Majoritarian Departmental Politics and the Professional Pyramid :

1. Majoritarian Departmental Politics and the Professional Pyramid : Groupthink Mechanisms in Academia in the United States Link to paper as published in The Independent Review

2. Classical liberal professors are rare • Professors in the humanities and social sciences (abbreviated h/ss) in the US are dominated by social democrats. • They are generally highly supportive of status-quo interventions and welfare state policies. • In h/ss, Democrats outnumber Republicans about 8 to 1. (Democrats are almost never classical liberals.)

3. 1= pro-intervention5= pro-laissez-faire

4. Economics an exception?

5. Economics is not nearly as different as many think. • Overall policy index: 2.65 • D to R is about 2.9 to 1. • Only about 10% of economists can be called serious free-market supporters.

6. Why so few classical liberals? • Because academics are wise and enlightened, and classical liberalism is unwise and unenlightened. • Because classical liberalism is wise and enlightened, and academics are unwise and unenlightened to the extent that they oppose classical liberalism. We proceed on the presupposition of 2.

7. Why are liberal professors so rare? • A broader question: Why are liberals in general rare? • The question about professors is intertwined with the question about people in general. • Here we focus on structural features of academia. We speculate on how bad thinking could become locked-in and self-perpetuating.

8. Groupthink -- the idea that a group can make bad decisions and hold bad beliefs because of bad practices and attitudes: • Excessive concurrence-seeking within the group. A lack of critical examination within the group. • Too insulated from outside criticism. Outsiders are stereotyped. • The group validates its own beliefs and decisions. Little independent testing, analysis, or evaluation.

9. Groupthink • The idea has academic respectability. • It approaches cases with a presupposition of defectiveness. • Groupthink is an explanation for defective thinking. • “Groupthink” is pejorative. • The term is used with hindsight.

10. Groupthink settings • The cases are generally narrow policy decisions taken by a small group. • Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba • Vietnam War escalation • Watergate cover-up • Space shuttle Challenger disaster • Etc. They are afterwards recognized as fiascos, even by the perpetrators.

11. Groupthink literature • Irving L. Janis, Groupthink, 2nd ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1982. • Paul ‘t Hart, Groupthink in Government: A Study of Small Groups and Policy Failure, Johns Hopkins, 1990.

12. Groupthink literature • Sociology, social psychology literatures: • group dynamics • organizational theory and behavior • Groupthink is also applied in: • political science • international relations • public administration • management

13. Janis “Groupthink refers to a deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment that results from in-group pressures.” (9)

14. Hart “the focus of this study will be on flaws in the operation of small, high-level groups at the helm of major projects or policies that become fiascoes.” (4)

15. Similarities between Janis-Hart and our application • The analysts presuppose that beliefs and actions are defective/unenlightened • There is an in-group • many parallel mechanisms

16. Differences between Janis-Hart and our application J-H groups are • small • chief-based • concerned about security leaks • often under great stress • often making high-stakes or risky decisions • dealing with immediate exigent issues.

17. Differences between Janis-Hart and our application • J-H groups sustain groupthink beliefs that are: • specific to the decision at hand • shallow, not about one’s identity • greater potential for eventual admission of defectiveness

18. Differences between Janis-Hart and our application Compared to J-H groups: • Academic groups are: • larger • group boundaries are blurrier • less chief-based • less policy/action oriented • less stressful, urgent, risky, secret. • Academic beliefs are: • deeper, more complex, 25-to-grave • more like moral, political, and aesthetic values

19. Adapting the theory to academia The differences make academia a less cohesive group, with less clear policy decisions. However, certain structural features have made each academic “tribe” more cohesive than meets the eye.

20. Groupthink in academia? How can entire disciplinary professions—like Political Science, History, Sociology, and so on—become mired in unenlightened ideas? An explanation must relate micro decisions to macro norms and values.

21. What is the XYU History Department? You see XYU, with its campus and buildings. You think of XYU as a hierarchical organization, led by the Provost or President, the trustees, the Deans of the divisions or colleges. Beneath them, inside a building, on each floor is an academic department.

22. What is the XYU History Department?

23. Department • “Department” sounds like a part. • It sounds like a sub-unit within a larger agency. • It sounds subordinate to agency chiefs.

24. An Agency Unto Itself Important departmental decisions • Who to hire? • Who to tenure and promote? • What to teach? • What to research? Whom to write for? • Which students to promote? The provost, dean, etc. cannot meddle in History decisions. On questions of History, no one is above the department. The department is autonomous.

25. Departmental Procedure • How are hiring decisions made? • Answer: Majority vote. • What happens when 51 percent share an ideology and feel that to be a good colleague and professor one must share that ideology? • They hire one like themselves. • Making it 60 percent, then 70 percent, then 80 percent . . . • A tendency toward ideological uniformity within the department. • The gradual elimination of minority points of view.

26. Departmental Ethos • However, a major principle is consensus. • It is possible for a vocal minority to sink a candidate. • A tendency toward bland, OK-by-everyone candidates.

27. Diverse History Departments? • The XYU History will tend to become ideologically uniform. • Might we get diverse History departments at different universities?

28. On what basis does the department decide? • Important decisions (again) • Who to hire? • Who to tenure and promote? • What to teach? • What to research? Whom to write for? • Which students to promote? • Answer: The professional norms and standards of History, the profession. • Partly, out of sincere faith in History • Partly, out of practical need for focal points for consensus making

29. History: The Profession • Nationwide, each History dept functions within a mono-centricclub called History • The club hierarchy cuts laterally across the country • The XYU History dept is more a creature of History than of XYU

30. The Professional Pyramid • The “ranking” of: • Departments • Journals • Historians (“leaders of the sub-field”) • Awards, kudos, grants

31. Again, the History Dept at XYU

32. Again, History cuts laterallyin space

33. Again, the XYU History Department is more a creature of History than of XYU

34. Professional Hierarchy • People like to think that the discipline is: • filled with independent spirits and independent centers of scholarship • polycentric • contestable • diverse • But if you get out the microscope and think about how the profession functions, you realize it is very hierarchical. • It is highly focused on the apex (including “field” apexes).

35. The only encompassing standard • Without an encompassing standard, a discipline has no prospect of being a coherent enterprise. • “History is what historians do. Historians are those with History degrees and History appointments.”

36. Heterodoxy is heterodox • Despite heterodox protestations, the pyramid remains the gravitational well of group practice and individual ambition. • Heterodoxies focus on criticizing the mainstream. People fight over influence and power within the pyramid. • If parallel pyramids get erected, they generally are either ignored or are co-opted into the official pyramid.

37. How much real heterodoxy? • There are almost no classical liberal historians, especially at the apex. • What are the classical-liberal parallel pyramids in History?

38. Material Resources • Jobs, pay and security • Not having to teach • Grant money • Grad students: • research assistants • teaching assistants • an audience • protégés

39. Encompassing public and private • 70 percent of professors are government employees. • But privates schools are enmeshed in the same History profession. • New PhDs must be sold to the profession. • Public or private doesn’t matter much. XYU History dept is mainly a creature of History.

40. The market for History professors • Is it like the market for waiters? • Thought experiment: What if waiters were like History professors?

41. If Waiters were like History profs • Each waiter job is controlled by a collection of other waiters, a Waiter Department. • Each Waiter Department spends money with slight regard for the preferences of restaurant customers. • There are 200 Waiter Departments. Each Waiter Department gets whatever prestige and revenue-base it commands principally by adhering to the standards of the encompassing club. • Each Waiter Department produces the new young waiters, whom it tries to place in the pyramid.

42. If Waiters were like History profs • Non-waiters are deemed unqualified to criticize the standards of the Waiter club. • Waiters at top departments set the tone. • Waiters at the top departments rub shoulders with cultural elites.

43. If Waiters were like History profs • Then there might be a groupthink problem among waiters.

44. The market for Historians • History is not like a normal labor market. • Supply and demand consist of historians! Historians producing historians. Historians buying historians.

45. A Professional Club • History is like a genteel society drawing resources indirectly, much from tax-payers. • Circularities: • Self-validating: Historians validate each other and the pyramid • They replicate themselves in PhD students

46. A scary thought • What if a small number of departments: • held unenlightened ideas • validated each other • gained influence over the entire discipline • manufactured most of the new PhDs • who then filled most of the jobs at all schools?

47. The case of Economics Let’s look at: The percentage of economics faculty with Ph.D. from the worldwide top 35 economics departments . . . [source: D.B. Klein,”The PhD Circle in Academic Economics,” Econ Journal Watch, April 2005]

48. The case of Economics

49. The case of Sociology in US Val Burris, “The Academic Caste System: Prestige Hierarchies in PhD Exchange Networks,” American Sociological Review, 2004 . . .

50. The case of US Sociology in US “Graduates from the top 5 departments account for roughly one-third of all faculty hired in all 94 departments. The top 20 departments account for roughly 70 percent of the total. Boundaries to upward mobility are extremely rigid. Sociologists with degrees from non-top 20 departments are rarely hired at top 20 departments and almost never hired at top 5 departments.”(247-249).