Notherbob2, a commenter on my last post, points to an interesting column in OpinionJournal today on the lack of intellectual diversity in academia, and he even quotes its highlight, which follows:
A forthcoming study by Stanley Rothman of Smith College looked at a random sample of more than 1,600 undergraduate faculty members from 183 institutions of higher learning. He found that across all faculty departments, including business and engineering, academics were over five times as likely to be liberals as conservatives.
Mr. Rothman used statistical analysis to determine what factors explained how academics ended up working at elite universities. Marital status, sexual orientation and race didn’t play a statistically significant role. Academic excellence, as measured by papers published and awards conferred, did. But the next best predictor was whether the professor was a liberal. To critics that argue his methodology is flawed, Mr. Rothman points out that he used the same research tools long used in courts by liberal faculty members to prove race and sex bias at universities. Liberals criticizing his methods may find themselves hoist by their own petard.
I hope liberals have enough petards to go around, since there seems to be an increasing need for them.
Please read my discussion of the reasons for left-liberalism (Democrats)at top universities at
http://shroudedindoubt.typepad.com/bag_of_worms_yet_words/2004/09/university_ligh.html
“I hope liberals have enough petards to go around, since there seems to be an increasing need for them.”
They do indeed, if you go by the dictionary definition, which is basically “a fart” and is the way Shakespeare used it.
The other meaning, an explosive device designed to take down doors or walls, is the one more commonly understood, perhaps from WW One when it was (I think) an alternative to “Bangalore Torpedo”. But this does not yet seem to have been entered into the dictionaries.