> > It seems to me the image of a monolithic left-wing
> > academia is overstated, and serves a purpose
> similar
> > to that of the "liberal media" myth. John K.
> Wilson
> > in The Myth of Political Correctness does a good
> job
> > of articulating this point. For every sociology
> > department there's an economics department, and
> for
> > every Berkeley there's a Brigham Young.
>
> WS:
> I do not know who paints such an image, except
> perhaps some right wing talk
> show hosts grasping for straw men.
>
In my experience, this image is taken for granted by a great number of people.
> As Pierre Bourdieu showed in _Homo Academicus_ - the
> academe is as divided
> along political lines as the rest of society. That
> division coincides with
> disciplinary boundaries: there are left wing
> disciplines (sociology,
> anthropology) and right wing disciplines (economics,
> law, management).
Sociology is relatively left-wing almost by definition. Anthropology, though, is a discipline that I think has seen a rightward drift in recent years, at least in the U.S.
> Those disciplines attract people with respective
> political orientation, and
> also serve as the pools of cadres for political and
> economic institutions
> (corporations, government).
>
> This system works regardless of the actual political
> orientation of
> individual people. If you claim having a degree in,
> say, sociology, on your
> job resume, you can be almost certain that you will
> get a flat rejection
> notice from most corporations. Job hunting
> specialist would advise you in
> such a situation to omit the field in which you have
> your degree (give only
> the degree you have, say, PhD, Rutgers University)
> and instead focus on your
> skills, and say for example that you are a
> statistician (if you can crunch
> numbers) or pollster (if you know how to do survey
> research), etc.
>
> Therefore, no one with actual decision making
> authority (especially about
> hiring and recruitment) complains about "liberal
> bias" in the academia,
> because they know how the system works and where to
> look for the appropriate
> candidate need for a particular position. The only
> ones that complain are
> right wing ideologues - they do so only because
> conservatism is a mental
> disorder and their brains need a scapegoat to
> function.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
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