The lack of ideological diversity in social research, paired with the lack of engagement with citizens and policymakers who come from other places on the ideological spectrum, poses an existential risk to the continued credibility, utility and even viability of social research. The need for reform is urgent

al-Gharbi, Musa

English

PhilPapers

 23 March 2017 Times Higher Education 26     Opinion                     A Lack of Ideological Diversity is Killing Social Research Without more conservative views in the academy, lawmakers will increasingly ignore and even defund the field, says Musa al-Gharbi  Beginning in the late 18th century, post-secondary education was restructured across Europe—in part under the auspices of accelerating the transition to an envisioned rational and secular age.1 In order to enroll the broadest swath of the public in this enterprise, institutions and curricula were rendered more accessible, inclusive, and professionally-oriented. At the time, Nietzsche condemned2 the  “ubiquitous encouragement of everyone’s so-called ‘individual personality’” and the growing trend to curb “serious and unrelenting critical habits and opinions” at universities—discerning as astutely in his own time as Jonathan Haidt today that the use of educational institutions for promoting a particular social vision is   fundamentally incompatible with the pursuit of the truth wherever it leads.3  Yet across Western societies, and especially in elite circles, the 18th Century faith persists that a proliferation of education, science, and technology will help usher in a more rational and secular age4—one governed by expertise, and defined by worldwide peace and prosperity.5  Among adherents of this vision, universities are held in particularly high regard, as incubators of that better tomorrow—where our best and brightest hone the character, skills and knowledge to solve the world’s ills in an environment that promotes reasoned and civil debate, the free exchange of ideas, and an unflinching commitment to truth.    23 March 2017 Times Higher Education 27 Opinion       However, contemporary research in the cognitive and behavioral sciences suggests a much bleaker picture:6 For instance, rather than serving as an objective base upon which agreements can be built, evoking scientific studies or statistics in the context of socio-political arguments tends to further polarize interlocutors.7 Both conservatives and progressives politicize science and evaluate its findings on an ideological basis: exaggerating conclusions when convenient while findings ways to ignore, discredit, defund or suppress research which seems to threaten one’s identity or perceived interests.8 Rather than contributing to open-mindedness or intellectual humility, greater cognitive sophistication or knowledge often renders people less flexible in their beliefs by enhancing their abilities to critique and dismiss challenges, or advance counter-arguments, regardless of “the facts”—thereby exacerbating people’s natural inclinations towards motivated reasoning.9  That is, if one wanted to create an environment which actually promoted closed-mindedness, dogmatism and polarization, contemporary research suggests the following prescription: consolidate societies’ most intelligent, knowledgeable and charismatic people, at a time in their lives when their identities are just taking shape (which increases the perceived urgency of protecting and validating said identities10), and place them in a competitive environment focused largely (and increasingly) on the sciences. 11 In a word: universities.12  Perhaps then, it should not be surprising that the long leftward trajectory of U.S. institutions of higher learning seems to have culminated with conservative faculty, students and perspectives almost completely absent from many fields,13 while dissent from progressive ideology is met with increasing sanctions and scandal14—from which even historical figures are not immune.15  However one may feel about these developments from a moral or political point of view, they are harmful for the practice and profession of science--especially for the social and behavioral sciences.   A Threat to Research Integrity One of the primary reasons universities seek to recruit faculty and students from gender, sexual, racial, ethnic, economic and other minority groups is to enhance viewpoint diversity; the idea is that integrating the unique life experiences, influences and perspectives of under-represented populations can enrich learning for all students, strengthen research, and spur innovation.16  In other words, it is cognitive and ideological variation which gives substance to other forms of diversity on campus.17 The work of trying to understand, accommodate, contest or reconcile across different languages, cultures, disciplines, perceived interests and priorities, while often frustrating and exhausting, is precisely how the benefits of diversity are realized.18 Substantive diversity will generate contradictions and conflicts, it will challenge people and make them uncomfortable—both those from majority and minority groups—but it will ultimately produce stronger research and better scholars.  On the other hand, too much cognitive and ideological homogeneity in a field creates a host of epistemological problems: methodological weaknesses, gaps in research, errors and problematic assumptions can be overlooked because the results of a study comport with what reviewers want to believe or already believe19(contributing to the reproducibility crisis which is especially pronounced in the social and behavioral sciences20). Important lines of study are never even undertaken because antecedent commitments blind researchers to their value.21  Research which seems to threaten or undermine the prevailing consensus is often subject to unfair scrutiny in the peer-review process, making it difficult to publish and disseminate the findings.22   Institutionalized bias adversely and unjustly affects careers as well:     23 March 2017 Times Higher Education 28 Opinion       when students perceive ideological differences between themselves and their professors, they tend to provide lower ratings in course evaluations. These evaluations have come to matter a great deal for the employment and advancement prospects of junior and adjunct faculty.23 Defying a department’s prevailing ideological consensus can also harm scholars with regards to committee deliberations on hiring and promotion.24 As a result, conservatives often feel compelled to conceal their political leanings and limit their exploration of controversial topics unless and until they receive tenure.25 This wait often proves indefinite: overall less than a third of America’s college and university faculty are tenured.26 For aspiring social researchers who actively avoid the most pressing issues of the day, the rate is likely much lower.   The Urgency of Reform While exhibiting conservative inclinations may be harmful within academic circles, the perceived leftward bias of many fields of study has limited the utility and application of social research outside of the university.  Republicans control the Presidency, House, and Senate; they dominate state legislatures and governorships nationwide.27 But given that more than 90% of sociology faculty lean progressive, there is virtually no incentive for conservative lawmakers to consult sociological research when crafting policies. They turn largely to economists instead, whose field more closely approaches political parity (exhibiting a mere 4:1 progressive bias28). And increasingly, Republican policymakers circumvent academics, academic research, and academic institutions altogether in favor of think-tanks, which have become repositories for those right-leaning intellectuals alienated from the ivory towers.29 Meanwhile, to the extent that universities are not only portrayed as, but in fact are, populated overwhelmingly by progressives30—and nearly exclusively produce research and scholars reflecting these commitments—conservatives have every incentive to not only ignore social research, but to defund it. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the leftward trend within U.S. institutions of higher learning has been met by aggressive Republican-led campaigns to slash government support of post-secondary education (especially for the humanities and social sciences) along with declining contributions from wealthy donors.31 Meanwhile, private universities designed to explicitly promote conservative ideologies are seeing a surge in donations and enrollments.32  To make matters worse, the ideological and cultural climates of many U.S. universities are radically out of step with the broader American society, contributing to declining public confidence in institutions of higher learning and the growing inability of social researchers to relate to ordinary people33—which undermines their capacity to understand phenomena, predict trends, or craft effective interventions.34  In other words, the ideological homogeneity of contemporary academic institutions—especially in fields related to the humanities or social and behavioral sciences—serves to broaden the disconnect between the ivory towers and the rest of society, between theory and practice, research and application. It poses an existential threat to the integrity, credibility, utility (or even the continued viability) of social research. Academics, and social researchers in particular, must better engage with conservative thought, appeal to conservative policymakers, and reach out to a public which tends to be far more conservative than they are.   Musa al-Gharbi is a Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in sociology at Columbia University and a research associate at Heterodox Academy.       23 March 2017 Times Higher Education 29 Opinion       1 Chad Wellmon. Organizing Enlightenment: Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Ben Knights. The Idea of Clerisy in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, 2010. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche. Anti-Education: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions. New York Review Books Classics, 2015. 3 Jonathan Haidt. “Why Universities Must Choose One Telos: Truth or Social Justice.” Heterodox Academy, 21 October 2016. Christian Smith. The Sacred Project of American Sociology. Oxford University Press, 2014. 4 Cathy O’Neil. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Crown, 2016.  John Gray. “What Scares the New Atheists.” The Guardian, 3 March 2015. Yuval Levin. The Tyranny of Reason: The Origins and Consequences of the Social Scientific Outlook. University Press of America, 2000. Bruno Latour. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard University Press, 1999. Paul Feyerabend. Farewell to Reason. Verso, 1988. 5 Thomas C. Leonard. Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics and American Economics in the Progressive Era. Princeton University Press, 2016. John Gray. “Stephen Pinker is Wrong About Violence and War.” The Guardian, 13 March 2015. Thomas Piketty. Capital in the 21st Century. Belknap Press, 2014. James C. Scott. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press, 1998. Paul Feyerabend. Science in a Free Society. Verso, 1982. 6 George Lakoff & Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind & Its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books, 1999. 7 William Davies. ”How Statistics Lost Their Power—And Why We Should Fear What Comes Next.” The Guardian, 19 January 2017. Dan Kopf. “Using Science in an Argument Just Makes People More Partisan.” Quartz, 23 December 2016. Dan Kahan. “The Cognitively Illiberal State.” Stanford Law Review, Vol. 60 (2007).  8 Eric Armstrong. “Are Democrats the Party of Science? Not Really.” New Republic, 10 January 2017. John Tierney. “The Real War on Science.” City Journal, Autumn 2016. Chris Mooney. “Conservatives Don’t Hate Climate Science. They Hate the Left’s Climate Solutions.” Washington Post, 10 November 2014. Dan Kahan. “Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus.” Journal of Risk Research, Vol. 14 (2011): 147-74. 9 D.J. Flynn et al. “The Nature and Origins of Misperceptions: Understanding False and Unsupported Beliefs About Politics.” Political Psychology, Vol. 38, Supplement S1 (2017): 127-50. Peter Hatemi & Rose McDermott. “Give Me Attitudes.” Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 19 (2016): 331-50. Richard F. West et al. “Cognitive Sophistication Does Not Attenuate the Bias Blind Spot.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 103, No. 3 (2012): 506-19.  Chris Mooney. “What is Motivated Reasoning? How Does it Work? Dan Kahan Answers.” Discover, 5 May 2011. Hilary Kornblith. “Distrusting Reason.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1999): 181-96. 10 Musa al-Gharbi. “Why We Reject Facts and Embrace Conflict.” Real Clear Science, 11 March 2015. Bradley Campell & Jason Manning. “Microaggression and Moral Cultures.” Comparative Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 6 (2014): 692-726. 11 Elizabeth Kolbert. “Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds.” The New Yorker, 27 February 2017. Diego Gambetta & Steffen Hertog. Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection Between Violent Extremism and Education. Princeton University Press, 2016.  Pierre Azoulay et al. “Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 21788 (2015).  12 Greg Lukianoff. “Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate.” Encounter Books, 2014. Marin Cogan. “How Liberal Colleges Breed Conservative Firebrands.” New York Times, 18 March 2017. 13 Samuel J. Abrams. “Why Colleges’ Liberal Lean is a Problem.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 March 2017. Rod Dreher. “The Imaginative David Gelernter.” American Conservative, 27 February 2017. Clay Routledge. “A Letter to Conservatives: You Need College and College Definitely Needs You.” James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, 27 January 2017. Jonathan Haidt. “Why Concepts Creep Left.” Psychological Inquiry (2015). Mark Lilla. “Taking the Right Seriously.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 September 2009.  14 Mene Ukueberuwa. “Don’t Blame Politics for the Crisis at American Colleges.” New Republic, 1 February 2017. Anthony L. Fisher. “The Free Speech Problem on Campus is Real. It Will Ultimately Hurt Dissidents.” Vox, 2 January 2017. Conor Friedersdorf. “The Glaring Evidence that Free Speech is Threatened on Campus.” Atlantic, 4 March 2016. 15 Michael B. Dougherty. “Students Don’t Want to Learn Anymore. They Want to Teach.” The Week, 10 January 2017. 16 Natasha K. Warikoo. The Diversity Bargain: And Other Dilemmas of Race, Admissions and Meritocracy at Elite Universities. University of Chicago Press, 2016. 17 Musa al-Gharbi. “From Political Liberalism to Para-Liberalism: Epistemological Pluralism, Cognitive Liberalism & Authentic Choice.” Comparative Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 2 (2016): 1-25 18 Robert P. George & Cornel West. “Truth Seeking, Democracy, and Freedom of Thought and Expression.” James P. Madison Program in American Ideals & Institutions, 14 March 2017. Jonathan Haidt. “Van Jones’ Excellent Metaphors About the Dangers of Ideological Safety.” Heterodox Academy, 2 March 2017. Lyell Asher. “Your Students Crave Moral Simplicity. Resist.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 February 2017. Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt. “The Coddling of the American Mind.” Atlantic, September 2015. Katherine W. Philips. “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter.” Scientific American, 1 October 2014. 19 Lee Jussim. Social Perception and Social Reality: Why Accuracy Dominates Bias and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Oxford University Press, 2012. Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan: On the Impact of the Highly Improbable. Random House, 2010. 20 Marcus R. Munafo et al. “A Manifesto for Reproducible Science.” Nature Human Behavior, Vol. 1, Article 21 (2017).                                                             23 March 2017 Times Higher Education 30 Opinion                                                                                              Joel Achenbach. “No, Science’s Reproducibility Crisis is Not Limited to Psychology.” Washington Post, 28 August 2015. 21 Chris Martin. “How Ideology Has Hindered Sociological Insights.” The American Sociologist, Vol. 47, Issue 1 (2016). Scott Atran. “God and the Ivory Tower.” Foreign Policy, 6 August 2012. 22 Maria Konnikova. “Is Social Psychology Biased Against Republicans?” The New Yorker, 30 October 2014. 23 Rebecca Schuman. “Needs Improvement.” Slate, 24 April 2014. Philip Stark. “What Exactly do Student Evaluations Measure?” Berkeley Blog, 21 October 2013. April Kelly-Woessner & Matthew C. Woessner. “My Professor is a Partisan Hack: How Perceptions of a Professor’s Political Views Affect Student Course Evaluations.” PS: Political Science & Politics, Vol. 39, No. 3 (2006): 495-501. 24 Nathan Honeycutt & Laura Freberg. “The Liberal and Conservative Experience Across Academic Disciplines: An Extension of Inbar and Lammers.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, March 2017. James C. Philips. “Why Are There So Few Conservatives and Libertarians in Legal Academia? An Empirical Exploration of Three Hypotheses.” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 39, No. 1 (2016): 153-207. 25 Jon Shields & Joshua Dunn Sr. Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University. Oxford University Press, 2016. 26 “The Truth About Tenure in Higher Education.” National Education Association, 2015. Sean Carroll. “How to Get Tenure at a Major Research University.” Discover, 30 March 2011. 27 Musa al-Gharbi. “The Democratic Party is Facing a Demographic Crisis.” The Conversation, 28 February 2017. 28 Sean Stevens. “Langbert, Quain & Klein: Faculty Voter Registration in Economics, History, Journalism, Law and Psychology.” Heterodox Academy, 14 December 2016. 29 Ed Yong. “Professor Smith Goes to Washington.” Atlantic, 25 January 2017. Jason Stahl. Right Moves: The Conservative Think Tank in American Political Culture Since 1945. University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Thomas Medvetz. Think Tanks in America. University of Chicago Press, 2014. 30 Joseph Conlon. “Why Viewpoint Diversity Also Matters in the Hard Sciences.” Heterodox Academy, 27 January 2017. 31 Sopan Deb. “Trump proposes Eliminating the Arts and Humanities Endowments.” New York Times, 15 March 2017. Elizabeth Harrington. “Trump Plans to Eliminate NEA, NEH, Cut Spending by $10.5 Trillion.” Washington Free Beacon, 19 January 2017. David Sarasohn. “The Republican War on Public Universities.” New Republic, 10 August 2016. Anemona Hartocollis. “College Students Protest, Alumni’s Fondness Fades, and Checks Shrink.” New York Times, 4 August 2016. Ziyad Marar. “Why Does Social Science Have Such a Hard Job Explaining Itself?” The Guardian, 8 April 2013. 32 David Wheeler. “The Hot New Brand of Higher Education.” Atlantic, 1 February 2017. 33 Charles Camosy. “Trump Won Because College-Educated Americans Are Out of Touch.” Washington Post, 9 November 2016. “Public Opinion on Higher Education.” Public Agenda, 12 September 2016. Dan Kahan. “Fixing the Communications Failure.” Nature, Vol. 463 (2010): 296-7 34 William Easterly. The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor. Basic Books, 2015. Evgeny Morozov. To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. Public Affairs, 2014. Greg Ferenstein. “Former Political Scientist to Congress: Please Defund Political Science.” Atlantic, 12 February 2013. Philip Tetlock. Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Princeton University Press, 2006. 

A Lack of Ideological Diversity is Killing Social Research

https://philpapers.org/archive/MUSALO.pdf

A Lack of Ideological Diversity is Killing Social Research

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

PhilPapers