Thread by @PhilWMagness

I'm not convinced that this is a result of a plan dating back to the 60s, but the leftward ideological shift of the universities is both rapid and undeniable.

Simpler explanation: faculty jobs are scarce, and scarcity prioritizes political homogeneity.

wsj.com/articles/can-p…

Decades of PhD overproduction have resulted in a situation where tenure track appointments are mainly rationed on non-merit based grounds. Instead we get ideological nepotism, so faculty retirements are replaced by an ideologically homogeneous cohort of new hires.

We see this clearly in faculty surveys, which show a hard left shift after the early 2000s to the point that leftwing faculty went from a ~40% plurality to an outright 60%+ majority. In some areas such as the humanities it's more like an 80-90% majority.

Under such circumstances, ideological discrimination against not only conservatives but even moderates is inevitable. And we see it in academic hiring, promotion, publishing etc.

At the same time, scholarly rigor is in rapid decline within the ideological echo chamber because political agreement leads faculty to look the other way on shortcomings and even misconduct by members of their own team.

Misconduct that woule have led to termination of employment decades ago. (e.g. Bellesiles) is now rewarded and promoted (e.g. MacLean, Zucman) because it services a desired ideological narrative. Ditto with work that is outright incompetent and factually wrong (e.g. Baptist).

Despite all of this, much of academia is in outright denial that an ideological shift has even happened. Naomi Oreskes espoused this form of denialism in a recent Chronicle of Higher Ed exchange with me, even though the survey data show a clear and well documented shift.

The tragedy of academia's emerging ideological hegemony is that it's ultimately self-defeating. It undermines public support for universities, and eventually that means a decline in public willingness to fund universities.

Higher ed acts as if funding is simply owed to it. But in a democratic society, the public had an absolute right to decide what it funds and what it does not. When higher ed treats its tax base with sneering contempt, that tax base can and will eventually turn off the spigot.

Academia was able to maintain public support even with a center-left leaning plurality for decades, because it also allowed enough space for a dissenting non-left minority on campus. Expel that minority - which is what has happened - and higher ed no longer serves the public.

Instead what you get is what we are seeing now: universities are ceasing to be institutions of knowledge and debate and inquiry. Instead they've become publicly subsidized jobs programs for far-left political activists.