Academic

MEGAN MCARDLE ON ACADEMIA: What Bias Looks Like. ?One of the things the legacy of racism has taugh?

By Glenn Reynolds

MEGAN MCARDLE ON ACADEMIA: What Bias Looks Like. “One of the things the legacy of racism has taught us is just how good dominant groups are at constructing narratives that justify their dominance. Somehow, the problem is never them. It’s always the out group. . . . More troubling is that these volitional arguments are almost always combined with denigration: the out group is stupid, greedy, mean, violent, overemotional, corrupt . . . whatever. As indeed these arguments are when they’re deployed against conservatives in my comment threads. In fact, it seems clear to me that many commenters have taken the underrepresentation of conservatives in academia as vindication of their beliefs–if conservatives can’t make it in academia, that proves that conservatives are not smart, and liberal ideas must be better. This is possible, of course. It’s also possible that academics are validating their own bias by systematically excluding those who disagree with them.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on February 14, 2011 (boomark / email).