Dartblog

Some dismiss the proposed problem that college professors are relatively uniform in their ideologies. Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, deftly explains why academic orthodoxy is a real impedance to quality instruction:

We end up with indoctrination passing as proper teaching. When [women’s studies and religion professor Julie] Kilmer states, “What happens to the feminist classroom when students challenge feminist principle?” we might respond, “An energetic discussion follows.” But for Kilmer, it means disruption and intimidation. By her own admission, she can no longer distinguish honest disagreement from insubordinate conduct. That’s what happens when disciplines admit ideology into their grounds.

RELATED to all of this is news of Yale’s continuing struggle to attract and maintain a diverse faculty.

It does not even seem necessary to say that the solution to all of this certainly does not lie in mandating conservative quotas for new hires. It is in exorcising those prejudices which prevent quality heterodox applicants from being hired to begin with. Yet, as Professor Bauerlein explains above, the trouble there is that the practitioners of those prejudices do not see them as such; they see their prejudices as learnings which ought to be inculcated into the field by way of refusing access to anyone who does not share them.

FINALLY, does anyone happen to have an update on the continuing search of the Dartmouth English Faculty for a Shakespeare professor? Several of my spies have been slain on the docks, and I am without current intel on the matter.