The Academic Closed Shop

David Brooks had a depressing yet nice piece in the NYT the other day about the travails of conservative academics. Roger Kimball in Armavirumque explains it thusly: Oh, they exist. It's just that at most campuses they are a vanishingly rare breed. Departments of English generally have none; political science might have one; history, one; classics, one. Williams College is reported to have two bona fide conservatives: I can vouch for the presence of one. It's a lonely but often exhilarating existence. What does it mean for conservative students? It means that, if they want to pursue an academic career, they become experts in the arts of evasion. I can relate. Being a rightist in the academy is an exercise in evasion and smiling, teeth-grinding tolerance of intolerable remarks, policies, and ideas.

Oh the things I could tell. Overheard outside my office door last week, a poli sci prof speaking to a criminal justice prof: "The Lieberman campaign called asking me if I had decided, and I said 'no.' They said, 'are you leaning toward anyone?' I said, 'the first candidate who advocates impeachment.'" [laughter ensued] Or perhaps the time when the woman who shared my office put up a 2003 calender entitled "Cat Lovers Against the Bomb." Or the rage of "door art," in other words the various things profs paste on their office doors to advertise their political ideas: the sociology prof with his "Preemptive War is Terrorism," another with "Save Tibet," yet another with anti-death penalty and pro-pot legalization stickers and articles.

I could go on. This just scrapes the surface.

My "favorite" was when one of my students came to class with a feather scarf. She explained that directly after class she was playing in the campus production of the "Vagina Monologues." When asked by me what she planned to do after graduation (she was a senior), she replied she was going to graduate school to get a History Masters in black gay and lesbian history ... and then go on to be a high school teacher.

I smiled politely.