Kenneth Arrow on academic freedom

The pointer is from www.politicaltheory.info.  Arrow talks about when university administration should interfere with hiring decisions.  Here is the interview, in which Arrow speaks of Daniel Klein and political bias in academia...

Bowen: There was a study done recently by an economist at Santa Clara University, Daniel Klein, showing disproportionate numbers of registered Democrats versus registered Republicans in various departments at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford. [The study’s findings are available at http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/dk_aw_voter.pdf.] He has concluded that this kind of ideological imbalance has a negative impact on the education of students. He implies that there is a temptation to hire one’s own. Conservative activist David Horowitz has made much the same kind of statement, saying that faculty are preaching rather than teaching. And why?  Because there’s a gross imbalance between liberals and conservatives in the professoriate. Effectively, they are calling for government regulation of the academy [TC: Klein is not, this is inaccurate]. Do you worry about calls for legislation at the state level to correct this situation? Does this worry you as an economist or as a professor?

Arrow: You know, it certainly does worry me. It would worry me a lot if legislation passed. There was a concern at one time that there would be repression of the left. And now there are concerns that the left is taking over. It’s hard for me to judge, of course, but I must say that my department contains a number of Republicans. And they were appointed by a democratic group, whose members said these guys are good, and we’ve got to hire them. And so far, I have not seen it work the other way, but I’m a little concerned about where it could swing. In this case, the criticism seems to be just wrong, because I think the departments hire on the basis of merit. And I think it’s nonsense to say that we’re discriminating against Republicans. We hire them all the time. On the other hand, there was a department here that until the 1960s would not appoint a Jew. And, finally, the university did interfere, you see, in that case. The dean took over the department. He took away the power to appoint from the department and changed its   composition in three or four years. In fact, I was amazed how rapidly he was able to turn things around to strengthen an already very good department. To defend the autonomy of that department would not have been something I would have been very happy to do.

Bowen: The  economics department at the University of Chicago has had a reputation for many years for being quite conservative. Do you think that’s the exception that proves the rule that you hire, as you said earlier, on the basis of merit, not on the basis of party identification of ideology?

Arrow: There are people in that department who are not conservative. It’s a very good department. Most of the conservatives are really quite outstanding. I think they flock together. I don’t think it’s entirely the case where you pick your own kind. I don’t think the economics department here is reproducing itself. They’re different politically and methodologically. I think methodological problems have been bigger more often than political issues. I do not believe the university, the central administration, should be totally unconcerned about appointments. I used to believe that the department had to be completely autonomous. It took me a couple of years to realize that that was not right.

I can remember an instance at Chicago in which there was an incident involving a professor of economics who was sort of a village atheist type. He was a very good economist, but a little eccentric. He believed that religion was one of the big oppressive things in this world. This fellow saw a priest in class. He went and gave his whole lecture on the evils of the Catholic church. The next time the priest came, he gives another lecture. The priest finally quit the class, and the professor said that he could finally go on with the course.

Well, you know, the priest went to the chair of the department who had a very good record on academic freedom at the university. And the chair said it was a question of academic freedom. He wouldn’t interfere with this professor.          

TC: Does anyone have data on Stanford?