The most memorable class I took in college took seriously, to an unusual degree, the old adage that the aim of a liberal arts education is teaching students how to think, not what to think.
asserted
aim → take → what
Substantively, it comprised a series of debates.
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it → comprise → debates
We first examined a topic (like the Cuban-Soviet relationship) through government reports or documents produced by fellow travelers of the revolution.
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We → examine → revolution
The following week, we returned to the same topic, introduced alternative evidence, and discussed the American perspective.
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we → return → perspective
Finding oneself in agreement with the course for two consecutive weeks required great intellectual contortions.
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Finding → find → contortions
The lesson was as straightforward as it was effective: Working through competing perspectives is how we form and then stress-test our conclusions.
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we → work → conclusions
Our instructor did not deny his distinct viewpoint.
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instructor → deny → viewpoint
Yet the only time he spoke wholly in his own voice was on the last day of the semester.
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he → speak → semester
Until then, we heard deliberate performances of someone else’s version of history.
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we → hear → history
But as I now face my own students inside the classroom—this semester I’m teaching sociology to a group of first years who are as sincere as they are doe-eyed—I remember the spirit of that course.
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I → face → course
Outside the classroom, meanwhile, the argument is gaining traction that universities ought to reduce intellectual monocultures by hiring more conservative professors.
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universities → gain → professors
It also lets the rest of us off the hook.
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It → let → hook
It asks universities to solve through personnel changes a problem that the history course I took addressed through pedagogy.
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I → ask → pedagogy
An ability to work through competing views is central to scientific reasoning; and the departments and disciplines that make up the modern university all deal, at least in part, in topics that admit dissident views.
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that → work → views
Most scientific claims have a half-life: They will be modified or sometimes overturned as new data become available and existing data are reinterpreted or reanalyzed.
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data → have → life
Some questions are explicitly unsettled.
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questions → unsettle → ?
Yet in practice, scientists often focus in their research and teaching on a relatively small number of puzzles that are regarded as legitimate and solvable, while competing perspectives are set aside as uninteresting or someone else’s business.
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perspectives → focus → puzzles
The historian Thomas Kuhn called this “normal science”—but science is not unique in that regard.
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science → call → regard
One classic study in sociology outlines a general process of institutional isomorphism, whereby organizations in the same field become more alike over time, beyond changes that are strictly due to competitive pressures.
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that → outline → pressures
A similar process can also shape scientific research and teaching, with alignment driven not just by the weight of evidence but by social norms and a need for peer approval.
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process → shape → approval
In recent years, conservative critics have zeroed in on the ideological skew of faculty to explain this trend in both science and the humanities.
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critics → zero → science
This skew of the professoriate is well-known: Data from the United States suggests that liberal faculty outnumber conservatives in most academic fields by a large margin.
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faculty → know → margin
Danish data from the late 1990s showed that self-identified liberals and leftists already outnumbered conservatives in every social science discipline except business, economics, and law; and that even the latter two of those were, on average, more left-skewed than the general Danish electorate.
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two → show → electorate
In this context, the demand for affirmative action on behalf of conservative scholars follows a logic that left-leaning advocates of diversity have articulated for a long time: For conservative students and faculty, access to mentors and peers who share one’s convictions or lived experience can buttress personal growth and intellectual community.
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who → follow → growth
For liberal students and faculty, access to those who think differently can force critical self-examination and support the hard quest for truth.
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who → think → truth
Yet the challenges of this approach are larger than its proponents admit.
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proponents → admit → approach
Precisely because parts of the academy have been dominated by liberal and progressive worldviews for a long time, aspiring young scholars have partly voted with their feet, foregoing PhD programs or exiting academia for alternative (and often more lucrative) careers.
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scholars → dominate → careers
The second limit to this approach is that we should not expect academics who lean one way politically to be more able scholars, on average, than their peers who lean a different way.
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who → expect → peers
Data are scarce, but one study found that the ideological slant of authors does not predict the replicability of psychology research, for example.
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slant → find → example
Conservative scholars may see things differently or focus on research that has less resonance in left-leaning departments—which can be a good thing in its own right—yet heterodoxy is no synonym for rigor.
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heterodoxy → see → rigor
In short, there is growing evidence that institutional monocultures can lead to a loss of public trust in higher education and a narrowing of debate; there is not a lot of evidence that hiring for a specific ideology is the best remedy.
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hiring → be → ideology
But most importantly, the snap demand for conservative hiring lets the rest of us off the hook too easily.
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rest → let → hook
It would be a sad world—tribal, dogmatic, and intellectually impoverished—if moderates taught only normcore science, liberals taught liberal thought, and conservatives taught conservative ideas.
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conservatives → teach → ideas
In the many domains of knowledge where reasonable disagreement exists, one hallmark of sound research and pedagogy is the steel-manning of claims made by one’s opponents.
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hallmark → exist → opponents
Tackling intellectual monocultures starts there: with recognizing competing perspectives and the tentative nature of one’s own dearly-held claims.
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Tackling → tackle → claims
Let me offer two examples from my own work.
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me → let → work
I study privacy and surveillance in the United States.
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I → study → States
In recent years, I have researched how government agencies (like criminal courts and child welfare agencies) feed personal data into algorithmic risk models or artificial intelligence tools.
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agencies → research → models
This can be a polarizing topic: Progressives frequently argue that risk-scoring algorithms merely hide racial bias behind a veneer of objectivity.
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algorithms → argue → objectivity
Conservatives tend to be more open to such technologies, although recent red state resistance to automated license plate readers, for example, hints at the limits of their techno-optimism.
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resistance → tend → optimism
…and 18 more, not listed.
The Aporia
