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(Tenured Radical)

Thursday, December 09, 2004

BLUESTER MAKEOVER TIP #1:

STOP SAYING "IT'S COMPLICATED."


Tip #1 goes out to the many professors who, on being asked about the extreme blue/red disparity in the university, keep saying, "It's complicated."

When you, a university professor, say this, it sounds to many non-professors as though you are trying to change the subject, or to make the subject appear too complex to define, let alone address.

Growing numbers of statistical studies on the subject make it clear to all but the most obtuse that the situation is not complicated. There is a scandalous degree of non-diversity in one of the most diversity-pious settings in America: the university.

Professors are free to find this situation of analytical interest. But it stands as an overwhelming fact, and professors should be talking policy, not nattering on about the philosophy of knowledge, etc., etc.