DAVID SIDORSKY
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formism, now is placed in a position where, with rare exceptions, it ei–
ther ought not, cannot, or will not appea l to an external power for
protection against pressures for ideological conformism or political cor–
rectness from within the university.
The well-known case of Professor Jeffries at the City College of
New York provides an interesting confirmation of these trends.
Informally, many faculty will cite chapter and verse of Professor Jeffries's
violations of standards of academic freedom in class discussion or of aca–
demic integrity in scholarship. Yet there is no faculty support for any
procedures which would be able
to
probe these assertions or to take ac–
tion upon them. The action of the board of trustees in removing
Professor Jeffries from his chairmanship but not denying him his profes–
sorship, tenure, or sa lary, was taken very reluctantly on what were
judged
to
be adequate legal grounds. But the legal result was a
reinstatement of Professor Jeffries with an award to him of monetary
damages, on the ground that his rights
to
freedom of speech had been
denied. The jury's verdict suggests that politicized scho larship, set in the
framework of a minority studies program, can receive support from the
related minority constituency. A perceived group interest in
multiculturalism outweighs a less urgent abuse of academic standards . So
while the discrepancy between radical faculty views and community
sentiment may be a source of tension , it is not likely to generate a
movement toward any external pressure for academic freedom or for
protecting standards of scholarship.
A third interest group for depoliticization is the student body. It has
been often noted that the current student generation demonstrates much
greater conservatism in economic and political attitudes than its teachers,
many of whom. came of age in the period of student revolt on campus .
Thus, there has been a widespread doctrine of conservative consolation
and radical lament that what is taking place is the working-out of a
transitory generational phenomenon. Just as the universities were radical–
ized as the age cohort of the sixties came to power, so the process will
be reversed as the academic inheritors of the eighties come into their
own.
Against any such assessment of the potential for change in current
politicization, or in the balance in representing the political spectrum of
American society, there is the understanding of the process of faculty
formation. On faculty formation, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once
cited a comment he attributed to Professor von Hayek of the University
of Chicago: his better students in economics became successful bankers if
they were conservative, and recognized professors of economics if they
were liberal. Among minority groups, this self-selection process would be
intensified, with conservatives opting to enter the mainstream professions,
