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On Conservatives and Cowardice
In college I was fairly open about my politics. I was, even then, a conservative, though I think my particular “style” of conservatism was different from what it is now: Limbaugh vs. Buckley, populist vs. intellectual, angry and conspiratorial vs. classical liberal. When I landed in an English literature class with an outspoken progressive professor, a man who promised at the start of the semester that he would transform us all into marching social justice warriors, then proceeded to deliver on his promise by having us read far more Chomsky than Shakespeare, I pushed back often and loudly. I did pretty well in the class, but I felt at the time that, if not for my politics, my B+ would have been A. At the end of the semester the professor wrote me a personal note in which he expressed regret that I “didn’t learn anything.” In other words, he didn’t convert me.
I clammed up a lot more as I got older because I finally decided to get a Ph.D. in History, and as I married and had children, I grew extra sensitive to jeopardizing my educational and career prospects by saying the wrong thing or just being the wrong kind of person for my graduate school advisers and potential employers. I showed up for class, did my work, spoke up in historical discussions, but shut up when things turned political, even when professors spoke derisively and intolerantly of people and ideas that mattered deeply to me.
As a newly-hired assistant professor I have maintained the same strategy, for similar reasons: The good opinion of colleagues matters tremendously for raises, promotions, or even just keeping the job for more than a few years. When two professors at a lunch during my first year complained about conservative politicians and opined about the silly, unfathomable conservative mind, I said nothing. When one of the same men later talked in a Department Meeting about a local math professor, describing the gentleman in question as a “conservative [expletive],” I said nothing. In fact I may have even smirked with everyone else, but mostly (in my case) because it was so unexpected and shocking.
I don’t know why I was shocked. Most of the people I’ve worked with in academia, both as a student and professor, are good, kind, thoughtful people. But I have also seen things to confirm and justify every conservative stereotype about American campuses: coddled, entitled students, grade inflation, whole departments and even schools without any known conservatives, and administrators who kowtow to angry mobs. If professors have comics and signs and messages on their office doors, they are invariably progressive jokes and messages, sometimes openly hostile to conservatives and conservative ideas. I once knew a professor who, kind of like my current colleague, referred to Christians as “Bible [expletives].”
Despite this oppressive atmosphere, and despite the fact that I will soon have to face the tenure review process, I have slowly started coming out of my political shell. I drop hints and jokes about intolerance in academia, about the lack of intellectual diversity there, the illiberalism of campus speech codes, etc. And I have publicized my support for organizations like FIRE and Heterodox Academy. One colleague even stepped into my office last week to ask directly about my politics and about who I supported in the 2008 and 2012 elections. He’s one of at least three professors who definitely know now that I’m a conservative. Why he didn’t ask about the 2016 election, I’m not sure. I suspect that he didn’t want to know the answer. I think he couldn’t bear the thought that I was maybe that kind of conservative.
I was feeling pretty good — even liberated — about my recent and growing openness. But today’s news that Google fired the guy who wrote the controversial memo about diversity and gender in the workplace revived my old fears and reminded me why conservatives in certain settings just prefer to shut up. That’s exactly what progressives want, I guess: to promote their own views and policies and squelch all others through social pressure and intimidation. And if my experience is any indication, they’re succeeding.
Published in Education
I feel for you. I’m not in academia but make a point of laying low in most work situations/groups unless given an indication of like-mindedness, then its like a damn breaking for both of us. Very cathartic when it happens.
You may want to document as much of those type of events (who, what, when, where) just in case, enlist students that may be favorable to your point of view in documenting their intimidation as well. As much as I don’t like the lawsuit culture, I’m beginning to think that is one of our only avenues left.
No need to guess where you come down.
Some useful perspective, fresh from Ricochet: http://ricochet.com/446930/quote-of-the-day-5/
And ain’t it a damned shame? I mean how many thought provoking conversations could you have had over the course of your academic lifespan had the atmosphere for Conservatives in academia been more tolerant? There could have been plenty of common ground found with some I am sure. Instead you have to worry about your very livelihood if you speak up or offer a different take on things. And of course, if you were to be given the Google guy treatment, the refrain would be that you acted outside of the intellectual “standards” of the school or violated some sort of publishing on your own time guideline in your employee handbook, which legally are terms to a contract. Good luck with tenure and I hope you get it and then I hope you unleash a torrent of in your face ideology back into the faces of these Stalinist thugs. Give them the intellectual equivalent to the “bird” as you go to your class each day that you can never be removed from. God speed.
This is a user-friendly site that’s out in cyberspace. And yet it appears that many people use a pseudonym out of concern for professional consequences.
I cannot imagine the guts it would take to “come out” in academia with tenure on the line.
Unfortunately, that might be more difficult than you think. It’s easy for racial, gender, or sexual preference to be used as a cause of action for an employment discrimination case because there is no doubt that the characteristics being used as the basis for the alleged discrimination are visible tot he naked eye. Any attempt to use employment guidelines or what have you as a defense against such accusations are hardly ever taken seriously by your casual observer of the even. With the use of ideology as the discriminating factor you have an uphill battle because there are plenty of examples out there of termination based on views expressed outside the bounds of the employment. Look at the Duck Dynasty guy or even other professors being threatened for voicing their own opinions that run counter to the zeitgeist. The point is, that the Right has been so complacent to this kind of thing for so long that now we are left with having to keep our heads down.
I agree. No one gets fired specifically because they’re conservative. There’s always some other pretense: student reviews aren’t quite as high, the professor isn’t publishing enough or in the wrong journals, isn’t serving on enough committees, etc. It’s easy to make a case against someone because there are so many categories to pick and choose, and there are few people willing to defend the victim. How do you prove prejudice when prejudice is in the mind? How do you prove that it wasn’t really just about downsizing and selecting from among the jr. most professors? I doubt a court would accept the private stories about prejudice and discrimination from my diary as evidence.
I just open carry a big 1911 .45 to remove any guesses about my views.
Tough road you have sir. Good luck.
For anyone who’s interested in these issues (and why would you be way down here in the comment section if you weren’t?) here’s a link to an article that I just came across today. It tries to address the question of why there are so few conservatives in the Humanities. And it has nothing to do with prejudice.
Father B, how brave you are–a coward no longer! Now that the word is out, I have a couple of suggestions (even though you didn’t ask for advice). Don’t be apologetic or defensive if others ask you about it–look “genuine” and offer to tell them more about your views if they’re interested. It helps to remember that underneath their arrogance and disdain is probably fear. You don’t have to tell them every political belief, but those you have that relate to academia and that you can explain how they make a contribution (like the Heterodox Academy), share those. But only if they’re interested. And if they are, be interested in what they have to say.
Much of the bigotry and hatred in the world is our fear of the unknown. Now that you are “out,” let them know who you are, not necessarily pridefully, but with grace. I hope this helps.
The Google employee was probably employed “at will”, as are most employees of private-sector companies. He could be fired at any time, for any reason. He could also have left the company at any time for any reason.
I am “out and proud” as a conservative at work. On Fridays, I sometimes wear one of my Ricochet t-shirts (one of them has the Rico logo on the back), and I have a Hillsdale College banner on my desk. Here is what I have clipped to the side of my cabinet.
There is a manager who sits a few feet away from me, and most mornings he stops by to discuss politics-he went to a Trump rally last year and was impressed.
In the 6 years since we have been in this facility, fellow conservatives at work have passed by my desk and talked to me, and I have made friends of people I never knew before. There is hope.
I feel so lucky. The college I went to in the sixties was at least in my majors conservative. I had a triple major, Political Science , Economics and History. The head of the Political Science department was a retired submarine commander, the head of the Economics quoted Mao at the start of every class then proceeded to tear it a part, the head of the History Department was a brilliant Irish/ Jew with whom I drank beer and discussed how to make money. Oh those were the days.
Several things struck me about your excellent post. First, that you earned a B+, yet your professor sent you a note that said “sorry you didn’t learn anything’?! What did he give the C and D students? Second, you’ve run across professors who describe people as a “conservative f***”, as well as “Christian Bible f****”. Liberal theology is compatible with liberal education, i.e. political correctness has infiltrated both, and both are under attack. It’s also odd that your colleague asked who you voted for years ago.
I commend you for coming out of your shell – and understand the need to protect your income – hard to believe it’s come to this in our country!! But be fearless and have courage! Our freedom and democracy depend on it!
I occurs to me that the real question is the degree to which you political views have informed or can be discerned within your academic writings and publications. I have been told that your body of published research will be the single most important factor when being considered for tenure.
Of course, if the members of your tenure review board all think of you as an arrogant and ignorant bigot (aka, a conservative) then it won’t matter what you’ve published. But it’s not cowardly to have avoided picking fights with co-workers. What would have been cowardly is to deny your conservative beliefs when asked about them; when someone has asked you directly for your opinion, did you pretend to be a progressive to curry favor? That would have been cowardly and dishonorable. However, it doesn’t sound as though that is the case here.
By the way, I have a bunch of those old Ricochet business cards. If anyone wants some, they can PM me with their address and I will send some.
I hear you. I had a couple of profs who taught in their uniforms, with full salad on display. The student questions were amazingly respectful.
I read the linked article. Apparently the author’s thesis is this: on the whole, conservatives working in the Humanities tend not to produce interesting or worthwhile scholarship. As a result, they don’t get published in the periodicals and peer-reviewed journals that substantiate the quality of their work. Thus, they don’t earn tenure, or even get hired. It’s the conservatives’ own fault for not producing good scholarship.
This seems to me to be a rather self-serving and circular argument on the part of the author (whose CV suggests he is a secure member of the progressive academic community). But perhaps I am reading it wrong?
Great advice. Thank you.
Yes, this has always struck me as funny too. I wrote something about it in my original draft, then deleted it b/c it seemed like too much of an aside.
This is probably true. I’ve published stuff mostly on Calvinism and religion in colonial America. I don’t think you can determine my politics in my articles and book reviews and such, but I have seen some raised eyebrows when I tell people what I do. In other words, the fact that my topic is religion (instead of race, class, gender, etc.) does make people wonder. Once when I applied for a Fulbright grant the lady in the interview looked at my research interests and my research proposal and asked me directly whether I write about Christians with admiration or whether I’m critical enough about them. I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant. In the ensuing discussion it became clear that she was trying to gauge my politics because of my topic. I guess I can’t complain too much because in that instance I got the (publicly-funded) grant … which is so not very conservative of me.
You need to be teaching at Hillsdale, home of our very own Dr. Paul Rahe.
I confess: I only skimmed the article and I didn’t look at the author’s CV. It seemed to me that his argument was about what is considered (or even can be) “cutting edge” in the Humanities vs. the hard sciences. To get ahead in the former, just like any field, you have to have something new to say, yet conservatives are less likely to be interested in topics like “Shakespeare was a closeted transsexual” and more interested in classics and beauty and timeless truths and so on. Although I wouldn’t discount other reasons that we don’t find more conservatives in the Humanities and Social Sciences (prejudice, groupthink, the oppressive atmosphere), there may be something to the argument of this particular essay. How do you break new ground with Shakespeare, for example, unless you’re willing to apply theories (Marxism, postmodernism, etc.) and adopt relatively new scholarly frameworks (all the various Balkanized “studies”) that conservatives typically eschew?
I actually think there’s some merit to it, if you go in with the caveat that the judgement of what counts as “innovative” can skew left. But sub-specialties that traditionally had a lot more conservatives – diplomatic and military history, for example – have been almost completely phased out of most modern history departments. The trend instead is to focus on class, race, gender, etc., and the literature underpinning such studies is necessarily left leaning. There’s also a (to my mind, really alarming) trend toward family/personal history as a jumping off point: so African American women write about African American women, and the gay children of Cuban refugees write about homosexuality in the Cuban refugee community, etc. I don’t like it because it blurs the lines between scholarship and activism, and it’s a lot harder to be objective when you’re so close to the story.
I’m not at all “out” as right-leaning in my department, though my colleagues all know that I’m a Christian and regular church-goer (helpfully, I’m not the only one in the department), and I spearheaded an effort on campus to better serve student veterans, (which my colleagues have actually been incredibly supportive about). Mostly, I don’t like living in the state of constant battle that would be required to be the only right-leaning person in the department, so I just avoid politics. But I also don’t lie and pretend I voted for Obama. Instead, my students just get a really balanced take issues when they’re least expecting it — I remember the stunned faces as I defended George W. Bush on attacks against his intelligence — and being even-handed probably more or less outs me anyway.
Good luck with tenure! I remember that year… I lost ten pounds.
I need another lifetime to catch up to Dr. Rahe in knowledge and wisdom. Then maybe I’ll apply.
Looks like we were posting at the same time. I made some similar points above.
Yup. I saw that after I posted. Clearly, we’re both right!
Fair question; Is it possible to critique the application of such theories as representing shallow or weak (albeit “popular”) scholarship? Might there be a place for conservative academics to engage in the scholarly discussion by presenting the opposing view and make the argument that such frameworks are misapplied?
I don’t know this, but my guess is that when such essays are written they are much more difficult to have published.
(@lois-lane, @thewhetherman, @sabrdance …care to jump in on this?)
Some have done this. For example, see the collection of essays in Reconstructing History.
But my first reaction to your suggestion was to laugh, because my post was largely about my fears of retribution and professional obstacles, and this would be a sure-fire way to incite controversy and earn the ire of the very colleagues who might be able influence my tenure and promotion. Maybe later in my career!
From the article:
This is how professors end up publishing reams of studies (and teaching gobs of courses) on such topics as “Class in Shakespeare,” “Race in Shakespeare,” “Gender in Shakespeare,” “Transgender in Shakespeare,” “Intersectionality in Shakespeare,” and so forth. To tease out those themes in texts that have been read, studied, and debated for centuries certainly constitutes progress in knowledge, since those who publish the research have said something genuinely new about something old and familiar.
To tease out those theme is progress, even if they’re wrong and/or inappropriate?
Unfortunately, it will likely only help him decide on an inevitable career change at an inopportune time. These people don’t fight fair or above board. He probably won’t get a bike lock to the head, but he’ll get taken out if he’s too outspoken.
The sad part of this is that your advice is very high-minded, Susan, but dangerous in our present world. That’s why I’m @trinitywaters here, as @hoyacon noted.