By Benjamin Ginsberg
It’s no secret that America’s colleges and universities have become bastions of political rectitude. This is often attributed to the left-liberal political orientation of the faculty. Typically, however, the administration, not the faculty, is the driving force behind efforts to promote campus diversity, to build multicultural programming and to regulate campus speech. The president of the University of Rochester, for example, recently announced a 31-point “diversity plan” saying that diversity was a “fundamental value” of his university.
What accounts for the solicitude shown by university administrators for this progressive political agenda? The chief reason is that a pitched battle for control of the university is under way, and by championing left-liberal causes administrators hope to bolster their own power vis-à-vis the faculty. Most professors are progressive in their political commitments and usually unwilling to be seen as siding with putative oppressors against the oppressed. Hence, they are generally reluctant to oppose programs and proposals that are presented as efforts to foster campus equality, diversity, multiculturalism, and the like. Accordingly, university administrators will often package proposals designed mainly to enhance their own power as efforts to promote these social and political goals.
Take, for example, the matter of faculty diversity. Most colleges and universities in the United States appear to be campaigning vigorously to hire and retain women and people of color as professors. Hundreds of schools have appointed “Chief Diversity Officers,” with the authority to implement diversity plans. Still others have employed the services of one or another of the now-ubiquitous diversity consulting firms, which will, for a hefty fee, help ensure that they do not overlook any possibilities that might help speed them along the road to greater and greater diversity.
At first blush the administrative drive to add under-represented minorities and women to college faculties seems a bit off the mark. The simple fact of the matter is that in many fields there are few women and virtually no minority faculty available to be hired. In a recent year, only ten African-Americans earned Ph.D. degrees in mathematics and only thirteen in physics. Given these numbers, it might appear that the only way to bolster the presence of minority faculty in such fields would involve a long-term effort to identify and nurture math and science skills among talented minority secondary-school students. A crash program to hire minority scientists when none are being produced seems misguided, to say the least.
In the humanities and social sciences, to be sure, women and members of racial and ethnic minorities constitute a larger fraction of the graduate school population. In these fields, though, the academic departments have been actively hiring minority faculty for a number of years. Why then have university presidents, provosts, and other high-ranking officials suddenly, and somewhat belatedly, become outspoken diversity advocates, seemingly on a collective quest to drastically change the gender and racial balance of their faculties? The answer to this questi
on has more to do with administrative interests than long-standing moral commitments.
Since the emergence of the tenure system, faculties, particularly at research universities, have strongly resisted even the slightest encroachments by administrators into faculty autonomy in the realm of hiring. Efforts by administrators to intervene in the process were almost always firmly rebuffed. Today, under the rubric of diversity, university administrators have been able to arrogate to themselves an ever-growing role in the faculty hiring process. The rationale for this administrative encroachment is the idea that university departments are not well suited to work diligently on behalf of diversity. According to one diversity advocate, university departments assign too much weight to “their notion of quality, appropriate credentials, and scholarly research/productivity administrators.” Rosovsky was correct. Controlled by its faculty, the university is capable of producing new knowledge, new visions of politics, policy and society. The university can be a subversive institution in the best sense of that word, showing by its teaching and scholarship that new ways of thinking and acting are possible. Controlled by administrators, on the other hand, the university can never be more than what Stanley Aronowitz aptly termed a knowledge factory, offering some vocational training but never imparting to students the most important training of all-–the ability to think.
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Benjamin Ginsberg is author of "The Fall of The Faculty," published this week by Oxford University Press. He is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science, Director of the Center for the Study of American Government, and Chair of the Government Program of Advanced Academic Programs at Johns Hopkins University
Comments (8)
I'm old enough to remember when Ivy League colleges had quotas on the number of Jewish students admitted as undergraduates. When I received my Ph.D. in physics from Penn my Ph.D. adviser, Sherman Frankel, warned me about the anti-Semitic hiring practices of Yale University, which I was considering at the time.
I also remember when such august institutions as Caltech refused to hire female faculty members in many of its divisions. This included the case of world-renowned Olga Tauski Todd who was denied a tenure-track position in mathematics there for decades, even though her husband who was not nearly as talented a mathematician was hired into a tenure-track position.
Perhaps attempts at diversity and inclusion have some merit, and should not be decried out-of-hand.
Posted by Dr. Mark H. Shapiro | July 27, 2011 3:56 PM
Posted on July 27, 2011 15:56
Mark, those quotas were meant to keep the competent out!
Posted by Dismalist | July 28, 2011 12:14 AM
Posted on July 28, 2011 00:14
The administration of the City University of New York, the nation’s largest urban university, also undermines its faculty by insisting that they inflate grades and pass all students regardless of performance. Indeed, the administration will persecute any teacher who refuses to do so.
Having received a prestigious award for my teaching, I was later removed from the classroom and finally forced to retire because I refused to pass subliterate students, of whom there were many.
My persecution began with student complaints about my grading. CUNY now invites students to register complaints about their teachers, so that a refusal to inflate grades, or a failure to inflate them sufficiently, is immediately detectable.
CUNY can retain students only by giving them the grades they want, and this can happen only if the administration keeps the faculty too terrified to give students the grades they deserve.
Frederick K. Lang
Professor Emeritus of English
Brooklyn College,
City University of New York
Posted by Frederick K. Lang | July 28, 2011 9:12 AM
Posted on July 28, 2011 09:12
@dismalist. The quotas ensured that only the most competent Jewish student were admitted. The merely "competent" Jewish students didn't make the cut; while, at the same time, plenty of merely "competent" WASPs were admitted.
The misogynist hiring practices of the past not only kept the merely "competent" females off the tenure-track, they also kept many of the superbly competent females off the tenure track. The same can be said for many minority faculty members in the bad old days.
Posted by Dr. Mark H. Shapiro | July 28, 2011 11:42 AM
Posted on July 28, 2011 11:42
Professor Ginsberg has hit the nail precisely on the head. My perspective is as an outsider, peering into the academy when representing students and faculty who have a legitimate grievance that their liberty has been infringed. I find that these disputes are rarely handled by faculty, and that the mid-level administrators have taken over. As such, rational principles are out the window, and ideology reigns supreme. There is no such thing as evidence, hard facts, with which one defends oneself. Instead, one has to plead guilty and commit oneself, in the future, to diversity and inclusion, whereupon probation rather than expulsion is the penalty. It is the administrative state run wild. HARVEY A. SILVERGLATE, TRIAL ATTORNEY AND AUTHOR, CO-FOUNDER AND CURRENT CHAIRMAN OF THE FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION.
Posted by Harvey A. Silverglate | August 3, 2011 11:16 AM
Posted on August 3, 2011 11:16
Let me suggest another factor for why administrators lead the charge for diversity.As salaries for administrators increase, being PC smooths the path to even greater compensation. Hard to imagine moving to the top rank without having one's PC credentials in order since campus "victim groups" usually exercise veto power over these appointments. And, for good measure, being PC is far easier than real accomplishment. One simply announces "one's commitment" and that's that.
Posted by Robert Weissberg | August 3, 2011 11:57 AM
Posted on August 3, 2011 11:57
Overlooked in article & comments is the force multiplier for this diversity campaign; ambitious faculty. They, plus the administration people, plus those who benefit from the special treatment form a classic "iron triangle" (Friedman, M.)
Posted by Mike Loop | August 5, 2011 9:42 AM
Posted on August 5, 2011 09:42
Gosh, I wish I would have had that information earlier!
Posted by Linda | September 6, 2011 1:53 PM
Posted on September 6, 2011 13:53