Saving American Political Science and Saving America: Thoughts and Recommendations for Restoring Pluralism | American Enterprise Institute

• In the 20th century, the American Political Science Association (APSA) and its representative fields promoted pluralism, but behind-the-scenes pressure from activists and generational shifts have pushed APSA to the left in personnel and leadership in the 21st century. Shifted. ,Conference configuration.
• Restoring ideological pluralism can ensure a more scientifically rigorous and politically legitimate field. This will require conservative political scientists to come out of the closet and build bridges with their pluralist colleagues on the center and left.
• Policymakers can help promote pluralism by withholding funding from (secular) universities that restrict freedom of expression through measures such as required diversity, equity, and inclusion statements. can. It also helps improve K-12 schooling to emphasize pluralism and convey the true history of Marxism rather than the one presented by critical theorists.

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The House Education and Labor Committee hearing on anti-Semitism in higher education on December 5, 2023, embarrassed American political science (of which I am a member). Two of the three university presidents who disgraced themselves had degrees in my field and received their degrees from elite universities.¹

in his classic The tragedy of political science: politics, scholarship, and democracyDavid M. Rich accused our discipline of being divorced from real-world politics.² The December hearing revealed a far greater moral tragedy than Rich had imagined, with more than just normal politics acknowledging that calling for the extermination of Jews violates American norms. Even basic human decency and judgment were violated. This marks the triumph of critical theory in the academy.³

How did that happen? How can I set things right?

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Note

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Williams College. Harvard University President Claudine Gay won the Harvard Toppan Prize in 1998 for her (plagiarized) paper.

2. David M. Rich, The tragedy of political science: politics, scholarship, and democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987).

3. Robert Marant, “Postcolonial Theory: Why Students Support Hamas and What Educators Should Do About It.” star tribuneNovember 8, 2023, https://m.startribune.com/why-students-back-hamas-and-what-educators-Should-do-about-it/600318317; and Helen Pruckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical theory: How activist scholarship has made everything about race, gender, and identity. (Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020). Critical theory divides society into oppressed and privileged castes and depicts demographic characteristics as essentialist, while denying most of Western civilization, such as the rule of law, the scientific method, and the democratic process. Cover the sides. Although scholars debate the extent to which critical theory derives from Marxism, all agree that critical theory opposes pluralism, free speech, free elections, and free market economics. There is.