Liberal Academic Turns on the Liberal Bias in his Own Field

I always took the idea of diversity of thought was a big deal in Academia but from most of what I read about the current state of Academia that not the case. A Social Psychologist from the University of Virginia named Jonathan Haidt calls out liberal academia for their lack of diversity of thought.

But Haidt persisted.  After emailing 30 colleagues and friends in the social psychology field, and querying them if they knew of any conservatives in the field, one genuine conservative was found. That was Rick McCauley of Bryn Mawr College, a specialist on the psychology of terrorism.  Haidt had actually met McCauley years earlier during his student days at the University of Pennsylvania where McCauley was a friend of one of Haidt's academic advisors:  "When I first met Rick [as a student at Penn] I was wary of him," Haidt explained.  "I had heard that he was a conservative.  … I had never before met an actual conservative professor, and it took me a while to realize how valuable it was to hear from someone with a different perspective."  Haidt went on to explain that many of McCauley's later insights in the social psychology field were only made possible because "he stands outside of the liberal force field" of the contemporary psychology profession.  Without his dissenting political perspective, Haidt suggested, McCauley might not have come up with his particularly valuable angle on political terrorism.       

In other words in the entire field of Social Psychology there was one guy that was a conservative. Talk about an echo chamber. I bet this McCauley guy probably has to hang out with the Business Professors because the rest of the people in his field go out of their way to ignore him due to his heresy of thought. Also I wonder since he is an expert on the psychology of terrorism the Islamic studies people hate his guys?

Then he lays down the boom on his own field:

Haidt's indictment of the social psychology profession was devastating.  While cult-like or conformist tribal behavior may have its benefits for a religious group -- Haidt, had made just this point in his earlier writings -- it has no place in science, he declared.  "We social psychologists" said Haidt, think of ourselves as "super-tolerant free thinkers.  We celebrate diversity and non-conformity. We boldly follow our science wherever it takes us, and no matter whom it offends.  We care only about truth!"  In reality, however, Haidt went on to explain, "we are a tribal moral community. … We have sacred values other than truth; we have taboos that constrain our thinking; we have almost no moral/political diversity; and we have created a hostile climate for graduate students who don't share those sacred values." 

In other words he just said his own field resembles a tribal cult in many ways. What is sad is that social psychology is far from the only field that has this "tribal moral community." This sort of thought is in almost every field that isn't business or engineering at most universities. I bet you can count on one finger the total number of Conservative Women's Studies professors there are in the US. You would probably find even less in most Ethnic Studies and Anthropology departments as well.

Dr Haidt then tells his colleges to read National Review and books by prominent conservatives to familiarize themselves with that viewpoint. I bet to some of his peers that was like telling them to poke out their eyes with a sewing needle. Some people reacted by saying that 40% of Americans that are conservative are dumb and social scientists are just smarter than them. Others suggested that conservatives were just too close-minded to enter their field. 

While others actually supported him. Hopefully these supporters will pick up some National Review or maybe look at conservatives as something other than evil, brain-dead, Tea-Baggers. If academia actually decided to bring in non-liberal ideas or at least think about them critically without making fun of them then that would be a great start. I mean these fields preach diversity of thought all the time but I am not sure if they have ever actually practiced it.

What is interesting is that quite a few conservatives and moderates read liberal thought and try to make sense of it. In fact I read HuffPo and Firedoglake every now and then because it is nice to see how the other side is sees something. Hell, I even watch the Daily Show even though it is pretty left-leaning and I sometimes find myself yelling at Jon Stewart. Maybe liberals in Academia (and hopefully liberals in other places) will finally start doing the same with Instapundit or O'Reilly. It would certainly drain some of the partisan swamp if it did happen.