Academic bias

The famously Bush-hating Jonathan Chait has an article in which he defends the overwhelming Leftist bias in academe. He rejects the notion that underrepresentation implies bias, though he realizes that Leftists like himself normally make the opposite argument where blacks are concerned. That does rather highlight the difficulties that the dishonesty of Leftists gets them into. Chait in fact is forced to admit that conservatives are right and that lack of proportionality does not imply bias! A major backdown for a Leftist, it seems to me. He also has a point in saying that academe is not a natural career choice for a conservative, though I disagree with his reasons. Academe is a stuffy bureaucracy and conservatives prefer the more free-wheeling and wide-open business world. I was in academe for many years and I am in no doubt that most of my colleagues would not last 5 minutes in business. My own combination of actual success in both academe and business is certainly extremely rare. There are however many conservatives with academic ambitions and Chait ignores what almost every one of those people could tell him -- that you virtually cease to exist in academe once your conservative views are known. Like most conservatives who do make it into academe, I got an academic job before my political views were known but once they were known, the roadblocks put up to my further progress in academe were almost amusing in their compulsiveness and violation of academic principles. Chait is just not acknowledging the facts, which is what I expect from Leftists. I have more on the Leftist nature of academe here and Prof. Bainbridge also gives Chait a serve.