anti-conservative bias in academia

(This post really belongs in a Slate board dedicated to education,
but there doesn't seem to be any such
so it's being posted in botf.)

John Tierney, in the 11-18 NYT, published an article
Republicans Outnumbered in Academia
of especial interest.

Here are some excerpts,
with attributions or my comments in square brackets:

"[C]onservative students are discouraged from pursuing scholarly careers,
because they see very clearly that their professors consider Republicans to be the enemy."
[David Horowitz]

"Our colleges have become less marketplaces of ideas
than churches in which
you have to be a true believer to get a seat in the pews,"
said Stephen H. Balch, a Republican and the president
of the National Association of Scholars.
"We've drifted to a secular version of 19th-century denominational colleges, in which the university's mission is to crusade against sin
and make the country a morally better place."

"Screened out, expelled or self-sorted, they [nonleftists] tend to land outside of academia because the crucial decisions - awarding tenure and promotions, choosing which papers get published - are made by colleagues hostile to their political views,"
[Daniel Klein, an associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University and a co-author of the study.]

"I'm really having a hard time finding courses my last year.
I don't want to spend another semester
listening to lectures about victims of American oppression."
[Kelly Coyne, a senior at UC Berkeley
and editor of a conservative magazine there.]

Robert J. Birgeneau, the chancellor of Berkeley, said that he was not sure if the new study of his faculty accurately reflected the professors' political leanings, and that these leanings were irrelevant anyway.

"The essence of a great university is developing and sharing new knowledge as well as questioning old dogma," Dr. Birgeneau said.

[Birgeneau's statement, intended to protect his faculty
from a charge of bias,
only shows his own bias.
Recall the definition of university,
as found, e.g., in the OED:

The whole body of teachers and scholars engaged, at a particular place, in giving and receiving instruction in the higher branches of learning.

Of course development of new knowledge (research)
is a part of research universities.
But the prime mission of a university
must be to maintain and pass on old knowledge.
Note that this is a function that the UCB chancellor
doesn't even mention!
There could be no clearer example of
his misshapen view of his own universities function,
highly biased to the left.
What hope do conservatives have in that university,
when the chancellor himself is so biased?]

avoiding responsibility for 9/11

I just attended a remarkable public talk
in the Washington, DC area.

A local university professor (George Mason University)
talked about work he was doing
that could assist intel analysts
in finding "evidentiary patterns" in data,
that could be useful in forestalling future 9/11s.

That seems like rather a "bottom-up" analysis.
Another way of approaching the problem
is to identify the possible threats the country might face,
then devise ways of seeing if those threats are materializing.
(Clearly both approaches are needed.)

Being a believer in responsibility and accountability,
I asked several questions.
Here they are, and their (non)answers:

1. Q: What agency/branch/office of the govt.
   is responsible for identifying threats the US might face?
   
   A: GMU, and other universities,
   have contracts to do just that,
   and have various smart grad students and professors
   working on that.
   
   
2. Q: That's fine, but who in the government
   is responsible for this critical issue?
   
   A: We can't tell you.
   There is someone working on it,
   but we can't tell you who.
   (Hint, hint: Maybe it's the CIA.)
   (They didn't say that, that's my interpretation.
   
   
3. Q: The president, as part of his daily intel brief,
   sees a Threat Matrix.
   Was the 9/11 scenario on that Threat Matrix,
   or was it at least part of one of the lines of that matrix?
   
   A: No, it was not.
   
   
4. Q: Why isn't someone being fired over that?
   
   A: What good would that do?
   

Are Dems total idiots?

Kerry got 252 electoral votes
(for those Dems looking for a silver lining ;-),
note that only 37 EV were "barely Bush,"
while 69 EV were "barely Kerry").

Consider if Gephardt rather than Kerry had been the nominee.
Gephardt almost surely would have won MO(11) and IA(7),
putting him at a winning 270.
On the other hand,
he might have lost NH(4),
but with equal likelihood would have won WV(5)
(a significant amount of the anti-Kerry vote
in that area is based on cultural dissonance,
which Gephardt would not have suffered).
Further, he would have had a better chance at winning
AR(7) based on cultural affinity and geographical proximity,
and the big enchilada of OH(20)
due again to less cultural dissonance,
and also to his strong support from rank-and-file union members.

My amazement is that this situation has gone uncommented-on
by the commentariat.
In particular,
Slate's mammoth venting of Democratic angst notwithstanding,
a Slate search on "Gephardt" shows he was not even mentioned
in all that teeth-gnashing.

One also wonders about those union bosses,
at SEIU and AFSCME, who supported Kerry rather than Gephardt.
Don't their troops have a way of signaling their dissent?