Editors at National Review Online assess a questionable article promoted by a group of top academics.
Academics have long tried to have it both ways in claiming to support diversity and robust debate while excluding views that challenge left-wing orthodoxy. Now an influential academic publication is abandoning all pretense.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a major union of academic professionals, states that it aims to “champion academic freedom, advance shared governance, [and] organize all faculty to promote education for the common good.”
And yet, AAUP’s magazine published an article titled “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity” by Lisa Siraganian, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and the president of her university’s AAUP chapter. It became the subject of some heated criticism, and a Chronicle reporter wrote a Twitter/X thread that fairly described some flaws in the article, particularly by pointing out that the broader public accurately perceives academia as leaning left. In an attempt to defend the article, the AAUP account responded with the following: “Fascism generally doesn’t do great under peer review, but perhaps it’s the intellectual values of academia, which emphasizes critical inquiry & challenges traditional norms, that may be inherently less appealing to those with a more conservative worldview.”
It is difficult to identify what is most wrong in the AAUP’s post. By arguing that academia skews left because “fascism” doesn’t survive intellectual scrutiny, the AAUP suggests that anyone who isn’t sufficiently progressive is a Nazi who needs to be ejected from higher education. Could there be a more stark confirmation of the public’s perception of universities as ideological hubs unaware of their own internal hegemony? Still, the AAUP applauds itself, its affiliates, and university culture as practicing “critical inquiry.”
It isn’t clear what the “intellectual values of academia” mean anymore given the affirmative action policies that undermine meritocracy, and the proliferation of pseudo-disciplines like “gender studies.”
