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isn't to redirect the study of language and literature; it
IS
a very, very
distinct political power. And that's something different.
Willialll Phillips:
There's also some control of jobs. We know some
political scientists and a soc iologist w ho , take my word for it, are very
competent. They can't get jobs because the ruling powers in specific de–
partments won't give them jobs.
Digby Baltzell:
Are they white males? Is that the trouble?
Irving Louis Horowitz:
Well, that is politics for you. If you run three
times, you lose, and then you win. The people who are w inning presi–
dential elections in organizations do not reflect the infrastructure of the
organization. But every organization, every profession has to be looked
at carefully and individually. You cannot over- generalize, and you cannot
presume that one organization speaks any longer for the entire group.
For example, fully one-third of the membership of the AFL-CIO vote
the Republican ticket at Presidential elections.
Roger Killlball:
If you take a look at all the journals coming out of
academia, they are without exception on that side.
Edith Kurzweil:
Presidents are elected by secret ballot, but when you
have a meeting at the American Sociological Association, when it's done
by a show of hands, you have a totally different story. I'd like to elabo–
rate on your point, Celeste. You say that congressmen listen to the offi–
cers of professional organizations and are being influenced. What happens
also is that earlier decisions again are being reinforced along the same
lines. This is why it's important for the oppos iti on to speak out too.
But it's not doing so .
Jean Elshtain:
Students are profoundly affected by their education and
by the training they get. 1 read an interesting study of students who had
pre- and post-graduate training in economics. Ultimately, after they got
their Ph.D.s, they were more convinced than they had been when they
started that the world was a place of totally self-interested, cutthroat
competition, that people are nothing but maximizers of marginal utility.
So in a sense they had internalized the world view of some of these
models. It's similar in political science . Cynicism prevails. More and more
students have become cynical about the possibilities of democracy itself.
It
finally comes down to power and how to grab one's share of it. The
notion that people could make alliances with each other, could come
together over shared purposes seems more and more elusive, impossibly
