At a panel held Monday night to discuss academic freedom and faculty political affiliation, no one disputed that many of Duke's departments are dominated by registered Democrats. The central issue that did arise was whether this represents a problem that needs to be addressed.
Among the five panelists, four agreed that this was not a major problem requiring swift action, while the lone dissenter, Political Science department Chair Michael Munger, argued that a bias against conservatives is evident in both the hiring process and the classroom and should be corrected.
The panel, entitled "The Politics of Academic Freedom: Does Political Affiliation Matter?", was co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Duke College Republicans and Duke Democrats. Provost Peter Lange, who selected the participants and moderated the discussion, organized the panel in response to an ad run by the Duke Conservative Union in The Chronicle several weeks ago that alleged a lack of political diversity among faculty.
Law professor William Van Alstyne, a leading constitutional scholar on free speech and academic freedom, began the panel with a moderate position. He noted that applications for faculty positions never have a box for political affiliations, but then proceeded to display a chart showing seven unnamed departments that combined for 107 Democratic faculty members and only one Republican.
"One could say that's interesting, but it doesn't prove a goddamn thing," Van Alstyne said. "There are a lot of things we don't know; we don't know if [Republican] applicants even exist... [but] at the least, this should force departments to re-examine themselves."
University Counsel David Adcock, an expert on tenure rules and processes, offered a stronger defense of the school. Adcock said that although he has always been a conservative Republican, he has never in his 21 years of work at Duke encountered one instance in which administrators compromised their academic integrity in order to promote a certain political party affiliation.
"The issue should be, do the faculty do their duty?" Adcock said. "Does ideology bleed into their work so much that they are not doing their duty? In my 21 years here, the answer is no."
Adcock also noted that the American Association of the University Professors offers a list of obligations, such as the encouragement of free learning and due respect for the opinions of others, and said that faculty should be cognizant of these duties.
Munger, the other Republican on the panel, pointed out that neither Van Alstyne nor Adcock teach undergraduates, so they may not be aware of bias in the classroom.
"Professors would not travel to the law school or the University Counsel's office to berate [conservative] students," Munger said.
Munger went on to say that the University's policy is one of openness, but the expectation exists that departments will hire liberals. As an example, Munger pointed to the history department, which according to the DCU's ad has over 30 registered Democrats and no Republicans on its faculty.
"The problem is too few Republicans," Munger said. "It's not a legal problem, as its simply not true that they've suffered historical discrimination. But it's important to ask if a lack of political diversity is consistent with the University's goals."
Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Affairs and English professor Cathy Davidson followed Munger with a strong attack on the idea that political affiliation matters.
"We have laws and rules against discrimination, and we have mechanisms to correct it," Davidson said. Instead of a bias against conservatives, she pointed to a lack of political diversity among applicants as the cause of unequal representation.
The vice provost ended her remarks with a sarcastic solution that drew loud applause from the mostly filled Zener Auditorium. "To solve this, we would need a full-scale redistribution of wealth so that professors make as much money as doctors and lawyers," she said. "If we did this, we would have many more Republicans teaching French... [but in reality] you get what you pay for--in higher education, this means Democrats."
The hour-long question and answer session that followed became contentious at several points as audience members and panelists clashed over different issues. When one student repeated an experience in which a professor used the beginning of her first class to issue a pointless rant against President George W. Bush, several panelists chastised the student for not reporting the incident. In response, another student rose to say that students' intimidation of professors prevents them from doing so.
Freshman Alex Kaufman, who attended the panel, said he thought it went well.
"It was interesting how they approached it. It was a topic that was broad enough that lots of other debates could have been brought up which may have needed their own panel," Kaufman said.
Senior Madison Kitchens, executive director of DCU, also said he was happy that the panel discussion occurred.
"This was precisely one of the things we wanted in publishing the ad, which was to make sure this issue of academic bias became open to discussion," Kitchen said. "I felt as though the somewhat hostile environment in the question and answer session indicated to me a manifestation of the problem we're talking about... [there was] a condescension and inability to even hear out dissenting viewpoints."
A video of the panel discussion will be posted on the Duke website later this week.
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