As a parting gift to the nation, the Coalition majority in the Senate set up an inquiry into academic bias, at the instigation of the Young Liberals. It’s been discussed extensively before at LP on a number of occasions. The Committee has now reported. Let me just observe that it must have been a highly enjoyable task to write the majority report (italics in the quote from Senator Gavin Marshall are mine):
The committee’s finding is that in view of the relatively tiny number of submissions received, from the hundreds of thousands of students who are said to be affected, there can be no basis for arguing that universities are under the control of the Left and that this is reflected in course content and teaching style. If there is a Left conspiracy to influence the direction of the nation’s affairs and its social and economic priorities through the process of subverting a generation of undergraduates this is not yet evident.
It must be said that the committee processes of the Senate are not at all suited to the kind of inquiry that might have been imagined by its instigators. That is probably less important to them than the fact that the inquiry was held at all. On the other hand it might be argued that as even the most intensive specialist research would be unlikely to reach any conclusion as to the incidence of biased teaching, this inquiry has been as useful as any.
Elsewhere: John Quiggin and Terry Flew.
You’re just using the leftist dominiated Senate to hide the truth from the people whilst you brainwash the kids into being CO2 bedwetting DDT holocaust deniers.
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Sorry Graeme Bird paid me 5 bucks to say that. It might not seem like much but it’s a whole year’s income to him.
On a related note, I quite enjoyed this from Peter Slezak
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/i-am-guilty-as-charged-of-bias-and-prejudice–shall-i-be-put-todeath/2008/10/19/1224351052163.html
The ALP senators seem to have written the majority report with a certain lack of gravitas … no doubt anticipating with glee a hilarious display from the Young Libs when they get to vent their outrage at being treated like the juveniles they are.
The hyper-ventilating from Kevin Donnelly, Keith Windschuttle, Miranda Devine et al should also be predictably entertaining. Like John Quiggin however I’m pissed off that I wasn’t named and shamed as a leftie academic. Smeone should tell these twirps that the conspiracy is MUCH MUCH more extensive than even they dream of.
Does anyone here believe that the arts faculties aren’t dominated by the left?
Yes.
I’ve made this point a million times ever since all this stuff reared its head. Most academics are most concerned with their own narrow area of specialisation. Spanish literature or Augustan poetry or Goethe or human geography experts are going to be most interested in these things. None of which offer much scope for “bias”.
Whether or not most Arts academics vote for Labor or the Greens is a different matter – people are more than capable of separating personal politics and professional practice, and really it’s no one’s business in a free society. Incidentally, I wouldn’t be so quick to make that assumption anyway.
The report does a good job of disentangling the irrelevance of many of the “arguments” made. “Dominated by the left” just isn’t meaningful in the sense it’s supposed to be.
Does anyone here believe that the arts faculties aren’t dominated by the left?
But considering that Neoliberal ideology actually cause more damage let’s have a look at the right-wing bias in faculties of economics okay?
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Does anyone believe that commerce faculties aren’t dominated by the right? And if so why is that?
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I mean people can crap on about the evils of postmodernism all that want. I don’t. Evil’s too grandiose a concept for postmodernism
What I really like in the report is the liberal use of comments on Andrew Norton’s blog as evidence against systematic bias.
Apparently blog anonymous blog commentary carries the same weight as sworn evidence before a parliamentary committee by officers of the Australian Liberal Student Federation. This seems about right to me.
The Liberal students agitated for years to get this inquiry and have they come across as petulant, preening prats. Unable to get what they wanted in the playground/lecture theatre, they complained to what they thought would be sympathetic grown ups. Alas, as is so often the case, the grown ups weren’t sympathetic. Most people learn this lesson by the age of eight.
And anyone who cares to refresh their memory about who these prats were need only look up the Hansard. This will be very handy indeed for all sorts of purposes, one can be sure.
Mark – I personally think that the forces of Neo-Trotskyitism have taken over the study of Augustan poetry and that this threatens to bring about a Marxist coup. Obviously you’re in on the plot.
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Seriously. There is a ‘line’ in a lot of courses. That’s pretty apparent to anyone who’s done ‘em. I don’t think they can be destilled into ‘left’ and ‘right’ so neatly however. Andrew Bacevich for example, is a conservative. He’s also an historian. Despite the fact that he was schooled in the Grand Narrative, Great Man school of history he tends to write stuff that’s more in keeping with Marxian notions of historical determinism. Yet he’s not ‘left wing’ because of it. He still is as he was.
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Similarly, talking of postmodernism, I once took a History/Lit course called Postmodernism. There were four academics with widely disparaging views. None of which could be classified as ‘right’ or ‘left’ wing.
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The bias that really matters is that in the heads of people. If a sloppy piece of shit of an essay gets top marks because it endorses the line and an excellent submission barely passes because it disagrees then you have problems.
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It’s really about skills and knowledge. Some f the best courses I took were ones, the ‘line’ of which I disagree with. But they were worthwhile cause I learned some things. One of which was to think for myself.
OMG. In the space of about 2 days there have been five posts that prove the Libs either have lost it or are losing it: Julie Bishop, pyne, Howard’s Xtan Soldiers’ Brigade, Malcolm and this one.
How comew I didn’t notice this before.
What Adrien said at 6. The people behind this inquiry are the same folk who led a McCarthyist witch hunt against Macquarie Uni in the late 80s, because they dared to teach economics without an exclusive focus on neoliberal orthodoxies. The only really consistent ideological biases Ive ever seen in Universities are in Commerce departments.
Management departments tend to be a bit more diverse , as the received quite of few Industrial Relations acas when IR became a dirty word, and they were all booted from Arts Faculties in a systematic managerial sweep in the early -mid 90s.
Mark, rather than left wing bias do you think a more common problem might be the groupthink around certain disciplines.
Peter Saunders, who used to be with the CIS, makes a lot of sense I think in his critique of groupthink,in all types of fields, whether left or right.www.cis.org.au/Policy/autumn_08/policy_myths_autumn08.html
Yes, there’s “groupthink” at Uni, gustaf. From the Young Lib submissions (and my own experience), it appears it’s infinitely more common among the students than the faculty.
Well, I agree that the commerce faculties lean to the right (though more in terms of free market economics and classical liberalism, rather than social conservatism).
But the arts faculties are strikingly left-wing. I just googled “arts faculty” – it came up with a sociology programme for the University of the Sunshine Coast (I know – not the best example). What is offered for undergraduates?:
SCS130 Introduction to Indigenous Australia
SCS210 Indigenous Australia and the State
SCS211 Green Justice: Environmental and Social Issues
SCS216 Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies
SCS235 Providing for the People: Social Justice, Welfare, and the State
SCS285 Health, Society and Culture
SCS286 Disability: Culture, Community and Change
SCS290 Understanding Cultural Diversity
SCS295 Gender and Culture
The programme itself excludes conservatives, let alone what is actually taught within the faculty.
I think what they’re really getting at is the bias universities have toward encouraging people to think for themselves. Surely this is such a stark contrast from their own reality that they just can’t accept it – it must be exposed for the scandal it really is.
Mark Richardson, you’ve just repeated the idiocy of the Young Lib submissions to the Senate Inquiry. Why is “Introduction to Indigenous Australia” left wing? Why is “Gender and Culture” left wing? It’s patently obvious that there’s no capacity for political bias in a subject name, unless conservatives think that we shouldn’t study culture, or anything related to gender, or the Indigenous Australians. Is that your point, Mark?
Forget it Alister, Mark’s got the place on toast. This VERY SAME FACULTY OF ARTS also offers these courses which are self-evidently a breeding ground for socialists and Obamaniacs.
INT230 Making Public Policy in a Global Era
INT236 International Relations Theory and Practice
INT245 Politics of the USA
INT250 Forces of Change in International Politics
INT256 Indonesia: Society, Culture and Politics
INT257 Issues in Pacific Security: Terrorism, Low Intensity Warfare and Western Responses
INT270 Politics and the Media
INT274 Politics and Security in East Asia
INT276 Internship in Politics and Public Policy
AUS211 Eve of Destruction: War Propaganda of the Twentieth Century
AUS250 Riots and Rebellions: Conflict in Australian History
ENP235 Regional Sustainability and the Ethics of Planning
JST202 International Justice and Human Rights
SCS211 Green Justice: Environmental & Social Issues
SCS235 Social Justice and the Welfare State
War propaganda? Sustainability? HUMAN RIGHTS? I’ve never read such a load of leftist claptrap in my life.
Where are the courses on the Menzies era and cricket’s contribution to global peace?
SCS130 Introduction to Indigenous Australia
SCS210 Indigenous Australia and the State
The content of these subjects could be written by Tony Abbott himself and be consistent with the subject titles.
Alister, of course there’s a capacity for bias in a subject name. If I see a subject entitled “Patriarchal representations of gender in colonial Australia”, then I know that it’s already assumed within that subject that there is a patriarchy and that our sex is a gender construct. It also signals to me that the course is likely to be presented from a feminist perspective.
Alister, I looked up that course on gender and culture. It’s an openly left-wing course, as any conservative student might have guessed. Here is part of the course description:
“The cross-cultural perspectives offered in this course challenge the assumption that the characteristics and behaviours commonly associated with femininity and masculinity in the West are natural, biological or unchangeable.”
There is no attempt at neutrality here and no attempt to hide the left-wing nature of the course.
Daniel B, left-liberalism is the going orthodoxy. How does having left-liberalism dominating arts faculties encourage people to think for themselves?
This is part of the difficulty of the current political situation. Left-liberals want to identify as dissenters even though they have become the political establishment.
SCS210 Indigenous Australia and the State
This course examines questions regarding the origins of the Australian state vis-a-vis the country’s indigenous population and the nature of the contemporary state and bureaucratic government as the central mechanism which articulates public policies. State Indigenous policies such as assimilation, self-determination and reconciliation are evaluated from both Indigenous viewpoints and theoretical explanations concerning racial and ethnic inequality and the role of the state. Furthermore, students critically explore the current situation of Indigenous Australians in areas such as employment, health, criminal justice and native title.
Not one word in the course description so much as hints at left wing bias.
Of course the arts faculty is left leaning. What would be the utility of a right wing humanities? It’d be a long shelf of dusty tomes and no staff would be required.
There is no such thing as right wing enquiry. That’s why the Taliban shutdown education. (And why the Young Libs would like to.)
Mark, you don’t make any sense. If I was to use as shallow an analysis as you, I’d have equal evidence of right wing course design. You’re making a dumb argument.
And this nails it. You could have gone on to argue that it’s assumed Australia was colonised, which clearly demonstrates a black armband view of history. Your assumptions are evidently wrong, by the way – the subject name (I can’t believe I need to point this out) would be referring to how men portrayed women in the 1800s. If you seriously don’t think that Australia at this time was patriarchal, then there’s not really any point continuing a discussion.
Yes, but there is patriarchy and our sex is a gender construct. Those empirical truths are something that the Young Libs just can’t seem to face.
So the argument now is that:
a) there is no such thing as right-wing enquiry so it is not biased if arts faculties are left-wing
b) the left-wing way of looking at things is the simple truth and therefore there is no bias if courses are left-wing
Alister, do I believe that Australia in the nineteenth century was patriarchal? Not in the way that patriarchy is usually defined. I don’t believe that men constructed gender and the institutions of society in order to uphold an unearned privilege over women.
The most reasonable counterargument is the one made by Spiros. I expect it’s true that not all courses are openly biased. I’m sure that there are still courses in the arts faculties about, say, Renaissance Italy, which will be taught by left-wing academics, but probably in a way that wouldn’t exclude conservative students.
It’s the best that conservative students can hope for as things stand.
‘Quick definitions (patriarchy)
▸ noun: a form of social organization in which a male is the family head and title is traced through the male line’
Or if you prefer the Compact Oxford:
‘patriarchy
• noun (pl. patriarchies) 1 a form of social organization in which the father or eldest male is the head of the family and descent is reckoned through the male line. 2 a system of society in which men hold most or all of the power.’
Sounds awfully like the 19th century to me but now I see that I was blinded by leftist bias. No doubt leftists have got at (a) the dictionaries and (b) all those histories and 19th century novels I’ve read over the years. The Married Women’s Property Act had nothing to do with power in society and primogeniture was actually imposed on men by the secret conspiracies of women. This is all clear once you take a correct, NEUTRAL perspective from which conservatives are not excluded.
I hope Mark comes back often. He’s fun.
Ken Lovell says “I hope Mark comes back often. He’s fun.”
This sort of attitude is, I think, a lot of the reason people stop contributing to blogs that don’t align with their preconceived beliefs. The right stick to their blogs and endlessly reinforce their own beliefs and the left do the same on LP.
Why not dispute Mark Richardson’s arguments without having to go the patronising sneer of “he’s fun”. Having to cop that why would he bother returning and forcing LP’s to have to think about their arguments and how to couch them in such a way as to persuade others.
Ken, I seem to know more about feminism (and contemporary leftism) than you do. Feminists don’t use the dictionary definition of patriarchy. They use the definition I briefly outlined.
The argument runs like this: the categories of male and female are fictional; one group of people constructed the gender categories as an act of power over another; therefore one class of people, designated “men”, enjoy an unearned privilege over another oppressed group, “women”. The male role is the fully human autonomous one; therefore women are treated as not fully human – they are “othered” and treated not as a human class but as a “sex” class. Society is to be understood in terms of establishing and maintaining patriarchal control; men use violence to dominate women, and marriage, the family, culture and art are all agencies through which men enforce patriarchal control. Justice therefore requires the abolition of gender as an artificial, oppressive construct; all people will be regarded instead as human, rather than as male and female, and all will have the privilege of the traditionally male, fully human role. As domestic violence is a product of a patriarchal male control over women, it can only be understood in terms of male perpetrators and female victims and as having a systemic cause in the construction of masculinity to dominate and oppress women.
And so on.
Do I believe that this feminist theory of patriarchy is true? Either now or at some other point in history?
No.
It seems that Mark’s opposition to the idea that there’s no leftist bias in universities stems from his belief that there is a leftist bias in universities. He believes it, therefore it must be so. What neo-Marxist, postmodern nonsense!
In any case, pulling up the University of the Sunshine Coast as an example of how rotten Australia’s university sector is really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Mark could’ve gone after UQ, QUT or Griffith if he wanted to use a Queensland uni that has a chance of actually influencing people. USC’s not exactly big. I can’t imagine USC is able to offer very high wages to their lecturers on account of where they are and how big they are. This is the free market at work, isn’t it? That’s not exactly a left wing cause celebre.
Because gustaf Mark has amply demonstrated he’s not remotely interested in having his beliefs challenged. He prefers instead to grossly misrepresent the arguments of others (see (a) and (b) at #23) so he can feed his self-pity for being a conservative excluded by the wicked leftists.
I would welcome frequent comments from anyone who uses tired debating tricks to support irrational beliefs: left, right or just plain deranged. They’re all fun.
BTW I’ve found that people generally are impervious to argument about their ‘beliefs’. It just makes them angry and defensive. Discussions about informed ‘opinions’ offer more scope for constructive engagement but are, alas, rarely accommodated by the constraints of a blog comments thread.
@26
That’s a very simplified characterization of feminist arguments, a “straw person” one might say.
Mark at #26 now adopts tired debating trick number 12: tell the opposition they don’t understand their own ideology as well as he does; combined with trick number 2: pretend your previous argument meant something completely different to what it plainly said (as in “When I wrote ‘the way that patriarchy is usually defined’ I obviously meant ‘the way in which I claim feminists and contemporary* leftists define it’”).
Plus of course basic trick number 1: ignore any points that are awkward to answer, such as Spiros at #19.
He’ll go on forever too I reckon. He’ll be an Energiser bunny of a commenter, wriggling with happiness that people are finally giving him attention.
*Why ‘contemporary’ leftist anyway? Is Mark insinuating that some of us here are has-been leftists?
Fair enough Ken.
When you say that “Discussions about informed ‘opinions’ offer more scope for constructive engagement but are, alas, rarely accommodated by the constraints of a blog comments thread”
it makes me wonder what you see as the purpose of these blogs. Is it to reinforce what people already think or is it to try and see where there may be grey areas or even black and white areas? I’m sorry if this is off topic.
Well gustaf I guess the purpose of the blog can only be explained by the owners. Many commenters though are engaged in a light-hearted intellectual game of point-scoring where the imaginary audience in our heads cheers our incisive brilliance and confirms we have won every argument by TKO
Ken, does your imaginary audience in your head ever think the other team scores a blow?
Of course not. I am a staunch believer in the great British parliamentary tradition.
I’d go so far as to wager actual dollars – say, $50 – that none of the key Young Liberal complainants had ever set foot in an actual Arts Faculty tutorial. I’m that confident on the question.
That said, and Ive commented here before – there *is* an anti-conservative bias in universities, and thats the great thing about them. The whole point of post-feudal inquiry is to question and actually test received truths and order. This orientation is however entirely compatible with liberalism and capitalism (one of the most radical forces for change ever witnessed); but not especially compatible with political conservatism.
However, you’ll find plenty of other institutions fulfilling that role (eg the Church). The desire to control all institutions is merely evidence of anti-pluralist and undemocratic tendencies among RW youth, and we all know where that’ll lead.
But Lefty E, what happens when it is left-wing thought which is the established orthodoxy? If the role of inquiry is to question received truths and order, and left-liberalism is the received truth, then shouldn’t arts faculties be focusing on a critique of left-liberalism?
By the way, you get to keep your $50 in my case, but only because I’m not a Young Liberal. I did, though, spend 7 years in an arts faculty, and three of my siblings are arts academics. I can tell you from my own experience that it’s very difficult to be a conservative student in an arts faculty.
“But Lefty E, what happens when it is left-wing thought which is the established orthodoxy?”
Do not fear Mark Richardson.
We will just have to wait and see, though it is more than unlikely in all of our lifetimes. That is unless you are prepared to use the RWDB definition of “left-wing” that that seems to include, as well, the Labor party and the ABC in a dangerous brainwashing plot.
Perhaps thats because there aren’t that many there. There are material reasons for this: to even enrol in Arts, and leaving politics completely aside for now, you will generally be of an inquiring, questioning disposition; and perhaps most tellingly, not especially motivated by security and financial reward.
That may lead to a certain mode of self-selection among students, who later take the long, long, and rather low paid route to academia. So, in the end, all we’ve established is that some lefties are more likely to bother with it.
However, in the process, we a re trained to evaluate arguments based on the evidence adduced with them. I personally hi-5 myself in any tutorial with a smart and confident right-winger in it. That means it will be a corker of a semester in a teaching sense, because we’ll have debate. I dont fear conservative viewpoints: I fear a dull tutorial. Sadly, there arent that many. Maybe they do feel intimidated – or maybe they’re all down the hall in a commerce tute. I dunno – but this whole debate reeks of furphy.
Joe2, it’s not a question of plots. Left-liberalism is the dominant form of belief in the Australian political class. It has dominated the arts faculties since at least the late 1930s. So for a couple of generations, at least, it’s been the reigning orthodoxy. How do you think that left-liberal beliefs got to be thought of as “politically correct”?
Mark’s blog links to this which is presumably an example of what he considers ‘right wing inquiry’:
‘As I type, I’m glancing at some grotesque thing on ABC, about the Grinch and Christmas, in which humans interact in brotherhood with a variety of monstrous looking other species, and a little girl has a tender relationship with an unsettlingly hideous but sensitive and kind-hearted being called the Grinch, and everyone loves each other. This is not our society celebrating the beautiful holiday of Christmas. This is the Liberal Controllers of our society carefully teaching children an unnatural and dangerous lie that they would never believe unless they were carefully taught. How many whites will militate against vitally necessary immigration restrictions in the decades to come, how many young white females will be raped and murdered by nonwhites in the decades to come, because of the message of trusting and loving racial aliens that programs like this implant in them?’
I do have to concede that you would not find that kind of thinking promulgated in many Arts faculties.
Ken, you’re doing it again. I could probably find something just as crazy on a site linked from LP. It doesn’t detract from the point Mark is trying to make.
Maybe its as adrien said at the start of the thread that “There is a ‘line’ in a lot of courses. That’s pretty apparent to anyone who’s done ‘em.” Maybe it just happens that the ‘line’ in the vast majority of Arts subjects is a left-liberal line.
Well no you wouldn’t, Ken. Mark R may file it under “academic inquiry”. I prefer to think of it as “pulling it out of your arsehole”.
Mark Richardson, I’m a feminist and a Women’s/Gender Studies major, and I don’t recognise what you just argued feminism to be as anything I was taught! Seriously, I reckon you could really benefit from enrolling in at least one of those Sunshine Coast uni courses you’ve at least done the initial research groundwork for now; sounds like you’ve fallen prey to popular stereotypes of feminists. No derogatory criticism intended: these stereotypes run rampant and they’re too rarely challenged outside of circles in which feminism is granted any degree of respect or approached with an open mind rather than dismissed as biased before any feminist can get a word in edgeways. But read up a bit on the subject. Feminists are neither the same across the board, nor the same across time. Men aren’t outside the list of demographics feminism seeks to liberate from rigid roles and oppressions related to gender and, yes, patriarchy.
Bec, I’m greatly surprised you don’t recognise the understanding of patriarchy I described. It dominates discussion of domestic violence; it has been officially “mainstreamed” by the Swedish government; it is theorised by feminist writers like Kate Millett; and it permeates the discussion at feminist websites like Hoyden about Town (and, to an especially advanced degree, at I blame the patriarchy).
Furthermore, it fits a more general pattern of left-wing thought. The same kind of thinking is applied to issues of race and ethnicity. For instance, whiteness theorists claim that there is no race; that one group of people invented a fictional category of whiteness to oppress the non-white other; that society is structured to enforce white dominance, to the degree that all whites are complicit in racial privilege; and that justice therefore requires the deconstruction of whiteness and the traditional institutions of white society.
The same structure or pattern of theory is employed in regard to both gender and race.
Gustaf @ 11, I’m struggling to recall ever having heard Peter Saunders say anything sensible on any subject. (The link you provided wasn’t as helpful to your claim as you think it was.)
Please provide evidence of your (risible) assertion.
I think I will use Mark Richardson’s posts as an example of what confirmation bias is, when I’m next asked. Mark, you didn’t engage with my points in any meaningful way. You simply deliberately misrepresented my argument to claim points I didn’t make:
You see bias wherever you look (again, in subject names), and so bias exists. And no argument to the contrary (for example, pointing out that subject names are a ludicrous way of identifying bias, or that your construction of patriarchy is unsupported by the evidence) will change your mind. And you’re sufficiently single minded as to not understand that if the name of a subject denotes bias, then this argument can equally be applied to business and economics faculties to demonstrate systematic right wing bias.
Mark Richardson, I spent some time failing to do any work in an Arts faculty between 1968 and 1970, and you’re full of shit. Granted, a sizeable minority of the students were lefties (most were actually apolitical, as far as I could tell), but the staff were generally pretty conservative.
David Irving (no relation) says “Gustaf @ 11, I’m struggling to recall ever having heard Peter Saunders say anything sensible on any subject. (The link you provided wasn’t as helpful to your claim as you think it was.)
Please provide evidence of your (risible) assertion.”
This was in reply to my comment that: “rather than left wing bias do you think a more common problem might be the groupthink around certain disciplines.Peter Saunders, who used to be with the CIS, makes a lot of sense I think in his critique of groupthink”.
Below is part of what Saunders says:
“Most of these people believe similar things and think in similar ways. They were educated in the same kinds of degree courses, reading the same books and internalising the same basic theories and perspectives. They interact regularly at seminars and conferences where they reaffirm the core ideas they share. They referee each other’s writings, award each other research contracts, and evaluate each other’s job applications. They often live in the same neighbourhoods, send their children to the same schools, and read the same newspapers and periodicals. Collectively, they ‘know’ what our society is like, and they ‘know’ what needs to be done to improve it.
The core beliefs and assumptions of this group of ‘experts’ are rarely challenged, and when they are, the challenge is generally ignored or waved away as self-evidently absurd and wrongheaded. This is not because these people consciously act in bad faith. They genuinely believe they are open to ideas and that they are self-critical, even impartial. But when everybody around them thinks as they do, and sees the world as they see it, it is difficult for them to take contrary ‘definitions of the situation’ seriously when they occasionally encounter them.”
I think that sounds sensible and is a good critique of groupthink.
‘Ken, you’re doing it again. I could probably find something just as crazy on a site linked from LP.’
Ah but I doubt you’d find a poster at Lp
‘Ken, you’re doing it again. I could probably find something just as crazy on a site linked from LP.’
Ah but I doubt you’d find a poster at LP ENDORSING it.
Bored now.
Alister,
a) I said at the outset that commerce and economics faculties tend to be right-wing, at least in the sense of being right-liberal (free markets and classical liberalism). The argument is whether arts faculties are dominated by left-liberalism. Half of the commenters here seem to be arguing that of course they are, but that there are reasons for this. The other half are very defensive about admitting that any bias might exist.
b) I did engage your arguments. You stated that there could not be bias in a subject name. I gave you an example of a subject name which would already assume a left-wing view of the world. Other commenters then responded that the left-wing view I gave was just the simple truth – which then led off to another argument. You can agree or disagree with my argument – but I don’t see how it failed to engage your point.
David Irving,
From a history of the left in Melbourne in the 1930s:
“The appointment of Raymond Priestley as the university’s first
fulltime Vice-Chancellor in 1935 was a crucial step in legitimising
academic radicalism. An English liberal, Priestley broke the control
of the University Council, dominated by Melbourne’s business elite,
over university political life … He wrote that it is “the responsibility of [the university's] educated staff to act as leaders of progressive thought …”
Yeah, I read that gustaf. I don’t feel like refuting it word by word, but it’s gobbledegook. One could say exactly the same thing about any professional group (bankers, lawyers, computer programmers, the list goes on) and it wouldn’t be any more sensible.
“Joe2, it’s not a question of plots. Left-liberalism is the dominant form of belief in the Australian political class. It has dominated the arts faculties since at least the late 1930s. So for a couple of generations, at least, it’s been the reigning orthodoxy. How do you think that left-liberal beliefs got to be thought of as “politically correct”?”
What tosh. You seem to believe that by saying something over and over it will become somehow true. I also studied in an arts faculty in the period you mention and saw absolutely no evidence of this left wing bias that you and young liberals keep banging on about. It is all just in your paranoid minds like the suggestion of the left wing dominating political correctness.
For gods sake we have just come out of eleven years of Howard thought bullying and you can still somehow imagine this all powerful left wing boogyman is running rampant. Take a look at the bludgeoning the greens get whenever they stick their heads up above the parapet and you will see how far behind the power game the left has sadly become.
You guys are running the show. Stop the bullshiting line about how your views are being swamped.
Oh, by the way, gustaf, I think you’d find a lot more of the groupthink you’re banging on about in the (supposedly) right-wing-dominated (and therefore bias-free) economics and commerce faculties than in the humanities. Look who’s rather warped view of the way the world works has got financial markets into their current state.
According to Gustaf and Mark R, people (other than them and their fellow conservatives) are so stupid that (assuming a counterfactual here), if the humanities lecture halls and seminars were totally dominated by Stalinist/trotskyist/deep green / socialist orthodoxy, nothing in the world, including family, peer group, media or life experience would be sufficient to counter it. No, It’d go into their brains like plasma into an intravenous tube.
David Irving says
“Yeah, I read that gustaf. I don’t feel like refuting it word by word, but it’s gobbledegook. One could say exactly the same thing about any professional group (bankers, lawyers, computer programmers, the list goes on)” and ” I think you’d find a lot more of the groupthink you’re banging on about in the (supposedly) right-wing-dominated (and therefore bias-free) economics and commerce faculties than in the humanities”
That was my point David when I said ” rather than left wing bias do you think a more common problem might be the groupthink around certain disciplines.”
When you then say “I don’t feel like refuting it word by word, but it’s gobbledegook” it seems earily familar to what Saunders means when he says “The core beliefs and assumptions of this group of ‘experts’ are rarely challenged, and when they are, the challenge is generally ignored or waved away as self-evidently absurd and wrongheaded.”
Helen then says that I am a conservative on the basis of my desire for people to play the ball and not the man and the fact that I belive that groupthink exists and should be avoided. I thought everyone believed those things. Are they things only conservatives believe?
http://www.theage.com.au/national/bureaucrats-try-to-censor–alan-jones-name-in-report-20081205-6slh.html
Hmm, here’a an example of academics being pressured to suppress their findings about a right-winger. I hope the Young Liberals and other conservatives will give this Equal Denunciation Time. (Or is it proof of lefty bias that they say bad things about that nice Mr Jones?)
gustaf, there may be a certain amount of groupthink within some, at least, occupational categories (although rather less than you seem to believe), but the whole ‘Arts faculties are dominated by teh Leftist groupthink’ shtick is so old and tired that it’s difficult to respond to it seriously. GrodsCorp have a lot of fun with this one.
Helen @ 58,
While I preface this commeny by saying I abhor censorship of almost any kind, surely that’s more an example of political correctness gone mad?
Mark, your suggestion that left-liberalism is the dominant ideology of the political class seems to hint at there only being a left wing political class. Last time I checked, Quadrant was still being published, Tony Abbott was still a senior figure in the Liberal Party, Nick Minchin was still kicking heads in, Kevin Rudd was earning the scorn of leftists for not moving fast enough on Climate Change, Stephen Conroy was earning the anger of apolitical computer nerds for his authoritarian internet policies and Julia Gillard was still trying to provide funding for private schools.
Is Alexander Downer a member of the political class? Malcolm Turnbull? Peter Costello? What is the political class? Is it Phillip Adams and his buddies? Is it Robert Manne, Imre Saluzinsky? Is Janet Albrechtsen in or out?
# 36″I can tell you from my own experience that it’s very difficult to be a conservative student in an arts faculty.:”
Isn’t higher education about inquiry and being challenged? Isn’t it about understanding a range of points of view and using that to develop your own thinking? Who cares if it’s hard – not me!
I can tell you that from my experience in 4 degrees in 3 unis:
Environmental science – about 70% apolitical ecologists; 10% mad lefty sociologis and 20% people who thought that one day resource economists would rule the world. (I think their time is coming soon).
Economics – full or right wingers who if they ever had a liberal thought, beat themselves until it went away. But I did economics so I would know where they were coming from, so no problem for me with that.
MBA – more right wingers than Economics. And people who were sociall very shallow. See point above.
Law – about 50:50 (probably as it should be)
Alister – Mark Richardson, you’ve just repeated the idiocy of the Young Lib submissions to the Senate Inquiry.
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No he bloody hasn’t.
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The Young Libs are political opportunists and are appealing to the baser aspects of the human animal. Mark is actually putting forward, yes the same case, but in a more civilized tone. That kind of response makes his case – that the Right are excluded – for him.
So Mark Richardson is repeating the same idiocy, but with a more civilized tone.
Glad you cleared that one up for us, Adrien.
Subjects that of which MR might approve:
SC101 Indigenous Australians and why they should be grateful.
SC111 Capitalism: What IT has done for you
SC112 Great Australian Conservative Thinkers of the 21st Century
SC113 Libetarianism and Gender Politics
SC114 Introduction to War and its Economic Benefits
SC115 Appreciating Western Monoculture
SC116 Onward Christian Soldiers
Gustaf at #48 can you perhaps nominate who some of the ‘these people’ are that Saunders is writing about, who all live in the same neighbourhood and award each other research contracts and so on? Whose core beliefs and assumptions are ‘rarely challenged’? I mean actual names and positions. Otherwise I’m afraid an argument couched in terms of ‘these people’ is just an example of tired debating trick number 7, to be compared with Mark’s use of trick number 4: presenting random morsels of pseudo-information in support of a general proposition (e.g. “THE SWEDISH GOVERNMENT HAS MAINSTREAMED IT what more proof do you want of leftist thinking?”)
Mark R – The programme itself excludes conservatives, let alone what is actually taught within the faculty.
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When I was at uni the business students had a contempt for students of generalist humanities degrees. Related to this, and I’m thinking of certain examples here, was the idea that attending university for the purposes of acquiring knowledge for its own sake, particularly knowledge that lent itself to social criticism, was illegitimate somehow. ‘Most students’ a president of the Australian Liberal Students Federation told me often, ‘want to get their degrees and get out’. On the whole, right-wingers were not interested in studying the humanities. They didn’t see money in it.
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Those who did, and again I’m thinking of certain examples, were either interested in a political career or wanted traditional instruction in the humanities. They had an indoctrinated hostility to reading Marx and were disappointed that they wouldn’t spend three years sitting on the lawn reading A Tale of Two Cities to each other.
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There were of course many left wingers amongst the faculty. The study of the humanities attracts certain types who tend to the left. There was a spectrum of types amongst the staff from the dogmatic to the heterodox. This does effect the coursework, the selection of texts, the purview of study – yes. Sociobiology, for example, was something to which there was widespread hostility. And the sole teacher of this theory was, yes, very conservative (and a notorious womanizer wannabe).
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But interestingly by the end of my time there, the faculty came to be dominated by an inter-disciplanary, trans-ideological and vocationally orientated crew who excluded the ludicrous fringes of ideological obfuscation and obtained as allies a motley collection of quality intellectuals; some left, some right, some neither (including said sociobiologist).
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The humanities is still haunted by the 60s but its a collective of fields that move as you play and is subject to the rigours of intellectual competition. Commerce students, science students may scoff at our degrees but I get a lot of money to string sentences together for such as these. And I’ve got those skills in no small part due to the honing I received at university.
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Doubtless many humanities faculties are awash with second-rate apparatchniks of some confused post 60s soup of New Left fragments and French obfuscation. Some of the ‘best’ unis are particularly susceptible. But the humanities is probably now more needed than ever it was and the various pressures of fortuna will come along from time to time and separate wheat from chaff.
If left bias did/does exist in university course content then it would nevertheless inherently be incapable of producing citizens capable of effectively challenging or critiquing or even understanding the larger society or history. Hence, it would be counter-productive from a left-wing pov.
If there is such a thing in this world as an approximation to absolute truth it will only ever be found in always placing side by side the two most extreme points of view that exist. Everything is dualistic. Between one extreme or taboo and another swings the great pendulum of the contraries of all life.
The aim of education should be to encourage students to
Adrian – So Mark Richardson is repeating the same idiocy, but with a more civilized tone.
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Is it idiocy? Or is it a legitmate point of view that deserves an airing in a democracy? Mmmm?
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Glad you cleared that one up for us, Adrien.
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Yes the clarity is startling apparent.
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And y’know I think I’d approve of something like:
Only more accurate.
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Let’s start by getting rid of monoculture. So-called ‘Western culture’ normally refers to a narrative organized on the basis of a series of cultures emanating from Sumeria one of the four locales of Original Civilization. Unlike the other three however it is a broken series that branches off in several directions. Considering only those epochs of Western civilization that obtain in the Eurocentric view of it we can name Carologian France, Elizabethan England, Athens c500 BCE, Sparta c500 BCE, 2nd century Rome, Ancient Egypt c 1200 BCE, ancient Judea, the Vienna of Mozart, the Venice of Casanova. The Paris of Abelard. The Paris down which streets an increasingly disillusioned Mary Wollostonecraft walked. The Paris of la nouvelle vague. The London of Swift and Pope. The London of the Beatles and the Stones. New York. Berlin. Prague, Florence, Edinburgh.
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This is the Western ‘monoculture’ which conquered the world. Why? Because for centuries a lack of political stability led to huge improvements in the art of war – yes. This is the Western monoculture that expanded the African slave trade to industrial proportions and then put an end to it. This is the Western culture that created Hitler and defeated him.
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There’s a lot more to Western culture than just its victims. And a lot more than the standardized, logo-blazed, ready-to-wear sloven-ness that’s commonplace throughout the developed world.
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Don’t get me wrong I think we should examine the grimy bits of the culture. We should face the nasty past and excavate it. I had contempt for those Tory types who refused to read Marx. Such a mind is that of Good Party Member – yuck. But this oversimplistic caricature of Western Culture as a catalogue of oppression is tiresome. And so is the failure to engage anyone with a differing point of view except by writing them off as a moron.
Ken says:
“Gustaf at #48 can you perhaps nominate who some of the ‘these people’ are that Saunders is writing about, who all live in the same neighbourhood and award each other research contracts and so on? Whose core beliefs and assumptions are ‘rarely challenged’? I mean actual names and positions. Otherwise I’m afraid an argument couched in terms of ‘these people’ is just an example of tired debating trick number 7″
I think Saunders argument could refer to any discipline where there is an accepted ‘line’.
I think you are using debating trick 8 Ken whereby you try to drag a general point down to a particular point in order to prove it wrong in one case and then hope that it invalidates it in all cases. If I am using trick 7 I am in good company.
For consistency’s sake please ask Mark to give names of ” Most academics are most concerned with their own narrow area of specialisation”;
Lefty E to name “The people behind this inquiry are the same folk who led a McCarthyist witch hunt against Macquarie Uni in the late 80s” and also name the “I personally hi-5 myself in any tutorial with a smart and confident right-winger in it.”
If there is such a thing in this world as an approximation to absolute truth it will only ever be found in always placing side by side the two most extreme points of view that exist. Everything is dualistic.
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In his essay on Americans and their withering grasp of history Chris Hitchens cites some dude whose technique was to teach an historical event or epoch by requiring two texts representative of the debate.
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I don’t agree that left-wingers unanimously want critical citizens. They may want citizens opposed to ‘The System’ but there are a lot of dogmatists out there. There are right-wing dogmatists of course. But there are open minds on the Right as well. And closed ones one the Left.
I think some Tories see all things po-mo as symptoms of societal degeneration, when it’s actually perfectly possible to have rightist po-mo theory in some sense. Much-maligned ‘identity politics’ is called to service by right-wing zionists, for instance.
when it’s actually perfectly possible to have rightist po-mo theory in some sense.
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Yeah. It’s called marketing.
As a part of the demographic who is somewhere in the centre, who dislikes GW Bush and Sarah Palin every bit as much as I dislike far-left-wing arts students, I really think that we’ve got to remember that most people are not the polarised extremes of neither Creationism-teaching war-mongering Right nor the let’s-smash-capitalism Left. They’re just the vocal, disturbing ones who get all the attention.
Incidentally, I was a little horrified to be walking through the arts building on campus the other day (not my usual haunt) where I find a “Free Lex Wotton – lock up racist cops!” sticker plastered onto somebody’s office door. They can call me an evil right-winger all they want, but no sensible person can think that the Palm Island riots and destruction should be tolerated in civilised society.
As an aside, I absolutely hate people who stick stickers on everything all over the campus to advertise their particular events or views – it’s basically vandalism, since they cannot be removed without damage.
Adrien –
stuffed formatting
No no gustaf that won’t do at all, you can’t try to deflect a simple question by refusing to answer it until I pose different questions to a bunch of other people.
Saunders’ statements are unequivocal, they require no interpretation, nor does your extension of them. You and Saunders are not positing some hypothetical class of persons who are personally unknown to you but whose existence you have deduced by logic. He claims ‘They interact regularly at seminars and conferences where they reaffirm the core ideas they share. They referee each other’s writings, award each other research contracts, and evaluate each other’s job applications. They often live in the same neighbourhoods, send their children to the same schools, and read the same newspapers and periodicals.’
These are quite concrete factual assertions which can only be interpreted as referring to actual known people. So I repeat my query borrowed from Margaret Thatcher: who are ‘they’? Don’t be coy, I’m sure naming them won’t be defamatory.
Failure to name names means that ‘these people’ are a total fabrication, invented to add some sort of empirical support to a flight of romantic conservative fancy.
Posey @74
It could just as well have been ’sprouting’ (rather than, in truth, ’spouting’) like Ovid’s sea nymph, Clytie, or Philemon and Baucis, but that would have been a happy, desired outcome, but not the case, in this instance.
Mark, go back and read what I said: I said I didn’t recognise the aforementioned as anything I was taught, not that I didn’t recognise it. Indeed, I do recognise Kate Millett, but not as a representative of either feminism or “the left”. Why’re you so sure she’s lauded amongst either of the above? Might I suggest you’ve read stuff by radical feminists of decades long past, assumed that that they speak for all feminists, and unfortunately then formed an opinion unfounded in any reality and gone about saying a whole lot of incorrect things on the basis of same? Consider it — really, do. It’s a bit like me saying I’ve read about how the earth was considered flat in centuries past and rejecting geography and science out of hand. The kind of uneducated and argumentative stickler I’d come off sounding like is kinda I think the reason you’re invoking the reactions you’re invoking here. There’s parts in what you say that I agree with and there’s parts I don’t, but picking it apart, whilst I wish I had time for it, is something I’m too busy to do. Essentially I think you’re proceeding from a misunderstanding, though, wherein you think feminists think men are essentially bastards vs. women being essentially good. That’s whack — and actually, to be honest, I’ve heard that opinion voiced by conservative non-feminist-identified women a helluva lot more than I’ve heard it in my university classes (the latter of which mentions number precisely zero). Seriously — read some stuff. Something from this century. Something general-overviewish like ‘Gender Studies: Terms and Debates’ (basic textbook stuff, by Anne Cranny-Francis, Wendy Waring, Pam Stavropoulos and Joan Kirkby) would probably be quite eye-opening for you in terms of both the variety of feminist thought out there and how it’s developed and continues to do so as a result of being critiqued not just without but within feminism. It’s not a stagnant, paint-all-with-the-one-brush kind of a thing and you’ll not be able to contribute any kind of meaningful critique as long as you consider it so.
Ken says “No no gustaf that won’t do at all, you can’t try to deflect a simple question by refusing to answer it until I pose different questions to a bunch of other people.”
It’s the same question Ken.
I believe the ‘they’ Saunders is referring to are people who follow the current orthodoxy of a particular discipline. I imagine it could refer to any discipline but I think in his case he is referring to the area of social policy. Because I don’t know anything about sociology I don’t know the names of the people he is referring to.
I’m sure Mark and Lefty E personally know the people they are referring to so you can ask them the same question.
How did I extend Saunders statements that there is often a group that sets the ‘line’ for a discipline and then polices and reinforces the prevailing orthodoxy?
Whoops, clarifying: when I say “there are parts of what you say I agree with”, please replace with “there are parts of your summaries I agree with and parts I don’t”. Sorry for lack of clarity.
No, gustaf, I don’t know what Saunders is talking about. Most sessions at academic conferences are marked by disagreement and critical engagement, not some sort of groupthink lovein. Academics are socialised to be quite competitive. I doubt Saunders has actually attended any Australian academic conferences – most people who write groupthink think tank stuff usually base their opinions on assumptions about what reality is like, and are completely disconnected from its actuality.
Oh gustaf … you started this thread so assertively and look at you now. ‘Believing’ that Saunders must have meant something but admitting you really haven’t the slightest idea.
Wait … the voices in my head are shouting something … what’s that guys? “Gustaf has been comprehensively pwned”?
Who am I to argue with the voices in my head
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Mark says “Most sessions at academic conferences are marked by disagreement and critical engagement, not some sort of groupthink lovein.” You obviously haven’t been to any school education conferences then Mark.
In relation to Saunders, I was replying to a question from Ken where he asked me to name names. I thought he wasn’t being consistent because other people are allowed to make generalisations without namimg names, such as yourself and lefty E. I then said he should ask you for the names of individuals you refer to in your comments.
When you say that “most people who write groupthink think tank stuff usually base their opinions on assumptions about what reality is like, and are completely disconnected from its actuality,” would that also refer to people who write for the Centre for Policy Development if they were to use generalisations about conservatives?
Ken says “Wait … the voices in my head are shouting something … what’s that guys? “Gustaf has been comprehensively pwned”?
“Who am I to argue with the voices in my head.”
I know this fits with your belief that
“Many commenters though are engaged in a light-hearted intellectual game of point-scoring where the imaginary audience in our heads cheers our incisive brilliance and confirms we have won every argument by TKO.”
Did you beat me by TKO or knockout or a points decision?
Becc, it’s true that I haven’t set up listening devices inside the women’s studies tutorials of our universities. But I read plenty of books, articles, websites and research papers produced by contemporary feminists. I think I have a reasonable grasp of trends within modern feminism.
Becc, there are many contemporary feminists who do follow patriarchy theory. Yes, one problem with this theory is that it puts men and women in a hostile relationship. But that’s not the only problem. The theory also assumes that men have easy privileged lives compared to women; that men are accepting of violent attitudes to women; that love, romance and marriage are ploys to oppress women; and that what is masculine is superior and more human than what is feminine.
In a way it’s understandable that there are feminists who follow patriarchy theory, as it’s an application of certain generally held ideas to the lives of women.
The theory does generate contradictions, which do lead to recurring debates within feminism. For instance, if autonomy is a key aim, this means that the freedom to choose will be prized. But what if a woman chooses stay at home motherhood? She is being autonomous in making the choice, but the choice itself fails to maximise the autonomy of her life circumstances.
Some feminists deal with the contradiction by supporting stay at home motherhood on the basis of choice, even if it does fail to maximise autonomy; others see it as a betrayal of feminism. But the longer-term drift of Western societies is toward restricting the choice of more traditional options.
It might surprise some on the Right, but some of us signed up to the Left without ever going to uni (real life political education).
I heard someone say that if it was the goal of left-wing academics to move the country to the Left they had conspicuously failed. Though where academics have failed a global economic crisis just might succeed.
I can think of plenty of right-wing academics out there. So the question really should be: why don’t right-wingers want to take up a career in academe? The uncharitable may say it has something to do with being dumb or greedy.
“why don’t right-wingers want to take up a career in academe?”
They do. Engineering departments are very conservative; both the academics and the students. Then there’s the commerce departments, the medical faculties, etc etc.
The problem with these discussions is that they assume Arts faculty = University. It just aint so.
This is really tiresome. I’m not much interested in Peter Saunders or his views. I am just observing that he is making assumptions without any evidence. The CPD doesn’t produce papers about “conservatives” but on policy. As the name suggests. Certainly such contributions should be assessed on the basis of that evidence – among other factors.
Much of this thread seems to exemplify basic failures of reasoning.
Mark says “this is really tiresome.”
Alister says “..there’s not really any point continuing a discussion.”
Ken Lovell says “Bored now.”
It must be awful to have to put your view and respond to dumb people who don’t automatically agree with you, makes me wonder why you bother continuing to have a blog. Perhaps Ken was right when he said that ““Many commenters though are engaged in a light-hearted intellectual game of point-scoring where the imaginary audience in our heads cheers our incisive brilliance and confirms we have won every argument by TKO.” Seems to be a bit boring though if you aren’t trying to do any more than point score and you already know all of the answers. I guess it means you always win though.
The young Libs have missed the boat. I think there was a fair bit of unthinking leftism in arts faculties in Australian universities in days gone by, but it’s pretty much gone now. Various studies in the US have shown that older faculty often cling pretty grimly to the arguments that animated their lives in the 60s, but younger faculty – of all kinds – are more interested in ‘what works’ and being good teachers and researchers. I’d be very surprised if Australia were any different.
At various times I’ve had to write essays that were designed to piss in a particular academic’s political pocket. At the time I viewed them as an opportunity to practice the art of rhetoric, and to improve my writing skills. Yes, I’d have been pretty annoyed if my whole course had been like that, but I’ve studied/taught at four universities in two different countries, and it never, ever was. Subjects where parroting the lecturer’s ‘line’ was essential to get good marks were always ’statistical outliers’. There were more of them in the early 90s, when I did my first degree, and far, far less of them when I came to study as a mature student.
I think, too, that people are getting political conservatism and intellectual conservatism in a not very useful tangle. I’d describe Oxford as intellectually conservative. I’ve seen, for example, a notable academic (very politely, but very clearly) completely destroy a group of students making the fashionable ‘identity politics’ argument that it is impossible for people from one gender or ethnic group to understand or speak for people from the other gender or other ethnic groups. For those political conservatives about to cheer the hallowed halls of academe at the oldest university in the world, I should point out that the academic in question is a Marxist. Wanting academics to ‘do’ political conservatism (or any other political ideology) in the name of ‘balance’ is fairly pointless, like demanding equal time for creationism in a biology class, or a spending a term on the labour theory of value in first year microeconomics.
I do think there is something to be said for intellectual conservatism. The exchange I witnessed above indicated that some new ideas are just not particularly rigorous. That doesn’t make them wrong per se, just intellectually flabby. A good university education will allow its graduates to keep their heads above the flab and see clearly – at least most of the time. Anything else is surplus to requirements.
Apologies for the long comment.
Among the terms of reference, the committee was asked by the Young Libs to consider whether the government should make laws related to preserving academic freedom — and to consider whether the government should actively pursue a politically “balanced” faculty.
Do these Young Libs even understand the irony of their attempt to get the government more involved in legislating, regulating, monitoring, interfering and “balancing” universities — in defence of academic freedom?
Why are right-wingers so prone to believing they must destroy the village in order to save it?
“Why are right-wingers so prone to believing they must destroy the village in order to save it?”
So true. Though, maybe the real question we should be asking is why our education is failing these dunderheads? Maybe left=wing teachers could be recruited from Cuba, along with doctors, to break the downward cycle.
As I’ve said before the main question is not whether academics are biased. Of course they are! Everyone is biased. The question is whether they accept different viewpoints or not.
So there’s a subject entitled “Understanding Cultural Diversity” – so what? That doesn’t mean anything by itself. The important thing is whether students are free to query the assumptions on which the course is built. I could envisage a scenario where a student could write a very good essay on that topic from a conservative point of view. I might not agree with it – but that’s not what I’m being asked to judge as a lecturer. I am being asked to judge whether it’s well-written, well-researched and engages with the issues raised in class in an intelligent fashion.
I’d also agree with Adrien’s comment way above that academics are mainly concerned about divides in their own area. I’m not sure whether I’m right or left wing, but I do know that I generally favour the mix produced by restitution law rather than a fusion fallacist point of view of Equity and common law. Anyone fallen asleep yet?
Mark Richardson is on to something.
Yes, it is true. We left-liberals have won the culture wars. Our cultural dominance is almost absolute.
Resistance from the Right is sporadic and piecemeal.
Paleoconservatives make futile attempts to impose their quaint cosmologies on various aspects of life, for example, man’s supposed special relationship with some deity or other. These attempts are now laughed without fear of persecution into ridicule.
Neo-liberals attempt to equate morality with the market. Remember the so-called <a href=” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Moderation“>”great moderation”? How embarrassment! Bad luck fellahs. Come back and try again after you’ve wiped the egg off your face.
And let’s face it. Different strands of the Right hate each other almost as much as they hate the Left.
As a left-libertarian, taking into account the inevitable ups and downs of the long run, I feel very sanguine about developments during the last century, and more.
Gustav, I don’t have a blog. And I’m more than happy to have people disagree with me, if they’re actually mounting reasoned argument. But this discussion started with someone giving a list of subject names and claiming that this is automatic and foolproof evidence of a left wing bias in Universities. That actually is a dumb argument. To date, there is no compelling evidence of a systematic bias towards the left (whatever you want that to mean) in Australian universities. It is incumbent on those who claim to see a bias to present actual evidence that it exists. This has not happened. And this is why I didn’t see any point in continuing a discussion. Disingenuous comments like yours don’t exactly help either.
Mark, every time you mention “patriarchy theory” you reveal that you confuse patterns of social hierarchy with personal relationships (of course social hierarchy influences personal relationships, but it’s not directly deterministic).
“that men have easy privileged lives compared to women”
Nope. There are many forms of social privilege, and all of us are privileged in some ways but not in others, which leads to complex interactions in social hierarchies. Male privilege is merely one form of social privilege: it exists, but it doesn’t mean that male privilege outweighs other forms of privilege that some women might possess. It’s one factor, not the factor.
“that men are accepting of violent attitudes to women”
Yet another conflation: that observations of common male attitudes are claims about “all men are x”. “Common” does not equal “most” and certainly does not equal “all”. Yet in nearly any pub or bar you like to mention there will be at least one group of men that are casually accepting of violent attitudes towards women: just listen to their “jokes” and watch how the response to such “jokes” is not walking away but buying the “joker” another beer.
“that love, romance and marriage are ploys to oppress women”
Romance is sentimental escapism that can be most enjoyable but is not a good stand-alone basis for life decisions. Love is generally a good thing independent of romance and marriage, and I don’t know a single feminist who’s said anything bad about love. If you’re conflating romance with love and marriage, perhaps that’s your problem, not feminism’s.
“that what is masculine is superior and more human than what is feminine”
You are confusing observation of social attitudes towards gender roles/stereotypes with an endorsement of those attitudes. Society generally provides more social rewards and recognition to behaviour/attributes that are “masculine” rather than those which are “feminine”, thus it is society which is placing “masculine” as superior etc to “feminine”, not theories of patriarchy which only seek to describe social attitudes.
Sorry, Mark, but your comments on this thread indicate that you don’t. Anyone who quotes Kate Millett as in any way representative of or central to contemporary feminist thought is either wilfully cherry-picking or stuck in 1968.
Tigtog, I think you’ve covered Mark’s points admirably, let me just add though
patriarchy theory. Yes, one problem with this theory is that it puts men and women in a hostile relationship…
This is the mistake that most antifeminist commenters (who are mostly kneejerk rather than considered) most commonly make, I think: conflating “patriarchy” with “men”. Yes, patriarchy has to do with men, but it has some very pernicious effects on men as well, which feminists and gender academics have been at pains to point out, I think. Let’s think of some examples: the man who’s well placed and well disposed to be the primary nurturer / stay at home parent at a particular time but is ridiculed by his traditional family or peers. The teenage boy who commits suicide because try as he might, he just can’t fit in to the blokey mould that society says he should. The husband who systematically destroys his family, his own life and his potential for happiness by trying to maintain complete control over “his” woman and children. The man who’s shoehorned into a job he hates because he thinks if he studied textiles, which he’d really like to do, He’d be a poofta. The gay man lying bleeding in the park, maybe bashed by the same man who… The list goes on.
“PHMT”, as we say.
Patriarchy is an abstraction, men are humans. By conflating the two, antifeminists manage to hold on to the notion at feminists hate men. At the level at which MSM blog comments operate, unfortunately, it’s a hard rhetorical illusion to dispel, but I tries.
An excellent description, Helen. Good on ya.
…Ahem, my point? (Cough – that’d be nice) was that feminists, by opposing patriarchy, are opposing something that oppresses men too, feminists see that and we think it is something that should be fixed for the good of everyone.
On another topic, Mark, I think you’re pushing the proverbial uphill when you speak of “autonomy” as being the be-all and end-all of feminist thought. Many feminists, although not all, are lefties and most of us think that society is interconnected and interdependent. Most of the feminist bloggers I read support public funded health, education, etc. The idea of it taking a village to raise a child wouldn’t have come out of a feminist milieu which was completely dominated by individual autonomy. If you’d just take that corridor to the left and follow the blue line, the Libertarians are that way…
This is a subject I’m offering next year. (Kate Millet won’t be on the reading list, lol – not that she wasn’t a pathbreaker, but a 1960s feminist’s views on D.H. Lawrence are about as relevant to the course material as Steve Irwin’s views on crocodiles.) I’m interested in Mark’s views about it, in particular whether it reveals my undoubted left-wing bias….
Laura, tell us more about “women’s relationships with animals”.
The book Flush is a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s pet spaniel (it’s by Virginia Woolf.)
Another book on the course is The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing. One of the main figues in this book is a dog/cat hybrid beast called Hugo who is a pet/companion/burden to the young woman in the story (like the familiars in Phillip Pullman’s books).
We’ll also read short stories by Dorothy Parker, Suzy McKee Charnas, and Joyce Carol Oates, that use ideas about animals to think about women in various ways.
Nice straight bat there, Laura.
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I loved ‘A Room of One’s Own’ when I read it in high school. I still have it kicking around at home. It’s one of those books I’ll never get rid of.
If you’re interested more about the relationship of people and animals, I recommend a book called ‘Melancholia’s Dog’, which looks at the way writers and visual artists have represented dogs. It’s a fascinating read.
Apologies if I’ve told this story before. A student I knew was offered an essay topic on student-tutor relationships. He knew what the expected line was (something which would have been independent of left or right I’d say). He decided to have some fun and instead argued that amorous relationships between students and teachers were not only acceptable but the ideal. He delved deeply into ancient Greece for support, but also found many more modern pieces of evidence.
His tutor hated it. But I think he still got quite a good mark because really she couldn’t fault the quality of his research and writing. I’ll take that as a score for the ability to challenge orthodoxy (again one shared by both left and right at least in terms of lip-service) and get away with it in the modern humanities faculty.
I’ve been wracking my brains for stories about students who challenged the orthodoxies and suffered for it. There were two students who had to rewrite theses because the academics doing the marking didn’t like their left-wing assumptions, but in each case they just had to provide some more evidence. Aside from that the ONLY examples I can think of from my years at university were the numerous stories that circled about one specific academic who is well known for marking down essays that disagreed with her. These stories certainly indicate the system isn’t perfect, but they really undermine the notion that the problems are widespread. If the stories got around about one academic, I’m pretty sure they would about others if it was a widespread problem.
So in sum, I think our LP inquiry finds:
* Complainants were not actually interested in the issue of ideological bias in unviersities. For example, clear neoliberal biases in Economics and Commerce Faculities were not worth commenting on. Interested in Arts Faculties only.
* Complainants found it difficult to distinguish between critical method (subjecting all recieved truths to scrutiny and “testing”), and being politically radical. Even though these are two entirely separate things, as Skepticlawyer pointed out.
* Conservative commentators appeared to lack confidence that the verity of their ideas would be sufficient to win public debates. Rather, Censorship of alternative views and strict policing of individuals within institutions is required to ensure the free play of ideas. Quotas, if you like (and what left-libreal wouldnt!).
*The susbtantial dominance of neoliberal economic and social policy circles innrecent years- despite the alleged dominance of left-liberal educators – was not found relevant to this disucssion by complainants; for reasons they were unable to explain.
* The fact that re-marking procedures are now standard was not mentioned at all- despite being a key instituional safeguard against any alleged ‘biases’ by a first examiner.
Complaints dismissed. Costs for frivolus and vexatious actions to be paid by the applicants.
I was a tutor for a history subject a couple of years ago, the topic being the Second World War in the Pacific. I had one student from Japan in each of my tutes. At the start of semester, one of them thought the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime, the other thought it was necessary to force Japan to surrender. But by the end of semester, they’d both reversed completely, swapping their positions!
I thought this was just fantastic, I was so pleased. And everyone I’ve told this to who has ever done any teaching in the humanities understood why — because it showed that learning more about something they’d previously held strong opinions about forced them to reconsider those opinions. (Not they needed to actually change their opinions, of course, but I guess it’s a good indicator of thinking going on.) If it was all about the indoctrination of impressionable minds into a leftist agenda, then there would be no cause for celebration — it’d be a wash, presumably (one pacifist recruit, yay! one warmonger, boo!)
It’s not surprising that these students were confused, for the grouping of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an error. You can make a strong case that Hiroshima was necessary (placing the act in historical context) but Nagasaki was straight up a war crime.
I really don’t see how Nagasaki could be ’straight up a war crime’ if Hiroshima was not, since Japan had not indicated that it was going to surrender by the time the Nagasaki bomb was dropped. But no doubt you can set me straight, Spiros.
Oh yeah, and it’s kinda beside the point, too.
Helen’s point about ‘autonomy’ is a very good one. Just so the lefties and feminists at LP stop being the target of conservative ire, I think I’d best own up and say I’m the one most likely to be the true ‘autonomy theorist’ – indeed, my current research is in this area. Although I’m happy to call myself ‘feminist’, I’m not particularly enamored of the group rights (and concomitant support for public funding of various things) that play a large role for many contemporary feminists – but by no means all.
It strikes me that many conservatives – including those here – are closer to the left-feminists with whom they purport to disagree than they realise. They may want their state funding and paternalistic intervention to go towards supporting different things, but they want it just the same. For me (the true advocate of individual autonomy), such demands have to pass two tests. First, will they work? This simple empirical demand asks if state intervention to, say, support the family (via tax and transfer policies) or publicly funded and administered education (via state schools rather than, say, a voucher system) will actually, ahem, support the family or generate better educational outcomes (less crime thanks to stable two parent families, or children who can do sums) without detriment to other things (governments, even small ones, still have a fair bit to do these days). Second, if the empirical test is passed (and it very often isn’t), then a normative one becomes necessary. Ought we be taking money from people to support things with which they disagree? Isn’t it better to leave choices to those most directly affected by them, rather than palming choice off to some government bureaucrat?
Thing is, the empirical hurdle is the real toughie, as philosophically interesting as the normative hurdle may be. Studies have shown, for example, that liberal divorce laws reduce domestic violence rates and female suicide rates – quite apart from facilitating choice. That finding helps feminists. Liberal abortion laws reduce crime, and anyone opposed to abortion now has to factor the massive drop in crime rates since the early 90s into any CBA attached to their proposed legislation. On the other side, parental notification laws reduce rates of STDs among teens, while long gaol sentences and tough sentencing policy do actually reduce crime. That’s something many conservatives would find amenable. And so on down the line. And we haven’t even addressed the normative issues yet – is abortion right or wrong? Is it right to lock even very bad people up until they rot?
In the past, libertarians have been able to make common cause with social conservatives in large part because the latter simply wanted to be left alone to make their own choices. If, however, they decide that their preferred choices should be imposed on those with whom they disagree, then the partnership becomes increasingly fractious. It will destroy the GOP for a generation unless the soc-cons learn to pull their heads in, something that is worth bearing in mind.
“soc-cons learn to pull their heads in, something that is worth bearing in mind.”
I see you are operating on a definition of “social conservatives” that doesn’t explicitly include sticking your nose in where it’s not wanted. Care to share?
I kinda like Kate Millett. I must be biased!
FDB, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. If you’re asking whether I think social conservatives should be able to advocate for their positions, then of course I think they should – that’s a basic free speech issue. Where I draw the line is at legislation and funding directed at furthering a socially conservative agenda, be that abortion laws or specious ‘charters of academic freedom’. Is that the question you were asking?
Sorry SL – ’twas banal sarcasm. I’ve been spending too much time around Liam.
Social conservatism is in its very essence about sticking your nose in to others’ affairs and regulating their behaviour, no more or less than is communism*. This is incompatible with “pulling [your] head in”.
*The main difference being that Soc Cons see a big picture where this constitutes a return to a natural order that will self-regulate if only people would remember how tops it was in the glorious
(mythical) past, and communists see a progressive march to a glorious (hypothetical) future.
I just wanted to add my agreement to that of other tertiary teachers on this thread (Ha! Hivemind! Groupthink!) that the best tutes are ones where people’s views and opinions are challenged – I like mine to be as well!
And I also wanted to observe that the idea that “conservative students” (whoever they are – and there’s been a conflation between Young Liberals and those who might vote Liberal but care little for politics, among the many illogicalities and confusions evident in the whole thing) need courses specially tailored not to offend their sensibilities is of course the latest variant of the “victim/rights” mindset that the right imagines others have being applied to itself! It’s really quite odd.
“conflation between Young Liberals and those who might vote Liberal but care little for politics”
And further, those who might vote Liberal, care quite a lot for politics, but recognise that this won’t necessarily be reflected in the curriculum.
i.e. intelligent right-wingers – a breed who must surely despise these YL nutjobs more than anyone.
Thing is, FDB, the GOP was able to sit on the soc-cons until Bush II, when they simply took over the party and turned it into something unrecognisable. In the past they’d wagged the Democratic dog as the Dixiecrats, until LBJ finally gave them the boot. I don’t like the idea of roughly 20% of the population of any country being excluded from political discourse, but that may be what the soc-cons have to experience – at least in the US – until they learn (or re-learn) to play nicely.
Yeah, I just don’t think that will happen from their end. The GOP might as you say simply move away from them, and they might suffocate, but I really can’t see them voluntarily keeping in check in some big-picture rebuilding phase. On the contrary, they’ll see any GOP realignment as a chance to increase their influence, and after all God™ is on their side, and you can’t get a bigger picture than that!
Posey – Chilling experience, but fruitful too.
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But at least you learned something. Others don’t. There’s a problem when a socio-political movements like feminism blends in with an academic field. Someone like Eric Hobsbawm is a good enough historian to contemplate and write about what happens when the Intellectual God which an intellectual worships at the feet of, in this case Marx, is wrong. Unfortunately most people aren’t as disciplined or exceptional so they try to make the reality fit in with the theory.
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asked me to defend Edmund Burke against Thomas Paine
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Shit happens. But the real answer lies in what happened to Paine when he went to France. Have you read Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution? There’s two types. One that wants to make the Good Society from scratch and one that wants to set people free. The latter works the forms becomes a nightmare – every time.
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Mark – Becc, there are many contemporary feminists who do follow patriarchy theory.
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Um… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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Oh that’s good. There are some feminists who won’t tolerate the very notion of debate about patriarchy, what it entails and whether we live in one. Their arguments are devastating however. They go: There’s a patriarchy ’cause there is.
The only bias I ever encountered at uni from lecturers was the ‘only my ideas are right (no double entendre intended)’ kind. For eg, my Asian Studies professor, who gave me a C on a well -written & evidence based piece I handed in on the subject of the role of community activism in changing Taiwanese society (towards democracy). According to him, it’s trivial, so he gave me a ‘C’. In fact the entire sum of his comment on my paper was the word ‘NO’ written in red. I don’t mind being wrong, but given I’d found over 20 references which supported what I was saying published in the same journals said Prof. got published in, I wasn’t very convinced. I’ve considered that the most naked example of bias I’ve ever come across, but it wasn’t right nor left.
Skeptic – I think, too, that people are getting political conservatism and intellectual conservatism in a not very useful tangle.
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It is useful if you’re a charlatan.
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I’ve had experiences with postgrad students in the arts who display no capacity to deductively reason and have no inkling that dogmatic retorts like labelling one a fascist for calling the Emperor’s New Clothes on some spurious sub-creek of postmodern backwash is not something that constitutes an argument.
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Generally however I tend to agree that post-Baby Boomers are more likely to be professional rather than persist in carrying the flag of a thousand demos c.1970. Trouble is this people were and still are in control a lot of places and they pick toadies. That puts a certain pressure on younger minds to pay lip service where they shouldn’t.
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The concept of intellectual conservatism is silly in the humanities. The humanities is intellectual conservatism. You didn’t find much by way of degrees in paleobotany back in the 12th century. And the 14th was practically postmodern – nothing means anything.
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But there’s always groupthink. If we were in the 1950s the dominant ethos of the liberal arts would entail contempt for anyone who thought movies an art form. In the English speaking world anyway. It’s the rebels and freethinkers who change paradigms. And establish the new groupthink.
Alister – But this discussion started with someone giving a list of subject names and claiming that this is automatic and foolproof evidence of a left wing bias in Universities.
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If you’re referring to Mark Richardson’s quote viz the coursework at Sunshine Coast Uni than that is a misrepresentation of his argument. I don’t know what you could possible mean by calling evidence automatic but he didn’t assert that it constitutes absolute conclusiveness. (I’m not certain you could.) He’s been treated very badly here.
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In the arts there’s a tradition of critical evaluation. This will generally tend to the intellectual ‘left’. I don’t see the problem. When such as the Young Libs come along you just say that. Trying to deny a bias plays their game.
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That said:
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Is a left wing thing. The intellectual right would challenge the idea of social justice as a category error. As far as I’m concerned it’s a nice collective term for efforts to make society a fairer place but as a jurisprudential term it’s meaningless. Given that there are people who assert such things as the ‘right’ to a house I think that’s a problem of critical mindedness. As in: there ain’t any.
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One may think that ’social justice’ makes sense, even that ‘green justice’ (fuckin’ Hell!) makes sense. But one should be aware that there are those who take exception to this and why. If one is not, one is indoctrinated not educated. And, at the very least, one is then unable to debate with the actually educated with any ammunition that isn’t a carton of slogans.
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War propaganda? Sustainability? HUMAN RIGHTS? I’ve never read such a load of leftist claptrap in my life.
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Is leftist, or was. but it’s not claptrap. The Left are as entitled to contribute as the Right. The Young Libs are stating their case in such a way as to deny this entitlement a priori. It’s a mistake to play that game.
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It would be nice however if human rights were taught in such a way that acknowledged the debate about what they actually are. How they are acquired and maintained. I wonder if that’s the case.
And by the way… Trackback. It’s been up for a while, I should have said earlier.
Um, in my experience some students complain about lowish marks if they don’t think the tutor/lecturer has sufficiently recognised their stunning originality and/or brilliance. Its just one of those things you have to put up with.
Adrien the likes of Ronald Reagan, George W Bush and John Howard have been lecturing other people about human rights for decades. You’re free to assert that it’s a leftist concept if you like but I suggest by doing so you render ‘leftist’ even more meaningless than it is when used by the Young Libs.
I said: Is leftist or was.
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Most of the notions viz changing society for the better are leftist ones to begin with. That’s generally what it means. Unfortunately notions often produce ironic results.
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Human rights were once opposed by conservatives. Hey, stopping the burning of witches was once opposed by conservatives. Writing paper, votes for women, getting paid to do a job… etc.
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Don’t feel too superior. There’s plenty of entries in The Catalogue of Left Wing Batshittery too.
I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you, Adrien, or Mark Richardson, that “Social Justice and the Welfare State” might represent vocational knowledge. Mark R’s list from Sunshine Coast Uni is in fact not a list of sociology subjects. It’s one of “social and community studies” subjects – ie social work and counselling. You can’t do a sociology major at SCU. And – sociology and social work are not the same thing. But given that there is a welfare state, it makes sense for those whose primary focus of activity vocationally will be in and around it to study it. The premises may or may not be questioned. I don’t know. But I wouldn’t expect a subject in contract law to spend the entire semester debating whether or not contracts are evil capitalist devices!
And I’d also want to challenge the basis for the assignment of “ideas” or whatever to the left or right. The sex/gender distinction, for instance, is a concept which captures the fact that cultural and social behaviour has some independence from biological factors. There are actually huge arguments about how much is “some”. But to state that there is such a distinction is to state a truth. Someone complaining about “traditional family values” also accepts it – insofar as their complaint could not arise unless it was clear that a variety of social roles are compatible with membership of one sex or other.
It strikes me that the Young Libs allegations have more substance when applied to schools than university. At university there are plenty of options – take a different class, appeal, suck up a low mark in the knowledge many potential employers will see it as a badge of honour.
None of these are really available to school students confronted with a teacher showing political bias in either direction. Of course Donnelly et al go on endlessly about bias in the classroom, but they almost always blame left wing education department bureaucrats or some such, not the teachers. Where as when attacking left control of Arts faculties it is the lecturers who cop it.
Why the difference? My guess is that school teaching is such a lowly paid and low status job that none of these right-wingers actually want to do it. So they know that getting lefty teachers fired won’t help as none of their mates will rush in to take over. OTOH, academic positions are still seen as desirable so they think if they can drive the lefties out of the Arts faculties they, or their friends, can sweep in to replace them.
Name one.
Adrien,@122.
Hobsbawm has never said that Marx was wrong. On the contrary, his method, he insists, is essential to understanding history. In September 2008 he wrote:
“To anyone interested in ideas, whether a university student or not, it is patently clear that Marx is and will remain one of the great philosophical minds and economic analysts of the nineteenth century, and, at his best, a master of passionate prose. It is also important to read Marx because the world in which we live today cannot be understood without the influence that the writings of this man had on the twentieth century. And finally, he should be read because, as he himself wrote, the world cannot be effectively changed unless it is understood – and Marx remains a superb guide to understanding the world and the problems we must confront.”
I haven’t read H. Arendt, but to the extent that she has no class or materialist analysis, even if she does use psychoanalytic tools, then she makes wild mistakes, like conflating fascism and communism – or so I understand.
I like the way thinkers and practitioners like Robert O Young use the tools provided by Darwin, Freud and Marx, the three indispensables, to shine light on such issues as totalitarian institutions and tendencies. Psychoanalytic theory on its own is insufficient and does, I agree, led to inevitable pessimism about the possibilities for human survival, even, given GCC, which is why Marxists denigrate it. But it too is essential for comprehensive understanding of human history.
SL, the Marxist at Oxford may have been intellectually conservative, or just a rigid, vulgar Marxist many of who abhor ‘identity politics’ as a diversion from the primary even sole necessary identity of class for politically transcendent purposes.
P Cat – Name one.
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You
Mark – I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you, Adrien, or Mark Richardson, that “Social Justice and the Welfare State” might represent vocational knowledge.
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Um yes. I don’t suppose it occurs to you that ’social work’ is a ‘left wing’ vocation. Or that ‘left academia’ might be vocational. Hell I sat thru lectures full of critiques of the standard form of television presentation but they taught me how to use a boom mike too.
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And I’d also want to challenge the basis for the assignment of “ideas” or whatever to the left or right.
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Well the terminology is an outdated relic from a Franch watershed. It doesn’t fit, no. But there is a general sense of ‘left’ and ‘right’ ideas. The phrase, the Academic Left, makes sense. Of course one can be intellectually on both sides at once and be entirely consistent. When Richard Dawkins is a biologist he’s on the ‘left’ especially in America. When he’s talking about the word that means everything and nothing and starts with a ‘p’ then he’s a right-wing science warrior who wants to drag us back to the 19th century boo hiss.
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I agree tho’. The application to a shifting and increasingly imprecise classifacatory instrument for describing political opinion to everything particularly ideas is a pain in the arse.
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The sex/gender distinction, for instance, is a concept which captures the fact that cultural and social behaviour has some independence from biological factors.
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Mmm indeed. And every time I suggest nature might play a part in the choices women make I get such a considered, thoughtful and open-minded response.
Adrien, social work isn’t necessarily a left wing vocation. A friend who is a social worker tells me that there are many who fit more into a ‘lady bountiful’ Eastern suburbs mould, who want to comfort the afflicted. They often work in places like hospitals, where there job is nothing to do with social change or social justice and everything to do with helping people who are in distress. Or you can find them in the more conservative charities, helping the deserving. Nothing wrong with that. But nothing particularly left wing about it either.
You know Adrien, sometimes I read one of your comments (not one of the really, really long ones) and if you forget to be especially pompous that day, and think you’re actually quite a nice, intelligent person.
That is not one of those times.
…er, this is not etc.
Posey – Hobsbawm has never said that Marx was wrong.
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I believe it’s In History that he discusses the Marxist historian’s dilemma when confronted by the fact that, altho’ Marx predicted the opposite, the latter 19th and 20th century brought unprecendented prosperity to most people in capitalist economies. Asserting that Marx still has value isn’t the same as saying he’s never wrong.
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Eric should’ve known better. Apart from the credulousness of support for the Soviet Union especially after ‘56, he should’ve understood that Marx would never have thought that country anything but an aberation.
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I haven’t read H. Arendt, but to the extent that she has no class or materialist analysis, even if she does use psychoanalytic tools, then she makes wild mistakes, like conflating fascism and communism – or so I understand.
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You haven’t read her no. Her analysis is familiar with, and makes idiosyncratic use of, political philsophy in general. She’s not easily classifiable ideologically. In The Origins of Totalitarianism she describes the origins of fascism and Communism separately and in terms of their particular circumstances. The origins of anti-Semitism, as it’s known, lie for example in the emacipation of Jews by Napoleon. Her argument’s contestable as most are, but it’s deft. She had gifts and would’ve been more famous in her time I’d wager if she’d also possessed a penis.
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Central European intellectuals are interesting on political ideology and its effects. Czesław Miłosz, for example, who lived under liberal democracy, fascism and Communism and had illusions about none of them. In my opinion any technocratic modern state ruled by a government of theocrats, secular or otherwise, will produce the same results.
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I don’t think any intellectual is necessarily indespensible. Freud and Marx belong with Nietzsche. I call them the German Gang of Three. Darwin set them all off. He’s a titan. The others are merely gods.
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(IMHO).
Fine – Hence the quotes. As Mark says the left/right thing doesn’t quite fit. But who do you think is liable to be more respectful of a social worker at a party, left or right. And at a social workers’ party what views will be expressed? Etc. (yes I have known social workers).
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Helen – You know Adrien, sometimes I read one of your comments (not one of the really, really long ones) and if you forget to be especially pompous that day
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I’m sorry. I’ve been getting slack. I’ll try to lift my game.
“And at a social workers’ party what views will be expressed? Etc. (yes I have known social workers).”
That’s my point. Not all social workers decide to do itthrough some sort of commitment to social change. Some are Liberal voting Eastern suburbs matrons who will be exprssing centre/right views. I’ve been to parties full of social workers (courtesy of this friend) and it’s not a homogenous group at all. Think of Brighton ladies talking real estate. They’re just as much in the mix as left-wing social workers. Even the ones that you may wish to lable ‘left’ will have a wide spectrum of views, and some very tough views, due to the nature of this work.
@Fine.
My partner has recently started as a child safety officer. I went to her xmas party on Saturday and was surprised to find out that they were quite an eclectic mix politically as well. I’d made a similar sort of assumption that they would all be “leftish”, but it wasn’t the case.
‘But who do you think is liable to be more respectful of a social worker at a party, left or right.’
Yes well Adrien now you are just getting silly. Nobody asks what you do at parties any more. The idea that people are defined by their occupation is neither left nor right, just archaic.
I’ve taught social work students, and my sister’s a social worker, as are a number of my friends. There is certainly a big tradition of “service”, often in some way or other having reference to Christianity, and also an attitude which really doesn’t see structural causes of poverty or exclusion, in the profession.
But, again, I’d question the usefulness – except in quite broad terms – of a lot of this discussion. I said way up at the top of the thread that a lot of academics aren’t terribly interested in politics. Not many people are in this society – and there are a lot of arts students – even in politics classes – who aren’t very interested in politics either…
Oh, and back in the day, when UQU had reps from each Faculty and when UQ had some quite small one department faculties, it was often quite difficult for the left to win the position of Social Work Rep on Council. And there were always some Young Libs elected as Arts Reps!
Yes. It’s a vague classification. I agree.
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In any event despite whatever the aggregate politial opinions of social workers are the idea that it’s a left-wing vocation really has to do with how it’s generally perceived in that context and what it does. Merchant banking, for example, is a right-wing vocation even if you’re deep pink doing it.
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Good luck finding one.
Eek! I was at a party on Saturday night and an academic I know slightly opened with “what are you working on?” – yikes! – save it for the conference or seminar room, dude!
Nothing is worse in social gatherings than shop talk!
So… Mark. What are you working on?
Procrastinating! Have two review essays I’ve promised to write!
I always say I’m working on my CV.
Impressions are the main thing.
I dunno. I agree with all of you, or at least some of your respective points. I guess I’m biased for not being biased.
The question I find hard to answer is, “What’s your PhD on?” Really people don’t want to know once they find out about it. Even worse is, “And how’s the PhD going?” Thank God I’m on maternity leave and don’t have to think about how it’s going for 4 more months…
I just updated mine – and put in some publications for reporting – have a C1 and an E2 and “other academic outputs” – excitement!
I started punching people who asked how the thesis was going. Word got around pretty quick.
I can assure that this man is one of the most impressive intellects I’ve ever encountered. I’m a right libertarian; I have very little time for Marxists as a rule. This man is, however, one of the most supple and subtle thinkers on Marx there is. I think he’s wrong about many things (particularly his interpretation of Nozick), but he’s very, very good at what he does, and certainly helped me read Marx with new intellectual spectacles.
Sorry, stuffed formatting (comes from using the library computers). The first par is a quote; the second par is mine.
[sorted! ~tigtog]
Jonathan Wolff?
C1 – excellent, nice. Which journal?
wtf is E2 again? Conference related something? Or edited something? Cant remember.
No, he’s at UCL. Close, though – they once worked together.
I realise you pointy heads enjoy discussing left right bias in universities.
I only went to grade 10.
I have 43 kids at uni, medicine, law and physiotherapy.
They are crucuially aware that to express a right bias in discourse, exans or assignments will lead to lower marks.
They play the game.
They will forever vote against Labor as a result.
I have two other children working in CFMEU mine sites. They have been encouraged to join the union.
They will earn more than my acadenic children but bristle at the need to join a union.
They do not vote Labor.
It seems to me that the Labor party by the actions of left academics and union bosses is shooting itself in the foot, through compulsion and bullying.
Jack Hackett
correction, I may have 43 children for all I know but only 3 at uni, and 2 in the mines.
Jack
Pacific Journalism Review!
E2 is edited proceedings – full paper – not refereed.
Ah, thats right. PJR, huh? Will check it out. I’m aiming to get Pacific-related course up sometime.
Oh, and I never forget J3 – blog post, peer-viewed.
Got nothin’ to do with the Pacific, though, Lefty E – it’s about political blogging in the 2007 election!
Well, still sounds interesting… despite its non-Pacificity. Have we seen the piece LPside?
An earlier version, I think. It’s the write up of the talk I gave on November 23 2007 at UTS for the “Public Right to Know” conference, but with the benefit of hindsight after the election!
I have 43 kids at uni
I’m guessing this is a typo. Not meaning to be mean, just thought I’d share with the LPers a public lecture that was advertised by Macquarie Uni Christian Group a couple of weeks agos. The sign read: “I was an atheist, now I’m a mother with ten children,” surely the premise should have been “I’ve had ten children, and as a result am now an atheist.”
BTW, enjoying the Gramscian paranoia that eminates from the Young Libs submission, if they were serious they’d get off their arses and complete Doctorates and Dip Eds and compete like the rest of us. Mind you maybe I should complain about the bias that ended my merchant banking career cold – I submitted my application with Merchant Bank X discussing the need for great distribution of wealth among the community through random ATMs spewing out hundred-dollar notes onto the pavement for lucky passerbys, a sort of ghetto-lotto. And I haven’t heard back from the selectiion panel, they prefer the GordonGecko-lotto where if you’re a member of the handshakes club you can name your own salary, its only the customers who are paying for it.
I just had another look at the title at the top of this post. I can’t wait for the day we see this title:
Jack Hackett, you really lost your credibility when you listed your kids’ degrees. The idea that physiotherapy is overrun by leftists who will mark down anyone who expresses a right-wing opinion is hilarious. As for medicine, well there has certainly been a trend to the left, but it is not that long ago that supporting the ALP made you a dangerous radical in that faculty. I’d be pretty surprised if there are not quite a few hold outs still floating around.