Progress In Iraq Continues...

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
1) There are some disciplines in which these types of people are more concentrated. Political science is simply not one of them. This is just an empirical fact. It is really in ethnic studies, anthropology, and literature departments.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok; I didn't know that, and thanks for the insight.

[ QUOTE ]
2) Even in those departments, the number of people with beliefs this extreme, or poorly nuanced, is much lower than you would imagine. You and a lot of other people who read conservative media face a problem that in social science is referred to as selection bias. You end up hearing about the Ward Churchills of the world, but not the many, many other people in anthropology or sociology or literature who simply produce good scholarship, have more nuanced (albeit probably left of center) pollitical views, and have a lot to contribute in terms of how we understand the world.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not saying it is a high proportion, per se; just higher than in more "grassroots" type professions. And that to me appears somerhing of an enigma.

[ QUOTE ]

Again, this judgement can only be supported if you have a balanced assessment of academia, and especially political science. This is the world I inhabit so I have a natural incentive to defend it. But I also have a fair amount of knowledge about how it works, and I just think your assessment is quite biased by some rather extreme "outliers" within the larger population of academics.

[/ QUOTE ]

I appreciate your insights and generally speaking find many of them (in this and other threads) quite valuable.