Conservatives’ academic view inconsistent

Over the course of the past year, I kept encountering the term
“academic freedom” in the mainstream media.

The subject really did not spark my interest, though, until I
picked up a copy of the Bruin Standard during my first week on
campus.

The words “academic freedom” were splashed across
the paper’s headlines, and I ended up reading through most of
the articles in that issue.

By the end of my reading, something about these students’
arguments was nagging me. It took me about a week and a half to
piece together what was specifically bothering me about their
academic freedom argument.

Subsequently, I deduced that political conservatives do not
realize that their academic freedom argument has a single
fundamental intellectual inconsistency.

This dilemma becomes apparent when one considers the
philosophical basis of political conservatism. I believe that it
starts with the principle of “economic
self-interest.”

Ever since Adam Smith, advocates of the free market have argued
that if everyone in society follows their rational, economic
self-interest, society as a whole will reap the benefits.

Now, I do not dispute the statistics that U.S. universities are
filled with professors who identify more with political liberalism
and that political conservatives are underrepresented.

That said, I believe that in order to understand why this
situation exists, we need to understand how the two concepts of
economic self-interest and opportunity cost interact with the
politically conservative students obtaining advanced degrees.

On most campuses, there are many conservative students, and
indeed a good number of them do go on to obtain advanced
degrees.

The question to ask is: How come these conservative graduate
students do not go into the occupations of teaching and
researching? I believe the answer is simple. It is a matter of
economic self-interest.

If the conservative graduate chooses to be a university
professor, that student suffers the opportunity cost of not
pursuing a career in the lucrative corporate world.

Consequently, a prominent reason that conservatives are
underrepresented in the academic field is that these students are
guided by their own economic self-interest.

For a conservative graduate student to choose the university as
his or her profession is an intellectual inconsistency because that
student is forfeiting the potential millions of dollars that can be
made on Wall Street.

This is not to imply that conservatives are completely void of
altruism or interest in teaching for non-altruistic reasons.

I know a good number of conservatives who give generously to
their churches and other charitable organizations.

However, when it comes to a conservative choosing an occupation,
the person is likely to follow the ideology of obtaining the
maximum economic gain that he or she identifies with.

I would argue that the difference between the salaries of a
corporate executive and a professor is so great that for the
conservative student to choose the professor’s salary is
directly contradicting the principle of following one’s
economic self-interest on this micro-level.

So what are the academic freedom activists at the Bruin Standard
to do in light of this philosophical extrapolation?

Well, two options present themselves. They could either follow
their self-stated principles, or they can continue in their
intellectual inconsistency, become university professors, and try
to eliminate the academic disparity, while giving up the millions
of dollars that can be made by entering the corporate sector.

Gilde is a third-year history student.