This doesn’t surprise me at all (hat tip to Powerline):
Mark Moyar doesn’t exactly fit the stereotype of a disappointed job seeker. He is an Eagle Scout who earned a summa cum laude degree from Harvard, graduating first in the history department before earning a doctorate at the University of Cambridge in England. Before he had even begun graduate school, he had published his first book and landed a contract for his second book. Distinguished professors at Harvard and Cambridge wrote stellar letters of recommendation for him.
Yet over five years, this conservative military and diplomatic historian applied for more than 150 tenure-track academic jobs, and most declined him a preliminary interview. During a search at University of Texas at El Paso in 2005, Mr. Moyar did not receive an interview for a job in American diplomatic history, but one scholar who did wrote her dissertation on “The American Film Industry and the Spanish-Speaking Market During the Transition to Sound, 1929-1936.” At Rochester Institute of Technology in 2004, Mr. Moyar lost out to a candidate who had given a presentation on “promiscuous bathing” and “attire, hygiene and discourses of civilization in Early American-Japanese Relations.”
It’s an example, some say, of the difficulties faced by academics who are seen as bucking the liberal ethos on campus and perhaps the reason that history departments at places like Duke had 32 Democrats and zero Republicans, according to statistics published by the Duke Conservative Union around the time Mr. Moyar tried to get an interview there.
Not long ago, I had a conversation with a liberal honest enough to admit that yes, university (at least the particular university being discussed) discriminated when hiring based on political stance. I’ve had this conversation before, and got the same mealy-mouthed excuse I always get: Universities are not really discriminating, but “preserving the university culture” and “collegiality” (the idea being that if you don’t agree politically with your colleagues, they won’t want to work with you–”university culture” is merely another way of saying “foaming at the mouth Stalinists,” of course). The conversation went nowhere, as it never does, but I give this liberal credit for honesty (relatively speaking). Most liberals will not admit there is any sort of bias on campus.
Read the whole thing. Powerline has an interview with Moyar here (mp3 file).
Incognito says:
Of course most Liberals won’t admit to bias in hiring practices , because it’s the antithesis of what they stand for, or should stand for.
It’s the same thing in the arts, that’s why so few of us (barring those few celebrities who admit to conservative politics) have the courage to stand up and reveal where we stand politically. Most people claim we are just being paranoid, but there is definitely prejudice and there are definitely those who have been blackballed. For the time being, I keep my politics to myself, save for a few rare occasions when I have countered some asinine comment someone has made.
May 3, 2007, 5:03 pm