Harvey Mansfield -- The Left on Campus

welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson be sure to follow us at on twitter at twitter.com/usembassymanila junior matriculated at harvard in 1949 and has been there ever since he received his bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1958 excuse me 1953 and his doctorate from Harvard in 1961 in 1962 he joined the Harvard faculty and today professor Mansfield is the William R Kenan junior professor of government at Harvard the author of translations and studies of political philosophers from Aristotle to Burke to Machiavelli to Tocqueville but professor Mansfield is the author of more than a dozen books including America's constitutional soul the controversial manliness and just out Tocqueville in a size that anybody can take a very short introduction to Tocqueville today on uncommon knowledge one of the most distinguished academics in America on the state of the American Academy Harvey let me begin by noting that when you were asked not long ago to name your proudest achievement you replied and I quote you at a certain point in my career at Harvard I decided to raise a little hell close quote would you care to explain yourself oh well the raising of hell was your priority how are you I decided to have a little fun most professors have who have tenure are very security conscious that's a strange thing you would think that somebody who has lifetime tenure would be willing to take a few adventures whoop it up a little yeah but they don't I think it seems that when you have security you become even more obsessed about security it isn't that it sets you free so I decided to make use of my tenure all right I'm going to do that by raising hell all right let's raise a little hell together right now segment one leanings few statistics political contributions by the faculties of several Ivy League institution during the presidential election year of 2008 Harvard 7% two Republican candidates 93 percent two Democrats Yale 6% to Republicans 94% to Democrats my own beloved Dartmouth apparently a bastion of conservatism with 14% to Republicans and a mere 86% to Democrats Harvey why is this why are the faculty at so many impressive institutions so monolithically to the left they can't help it they because they see each other and live with each other and listen to each other and talk to each other and they all turned left and in this way in the late 60s you saw happen I saw it happen that's when it took place in the late 60s the new left took over from liberalism the new left's main enemy was not conservatism there weren't many conservatives at that time Harvin was run by liberals of an older kind cold war liberals a lot of them and so and so that would be that would have been the when you entered Harvard the faculty would have been dominated by I'm trying to adjust my a Cold War liberal would have been John Kennedy that's right willing to endorse the New Deal people like that young but proud of the United States a sense of national morale willing to deploy American force abroad that would have been the Harvard faculty and all of them hard graders will come to that yeah all right so yes that's so yeah that was there well at that time they were simply taken over by the young some of them fought and they and I fought with them I was younger but most of them succumbed to the siren call of the new left which placed the protesting youth in charge of the university they were taking over the from the establishment the various institutions which had gotten us into the Vietnam War and even more were miss applying Authority and and and and and in general stultifying the country that was what what their view was and that all of us were undemocratic because we graded people and because we had had standards and we thought that some people were smarter than others they came after us and they invaded classrooms and in and interrupted public discussions and pushed everybody in the universities to the left what I saw then was just how weak liberalism was and so because there was a delight incentive there was no fight no longer did it it was a liberal somebody who stood up for something and and stood up in defense of Liberty but it was a person who was also eager to please and also afraid of being criticized by those younger than he at that time that you could say the youth and the students took over the university that's receded somewhat they no longer run the place and yet in a way they do because they are and they have they don't have tenure but there yep the SU right and professors they now have ten right yeah the students come and go still but they're they're very much very politicized and very much to the left now you say so all this begins I think from the students I see and the Faculty's surrender to the students segment to Western civilization historian Gilbert allerdyce quote for a time between the first world war in the campus protests of the 60s all roads led to the Western Civ class classrooms filled teachers multiplied in the discussion sections generations of teaching assistants began their apprenticeship in college instruction then came to collapse as Stanford where we're taping this program was considering its curriculum in the 1980s Jesse Jackson led hundreds of students in chanting hey hey ho ho Western Civ has got too go the historian Victor Davis Hanson tells of giving a lecture about the history of the West and realizing about halfway through that most of the students expected him to talk about Cowboys that was what the West meant to them Western civilization great books Athens and Jerusalem gone what happened yes I was going to add great books to your mentioning of a West F Western Civ yes those have gone those are those books make us think and on and that and that kind of history presents us with the problems of our civilization Western civilization is not one thing it's in a way divided against itself in a very interesting way the most important perhaps between church and state between theology and philosophy and so Western civilization is not a civilization which has one answer one authoritative answers orbiting but it contains within itself problems and questions so it's much more interesting and also more powerful than other non-western civilizations and we've seen that they've gradually watched Western civilization civilization cover the globe and come to them and and force them to make concessions to it so what Western civilization is something or which is for full of interest and full of questions and so one of the aspects of this that's all I've always found puzzling is just as you say that to study Western so they're great books if you start with homer and include the Hebrew Scriptures and work your way through it's not always a pretty picture and moreover the self critique begins right from the very beginning Homer is filled with what we have to believe are intentionally moral and morally ambiguous moments surely you have the prophets in the Old Testament attacking the kings and so the openness of the civilization itself to protest from within it's almost as though there's a very a low notion that two studies Western civilization is to come adoring and a simple-minded way to our own history which is not the case at all that's right as if it were all a canon yet for enforced by some sacred authority that's certainly not true no you have you've written an essay back when Harvard was reconsidering its core curriculum in the 90s you wrote an essay in which you made a number of specific recommendations and alas we don't have time to go all the way through your essay right now but I'd like to if you could give me a few sentences on each of these you've got Western civilization as a recommendation you made for the Harvard curriculum quote a course that begins with Homer and then somewhere in the vicinity of Nietzsche still makes a lot of sense why does it still make sense those are if you go through homer tune each mentioning say a dozen names those would give you ended read those books those will give you the main alternatives behind our way of life today and so in that way those it would be extremely relevant relevance was a demand of the late 60s but they didn't ever get to it because they were afraid of permanence what those great books and what Western civilization courses do is open you to the permanent problems of mankind and of human nature the questions that return again and again what is the good life is it a good thing to be ambitious or is it in general a bad and selfish thing to do but by the time undergraduates have matriculated Harvard that one's already been answered religion quote religion should not only be present but central in our curriculum well it's central in the lives of billions and billions of people and it's also a central question in our society and again in our Western history so what do we live under God or we to our own devices to do what we wish or what we think right Oh what is the need for authority what kind of God exists if there is a God all these are the absolutely central questions and we see it even in our time or in our age of science science cannot defend itself science doesn't have answers to the big questions that religion faces and attempts to answer the military quote this is hardly taught at all close quote it's amazing for example in my department a political scientists a lot of them study civic engagement the lack of civic engagement our society is too individualistic too selfish how do we get together it never occurs to them that a person who volunteers to serve in the military is engaged in civic engagement they think that it's all a matter of well to cite President Obama community organizing yeah getting people together or holding hands while we pretend to tolerate each other America quote far too little is taught about America at Harvard we're much too apologetic about America we are embarrassed that America is as powerful and as prominent as it seems to be and there's a considerable doubt that we deserve to be in that place well alright let's look at the facts how did we get to where we are that would be one big question that undergraduate students ought to consider when it's their own country involved segment 3 Harvey C 4 C - Mansfield I'm told by some of your former students that you did you earned that nickname a statistic and a quotation here's the statistic in 1950 about one-sixth of the students in any given course at Harvard received a grade of B+ or higher a sixth by 2007 more than half received a minus or higher here's the quotation Harvey Mansfield quote there is something inappropriate almost sick in the spectacle of mature adults showering young people with unbelievable praise close quote make sick explain yourself it's passing strange that's a kind of sake that the professor's will devoted their lives to their field should be so quick to find excellence in so many students it just doesn't make sense that 50% of a Harvard class can be can receive an A or a - and yet that's what our average is that's what our average is now you have famously introduced your own antidote to grade inflation would you explain to us how ironic grading works well I decided to give my students two grades one is the one that it goes to the registrar that's the ironic grade and that's based on a Harvard average and the other one is a private grade from me to them telling them what they really deserve and this sort of it's a way of showing my contempt for the Great Inflation that we have at Harvard now and is not just at Harvard obviously but all American universities and on the other hand not punishing my own students for taking my course I've talked to a number of your former students and it's the grade that comes from you that matters to them they do what they do appreciate it now how many professors at Harvard have followed your example giving real grades even if only privately ah I don't know I don't I haven't heard of any you are unaware of any young not aware here's another way of getting at the same kind of question in 2004 Princeton decided to end Great Inflation just did it and they imposed a rule that in no department could more than 35% of the students who took a course in that department receive a's so they just enforced a university-wide curve at Dartmouth they've taken they've addressed the problem by printing not only the students grade but the median grade in the course on the transcript so an A and of course where the median is a is less impressive than an A and of course where the median is B - as far as I know Princeton which just ended it Dartmouth which is struggling with it out of eight Ivy League institutions those are the only two to take action what is going on what why should it be what is what it explained to me the psychology behind this collapse of grading standards it becomes routine to give everybody high grades it's just laziness because it is easy to it becomes laziness it starts off as as a point of view a point of view namely that and this again from the late 60s that it's oppression for a professor to be in the position of a greater of passing judgment on on the young we should listen to them not instruct them or in any way command them but that's but that principle is not really held any longer it's just that it has fallen into a routine in which it is easy for professors to give high grades because students don't complain the students like it the parents like it the administrators of the universities like it because the students don't don't make a fuss and and and the rest employers afterwards or graduate schools just have to make just have to shift with it a segment for gender or the absence thereof harvey mansfield quote this actually as a parent who's writing big checks to a child in college and all this is this is the one that brings tears to your eyes Harvey Mansfield quote together the feminists and the left make up perhaps half the faculty the other half being moderate liberals who are afraid of the feminists rather than with them close quote let's unpack that to begin with distinguish the feminists from the left well those are almost all women obviously and and and they they are on the left but they are always insist on raising the question of of affirmative action or of having more women and and always more having more women means having more women of their kind it doesn't mean having more conservative women having a diversity or a variety of points of view among women no but so so but so their concentration is always on the women's question and this isn't always so with those who are more generally on the left alright now this question you've just touched on this question of diversity diversity is the word that gets used over and over again and you have made the point that on the government Department there are roughly 50 professors and you have said about three conservatives yes so I put to you what you already know which is that if there were 50 professors and only three women Harvard University would be all over that in a moment if there were 50 professors and only three persons of color the university would be all over that because Harvard University cares about ethnic and gender diversity but 50 professors and only 3 conservatives shrug yeah why doesn't the University of course Harvard is the example we're using but what we're saying is true of university after University why shouldn't it care most about intellectual diversity well of course it should but it doesn't these people all of a sudden go moral and saying oh you mustn't force us to make appointments on the basis of politics so we only choose whoever's best and if it just turns out that you've got 47 liberals and three conservatives well that is funny what it's not really objectionable and it isn't as if you conservatives really suffer you're being conservative you probably have more money than the rest of us oh um I'll quote you again Harvey quote in my time I think by my time you're talking about your student or early days on the faculty women expected to be happy in life without having a career women are now as ambitious as men having a career has become their duty how strange that the women's movement inspired by some time Marxists like Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Ford Ann has brought about a great increase in bourgeois career ISM among young women so instead of empowering women as women the feminist movement has instructed them to act like men is that correct that's exactly correct that's exactly what its effect has been would I get in an honest a for that question yes you are all excellent yeah and it shows up in matters of sex too as if feminism understands equality as sexual equality and sexual equality means that women should be is free to be as great predators as the worst of men and so they they look on us as a sexual license and having fun in that rather advanced way as a matter of political principle uh all right from women to men manliness your your 2006 controversial book as feminism in the Academy has risen what has happened to manliness well it's uh it's under a cloud of suspicion to put it mildly i I don't think that manliness is ever in danger of disappearing it's part of human nature and that I think is where I mainly differ from the feminists so it isn't that it's gone or disappeared it's just that it's no longer employed it no longer exists with regard and that's right it's notice that's what somehow that is on the side yeah and that's an exception which is strangely made to please the alumni right please the alumni and a few of them or rowdy males I'll quote you again Harvey today we live in a gender neutral Society it's a side society in which your sex matters as little as possible it doesn't give you your rights or your duties and certainly not your place this is new it hasn't been done before in human history the gender neutral society is really a kind of experiment how's the experiment coming out well if it's hard to know because it doesn't regard itself as an experiment it regards itself as a perfectly natural development out of democracy that democracy has a tendency a tendency become more and more democratic as talked Phil remarked and this is just another instance among many that could be cited to make that point and and so they don't they don't think of this as doing something strange although they are certainly conscious that no no other society that they can name has ever been the gender neutral before and it's they're only one or two possible feminist utopias in which such societies have been conceived a segment 5 speech quoting you again Harvey sensitivity is today's version of the soft despotism that Alexis de Tocqueville worried about in democracies and it would not have surprised him that the worst of it would be found in the halls of the intellect let's take that one step by step what did Tocqueville mean by soft despotism its democratic despotism it's a despotism which arises from the dangerous individuality or individual what he calls individualism in modern democracy that's when people decide that they can't do anything on their own with other people that they are the victim of huge historical forces that are mindless and extremely powerful and so they react by returning to their own private lives their family their friends and themselves and let government run their politics for them so it's it's a kind of despotism that results so automatically without being intended by anybody and works through benevolent measures big government or the immense being of government that Tocqueville refers to is perfectly good well-intentioned and doesn't mean to lord it over you but it just ends up doing that mostly because people decide to allow it to do that how is it that sensitivity has now become a form of soft despotism sensitivity is letting other people's reactions to you decide your behavior so instead of choosing to do what you think is right and then defending it you say something or try out something or listen to other people demand something and try to adapt to that so instead of when the students chant hey hey ho ho Western Civ has gotta go and the professorial which has dedicated its life to Western civilization says if it has to go it has to go yeah that's sensitivity exactly yeah now why is it the - Tocqueville wouldn't have been surprised to find the worst of it in the halls of the intellect because it is something that's begins as an intellectual proposition the proposition that we don't really run our own lives but we are victims or puppets of large historical forces beyond our control I'll quote you again being sensitive to blacks and women we're talking about life on campus now gave them the right to be offended when they pleased and they were encouraged to react with indignation whenever they felt put upon thus the notion of sensitivity led to less toleration rather than more those not tolerated were of course conservatives close quote yeah less toleration rather than more well because at some you start off by demanding toleration and then understand toleration as agreeing with you or making you feel welcome or making you feel or or in making you feel that you agree that you're in agreement the two of you so it becomes a demand that the person who's tolerating actually take measures to prevent the other fellow from the person the victim from feeling bad and this led to the proliferation of speech codes on campuses in the 90s and early 2000s where the notion was you shouldn't say anything that would make anyone else feel uncomfortable how do you know it would make them feel uncomfortable they say they're uncomfortable yes oh it submerges the standard into a purely subjective yeah and it encourages people to say I feel uncomfortable right because that's a way of grasping power they pick out certain things to say now for example black students I was once accused of saying you people well that's a phrase which is sometimes used I suppose to refer disparagingly to a group of blacks but you people so they pick on that not on what they take to be sort of signals then in other people's speech and interpret it as malign a kind of malevolence on on the part of the speaker right and so what in the second half of that quotation what I find so striking is that of course those not tolerated were of course conservatives we hear over and over and over again that the reason there are more people to the left in faculty than conservatives is that well that's just not the kind of life that attracts conservatives they'd rather go make money on Wall Street or they'd rather go into the military probably not very many liberals in the military are there so it's just the way things being sort themselves out and in this of course you're saying not a bit of it there is an active animus against conservatives on campus is that correct yes the people who put toleration first are intolerant of those who don't put toleration first if you have any kind of principle or live try to live by any kind of principle then toleration is not the most important thing in your life but by persuasion or for doing the right thing and persuading other people to agree with you or at least to tolerate you right so they but the the Liberals have often or typically taken choice as and and then and and a demand for toleration of infinite choice as their their principal when in fact the difficulty is which choice should you make they'll tell you what Marvy which which principle should you use I wished it one final time let me quote you to yourself and I have to say this is just outrageous for you to say this Harvey the way you do conservatism is closer to the mission of the University than liberalism is conservatives are more tolerant than liberals close quote now I've asked you to explain yourself a number of times this is one case in which I'd ask you to defend yourself yes conservatives are more tolerant because conservatives don't expect that liberalism is going to disappear whereas liberals expect that conservatism will disappear and that's because they think that conservatism is based on superstition or prejudice something that isn't in necessary to or human life and that is and that can easily be dispensed with so there's no excuse therefore for a conservative to remain conservative once he's enlightened once he's seen the truth then he'll abandon his view but conservatives I think have don't have that illusion they know that there will always be the left right and it will come back in one form or another and that our politics consists of a kind of alternation between left and right and they're more much more tolerant of of people who disagree with them conservatism is closer to the mission of the university how yeah that's because the mission of the university should be to open minds and not to close them it should be not to be it shouldn't declare that certain people are prejudiced and shouldn't be listened to and committee easily dismissed that's the way of political correctness and that's not the way of a proper university professor Harvey Mansfield a Harvard man since 1953 1949 1949 excuse me since matriculating not since graduating since 1949 the author of countless books including manliness and just out tocqueville which I actually am going to put this one in my pocket and get myself a refresher course in Tocqueville on my vacation this week thank you very much it's been a pleasure a pleasure will have to reconvene and talk about Tocqueville next time I'm Peter Robinson for uncommon knowledge and the Hoover Institution thanks for joining us

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Keywords: HooverInstitutionUK, Ivy League, liberal, culture, western civilization, education, schools, college, excellence, grade inflation, diversity, race, ethnicity

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Length: 33min 8sec (1988 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2010