If the parties responsible for awarding tenure don't like you because you subscribe to a school of thought that contradicts theirs, doesn't that creat kind of an intellectual monopoly?
If the parties responsible for awarding tenure don't like you because you subscribe to a school of thought that contradicts theirs, doesn't that creat kind of an intellectual monopoly?
reason i'm concerned about this is because i know most professors are liberal and i'm anything but
Are you obnoxious about your views? Are you going to espouse them to you students?
It depends entirely on where you're teaching. I suspect that stringent anti-abortion views would go over just fine at Liberty University but would get you canned at Vassar.
Each university, each department, has its own dynamic. It certainly makes sense, in certain contexts, to keep your political views more implicit than explicit.
The real path to "successful" scholarship is to whine about academia and then get a fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute. See D'Souza, Dinesh.
I don't like D'Souza's views at all, but he's a smart guy and a terrific public speaker.
He's certainly the kind of conservative intellectual that campus lefties love to hate.
I consider myself a progressive, but I'm not made unhappy by the presence of people like D'Souza. America has worked for him; he's letting everybody know it, and he's enlarging his own experience into what he imagines to be useful social truths. They're no more than partial truths, as far as I can tell, but they are indeed that, and deserve to be heard.
Depends on the academic area, and what your views are. If you want tenure in a biology department, and you hold "creationist" or "intelligent design" views, then no respectable institution will grant you tenure, because good universities try to limit the number of idiots with tenure.
I'm considering a Ph.D in economics and I wonder the same thing. I subscribe to the Austrican school, which is not accepted in mainstream academia because it relies primarily on logical inference rather than mathematical modeling.
If they are climatologists and you believe that the sun is the dominant driver of the climate, then not only will you never get tenure, you will probably be canned on the spot.
professor nutsack wrote:
If the parties responsible for awarding tenure don't like you because you subscribe to a school of thought that contradicts theirs, doesn't that creat kind of an intellectual monopoly?
get your phd in economics first, then if you are still of the austrian school you can write papers as to why it is the appropriate way to think about economic questionsas long as you are getting published in good journals (presumably because you are producing good results), that is all that mattersbut, keep in mind, academia is not free from politics and traditionsthere is a lot of noise in what papers get published... my feeling is that the very best papers eventually get published in decent journals and get heardafter the best, what gets in and what doesn't gets a little more blurry
wrd wrote:
I'm considering a Ph.D in economics and I wonder the same thing. I subscribe to the Austrican school, which is not accepted in mainstream academia because it relies primarily on logical inference rather than mathematical modeling.
I'm thinking about a PhD in Exercise Physiology, and I was actually just discussing this with a friend earlier today. I figure that Exercise phys wouldn't be nearly as liberal as would say...a career in political science, correct?
Exercise physiology isn't hard enough of a science to withstand corruption. Hence, they still use isokinetic machines for strength testing.
Good advice. It really is about publications. I'd add that mainstream thought in academia is mainstream for a reason - usually there's just better scholarship supporting it.
My gut feeling is that most people who are worried because their views aren't "mainstream" have really just done shoddy research...
When I was in grad school, I knew a Ph.D. who felt he was shut out of the tenure process because of his conservative views--he was part-time faculty and member of a conservative think-tank. I kind of felt he might have a point; he was very outspoken in his political views and I could see this rubbing people the wrong way. Out of curiosity, I asked the library to have his dissertation sent out from where he got his degree. It was the worst piece of crap I'd ever read. Really, really bad. But I'm sure my acquaintance felt he couldn't get it published because it espoused conservative views.
I've since met plenty of conservative, tenured people. The common denominator is that they produce good work.
In order to get tenure you must first get an assistant professor job. Getting this job is in fact harder getting tenure. I remember reading somewhere that the average tenure rate is about 80% (this is much lower for very prestigious universities that would rather steal established professors from other universities than promote those they hired as assistant professors). I've been told by professors that every opening they advertise has between 50 and a few hundred applicants, many of them qualified.
Getting an assistant professor position depends on:
1. Published papers
2. Presentations at international conferences
3. Service work
4. Recommendations, reputation, who you worked for, etc.
If you become an assistant professor it means you are already well established in your field and any sort of influence your political or religious views have on your research will already be known. However, since tenure partly depends on a vote internal to your department, if your does not mesh well with the department's research program there is a chance that they will deny you tenure. So I would say that it's not holding views outside the mainstream which cause a failure to obtain tenure but persuing research which contradicts the expectations of the department in which you work.
In relation to liberals and conservitaves in academia, I don't think that universities seek out liberals to hire, but the highly educated people in the applicant pool for the jobs tend to be more liberal than the population as a whole. Maybe some conservatives would like affirmative action programs to hire less-qualified but under-represented conservative professors....
A better answer wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/movies/18expe.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
From your link "One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry."
I'm guessing this person was a big fan of "Loose Change" though.
Anything that shows the hypocrisy, intolerance and closed mindedness of the liberal establishment is automatically labled a kook, conspiracy theory.
Gotta love those open minded, tolerant, free speech loving liberals.
what are you a postdoc in?This is not true in economics or finance -getting the assistant prof position is tough, but getting tenure is even harder
postdoc wrote:
In order to get tenure you must first get an assistant professor job. Getting this job is in fact harder getting tenure. I remember reading somewhere that the average tenure rate is about 80% (this is much lower for very prestigious universities that would rather steal established professors from other universities than promote those they hired as assistant professors). I've been told by professors that every opening they advertise has between 50 and a few hundred applicants, many of them qualified.
Getting an assistant professor position depends on:
1. Published papers
2. Presentations at international conferences
3. Service work
4. Recommendations, reputation, who you worked for, etc.
If you become an assistant professor it means you are already well established in your field and any sort of influence your political or religious views have on your research will already be known. However, since tenure partly depends on a vote internal to your department, if your does not mesh well with the department's research program there is a chance that they will deny you tenure. So I would say that it's not holding views outside the mainstream which cause a failure to obtain tenure but persuing research which contradicts the expectations of the department in which you work.
In relation to liberals and conservitaves in academia, I don't think that universities seek out liberals to hire, but the highly educated people in the applicant pool for the jobs tend to be more liberal than the population as a whole. Maybe some conservatives would like affirmative action programs to hire less-qualified but under-represented conservative professors....