Professor As Benevolent Dictator?

Paul Krugman is right on in his April 5 New York Times column questioning the liberal bias at universities and the movement toward "academic freedom" which "would give students who think that their conservative views aren't respected the right to sue their professors.

He hypothesises that more liberals are in academia because of self-selection: the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering.

He then goes on to comment on the Republican-inspired "theocracy"-campaign to increase the "diversity of thought" on campuses. Note this typical "Bushspeak" (white is black/black is white) means exactly the opposite of what it sounds like.

Consider the statements of Dennis Baxley, a Florida legislator who has sponsored a bill that - like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states - would give students who think that their conservative views aren't respected the right to sue their professors. Mr. Baxley says that he is taking on "leftists" struggling against "mainstream society," professors who act as "dictators" and turn the classroom into a "totalitarian niche." His prime example of academic totalitarianism? When professors say that evolution is a fact.

. . .

Think of the message this sends: today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science, or scholarship in general. It shouldn't be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party.

Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they're seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses' content.

And it wouldn't just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don't give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits.

In light of this I am revamping my Women in the U.S. Economy course. Specifically the section on the division of household labor. Now, instead of a critique of Becker's application of trade theory to men and women in the household, I'll embrace it encouraging a return to the idealized 1950s housewife scrubbing and cleaning, making homemade pie,decorating easter eggs with home-made dyes, and delivering beers to the tv room for her loving benevolent dictator on efficiency grounds.

Let's see of the students buy that diverse opinion!