University of Arizona Professors Reveal Their Hypocrisy

TUCSON – On July 25, the Arizona Daily Star ran a story (behind a paywall) about professors at the University of Arizona lamenting that the Trump administration has injected politics into science and government grants.

The professors criticized the university administration for not taking a strong stand against the politicization of what should be an objective, unbiased, science-based process.

I nodded my head in agreement with the underlying sentiment while reading the introductory paragraph to the story.

Then, as I continued reading, my BS detector began buzzing to remind me of the fact that the U of A and other universities have often taken sides on political issues and the culture wars instead of staying neutral.  (My son earned two engineering degrees at the U of A, and the university is located in the same town that I now call home.)

On a related note, it’s not a myth that students and speakers who take the wrong side on college campuses have been cancelled and shamed.

At the same time, academics accuse MAGAs of group-think while engaging in their own group-think.  Not only that, but they have something in common with MAGA in their group think:  illiberalism.  They want the state to subjugate the individual to the group, but by different methods, for different groups, for different ends.

Ironically, in the very same Daily Star story where profs railed against politicization, one of them, a director of an institute at the U of A, said that “food security,” “environmental justice,” and “marginalized populations” were among the funding priorities.  He also said the university should continue to work on such “wicked problems” as climate change and water and food security.

Those sounded more like subjective, qualitative value statements from the humanities than the empirical, quantitative, unemotional language of science.

Coincidentally, on July 24, the day before the Daily Star story, the Wall Street Journal published a story (behind a paywall) on a rift occurring in the discipline of sociology.

The rift is between two factions of sociologists.

One faction believes that their mission is to bring about societal change and take a political position on such issues as racism, social justice, colonialism, and all of the other hot-button buzzwords.  As the WSJ story reported, the president of the American Sociological Association described sociology to its members as “currently undergoing a renaissance as antiracist, decolonial, feminist, queer and transnational theorizing lead us to more inclusive insights.”

Geez, why are today’s panjandrums so hackneyed and unoriginal?  Can they speak in anything but vacuous buzzwords?

The other faction of sociologists believes that the social science of sociology should stick to science and not venture into activism and the culture wars.

Neither the WSJ article nor the Daily Star article mentioned that college faculty are overwhelmingly Democrat—less so in engineering, economics and science but still a majority in those disciplines.  The highest percentages of Democrats are in the social sciences and the humanities.  For example, 98% of anthropology faculty are reported to be Democrat.

The skewed politics can be seen on yard signs in a neighborhood next to the U of A campus.  Many professors and college administrators live in the neighborhood and seem to have an insufferable self-regard for their virtuousness.

It’s doubtful that the residents would be glad to have a neighbor who puts a MAGA sign in his front yard.

Are we to believe that U of A faculty and staffers leave their politics on the kitchen counter before heading for campus?

That’s what they want us to believe.  Being virtuous, they certainly wouldn’t try to deceive us.

Mr. Cantoni is an author, activist and retired executive.  Contact:  [email protected].