PhDs Behaving Badly

Full disclosure: I have a PhD, and I've behaved badly in the past. But I've never descended to such a petty and despicable level as those who hold PhDs in the humanities. To wit:

The Chronicle for Higher Education is one of the major voices for people and institutions involved with, well, higher education. Much like an academic version of the Wall Street Journal, it is a mix of news, advocacy, and opinion pieces. While it does, IMO, tilt to the left, it generally provides a forum for academic discourse.

Until recently.

A long-time Chronicle blogger, Naomi Schaefer Riley, recently posted a piece in which she argued that there are grounds for eliminating black-studies programs at universities. She didn't say anything that, at least to me, was derogatory or overtly racist towards blacks. She just questioned the need for and contributions of black-studies programs.

Seriously, folks, there are legitimate debates about the problems that plague the black community, from high incarceration rates to low graduation rates to high out-of-wedlock birth rates. But it’s clear that they’re not happening in black-studies departments.

The response was immediate, virulent, and entirely predictable. Outraged liberals flooded the Chronicle with calls for Riley's head. Shortly afterward, in what I can only describe as a craven capitulation to the minions of political correctness, the Chronicle fired her.

We now agree that Ms. Riley’s blog posting did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles. As a result, we have asked Ms. Riley to leave the Brainstorm blog.
. . .

One theme many of you have sounded is that you felt betrayed by what we published; that you welcome healthy informed debate, but that in this case, we did not live up to the expectations of the community of readers we serve.

Let's just think about that response, shall we. First, it's a blog post, for God's sake - an opinion piece. Since when do they have standards of "reporting and fairness?"

For contrast, let's take a look at another recent Chronicle blog post. In discussing obama's recent declaration of support for gay marriage, this one stated:

So what Obama has done is, without question, brave and important.

"Without question?!?" "Brave and important?!?" Where's the "reporting and fairness" in that?

But of course, that opinion is in line with the prevailing and politically correct mindset of most liberals, so it's perfectly acceptable. If that same person had said "So what Obama has done is, without question, cowardly and unimportant" would he have been fired as well?

Probably.

The Chronicle's statement on Riley's firing went on to say that the academic community "welcomes informed debate."

How could the editorial staff write that with a straight face? How can they look at themselves in the mirror today?

Thankfully, there are at least two other commentators on the Chronicle's website with the cojones to point out the blatant hypocrisy inherent in many of the readers' comments and the Chronicle's action.

As the first points out:

The disproportionate reaction, the hyper-emotional tenor, the casting of her post as “hate speech,” and so on, go well beyond refutation.  Riley has denied the intellectual viability of black studies, but the respondents haven’t replied by proving the opposite.  They have launched an attack of their own, a personal one.

... a fierce and misguided overreaction that reflects poorly on the field at large.

Followed by the second:

Last night I learned that Naomi Schaefer Riley has been fired by The Chronicle of Higher Education from her position as one of the contributors on the Brainstorm blog. It was a poor decision by The Chronicle‘s editors... (who) also apologize “for the distress these incidents have caused our readers.” As it happens, I had just drafted for Innovations a short essay which among other things praised The Chronicle’s editors for not giving in to demands that Riley be fired.

The Chronicle’s change of heart took me greatly by surprise. As a writer whose contributions to these pages have often  been assailed, I’ve come to trust that The Chronicle is pretty sturdy in its defense of the principle that dissenters from academe’s typical left-wing orthodoxies should be heard, and that dialogue–even if sometimes caustic–is better than enforced silence.

So why did Riley’s opinion arouse such fury? It fell within the category of unspeakable observations in higher education—unspeakable because to voice them is almost certain to provoke outrage. The outrage is all the hotter because many people share Riley’s view that “black studies” and its variants are intellectually shallow and academically superfluous.

Count me among the many people who agree that “black studies and its variants are intellectually shallow and academically superfluous." I'll explain why shortly.

And higher education’s conscience is troubled because of the history behind such fields. Their rise owes less to signal intellectual accomplishments than to university administrators seeking to appease vocal constituencies.

That last line captures the essence of the furor in a nutshell. The existence of black studies and similar programs are not legitimate academic disciplines: they owe their existence to "university administrators (N.B. - make that ball-less, gut-less, brain-less university administrators) seeking to appease vocal constituencies."


In this time of decreasing university funding and the increasing cost of a college degree it is unconscionable -- in fact, almost downright criminal -- to waste increasingly scarce resources on programs that do not provide their graduates with any hope of meaningful employment, and which do not make any sort of significant intellectual contribution to our collective body of knowledge.

What do I mean by that last statement? Here's an example.

In the post that got her fired, Riley made mention of a recent dissertation by a black studies PhD candidate.

In “Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s.” the author states that there was some sort of conspiracy in the federal government’s promotion of single family homes in black neighborhoods after the unrest of the 1960s. The premise is laughable. That the federal government attempted to help black families acquire single-family homes is not arguable, but to believe that the intent of such programs was to keep the black man down is beyond the pale. It's ludicrous. But there's more.

The author goes on to assert that the issue is still relevant today. She states that “The subprime lending crisis, if it did nothing else, highlighted the profitability of racism in the housing market.”

The only racism in the housing market that I'm aware of is the Community Reinvestment Act, which mandated that lenders must make mortgage loans to minorities who otherwise would not qualify for one. The failure of those borrowers to make their payments triggered the collapse of the housing bubble, which in turn led to the financial crisis and recession that began in 2007-2008. 

Here's the part where I explain why black studies programs are 'intellectually shallow and academically superfluous.' If the author of the above dissertation submitted her research to people with PhDs in finance or economics, it would get laughed out of the room. Her methodology is neither appropriate nor rigorous enough to satisfy research standards in those fields. But it passes muster in the Humanities field, which is more concerned with political correctness than academic rigor.

I have no problem with someone researching issues of racial bias. But if you're going to investigate the possible impact of certain economic policies on various ethnic groups, do so from an economics or financial perspective, where you deal with facts and reproducible analysis, not from feel-good arguments.

This whole thing has left an extremely bad taste in my mouth. The only thing that helps alleviate it is that a number of my fellow academics have stood up to the liberal orthodoxy. The liberal college professor is a stereotype, but like all stereotypes there is an element of truth in it. It is comforting to know that there are also some who refuse to kowtow to the liberal bullies.

Sadly, there aren't enough of us ... yet.

I'll have another post on a related topic Saturday. Stay tuned...