Traveling through my beloved former hometown of Minneapolis recently, I was appalled to pick up the Star Tribune and find an Opinion Exchange section cover article about missing conservatives in academia ("Higher ed leans left. But why? And so what?" Jan. 29). Such claims are based on a misunderstanding of human personality. Though people might like to label themselves as "conservative" or "liberal," every individual has attitudes and behaviors that fall outside these labels. Even at the group level, this type of categorizing is a fallacy. For example, check out American Catholics. How many label themselves as conservative and yet, against the authority of their church, use birth control?It is clear that academia is not missing conservative views. You can see this when you examine the nature of conservatism according to some of its elements -- like hierarchy, especially in terms of gender and outgroups, and its negative view of human nature.
Here's what's really missing in academia
Not conservative views as we know them, but the conservatism that's about sustainability.
By DARCIA NARVAEZ
Christian conservatism is correlated with the belief that women should defer to the authority of the males around them and should not take up leadership positions. Academia has this covered!
Women continue to be treated as second-class citizens in support, promotion, pay, health care and leadership roles in all areas of academia. Such cultural conservatism has been the bedrock of many a university. To argue for more conservative viewpoints in academia is to go backward for women's equal treatment.
According to some social conservatives, minorities should know their place and defer to whites (note Newt Gingrich's campaign rhetoric). No problem in academia there, either. Very few African- Americans, American Indians and Latinos ever earn a Ph.D., let alone land an academic job.
A negative view of human nature pervades U.S. society generally, showing a conservative bias. We don't blink an eye at the widespread violence in media and neighborhoods (it's just humans being humans). In contrast, understanding how human nature is malleable would bring about social changes to ensure that children have supportive environments for optimal development instead of blaming everything on a "lack of personal responsibility." Lack of self-control, aggressiveness and antisocial behavior has much more to do with parenting than any inherited characteristic.
I could go on. We are not missing conservative perspectives in academia, but there may be some that are less common. For example, there are likely a smaller percentage of academics with blind patriotism ("love it or leave it"), which is correlated with social conservatism, because more education and world travel leads to a greater appreciation of alternative perspectives and puts one's own culture in a larger context.
The conservative viewpoints that truly may be missing in academia are indigenous ones. Conservatism is about conserving, preserving well-honored traditions; indigenous peoples did just that. Indigenous thought and life (particularly simple societies of small-band foragers) generally is more holistic, relationally focused and contextually aware with long-term sensibilities. It is rooted in a "right-brain" orientation rather than the typically "left-brain" orientation of detached manipulation of variables and people. The indigenous viewpoint is oriented to cooperation, not competition; to sharing, not hoarding; to justice and autonomy for all, not just for some.
The indigenous mind-set is one that lived sustainably all over the world for tens of thousands of years including in North America, until Europeans systematically destroyed the habitats and societies of American Indians.
As we face the precipice of global catastrophes of overpopulation, environmental degradation and climate change, shouldn't we rather seek out these sustainable modes of thought and living that perhaps could get us out of this mess? Paying attention to white guys whining about not being dominant is a triviality we cannot afford.
Darcia Narvaez, formerly at the University of Minnesota, is a psychology professor at the University of Notre Dame.
