"The ’60s Begin to Fade as Liberal Professors Retire":
On Thursday, the New York Times had this interesting story on generational change within academia. Some of the data didn't quite seem to back up the story, but it was still pretty interesting.
Like a President appointing Supreme Court Justices, it's a gift that keeps on giving. Actually, it's better because those chosen young "Liberals" will get to clone their own successors. That's why rot in Academia is so hard to root out.
There is one? They are both socialists.
Not a moment too soon.
As a result of the draft deferment for those majoring in education, large numbers of students naturally listed ''Education'' as their major.
To keep their draft exemption, most went into teaching -- which maintained their draft-exempt status, unlike most other professions. [For instance, police officers were also exempt. But that's a dangerous profession, too.]
These draft-avoiding students were well aware that other boys had to step up and fight for our country in their place. But their guilt was not enough to make most of them step up and do their duty.
So colleges had a large influx of draft-dodgers.
These newly minted 'educators' had to rationalize their guilt, knowing they had put their tails between their legs to avoid serving. Another boy had to go and serve in their place, and that required rationalization.
So for 35+ years now they've taught impressionable students that the draft-dodgers were the heroes, and the soldiers who served in Viet Nam were the villains.
Today's students are simply reacting to this continuous false indoctrination by those same guilt ridden draft-dodgers who, rather than serving our country in its time of need, cut and ran. And now you can't get the draft-dodging professors out. Worse yet, they are now in charge of selecting their replacements.
Because cowardice has been elevated to a virtue, sooner or later the U.S. will probably be known as the neo-Euroweenies.
Seriously, the problem is difficult to either qualify or quantify. We may expect some movement in time, all paradigms considered, but we shouldn't be surprised that a slightly larger number of liberals will give their academic career a shot. On the other side, conservative students, likely to be more known pragmatic than their liberal counterparts, may end up embracing careers that generally take off much faster.
Now, if academic institutions are to choose between an increase of funding in humanities or more conservative disciplines, we should observe an overall change in those paradigms. The actual flow doesn't seem to favor humanities right now, but it is hard to make predictions on the long term as much has to do with contingency.
succinct and true.
Why? They didn't force him to go, the government did.
Thanks for providing an excellent and indeed stereotypical example of said rationalization.
I don't think there was a special deferment for education majors. There were deferments for college students, of course, but IIRC the major didn't matter. Dick Cheney, for example, apparently got several student deferments.
As a result of the draft deferment for those majoring in education, large numbers of students naturally listed ''Education'' as their major.
Maybe you could provide some evidence for this.
To keep their draft exemption, most went into teaching -- which maintained their draft-exempt status, unlike most other professions. [For instance, police officers were also exempt. But that's a dangerous profession, too.]
Maybe, but college professors are not typically education majors. They major in and earn their graduate degrees in the subject they teach.
These draft-avoiding students were well aware that other boys had to step up and fight for our country in their place. But their guilt was not enough to make most of them step up and do their duty.
If there is one thing everyone should understand about all this it is that hardly anyone wanted to go to Vietnam, pro-war or not. Those with influence got into National Guard units or the like (Yes, they did). Others resorted to different means. Draft-dodging was commonplace.
So colleges had a large influx of draft-dodgers.
These newly minted 'educators' had to rationalize their guilt, knowing they had put their tails between their legs to avoid serving. Another boy had to go and serve in their place, and that required rationalization.
Should right-wing dodgers feel guilty also? They're the ones who thought the war was great, as long as they didn't have to fight. At least the anti-war dodgers were consistent. They didn't want anyone to go. I think there's a difference there.
So for 35+ years now they've taught impressionable students that the draft-dodgers were the heroes, and the soldiers who served in Viet Nam were the villains.
What nonsense. Do you imagine that all professors have to talk about is the Vietnam era draft? I bet most college students go through four years and never hear it mentioned in class.
Today's students are simply reacting to this continuous false indoctrination by those same guilt ridden draft-dodgers who, rather than serving our country in its time of need, cut and ran. And now you can't get the draft-dodging professors out. Worse yet, they are now in charge of selecting their replacements.
Because cowardice has been elevated to a virtue, sooner or later the U.S. will probably be known as the neo-Euroweenies.
You have an active imagination.
To some extent, and esp. later on in the Vietnam war, the war became classist, with the children of the more affluent not carrying their fair share of the burden (earlier, this was less true, since the bulk of the troops fighting were volunteers). While I was in college (mostly during Nixon's first term), it was considered much better to scam the system, whether like Bill Clinton did, through a fictious CO deferrments, or finding a sympathetic doctor, etc. than it was to enlist or allow yourself to be drafted. There was little enthusiasm for dying in a rice paddy in Vietnam, when you could spend your lives stoned listening to acid rock bands and engaging in free love (never mind that by then, the war was in decline, and the real wasting of lives had ended essentially when LBJ left office).
Later, I felt guilty about my 2S deferrment, even though it was almost automatic to any guy in college, and I never had to lie or cheat to get or keep it. And many of my friends, looking back, esp. to the reality of the less fortunate fighting in our places, felt the same way, when the war was safely in the past.
The war wasn't really "in decline" during Nixon's first term. ~21,000 US combat deaths (compared to ~34,000 under LBJ), (compared to ~53,000 under LBJ), but ~108,000 South Vietnamese combat deaths (compared to ~53,000 under LBJ), not to mention major Allied offensives (into Laos and Cambodia) and a major Communist offensive (Easter Offensive, 1972). You can see that more Allied lives were lost during Nixon's first term, but most of them were South Vietnamese - a consequence of Vietnamization, and a refutation of the argument that the South Vietnamese didn't fight and were incapable of fighting. Also, none of these lives were "wasted" until Congress pulled the plug on aid to South Vietnam.
Aside from the fact that you are simply wrong about how deferments worked, is your thesis that all these students who majored in education went on to become college professors? Are they all education professors? Do you really think many poli sci or history or law professors started as education majors because that was how they could get a magical "education deferment"?
Or are you just talking out of your backside?
yep.
a rationalization in the extreme.
At least one major had a special deferment: theological student, 4-D for divinity. I know because I had that deferment and later gave it up, not thinking it fair that my plans to go into the ministry should give me a special break. By then the Army didn't want me anyway, but I wanted to give them a chance to take me.
If you can show me more than a handful of college poli sci or history profs with an undergrad degree in education I will concede the point.
If the war's objective was legitimate and Congress's decision caused that objective to not be achieved, that statement is correct. If either the war's objective was illegitimate or Congress's decision was not the cause of failure to achieve that objective, then lives were wasted prior to Congress's decision, which in either case would be a decision to quit throwing good money after bad. My understanding (entirely indirect, since it happened a decade before I was born) is that most opponents of the Vietnam War believed the war's objective was illegitimate and thus saw all lives lost there as wasted starting at Day 1.
Vietnam was one of several battles fought during the Cold War, Korea being another.
The objective was to thwart Communism.
Since we were in Vietnam, can we deduce what the outcome of the Cold War would have been had we not been there?
A battle lost, perhaps a draw, our troops sold out, a war won.
bad planning on my part- my intention, clouded by my structure above, is that we can't know what would have happened if we weren't there, because we were.
and, we lost the Vietnam War, but won the Cold war, of which the Vietnam War was an integral part.
Unfortunately for your otherwise excellent riposte I flew 158 combat missions there, surviving unharmed and with my ability to do simple logic intact.
When looking for a job after the Army (enlisted for Infantry), I ran into some guys who claimed they had a problem. They'd graduated in ed in order to have a deferment AFTER graduation. Teachers had the deferment. But when the draft ended, they wanted to get jobs in the private sector and they felt hiring folks figured anybody who'd been a teacher, or at least graduated in ed, would be expected to go back to the classroom in a heartbeat, given the chance. Thus, they felt they were at a disadvantage. They weren't sanguine about explaining that ed was only a draftdodging scheme, not a career choice. They didn't have a problem explaining it to other hopefuls, just to the hiring guys.
I went to a fraternity reunion of the classes from about 62-70. Something like seventy percent of the guys had served, one way or another, only one being killed. You had a deferment until you graduated.
I also encountered some Luftwaffe guys who were convinced the battle of the Fulda Gap was being fought in SEA. The point being the sovs wondering what we'd do for Europe. considering what we were doing for shit-fertilized rice fields in Viet Nam.
Anyway, we won the Cold War. I still get a chuckle out of any opportunity I get to tell folks about it and suggest they deal. Lots of opportunities, too.
Excellent comment.
It may not be that new professors in social science are conservative. But the important point is that their research is fact-driven and not so ideological. I think that's a very good thing. Now, this may not be true in other fields, but in areas like sociology and political science, hiring is based much more on math and stats than on anything else.
But the article did suggest one intriguing thing. As for why the baby boomer profs are so liberal, the key factor was American racism of the 50s and 60s (pushed along by Vietnam). It's an interesting story of how a certain brand of politics can produce a significant backlash and promote the opposite brand of politics for a lengthy time.
Although statistical empirical work figures prominently in American political science (and has sparked the 'Perestroika' revolt against it), such work is not necessarily that much less ideological. That liberals continue to dominate the discipline is readily apparent in the theme of this year's annual APSA meeting, "Categories and the Politics of Global Inequalities,"(I'm at a loss to find a single theme panel devoted to a robust defense of any inequality) or in the APSA's most recent debate about whether to hold the 2012 annual meeting in New Orleans because the state of Louisiana does not afford legal recognition to same-sex unions (with APSA endorsing such recognition as a matter of course).
The article also fails to connect political ideology with the much greater representation of women and racial minorities in the post-baby boom generation of academics: those groups are more likely to be liberal.
And yet at the presenters' home institutions, I don't suppose the tenured-track faculty are rioting over the inequities in T-and-R versus adjunct pay and benefits. Hmm.
I think he "taught" other unfortunate ones who were actually sent to Vietnam. Wikipedia says: "administrative assignments as a drilling reservist".
Please detail how he saw to it...etc.
He could have gotten himself ground job where things were considerably safer than flying Navy aircraft.
Keep in mind--not that you will--that the military, for all the noise about SEA, was most concerned about the balloon going up in Europe in which case, nobody's Guard or Reserve status would do him the least bit of good. It was only afterwards that the lefties could pretend there was nothing going on there.
No, it's "20/20" to become a pilot. After you've got your wings, your eyesight can pretty well go to sh*t and you can still pass the flight physical.
Rumsfeld served in the United States Navy (as an aviator and flight instructor) from 1954 to 1957 and in the Naval Reserves from 1957 to 1975.
Thus, he was exempt from the draft in the 1960s for three distinct reasons: 1) he had already served in the military (and was currently serving in a reserve capacity); 2) he was past the draft age; 3) he was a member of Congress from 1963 to 1969.
Ironically, at least it should be to whoever included Rumsfeld in the list above, he became Secretary of Defense shortly after the fall of South Vietnam.
But my point was not that the new profs are less liberal, it is that they are less ideologically closed minded and less likely to let their politics infect the classroom or even their research.
What I see is that the main movement has been from people who entered academia in a time when it was more centrist considering themselves leftists to people entering leftist academia finding themselves comfortably in the middle of the political spectrum. Are they accurately judging their orientation, or is their perspective spoiled by being surrounded by people so far to the left of center? Are they moderates only by the standard of academia?
It is my understanding that this is indeed true about those who obtain doctorates (I think I read it in a PS&P article a while back, but I'm not positive), but if you have newer, better data that contradicts the claim, please do tell.
it is that they are less ideologically closed minded
I'll believe that when the younger cohort succeeds the baby boomers and starts to hire more conservatives.
In some ways it was miserable being a pilot in Vietnam. According to the rules of engagement, pilots couldn't bomb a SAM while it was under construction. Our pilots had to watch the instruments of their destruction get built. Is this any way to run a war? Each plane carried a camera so your superiors could tell if you violated the rules. If you did you were punished. If you damaged the camera, you were punished. The following two books detail what it was like.
When Thunder Rolled
Palace Cobra
Both by Ed Rasimus.
Unlike the US, North Vietnam openly and flagrantly violated the provisions of the Geneva Convention with respect to the treatment of POWs. So much for the idea that we have to follow Geneva so our POWs won't get mistreated. What a sucker game the US plays when it goes to war. Is it any wonder people tried to avoid going?
I always knew The Letter People was part of the homosexual agenda! There's something a bit, well, off about Mr. F.
"How does the NY Times draw the demarcation line between "liberal" and "leftist"?"
None of these terms have any meaning in this dialogue other than as pejoratives. There is no commonly understood meaning.
Accordingly, most of the comments are just name calling.
Not to semi-hijack the thread but...
From what I understand, jobs in college &graduate school academia are really competitive positions. Good pay, good hours, fairly low stress, and more people graduating with Ph.Ds and other appropriate degrees than there are positions to fill. Therefore, if conservatives are being kept out of this realm of academia because of liberal bias as opposed to actual credentials, that is unfair and a problem that should be addressed.
I can assure you that no such problem exists in the world of K-12 academia, where there are teacher shortages in many areas. People aren't lining up in droves to make 28K a year in exchange for sharpening pencils, phone calls from angry parents, breaking up schoolyard fights, wiping up "accidents," and constant exposure to the flu. It may be that the only people willing to do that are bleeding-heart liberals, especially women and minorities. If conservatives would like to infiltrate this liberal stronghold, I promise you that you can go to any inner-city public school district in America and as long as you have any sort of college degree whatsoever (need not be in education, mine wasn't), they will take you, no questions asked.
Have I entered the promised land?
My major gripe is not ideological, but generational: As the Boomers retire, we mid-career Gen-Xers are not moving on and up. Rather, universities are cutting costs by hiring recently-minted PhDs. These are Gen-Ys. And they are cheap.
Once again, Gen-X is screwed.
"Legitimacy" is irrelevant. There are always grounds for argument about "legitimacy". Victory is the only meaningful metric, not "legitimacy". If you lose a "legitimate" war, then the lives lost were wasted. If you win an "illegitimate" war, then the lives lost were not wasted.
In any event, yes, the war's objective was legitimate, and Congress did cause that objective not to be achieved.
My understanding (entirely indirect, since it happened a decade before I was born) is that most opponents of the Vietnam War believed the war's objective was illegitimate and thus saw all lives lost there as wasted starting at Day 1.
No doubt that is so, but why should they be considered the arbiters of legitimacy?
That certainly wasn't true of Cronkite, and I feel reasonably safe saying it probably wasn't true of the majority of the American people.
People may either respect or lampoon Nixon's "silent majority" rhetoric, but in a substantial part it was true, both for those that supported the war and those that opposed it.
It was the SD's and the Other radical groups that shouted the loudest about the war being "unjust" and so everyone remembers them.
The average American person was much more likely to agree that stopping communism was probably good, but also wondering if it was actually worth it to keep sacrificing American soldiers for a country that could barely run itself in the first place and that a lot of Americans couldn't find on a map. There's a far gap between "All war is immoral" and having doubts about whether or not a particular war is worth it.
Thus, while a lot of people may have gotten 4 years deferment and then found the draft had ended by that time, quite a few others got 6 or 8 years and a masters or PhD courtesy of the desire to not be drafted. A lot of those people went into academia.
"We" didn't lose the Vietnam War. We got tired of the war and buggered out. Now the South Vietnamese, *they're* the ones who lost the war, after we abandoned them (to borrow a phrase from the time) to twist slowly, slowly in the wind.
Ironically, at least it should be to whoever included Rumsfeld in the list above, he became Secretary of Defense shortly after the fall of South Vietnam.
Yes, after Gerald Ford fired Secretary Schlesinger for being insufficiently enthusiastic about Kissinger's policy of
appeasementdetente.Your grasp of counterfactual statements never ceases to astound. Keep up the good work!
Far from being astounding, those seem like incontrovertible facts to me.
They are. But the problem is that we still need "Viet Nam" as a handy label to any new venture.
It's possible we could win a new venture--not acceptable--if we start, and so we shouldn't start.
Therefore, "Viet Nam" means in all ways both illegitimate and inevitably and permanently, no matter the effort, unwinnable. So, if, say, Iraq is "another Viet Nam", all it means is the left's afraid we might win if we start. Thus the lesson of "Viet Nam" must be defended with as much effort as the defeat of the US there was engineered.
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