Monday, July 28, 2008

Political Correctness on Campus

A new study "Ascriptive Justice: The Prevalence, Distribution, and Consequences of Political Correctness in the Academy," by Professor Solon Simmons at George Mason University, is reviewed in Inside Higher Ed (link).

The Inside Higher Ed article includes an interesting chart of "Political Correctness by Discipline," based on faculty interviews, showing these results:

4 Most Politically Correct academic disciplines: Psychology (59%), Sociology (45%), English (42%), History (31%).

4 Least Politically Correct disciplines: Finance, MIS, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering, all 0%.

Discipline with the Lowest Percent of Politically Incorrect Faculty: Sociology (1.8%)

2 Disciplines with the Highest Percent of Politicially Incorrect Faculty: MIS (72%) and Economics (51%)

HT: Ben Cunningham

11 Comments:

At 7/28/2008 10:44 AM, Blogger Marko said...

I guess these researchers did not talk to people in my old philosophy department.

 
At 7/28/2008 10:54 AM, Blogger Mark J. Perry said...

Unfortunately, philosophy was not one of the disciplines in the table?!

 
At 7/28/2008 11:12 AM, Blogger Marko said...

Well, maybe they did not consider it important enough. Funny that Journalism is not on their either. If the study was accurate, that would have been off the charts!

One problem with studies like this is that PC people tend to view themselves as open minded (“objective” even), perhaps even more so than un-PC people. As a result, questions like the one related to how political views affect hiring decisions will be skewed. Your average PC person thinks you should never ever let someone's political views stop them from being hired, perhaps because they think “the establishment” wouldn’t hire them for their own “subversive” (but PC) views . But then when they meet a conservative, they think they must be STUPID and would never hire them.

Personal experience.

 
At 7/28/2008 11:25 AM, Blogger thomasblair said...

I find it difficult to believe the researchers were unable to find any PC professors in mechanical engineering departments. In my relatively small department (~20 professors), I can specifically think of two that I would classify as PC based on my personal relationships and using the researchers' criteria. I'm curious about sample sizes and if any of the data from the question
"% of Professors Saying Politics of Job Candidates Shouldn’t Play Role in Hiring Decisions" are significant.

That said, if the data are good, it's interesting that those working in the hard sciences don't really care about your race or politics - just what you can accomplish.

 
At 7/28/2008 11:36 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Harvard Crimson ran an article on the degree choices of male vs. female students. Females are still more likely to choose courses in psychology, english and sociology while male students are more likely to choose finance, engineering, and MIT.

The faculty tends to reflect these preferences with heavier concentrations of female PhDs. Is it that surprising to find political correctness among women?

 
At 7/28/2008 12:44 PM, Blogger juandos said...

Well first of all what does, 'moderate' really mean?

Is that a liberal who's ashamed to call him/her self a liberal?

I don't know but let's see if this makes sense: "But for those who say that these tenured radicals have all the power in academe, the study finds that politically correct professors’ views on the role of politics in hiring decisions aren’t very different from the views of other professors"...

Hmmm, someone want to explain why college campuses are free fire areas for psychopaths roaming these supposed, gun free zones?

 
At 7/28/2008 1:52 PM, Blogger Matt S said...

no, juandos, a moderate is a moderate. But at this point I expect this kind of commentary from you.

And how many colleges have come under fire from angry psychopaths wielding guns (excluding dick cheney)?

This certainly gives me an insight into your mind though. you'd rather have everyone armed to the teeth in case someone else decides to pull out a weapon than work to get better campus security and warning systems (like reporting troubled students) in place.

having been around college campuses these days, I'd really like as few guns as possible, lest I be capped by some drunk frat guy because I'm in his way.

 
At 7/29/2008 7:22 AM, Blogger OBloodyHell said...

> And how many colleges have come under fire from angry psychopaths wielding guns (excluding dick cheney)?

Oh yeah, there's logic for you. Gotta mention Dick Cheney regardless of the fact that he doesn't have anything particularly to do with colleges-gun-laws or gunfire at colleges.


Care to identify a time frame? Do suicides count if they don't involve others being threatened by guns? Considering how obviously anything of this sort makes the news, I'm curious just how many events of this sort, excluding the recent Virginia case, you can identify and name as occurring in the last 10 years -- some searchable information allowing corroboration, please (a name, a university, whatever).

> This certainly gives me an insight into your mind though. you'd rather have everyone armed to the teeth in case someone else decides to pull out a weapon than work to get better campus security and warning systems (like reporting troubled students) in place.

And this ridiculously over the top diatribe certainly gives one an insight into your pointy little mind, too.

1) How many students are you willing to have killed before the campus cops can clear things out and neutralize the psycho with the gun?

2) Are you under the impression that a *law* is going to deter a psycho with a gun who has murder in his mind? What are you, stupid?

3) The amazing thing about the possiblility of a gun is that many people benefit from just the possibility of it, without ever having to touch, own, or fire one.

It's not college-related, but in one of the school shooting cases some years back, the student who subdued the shooter knew, from his own experience with guns, the sound the boy's weapon made when empty and knew he had time to attack the boy as he either switched weapons or reloaded. And thus, he prevented many more kids from being shot... This would be knowledge you would happily have denied him, sacrificing many, many children on your wonderful altar of "safety". In another instance, the boy in question was stopped and held at bay by a teacher who happened to have a gun in the glove compartment of his car, in clear defiance of state gun regulations regarding its presence within a certain range of school grounds which he succeeded in retrieving after hearing the first shots and bravely returning to the scene -- far faster than any possible response by the Police, thus preventing many more deaths.

But hey, you'll be HAPPY to sacrifice those kids on your altar of "safety".

Matt, every time you post, you show the kind of sheer, unadulterated fool you are -- one who laps up every liberal twiticism around, while never grasping that most of them rely on the notion of things "not happening" in a vacuum -- in economics terms, "that which seen, and that which is unseen". Go look up Bastiat and the Fallacy of the Broken Window. Now apply to your twiticisms.

Stop ignoring the benefits you don't see in favor of the benefits you do see -- those unseen benefits of the "other way" often far outweigh the benefits which can be seen "the liberal way".

 
At 7/29/2008 8:46 AM, Blogger thomasblair said...

obloodyhell,

The case you mention with the teacher subduing the shooter was the Pearl, MS shooting, and it was vice principal Joel Myrick. The VP actually was not in defiance of the possession rules and was forced to run to his car that he parked a quarter mile away to comply with the law. He ran a half mile and still subdued the shooter before the police could respond.

The shooter was using a 30-30 lever-action rifle (probably a Marlin) that holds 6 rounds in the tube. He shot 9 students. Unless you are very familiar with a tube-feed magazine, they're not that easy to load, and it takes time to do so. It's unfortunate this teacher had to take the time to run to his car, retrieve the pistol and ammo from separate cases within the car, and then run back to disarm the shooter. Had th VP had it on his person, that shooter might have only injured a few.

Just a gentle correction that really brings your point home.

 
At 7/29/2008 4:00 PM, Blogger juandos said...

Poor, ole matt s shows me his compassion for people: "And how many colleges have come under fire from angry psychopaths wielding guns (excluding dick cheney)?"...

Hmmm, how many would've satisfied you matt s before those so called, 'gun free zones' are just victims waiting for the psychopath?

Hey matt s, do you EVER consider doing a little homework before you make these pronouncements?

You might be interested in what economist John Lott has contributed to the, 'gun free zone' discussion:

Gun-Free Zones Are Not Safe

Now pay attention to this part matt s: "Just like attacks last year at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., or Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City or the recent attack at the Tinley Park Mall in Illinois or all the public schools attacks, all these cases had one thing in common: They took place in “gun free zones,” where private citizens were not allowed to carry their guns with them"...

 
At 7/30/2008 6:35 AM, Blogger OBloodyHell said...

> The VP actually was not in defiance of the possession rules and was forced to run to his car that he parked a quarter mile away to comply with the law.

Interesting. The account I read did not indicate that. I ack that it may well have been in error. The other case I mentioned was the Kip Kinkel case, and a web search should find you the name of the subduing student, who had already been shot himself when he heard the emptying action of the gun. Finding reference to the student's gun knowledge is more tricky, since, of course, many news accounts could not allow anything like that to stand. But it's out there.

Another point to mention, which isn't directly related to the Gun Free Zones, but which is related to the value of having a measure of social knowledge of guns in the populace:

Review of footage from Nazi Death Camps have shown that, towards the end of the war, the guns of the guards were not loaded -- ammo was too scarce and too precious to keep it on hand for the guards... so the prisoners were marching off to their deaths when, had even a small fraction had enough experience with guns to realize that the guards were actually defacto unarmed, their weapons unloaded, they might have been able to rise up and fight for their freedom, and, at worst, died like men rather than as helpless sheep being led to the slaughter...

 

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