academic culture wars! woo hoo! tim burke has a nice, clear-eyed look at the academic-blog debate over alleged anti-conservative bias in higher education. he ends with the following:

"I don’t understand why it is so hard to accept that self-identified conservative undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty report experiencing many similar forms of pervasive, subtle bias. What I'm seeing from many of those who dismiss these claims is a collective eye-rolling, a sort of "big deal, so your professor sneered at you, get over it". And yet few of those doing that eye-rolling would say the same to a student of color or a woman reporting similar experiences. The grounds on which many critics are doubting that such bias exists would have to, in all honesty, extend to all anecdotal, experiential or narrative claims of bias. The only way to salvage such claims would be if they could be profitably correlated with quantifiable evidence of discrimination—but in this case, we have some evidence to that effect. The only other way to salvage this point is to say, "It's wrong to be biased against people because of their race, gender or sexual orientation, but not because of their politics". A few seem willing to say just that: I can only say I think that's a big, fat mistake on a great many fronts."

to which i say: are you sure? really sure? i don't know what i think about this last, but i DO know that burke is making a mistake when he attempts an analogy between conservatism (a chosen ideological stance, generally powerful throughout history) and "race, gender or sexual orientation," as he puts it. discrimination against conservatives in academia might be very wrong, and unhelpful. but it is in no way the same as discrimination against people who come from historically underrepresented or marginalized groups, and who (often or even mostly) experience those identities not as choices but as circumstances.

it is also worth mentioning (and thinking about) the chicken-and-egg problem of liberal academia. that is, is it liberal because, having considered the issues, "it" thinks the left has hit upon what's really going on (i.e., The Truth)? or because there is discrimination going on at some level? or both? and what does all this mean about the search for truth (or whatever) that many argue should characterize academia? i REALLY dislike left-left-left folks who want to argue simultaneously that there's no truth to be found and that the only "real" way to think about issues is through their own ideological lens. however, my dislike for these people pales in comparison to the people on the right who claim, in each and every debate on these issues, that all the facts/data are on their side. i'd footnote some of the lovely quantitative data that supports--just for example--social democratic welfare states as predictors of broad-based enhancements of quality of life, but it's probably not worth the time.

anyway. now that i'm fairly certain that grad school is in the works, all the fights i've had with my dad on this one are coming back to haunt me. my guess is that, whatever the situation really is, i'll have enough sense to stay away from the ends of the ideological spectrum.

i will not, however, stop "discriminating against" conservatives when i think they're dead wrong. as was often noted at swarthmore, i know it's a shock to the system to find yourself in the ideological minority, or to find that people Just Won't Agree with you. but these are important issues, and staunch disagreement isn't discrimination, no matter how much they'd like it to be. there's a-whole-nother essay in me right now, having much to do with the right's success at casting itself as the underdog, but...i'm at work. hurray for capitalism.