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Another Academic Field that’s Become a One Party StateGeorge Mason University economics professor Daniel Klein has written about the phenomenon of groupthink in higher education. That is to say, the tendency for disciplines to get “captured” by a certain outlook and become hostile to scholars who are, as the Maoists would have said, “deviationists.” One of the fields where that has occurred is industrial relations (IR). In today’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Brooklyn College professor Mitchell Langbert discusses the way that discipline, once open to a wide array of perspectives, has over the decades turned into a one party state. The departments, journals, and scholarly societies are now only interested in people who favor unionism and government intervention.Those who argue that free markets would be better are persona non grata. “The ideological litmus tests in the Labor and Employment Relations Association and in the two leading journals,” he writes, “have direct practical effects because most leading business schools and other academic departments that sponsor IR programs will refuse to hire anyone who does not publish in those venues.” The way IR has become closed to non-leftist thinking is quite similar to the field of social psychology and Langbert draws the parallel between the two, citing our recent piece on social psychology by Professor Richard Redding. Just as social psychology hurts itself by shunning scholars who don’t toe the leftist line, so also with IR. Langbert observes, “IR is the logical venue for academic discussions of public policy and business strategy concerning the organization of employment systems. These might include the adoption of enterprise unions, the innovation of new forms of unionism not linked to the employment relationship, and the development of new forms of employment relationship.” Unfortunately, teaching and scholarship along such non-interventionist lines is very hard to find due to the groupthink that dominates in IR. Langbert closes on a somewhat optimistic note: He has managed to get the LERA to include a panel discussion about its one-sidedness in its next annual meeting in May. Will anything good come of that? The Pope Center will let you know.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/414832/another-academic-field-thats-become-one-party-state-george-leef?target=topic&tid=3264