"WHY PAUL KRUGMAN IS WRONG ABOUT REPUBLICANS AND ACADEMIA"

Smith College's James Miller has a good rebuttal to Paul "Whacky" Krugman's recent NY Time's column. Also congratulations to Prof. Miller on earning his tenure at Smith after dealing with the left-wing biases against him:

Republicans are too anti-science to become good professors. That's the essence of Paul Krugman's recent New York Times column explaining why there are so few Republican college professors.

Of course, recent events at Harvard indicate that it's the academic left that rejects science. Harvard's President Larry Summers was castigated for suggesting that politically incorrect science be conducted. Dr. Summers infamously suggested that researchers consider the possibility that biology partially explains the dearth of female science professors. For this comment, his Arts and Science faculty passed a resolution expressing lack of confidence in him, and the presidents of Stanford, MIT and Princeton published a letter saying that "speculation that 'innate differences' may be a significant cause of under representation by women in science and engineering may rejuvenate old myths and reinforce negative stereotypes and biases." So acting with the approval of their leftist faculties, the presidents of Stanford, MIT and Princeton have condemned Larry Summers for the crime of politically incorrect speculation. Nothing could possibly be more anti-scientific then rejecting speculation.

Larry Summers hinted that women on average might not be as qualified as men to be science professors. Paul Krugman wrote that Republicans en masse are categorically not as qualified as everyone else to be professors. Larry Summers was almost universally condemned by academia for his comments, not because they were necessarily wrong, but because it was considered wrong for him to make negative generalizations about an under-represented group. In academia, Republicans are far more under-represented than women are. So if Paul Krugman is not widely condemned by academics it will constitute pretty strong evidence that academia is biased against Republicans.

Many college leftists want more women but fewer Republicans in their ranks. They cite diversity as the reason for desiring more women, but this creates a problem since this diversity rationale would seem to indicate that they should also seek to hire more Republicans. Krugman, therefore, is aiding the intolerant college left by claiming that Republicans are so anti-science that colleges would suffer by having more of them around. Fortunately for Republicans, much of the college left is so hostile to science that even few college professors will accept Krugman's arguments. (full article)