OxBlog

# Posted 1:15 AM by Ariel David Adesnik

BROOKS YET AGAIN: I really want to go to sleep, but after seeing Glenn cite this post from Juan Non-Volokh, I just had to respond.

Juan writes that

When I was an undergraduate at Yale, I had several long discussions with my senior essay advisor about whether to pursue my PhD. My advisor, who was himself quite liberal, cautioned against it, largely because of my emerging, right-of-center political views. As he described it, succeeding in the liberal arts academy is tough enough as it is without the added burden of holding unpopular views. To illustrate the risk, he noted that one of his colleagues on the graduate admissions committee explicitly blackballed each and every candidate who had ever received financial support (scholarships, fellowships, etc.) from the John M. Olin Foundation because, his colleague insisted, the Olin Foundation only funded people who thought like they did, and Yale did not want any graduate students who thought that way. If I truly wanted to be an academic, he counseled, I was better off going to law school.

So I guess I must be pretty f***ed, given that I'm a fellow at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. Then again, I'm headed for DC, so it's no skin off my back.

But seriously...prior Olin fellows have an extremely impressive track record of finding tenure-track positions at top-tier universities. Moreover, we're very much part of the mainstream here at Harvard. And finally, I can assure you that the rest of the Olin Fellows don't share either the Foundation's political views or my own.

So, is there a message here? First, read the rest of Juan's post. He has some excellent insights into the hiring process which aren't quoted above. Second, I agree with the points Juan makes in the rest of his post, namely that anti-conservative sentiment is rarely a direct factor in the hiring process. However, it shapes the environment in a way that it makes it hard for conservatives to feel comfortable.

In so many words, Juan does a far more eloquent job than myself of arguing for the importance of self-selection in the hiring process.

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