Hiring conservatives just to please conservatives could 'backfire on conservatives': analysis
University of Pennsylvania philosophy professor Jennifer Morton writes in the New York Times' piece "Why Hiring Professors With Conservative Views Could Backfire on Conservatives," that hiring conservative professors because they’re conservative is no more a smart move than hiring liberals because they’re liberal.
The Trump administration is threatening to cut Harvard’s federal funding, demanded that the university foster greater “viewpoint diversity,” essentially by engaging DEI hiring for conservative professors and employing fewer progressives. But such a policy would “discourage curiosity and reward narrowness of thought,” Morton argues by “creating incentives for professors and students to have and maintain certain political positions.”
“Admitting students for viewpoint diversity would turn the holding of conservative ideas into a quasi-identity, subject to some of the same concerns,” said Morton, akin to the expectation society puts on students of color “that they will represent what is presumed to be, say, the Black or Latino view on any given issue.”
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Additionally, professors hired for their political beliefs, she says, will feel pressured to maintain those views, despite their ever-evolving philosophies.
Libertarian Robert Nozick, one of the most prominent and effective defenders of libertarianism, entered college as a socialist. But he encountered the writings of political economist Friedrich Hayek, a Nobel Prize-winning libertarian, which set him on a different path with some very good arguments.
That kind of evolution doesn’t happen as easily if you are hired for your political beliefs. Now you have “a tenure-track position, your salary, health insurance and career prospects” all dependent upon “the inflexibility of your ideology.”
“The smart thing to do in that situation would be to interact with other scholars who share your point of view and to read publications that reinforce what you already believe,” writes Morton. “Or you might simply engage with opposing ideas in bad faith, refusing even to consider their merits. This would create the sort of ideological echo chamber.”
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“That [Nozick] was hired on the basis of the quality of his work, and not the ideological category to which his views belonged, was as important to Mr. Nozick as it is to all of us who make thinking and writing about ideas our life’s work,” Morton argues.
Had he been accepted at Princeton because of his political beliefs, would he have been so willing to change them, Morton asks?
“If, on reading Mr. Nozick, some of my students are persuaded to reconsider their liberal positions, then I have done my job well, even if I don’t agree with Mr. Nozick’s conclusions,” writes Morton. “Those students might even become part of the next generation of conservative thinkers. And if they end up making valuable arguments, I can assure you it won’t be because they were pressured to think in just one way.”
Read the full New York Times report at this link.
