined, a new study says.

*sigh* 

Kurtz's piece is terrible, and while I could spend some time taking it apart, I'd rather address something else about the issue, since inevitably this study is going to be all over the right-wing talk shows and columns. 

Ezra, commenting on it says:

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?

Political ideology, unlike gender or race, isn't encoded in your genes. You're not born with a certain leaning, ejected from the womb with a partisan affiliation. And while the opinions of your parents are often bequeathed unto the kids, they're not inviolable, as evidence by Kerry's far-greater vote share among the young (if it was just about the parents, each generation should mirror the one before it).

Which is an absolutely true sentiment that I profoundly share.  And one which I think we shouldn't say very often.  If there is one thing that will not help our cause in a debate about bias in academia it's a "we're smarter than you because we know more" attitude. 

There are several things that I think we should say, though.  In a departure from my usual verbosity, I'll try to be succint about them.  Please feel free to steal them:

1) Who cares?  If you did a survey of businessmen, you'd probably find that a majority of them are republicans.  If you did a survey of climate scientists, most of them would Democrats.  Union members are probably a majority Democratic.  African-American women are overwhelming Democratic.  White guys from the South are overwhelming republican.  republican political strategists are probably mostly republicans, too. 

Party affiliation/political views cut across many different social, ethnic, cultural, and career backgrounds.  Merely saying that professors are liberal is no more interesting than saying the military is conservative. 

1b.) Has anyone ever considered the possibility that certain groups vote republican or Democrat because their job is better served by one party or the other?  Professors rely on a system where the government uses tax dollars to fund (at least public) universities and give out grants.  Democrats are more likely to support that sort of system, just as republicans are more likely to support policies that let businessmen increase profits.  Ya vote for the guy that helps you out, right?  Maybe the party that wants to cut your funding and that questions the value of things like...ya know...science, just isn't for you.

2) That professors have certain political views doesn't mean that it effects how they teach.  Let me say that again.  That professors have certain political views doesn't mean that it effects how they teach.  This is an important point that Kurtz, because he's a hack, practically ignores.  He spends 20 words out of 906 on it (2 fucking percent); here are all 20:

The study did not attempt to examine whether the political views of faculty members affect the content of their courses.

That's the real point, folks, and is the part where right-wing groups that monitor this stuff really falter; their evidence of bias falls apart.  See here and here for two juicy ones involving David Horowitz's joke of a group. 

3) If there were a political bias, in the vast majority of cases it wouldn't make any difference.  I never knew the political affiliation of my 19th century French literature professor.  I could never tell whether the guy who taught my "Music at the Turn of the 20th Century" course was liberal or conservative.  My astronomy professor?  Couldn't tell you if he was a republican or a Democrat.

4) If there are more liberals than conservatives in the academy, it's not because of a "blacklist" or any bias against hiring conservatives.  There is no evidence for this. 

More than anything else, this issue is nothing more and nothing less than a strategic ploy by the right to discredit universities, higher learning in general, and science by extension.  So while I agree with Ezra that there are certain things about this issue we shouldn't fight, there are other things we have to.  Otherwise, your kids will be learning that the world was created in week, that pollution is nothing to worry about, and that Ronald Reagan single-handedly won the cold war with his substantial brain tied behind his back.

-- Michael (with an assist from Heather)

Update: Up is still down

Condoleezza Rice:

In all that lies ahead, our nation will continue to clarify for other nations the moral choice between oppression and freedom, and we will make it clear that, ultimately, success in our relations depends on the treatment of their own people. America's belief in human dignity and human rights will guide our policy.

I could do the obvious thing, which would be to type the phrase "human rights" and have the words "human rights" be linked to pictures of Abu Ghraib.  Similarly, that would be the obvious thing to do with the phrase "human dignity."  Or I could find a paper about increasing income inequality in the US and link to that through the phrase "treatment of their own people."

But nevermind that.  Mostly, I'm wondering why the right is bothering with this human rights crap at all.  First of all, no really believes that the care about human rights, given that they've never cared about the rights of women, blacks, gays, Mexicans, and just about any other minority group you can think of.  Secondly, though, they seem more interested in "liberating" countries than they do in securing rights for them.  Bush said so in his second inaugural.  Liberty is prior to rights, not vice versa, as the rest of the civilized world assumes:

In the long run, there is no justice without freedom, and there can be no human rights without human liberty.

Which help explain why the US was kicked off the UN Human Rights Commission in 2001. 

By the way, I think we've had a president before who talked of the need to have a human-rights based foreign policy.  And I don't think he was a republican.  In fact, I don't think republicans think very much of him. 

-- Michael

No cert for you!

This isn't that surprising, but is still worth pointing out:

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday to reinstate a state law requiring girls under age 18 to get parental consent for abortions except under the most dire of medical emergencies.

Without comment, justices let stand a lower court ruling that struck down the Idaho law because its provisions on emergency abortions were too strict.

Mainstream media outlets rarely explain what "without comment" means.  It means that the they didn't "grant cert.," which is really to say that fewer than four justices wanted to hear the case.  Now, it's not conclusive that the Supreme Court is upholding the Ninth Circuit's ruling -- they could just think that they're not ready to rule on it.  But this is a court that has not been shy about making decisions about abortion, and so if four of them had something to say about it, they certainly would have taken it. 

To me this means that 6 justices are willing to see a law struck down because it violates Roe.  Which is to say that Bush will probably have to get two anti-Roe justices on the bench to see it overturned.  I think that would be difficult.

-- Michael

Why do republicans hate the US Constitution?

So yesterday Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) entered the fray (hmmmm... maybe not a "fray" so much; frays seem to imply that a lot of people are talking about it; I wish that were the case with this issue) about the Texas case and the Mexicans they want to execute.  Writing in the National Review, Cornyn says:

Today the Court considers whether to take yet another step down this path. The case involves the state of Texas, and I have filed an amicus brief asking the Court to respect its own precedents and to defer to the people of Texas in their administration of criminal justice consistent with the Constitution. The other side in the case argues in effect, however, that the International Court of Justice can effectively overrule a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court and of the Texas government.[...]

This is — to put it lightly — not how our legal system is supposed to work. To the contrary, our Founding Fathers fought the Revolutionary War precisely in order to stop foreign governments from telling us what our laws say. The Declaration of Independence specifically complains that the American Revolution was justified because King George "has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws." It was "We the People of the United States" who ordained and established a Constitution of the United States, one that includes a mechanism by which only "We the People of the United States" can change it if necessary. And of course, every federal judge and justice swears an oath to "faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me...under the Constitution and laws of the United States."

I would love for some republican to keep reading the Constitution one day.  It seems like they get to the end of the Preamble and the big words start taxing their brain.  So let's do this again.  The US Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2, says this: