If you belong to APSA, you probably got the email announcing the last-minute closure of the Ralph Bunche Summer Institute because of the Coburn (left) amendment. Undergraduate programming like this is obviously pretty vulnerable. It doesn’t have the cachet of high-profile, ‘big think’ research. But it does obviously endanger the discipline in the long-term by cutting into our future replacements (almost certainly one purpose of the amendment). It would be no surprise if some of this summer’s bright students got turned off our discipline because of these shenanigans, or missed a seminar or session this summer that might have helped them nail-down a good research question and so on. In brief, this cut is the real deal after years of GOP threats to our discipline, and that sucks.
We should probably start keeping track of what will get lost. It would be helpful in order to fight in the future for funding restoration. For myself, I worry most about cuts to training programs like Bunche. I participated in the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research last summer, and it was super. It certainly made me a better political scientist, which I guess would upset Coburn, and IQMR does get NSF funding. And then of course, there is the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, which I would imagine gets NSF support.
This kind of training is the thankless, unexciting ‘grunt work’ of political science – teaching method and rigor that will not look like politics at all to most people. It will be hard, as Brian argues, to stretch the national security opt-out of the Coburn amendment to cover such programming. But this training is actually really important. Method and discipline is what separates us from journalism and such, which Coburn’s flip remarks, about political science doing what CNN and MSNBC do, prove he doesn’t understand. Indeed, I am starting to think the GOP doesn’t really know what science is at all (here or here). Among other reasons why Coburn apparently proposed cutting NSF is because it once gave Paul Krugman a grant. That is a credible reason? If so, the Tea Party really is off its rocker. Krugman is a Nobel Prize winner; it is actually prestigious for NSF to say they were involved with his research. Come on, Coburn. This is just raw ideology now.
To push back, my sense is what we need to do two things somehow:
1. Find a way to communicate better with the rest of the world, especially with people in practical politics who wonder why they can’t read even 5 pages of the APSR or ISQ. That doesn’t mean we should dumb down our work or turn it into Foreign Affairs, but there is a clearly a gap growing between us and the wider tax-paying public and its officials who support our research. If we can’t close that, we’ll frequently be fighting a rearguard on funding. A clear marker of this gap is that we have a journal devoted to bridging that divide. So some of Coburn’s animus may simply come from frustrated unintelligibility. This is not exactly a new point of course. Walt’s been saying it for awhile on his blog. Here is a publishing officer from Sage making a similar point.
Maybe one way might be to talk up those (few) ideas we do have that get close to ‘science’ and ‘laws’ to counteract the growing conservative notion that we practice ‘junk science.’ For example, the democratic peace, which arguably is the intellectual foundation for US democracy promotion, or Duverger’s Law.
We might also point out that US graduate education is in fact a major industry in US GDP, and a successful ‘export’ in so far as foreigners come in large numbers to US schools and spend a lot of money, as well as, hopefully, pick-up liberal values (a soft power argument for education investment).
2. Find a way to communicate with conservatives. This will be very hard, but it should be pretty obvious to everyone now that American conservatives have really come to dislike academia. All supporters of the Coburn amendment were Republicans; Fox regularly accuses academia of ‘indoctrination’ (just last night Hannity blamed American college students’ ignorance of Margaret Thatcher on ‘your hard-earned tax dollars funding liberal professors’); evangelicals think we are de-christianizing our students. I am not sure how to do this. My own sense is that the GOP really is turning toward what Andrew Sullivan calls ‘epistemic closure.’ Remember ‘we’re an empire now; we build our own reality’? Then there was the Texas GOP’s rejection of ‘critical thinking,’ because reading too much destroys patriotism. Plus the denials of climate warming, evolution, or a link between rape and pregnancy. (In passing, it’s worth noting that even Augustine thought Genesis was an allergory and not real history; see the last 3 books of the Confessions.)
If the GOP really is turning toward a ‘Know-Nothing party,’ then there is little we can do. There may simply be an unbridgeable divide over the importance of unrestricted inquiry, academic freedom, and the ‘critical thinking’ importance of heavily reading those who disagree with you. But I also think this is a Southern evangelical hang-up rather than GOP-wide. I used to work for the Ohio Republican party back in the 1990s, and there was none of this stuff. Ohio Republicans were moderate and still are. The problem is the southern-fried take-over of the national party that turned Obama into African Muslim stalinist and all that.
On the other hand, if that is where the GOP is going – and so far its supposed post-2012 election re-construction is not really happening – then political science may need to start considering other funding sources. If NSF is permanently under siege, what about state governments, think-tanks, foundations, and so? Is that feasible?
Cross-posted at Asian Security Blog.
The Republican party is not turning toward a ‘No-Nothing Party’. However, it is hard for Republicans to like academia when academia is doing its darndest, as a group, to destroy conservatives and the Republican party. Academia is as united in its dislike towards cultural conservatives and Republicans as is the media.
Republicans have noticed. While it may seem regrettable to some, Republicans have decided not to give up and go away. And Republicans are reluctant to fund those who want to destroy them.
I wonder if your call to “communicate with conservatives” is the sort of “conversation” that progressives frequently call for — that is, a conversation in which progressives pontificate and give orders, and conservatives shut up and then do as they’re told. We conservatives are on to that con. If you want a true conversation, you need to do your part — you need to listen.
It is not ‘southern-fried’ to become very tired of people who accuse us of being ignorant simply because we don’t agree with you. Your own language betrays your mindset: do you really think you have complete ownership of “unrestricted inquiry, academic freedom, and the ‘critical thinking’”? How arrogant. How exactly do you intend to ‘communicate’ with us with that mindset?
The Coburn amendment (I hadn’t heard of it before but I applaud it and the senators who made it stick) should communicate a very simple idea: don’t bite the hands that feed you. We conservatives are tired of being bit, and clawed, and savaged, and hammered, and shanked. We’re not going to fund those who would turn the attacks on us into a science.
“However, it is hard for Republicans to like academia when academia is doing its darndest, as a group, to destroy conservatives and the Republican party”
Evidence?
Academics, particularly in the humanities,* are more liberal and Democratic than the population at large. But there’s a big difference between that observation and the claim that, say, Political Scientists want to “destroy conservatives and the Republican party.”
FWIW, I’ve seen a significant number of Republican academics desert the GOP over the last decade or so precisely because of its thorny relationship with the sciences. Many Republicans — in private and increasingly in public — admit that there’s a problem here.
*I can name three occasions in which significant liberal bias derailed scholarly conversation. The worst involved a humanities setting. In one of the others, liberal and conservative academics together moved quickly to shut it down.
I would actually define myself as one of those Republicans. As late as 2006, I gave money to a major GOP candidate in Ohio. And I still vote for Republicans here and there in the state, But at the national level, it’s all but impossible now – the Tea Party, the hostility to science, Bush’s christianization of the GOP, the refusal to admit the catastrophe of the Bush administration, which even Walter Russell Mead is now saying the GOP must admit if it ever hopes to electable again: https://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/04/11/the-gop-needs-to-talk-about-bush-part-one/. America needs a moderate, center-right party for balance and perspective. That is not what the GOP has become in the last 15 years. It’s just not.
Neil Gross’s recent book _Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?_ may interest you, if you haven’t come across it already (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674059092).
Could you name them, out of curiosity?
“FWIW, I’ve seen a significant number of Republican academics desert the GOP over the last decade or so precisely because of its thorny relationship with the sciences. Many Republicans — in private and increasingly in public — admit that there’s a problem here.”
Yes, you are right here. Both political swings have anti-scientific tendencies (the left an elite disdain of anything related to genetics — plant or human, but a small but vocal population of those against science in general; the right a widespread but low-education-skewed distrust especially about evolution, but extending to an anti-intellectualism in general), though in recent years it has been most irksome from the right.
This is where the Coburn amendment is dangerous, it is stepped-up political oversite of a science-funding body. A bad sign.
“Know-Nothing”
He’s quoting Robert. The typo is in the original post.
Oops
hah! Double oops.
Robert: Good post; but as long as you’re fixing typos, please change “Bunch” to “Bunche”. That will prevent nitpickers from getting their knickers in a bunch. ;)
It might help to burnish one’s qualifications by not confusing ‘cachet’ and ‘cache’ [which should not be pronounced the same way whether or not the military does].
Who knew typos would generate so many comments? I think I got them all now
“The Coburn amendment (I hadn’t heard of it before but I applaud it and the senators who made it stick) should communicate a very simple idea: don’t bite the hands that feed you. We conservatives are tired of being bit, and clawed, and savaged, and hammered, and shanked. We’re not going to fund those who would turn the attacks on us into a science.”
I’ve been parsing this paragraph for a while and I admit I don’t know how to respond. This paragraph presumes that scholars wake up every day and, I suppose, try to further the revolution, or at least the interests of the Democratic party, by running regressions and making arguments. As a description of both the practice and the intent of the scholars I know, this is laughably wrong, either because (as Dan mentions below) there are a great many rightist political scientists who have been turned off by the Republican Party’s increasing dedication to know-nothingism (something that Akin and Mourdock proved hurts the party with the public at large) and most liberal/leftist political scientists spend vastly more of their time working on projects that are orthogonal to contemporary political problems.
In a way, this attack is a backhanded compliment and a refutation of those who think that political science doesn’t matter because we’re so distant from the real world—the commenter presumes that we not only matter but we pose a threat to one of the most important and effective political parties in the world. As flattering as that notion is, I think it vastly overstates what we do and also misses the point about scholarly research. If I demonstrate (as I hope to!) that the policies resource-rich autocratic states adopt depend not (only) on the structural consequences of oil reliance but instead on the preferences of important players within those regimes, is that pro-right or pro-left? I literally have no idea. If I spend my time in class requiring that students justify their claims and carefully interpret their analyses, does that mean that I’m sponsoring an anti-rightist agenda? On the present evidence, apparently so; but then, I learned the importance of carefully arguing such claims by studying exactly the Great Books that my conservative high school teachers told me to emulate.
Steve, I wrote my own reply, but then read yours. I agree absolutely. Duck PM’s reply below doesn’t even address your main points, which gives credence to the tendency toward “pontificate and give orders” and call that “conservation.”
What are the main points of Steve’s arguments?
He assumes (1) that academics are liberal and (2) principally motivated by the desire to destroy the GOP and conservatism. Therefore, implicitly, he argues (3) that academia is a partisan enterprise and so (4) subject not to the rules of scientific inquiry but rather to partisan logics of distribution. Consequently, he arrives at (5): Coburn’s actions are justified in the name of partisan-self defense.
(1) is, as Dan and I suggest, a consequence of a deeper process (and a relatively recent one, at that), while (2) is simply fallacious and not even a good description of the daily lives of working academics. Accordingly, (3) is wrong and so (4) is wrong too. Therefore, (5) is misguided and a poor guide to action.
Hey DuckPM,
On argument (2), I didn’t read where Steve said academics are “principally motivated by the desire to destroy the GOP and conservatism.” Nor do I believe that. Nor (I assume) does Steve.
As in the original post, it seems that the liberal academics in this blog are imputing wild accusations into the writings of their political critics. It is precisely this tendency which makes it so easy for those who are hostile to the NSF to target political science.
“when academia is doing its darndest, as a group, to destroy conservatives and the Republican party.”
If that isn’t “principally motivated”, what is? Motivation is clearly implied; perhaps “principally” is a slight exaggeration of the author’s intent, but would the author object to “strongly”? Changing an adverb wouldn’t change the argument.
And who are the “liberal academics in this blog”? You may be imputing vastly more to Kelly and to me than is actually there. I know it’s easy to say silly and hurtful things in blog comments–if you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time, the odds that you’ve done either or both approach 1:1–but you might be more circumspect in your analysis of your interlocutors’ motivations or your ascription of political affiliations and viewpoints to them. Indeed, you’ve just managed to accuse the only two people (I believe) who write for the Duck who have been professionally affiliated with the Republican Party as liberals, which is an interesting reading of our biographies.
Speaking of wild accusations, I think you owe Professor Kelly an apology for calling him either a liar or a bad political scientist (which is what a “bad observer of politics” would translate to).
As you’re feigning ignorance — or actually ignorant of — the colloquial use of this phrase in the English language, I suggest the first 10 results from Google and Bing may be of interest to you.
So I’m going to step back from this echo chamber, and examine how this phrase is used in the he English language
https://www.google.com/#output=search&q=%22doing+its+darndest%22
https://www.bing.com/search?q=%22doing+its+darndest%22
“The Vampire Diaries Is Doing Its Darndest To Make You Team Damon”
“Sega’s doing its darndest to lead me @field ”
“But ABC is doing its darndest to distance itself from the suspect, insisting he only had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in the show, calling him “just a guy in the background.”
“Yes when it is a media doing propaganda for a terrorist government with a vile agenda that is doing its darndest to deceive its own people.”
“But the BlackBerry is now doing its darndest to get you to take it home with you. ”
“Sweden, it would seem, is doing its darndest to abolish the idea of gender. ”
“It’s technically not a good thing to anthropomorphize animals, but it’s really hard not to when you see this killer whale doing its darndest to sound like a boat’s motor.“
I don’t watch the Vampire Diaries so I can’t interpret the top result but of the rest you seem to have an even split between the phrase indicating “has as an objective,” or as a hyperbolic phrase that means “acts in the manner of having that as an objective.”
I notice you didn’t try to address anything else in my comment with any specifics, so I’ll return the favor.
The rest of your comment is funny. Not substantive, or intentionally so, but funny.
The post is generally pretty good, but the paragraph beginning “2. Find a way—” is a perfect exammple of why polisci was the easy target in this attack on the NSF.
The last lines of it especially are so ignorant of the perspectives they are criticizing that either (a) the author is purposefully lying about conservatives, in order to produce some agitprop or (b) completely ignorant of the conservative movement, which implies that he’s a pretty terrible observer of politics.
In either case such communication (which seem to be very common from political science academics) is quite effective at shooting itself in the foot.
“Academia is as united in its dislike towards cultural conservatives and Republicans as is the media.”
Yes, academia is. The “who, me?” routine would be more convincing if I hadn’t periodically seen molecular biologists in the 2000s showing signs of disrespect for Pres. Bush that would produce utter apoplexy if they were directed at Pres. Obama. My favorite instance: a montage of photographs, posted on a laboratory doorway, comparing George Bush’s facial expressions to those of a chimpanzee. Just try to imagine what would happen if, for some reason, somebody put a montage like that about Obama on their doorway in any academic institution. Just … try.
If somebody wants to claim that academia is *not* unanimous in its blanket hatred of non-progressives — not conservatives, but simply non-progressives — then that person is in a very different kind of academia than the one I’ve been observing for 30 years.
None of which means that NSF should be getting defunded for work that is in its purview. But if we’re going to talk about how the U.S.’s endless culture war is poisoning academia, then let’s *talk* about it, and not just do the sort of silly one-way “conversation” that political progressives seem to want.
George Orwell wrote in the 1930s about how there’d arisen a dangerous divide between people who were patriotic and people who were proud of being intelligent, with each side taking an increasingly dangerous pleasure in excluding the other from potential membership. He wrote about that in Great Britain while the world lurched toward fascism. I’ve thought of that passage many times, unhappily, over the past decade. The worst part of the syndrome is that there is just enough truth on either side to allow each side the self-righteous pleasure of thinking that it is completely free of fault for the divide.
I’m that utter rarity, somebody in the U.S. with friends on both sides, and I have long since gotten used to having conversations where the utter worthlessness of all human beings on the other side is taken for granted. Occasionally I will try to point out that this assumption is wrong. I can usually get a grudging partial agreement from my friends associated with the Tea Party. Leftist academics, though, are in my experience inclined to respond to such efforts by exploding in rage.
If U.S. academics don’t believe they’re indulging in this, they are lying to themselves. If they think they can indulge it forever and never have it come to haunt them, even when the U.S. is slowly imploding from runaway debt, then they are badly delusional and will experience the Darwinian consequences of being stupid. (And if somebody wants to claim that I don’t have “sources”, fine, you’re right — I’m not going to write a review article on my own time about this; I am too backlogged with actual work. But I’m not lying about this, and you’d really be better off paying attention than squirting squid ink.)
Whether or not academics are liberals or your Tea Partier friends are more reasonable than your progressive ones is irrelevant. If trying to defund people conservatives disagreed with was the goal, anthropology research would have been a more rational target. There’s clearly something about American Politics research the GOP doesn’t like. What, we still can’t figure out.
Well, as I wrote earlier, the defunding’s definitely not rational or justified. But then, when is it that students of politics and history expect every single human action in the political sphere to be Vulcan in its rationality? I thought only naive natural scientists saw life that way.
I think this episode, trivial in itself, reflects a toxic animosity between the culture of academia (and its ideological allies) and the culture of that ~50% of the U.S. who would rather be governed by the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty directory.
I’ve described the animosity, only to be told that it is not “relevant”. To which I answer: not relevant to whom? To you, obviously; but is the current lopsided, progressive-ueber-alles academic culture really irrelevant to ordinary citizens and their representatives, who vote on whether to pay for us? Will it remain irrelevant if our currently Very Bad federal budgets degenerate into being Completely Awful ones?
Academia — both in your field, and in mine — is kept alive by the cultural understanding that there is some long-term point in the larger society supporting it. It is not self-sustained and never has been. That’s not a big deal when times are good, and the inevitable cultural divide between academics and non-academic non-progressives is relatively benign. Unfortunately, that “not big deal” scenario describes life 15 years ago much better than it describes life in the U.S. right now.
If I thought the U.S. government was going to get its fiscal house in order, I’d agree with you that academics could afford not to care. Unfortunately, I think the reverse is true. If my worries are right, then this trivial episode with NSF may come to seem quite nostalgic.
Well, regardless, it is good to see you around the blog. Drop me an email sometime.
Academia has gone and will go in the direction of Big Government because that is the way to power and money. Big Brother and Little Sister. Until academia understands that and more importantly does something about it, there will be no understanding of why conservatives don’t particularly like them.
Also the “southeren-fried” reference smacks of elitism which is an academics hallmark amongst us “bitter clingers” It’s obvious who your audience is in this piece.
Reads to me more like regional chauvinism than elitism.