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Professors and Their Politics tackles the assumption that
universities are ivory towers of radicalism with the potential to
corrupt conservative youth. Neil Gross and Solon Simmons gather the
work of leading sociologists, historians, and other researchers
interested in the relationship between politics and higher
education to present evidence to the contrary. In eleven meaty
chapters, contributors describe the political makeup of American
academia today, consider the causes of its liberal tilt, discuss
the college experience for politically conservative students, and
delve into historical debates about professorial politics. Offering
readable, rigorous analyses rather than polemics, Professors and
Their Politics yields important new insights into the nature of
higher education institutions while challenging dogmas of both the
left and the right.
Moving back and forth between the history of philosophy and the
contributions of philosophers in his own day, Durkheim takes up
topics as diverse as philosophical psychology, logic, ethics, and
metaphysics, and seeks to articulate a unified philosophical
position. Remarkably, in these lectures, given more than a decade
before the publication of his groundbreaking book, The Division of
Labour in Society (1893), the 'social realism' that is so
characteristic of his later work - where he insists, famously, that
social facts cannot be reduced to psychological or economic ones,
and that such facts constrain human action in important ways - is
totally absent in these early lectures. For this reason, they will
be of special interest to students of the history of the social
sciences, for they shed important light on the course of Durkheim's
intellectual development.
Moving back and forth between the history of philosophy and the
contributions of philosophers in his own day, Durkheim takes up
topics as diverse as philosophical psychology, logic, ethics, and
metaphysics, and seeks to articulate a unified philosophical
position. Remarkably, the 'social realism' that is so
characteristic of his later work - where he insists, famously, that
social facts cannot be reduced to psychological or economic ones,
and that such facts constrain human action in important ways - is
totally absent in these early lectures. For this reason, they will
be of special interest to students of the history of the social
sciences, for they shed important light on the course of Durkheim's
intellectual development. Intellectual historians,
historically-minded philosophers, and French historians will all
find the lectures a valuable historical document. Insofar as they
speak to the philosophical foundations of Durkheim's thought, they
should also be of great interest to social theorists."
On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York
Times as "one of the world's most influential contemporary
thinkers." Controversial on the left and the right for his
critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty
experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living
philosophers. In this masterly biography, Neil Gross explores the
path of Rorty's thought over the decades in order to trace the
intellectual and professional journey that led him to that
prominence. The child of a pair of leftist writers who worried that
their precocious son "wasn't rebellious enough," Rorty enrolled at
the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen. There he came
under the tutelage of polymath Richard McKeon, whose catholic
approach to philosophical systems would profoundly influence
Rorty's own thought. Doctoral work at Yale led to Rorty's landing a
job at Princeton, where his colleagues were primarily analytic
philosophers. With a series of publications in the 1960s, Rorty
quickly established himself as a strong thinker in that
tradition--but by the late 1970s Rorty had eschewed the idea of
objective truth altogether, urging philosophers to take a "relaxed
attitude" toward the question of logical rigor. Drawing on the
pragmatism of John Dewey, he argued that philosophers should
instead open themselves up to multiple methods of thought and
sources of knowledge--an approach that would culminate in the
publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, one of the most
seminal and controversial philosophical works of our time. In clear
and compelling fashion, Gross sets that surprising shift in Rorty's
thought in the context of his life and social experiences,
revealing the many disparate influences that contribute to the
making of knowledge. As much a book about the growth of ideas as it
is a biography of a philosopher, Richard Rorty will provide readers
with a fresh understanding of both the man and the course of
twentieth-century thought.
Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully
explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences
using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these
advances, the contributors to "Social Knowledge in the Making" turn
their attention to the social sciences, broadly construed. The
result is the first comprehensive effort to study and understand
the day-to-day activities involved in the creation of
social-scientific and related forms of knowledge about the social
world. The essays collected here tackle a range of previously
unexplored questions about the practices involved in the
production, assessment, and use of diverse forms of social
knowledge. A stellar cast of multidisciplinary scholars addresses
topics such as the changing practices of historical research,
anthropological data collection, library usage, peer review, and
institutional review boards. Turning to the world beyond the
academy, other essays focus on global banks, survey research
organizations, and national security and economic policy makers.
"Social Knowledge in the Making" is a landmark volume for a new
field of inquiry, and the bold new research agenda it proposes will
be welcomed in the social sciences, the humanities, and a broad
range of non-academic settings.
Some observers see American academia as a bastion of leftist
groupthink that indoctrinates students and silences conservative
voices. Others see a protected enclave that naturally produces
free-thinking, progressive intellectuals. Both views are
self-serving, says Neil Gross, but neither is correct. Why Are
Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? explains how
academic liberalism became a self-reproducing phenomenon, and why
Americans on both the left and right should take notice. Academia
employs a higher percentage of liberals than nearly any other
profession. But the usual explanations-hiring bias against
conservatives, correlations of liberal ideology with high
intelligence-do not hold up to scrutiny. Drawing on a range of
original research, statistics, and interviews, Gross argues that
"political typing" plays an overlooked role in shaping academic
liberalism. For historical reasons, the professoriate developed a
reputation for liberal politics early in the twentieth century. As
this perception spread, it exerted a self-selecting influence on
bright young liberals, while deterring equally promising
conservatives. Most professors' political views were formed well
before they stepped behind the lectern for the first time. Why Are
Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? shows how
studying the political sympathies of professors and their critics
can shed light not only on academic life but also on American
politics, where the modern conservative movement was built in no
small part around opposition to the "liberal elite" in higher
education. This divide between academic liberals and nonacademic
conservatives makes accord on issues as diverse as climate change,
immigration, and foreign policy more difficult.
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