CBS News on Kagan: "She brought a lot of young conservatives onto the (Harvard) faculty."

[moondust]

(Reported enthusiastically Sunday evening.)

Ugh.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. Well... it's diversity.

[Teaser]

2. to be fair, as an academic

it wasn't her job to ensure that the department be progressive.

[moondust]

3. I think it's a question of judgement.

So to speak.

[NJmaverick]

4. right, this has nothing to do with fairness

I mean we would be screaming bloody murder if right wingers had a position of authority and abused it by hiring only right wingers. Oh wait we did that when Bush remade the Justice Department as a right wing hit machine.

[moondust]

5. See how this works:

"She brought a lot of young John Yoos and Monica Goodlings onto the Harvard faculty."

Good sign?

[NJmaverick]

6. So you are saying that one should abuse their position of authority to

push a political agenda in a non-political job. I can't agree with that idea.

[dsc]

7. Ms. Goodling was utterly unqualified

regardless of ideology. She went to a no name law school and had no discernable qualifications to make up for that fact. I have no problem with hiring conservatives for the Harvard faculty but I have a big problem hiring incompetent hacks.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. I don't see where they said the hires were incompetent

I agree, as somebody who has sat on search committees for academic jobs: the qualifications should be the top priority. It was somebody who opposed Ms. Kagan who brought up Ms. Goodling, in any case. I know - as do you - that Ms. Goodling would not be hired to teach law at Harvard. I doubt Mr. Yoo would either, though Stanford DID hire HIM, and Stanford Law is nothing to sneeze at.

:-)

[NJmaverick]

13. Ms Goodling is not on the Harvard staff

[MidwestTransplant]

15. and she never will be

[Atticus]

29. I'm sorry, but since Stanford basically abandoned integrity as a prerequistie

for its law school faculty and did, indeed, hire John "Anything for a Buck" Yoo, it is very much something to be sneezed at---and snickered at---and discounted as a "prestigious" law school.

[alcibiades_mystery]

30. That may well be

[NJmaverick]

10. She wasn't on the Harvard faculty, so I am not sure what your point is

[dsc]

16. You defended the notion of hiring a young Monica Goodling

and in point of fact you stated that refusing to do so would be an abuse of power.

[Pholus]

17. Refusing to hire on the basis of political belief is an abuse of power!

Goodling is not qualified. Forcing bright young students to endure her class might be a worthwhile educational experience though...

[dsc]

18. I agree that using ideology alone to refuse to hire is wrong

but competence matters. I have no idea if she hired competent or incompetent conservatives.

[NJmaverick]

20. Yet Kagan is being attacked for refusing to hire based on ideology

:shrug:

[moondust]

23. Wrong.

In the first place she is not being attacked. More specifically she is not being attacked for refusing to hire based on ideology.

There is ample reason for concern and further investigation when this OP is added to this post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8301997&mesg_id=8301997

[dsc]

26. that honestly is a big problem

[NJmaverick]

19. Seriously?!?! I said the EXACT OPPOSITE. I said we were angry when those sort of hirings were done

by the Bush Justice Department and now this thread is turning around and demanding Kagan do the EXACT SAME THING only hiring liberals

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. Were they qualified for the positions?

Monica Goodling, I'm guessing not so much.

[NJmaverick]

12. Goodling wasn't hired so what's your point????

[alcibiades_mystery]

27. Uh, that's my point

The qualifications are the only thing that matters. In this case, I suspect the hires were qualified. What's your point?

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[CTLawGuy]

36. all onservatives != Monica Goodling/John Yoo

NT

[Pholus]

11. I won't say this is bad yet...

Conservatives generally avoid academia since if they have any talent they can be well paid doing something else. Where do you think their saying that "Those who
can, do. Those who can't teach." comes from? They don't have an innate understanding of the great returns in investing your talents into others and it isn't in their nature to help others for reasons other than hard compensation.

That makes them rare as hen's teeth. And really valuable.

Academia is still the marketplace of ideas. Conservative ideas are rare there by conservative self selection, but the rest of us need to have them represented just to show what utter BS they are.

So she is diligent in that aspect of her work.

[Alcibiades]

21. That's not even true

I'm a political scientist. In my field, political theory, there are scads of conservatives: I know because they trained me. Economics, business, many of the sciences have plenty of conservatives.

There are plenty more conservatives on campus than these folks would allow. They are not rare as hen's teeth: in fact, the sheer number of right wing research funders make being a right wing social scientist something of a gold mine, so it's a growth industry.

[jefferson_dem]

28. That's my experience also.

It's odd how conservatives tend to land in the political theory positions. Of course, there are typically only one or two theory positions in most political science departments which relegates those conservative theory folks to token "antagonist" status. Liberal political leanings definitely dominate, and I'm cool with that. Of course, we're supposed to be value-free social scientists anyway. :)

[Alcibiades]

31. Plus the assumption that someone might be hired for politics

is ludicrous. The idea that a search committee would not hire a candidate who is qualified for the position and who is objectively better than other candidates on the basis of politics seems absurd.

The number of conservatives in political theory isn't too surprising, given that there's a super-secret, almost esoteric, network of folks who advocate not only for the hiring of their students, but also for the students of other folks in the super-secret, almost esoteric, network.

[jefferson_dem]

14. Conservatives on University faculty?

:wow:

The horror...

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

42. DU seems to manufacture new, previously unimaginable horrors on a daily basis.

Of course, all said horrors are strictly imaginary, but that's not the point.

[jeanpalmer]

43. It would be ok

if they didn't pimp themselves to the corporations for research dollars.

[tammywammy]

24. I have absolutely no problem with this n/t

[HughMoran]

25. She's a right-winger

Can't beat 'em, join 'em!

:P

[IndianaGreen]

32. She hired a lot of white men

Her record on minorities was dismal.

[Aramchek]

35. so Obama's picking a Racist?? Give us all a big break!

[phleshdef]

33. First off, political leanings shouldn't even be a topic when hiring someone for a faculty job.

[freddie mertz]

38. Correct! It should and cannot be ethically asked.

Hiring on the basis of personal politics or religion, etc, is pretty much anathema in academic ethics.

Schools that do so tend to be right wing ones like Liberty, etc.

Certainly not at Harvard.

[impik]

34. Just like Obama did in Harvard Law Review. They're consensus builders

[Dinger]

37. Oh Great (nt)

[Starbucks Anarchist]

39. Multiple viewpoints in higher education? Noooo!

[Political Tiger]

40. You mean she should do like Bush did

which was to hire people who only shared his political views whether they were qualified for the job or not?

[QC]

41. That approach could easily boomerang on her

and then what in the diddle would she do?