Henry Butler, dean of the Scalia Law School
There’s no disputing that the faculty of U.S. colleges and universities skew heavily to the left side of the ideological spectrum. Mitchell Langbert, a Brooklyn College professor, reviewed the party affiliations of 8,688 tenure-track, Ph.D.-holding professors at 51 of the top 60 liberal arts college and found that, of those registered either as Democrats or Republicans, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 10 to one. Two out of five colleges had zero registered Republicans.
And for some people, it seems, that’s just too darn many Republicans.
Now the culture wars are buffeting George Mason University as lefties seek to humble two rare institutions — the Antonin Scalia Law School and the Mercatus Institute — where conservatives and libertarians predominate. The New York Times and Washington Post both have highlighted the work of a student group, Transparent GMU, claiming that “deep-pocket donors” like the Koch Brothers “were given undue influence over academic affairs.”
The NYT indictment:
As early as 1990, entities controlled by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch were given a seat on a committee to pick candidates for a professorship that they funded, the records show. Similar arrangements that continued through 2009 gave donors decision-making roles in selecting candidates for key economics appointments at the Mercatus Center, a Koch-funded think tank on campus that studies markets and regulation. The appointments, which also created faculty lines at George Mason, were steered to professors who, like the Kochs, embraced unconstrained free markets.
More recently, in 2016, executives of the Federalist Society, a conservative national organization of lawyers, served as agents for a $20 million gift from an anonymous donor, and were given the right to terminate installments of the gift at their discretion. Emails disclosed by the university show that Federalist Society officials were also involved in hiring discussions and had suggested a student for admission. In turn, a professor at the law school wrote the society asking for help securing recommendations for prestigious federal judicial clerkships for students active in the society.
There are two levels of response. One is the one that Law School Dean Henry Butler takes here, responding point by point to the NYT article. He dives deep into the weeds, and it’s an effective rebuttal if you have the inclination to wade through it. That approach may work with law school faculty, students and alumni who are intimately familiar with the school, its history and its personalities. I haven’t spoken to Butler in years (maybe decades), but I knew him when he was a young and passionate conservative who would have adopted a more combative tone. As dean, I suppose, he has to take university politics into account, so he chose instead to maintain a measured demeanor.
Which brings us to the other level of response — punching back. It’s not enough that liberals and progressives dominate college faculties by a 10 to one margin. It’s not enough that identity politics has taken root almost everywhere and that conservative speakers are hooted off campus. Far-left progressives basically want to expunge conservatives and libertarians from college campuses, and organs of the progressive movement like the New York Times and Washington Post are only too happy to advance their agenda.
A couple of years ago, I covered a scandal at GMU regarding Jagadish Shukla, head of a climate-change institute who was double dipping from his GMU salary and his federally funded research grant. As I recall, the Washington Post never touched the story, even though it was in their back yard. The New York Times also was nowhere to be seen. No surprise — the Shukla story damaged the progressives’ narrative that the only bad guys in the global warming debate were climate “deniers” and the big fossil fuel companies that funded them. Yeah, Democracy Dies in Darkness. Guess who’s turning out the lights!
Butler focuses only on the “numerous misleading and inaccurate statements in the press coverage.” I’m sure he has his reasons for adopting such a defensive crouch. But he will never win the culture war that way. The progs will come back with another set of allegations again, and again, and again.
And let’s be clear about motives: The progs’ putative interest in academic freedom is purely tactical, just like free speech once was when it suited their purposes and now no longer is. The issue of academic freedom is a club they can use to purge the few conservatives and liberals remaining in academia. The irony is that they aren’t interested in academic freedom at all. They want academic uniformity — one that they define and control.
Update: National Review eviscerates the Washington Post article, rips out the entrails, and feeds them to the dogs.
