Responding to Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity 

Matters of viewpoint diversity have recently received considerable attention in the academy and the media. A recent essay by Lisa Siraganian, “Seven Theses Against Viewpoint Diversity,” makes the case against efforts to increase viewpoint diversity. Siraganian notes that arguments in favor of such diversity often draw on the ideas of John Stuart Mill, who discussed the value of engaging those with competing opinions to better come to the truth because it helps to uncover our blindspots and lack of impartiality. Arguments against viewpoint diversity, as reflected in Siraganian’s essay, often center around concerns over political motivation, and also the compromising of scholarly standards and autonomy of academic disciplines and departments. 

Toward the beginning of her essay, Siraganian states:  

If [viewpoint diversity’s] supporters are as open to competing perspectives as they claim, if viewpoint diversity means committing oneself to a robust debate about truth and values, then the movement should be open to responding to and refuting the following theses challenging its premises and fundamental arguments. … The theses are presented … as an invitation to viewpoint diversity’s inquiring intellects to defend their convictions openly, fearlessly, and logically.   

She concludes her essay with the charge that those “committed to ‘intellectual diversity,’ have an obligation to refute—openly, fearlessly, and logically—the seven theses articulated above.”  

I believe that the lack of viewpoint and intellectual diversity within the university has hindered the pursuit of knowledge and the well-being of society. I would thus like to take up Siraganian’s invitation and charge. 

I recently published an essay providing a summary and synthesis of what I take as the central arguments for the importance of appropriate forms of intellectual and viewpoint diversity, along with documentation of the evidence of the decline in ideological diversity in American higher education. I also presented a set of proposals to promote engagement with, and sometimes even the cultivation of, intellectual and viewpoint diversity in a manner that preserves the scholarly standards of academic disciplines. I will use that framework to respond to each of Siraganian’s seven theses.  

Siraganian Thesis 1: Viewpoint diversity functions in direct opposition to the pursuit of truth, the principal aim of academia. 

Siraganian argues that  

the pursuit of truth and the value of different opinions … do not work together seamlessly … One can often answer … questions with certainty … the logic of viewpoint diversity contains its own extinction, if truth really is the goal … once a consensus of the truth of that matter has been established, viewpoint diversity on that topic is rightly, habitually, dismissed … the pursuit of truth remains … foundational to higher education … And viewpoint diversity opposes that pursuit. 

She rightly points out that in the sciences, for example, we can arrive at truth and then there is no need for viewpoint diversity. 

The problem with Siraganian’s first thesis, however, is that she does not acknowledge the countless cases of economic, moral, political, philosophical, and other matters on which we do not manage to arrive at consensus around truth. In such cases, viewpoint diversity does, as John Stuart Mill argued, help us to understand our own positions better, and those of others, and the arguments for and against different views. Before we have established knowledge, viewpoint diversity tends to assist in the pursuit of truth; after we have established knowledge, viewpoint diversity is opposed to truth. However, the criteria for discerning whether we have indeed reached that state of knowledge is not whether we’ve managed to create a politically uniform faculty who all happen to hold the same views, but whether the evidence establishing a position cannot be overturned, and whether all relevant counterevidence can be refuted. The mechanism by which viewpoint diversity is to be eliminated is evidence and argument and reason, not suppression. 

Siraganian Thesis 2: Viewpoint diversity can work only as an instrumental value. 

The second of Siraganian’s theses is, I believe, entirely correct. Viewpoint diversity only has instrumental value. The issue with the second thesis is not that it is wrong, but that it is not a thesis against viewpoint diversity. Something that has only instrumental value does still have value. As noted above, viewpoint diversity can, in certain instances, have instrumental value in the pursuit of truth. 

Siraganian also notes that others have argued for its instrumental value in helping students “become creative individuals and productive citizens of a pluralistic democracy.” This, too, is an instrumental value, but it is still a value. I would fully agree that viewpoint diversity is never an end in itself, and when we arrive at rationally grounded consensus around truth, there is no need for it. However, before that point is reached, its instrumental value is worth embracing. As I argue in my essay, it has further instrumental value not only in the pursuit of knowledge, and in the forming of students as citizens, but also in the dissemination of knowledge, in social trust in academic research, and potentially in decreasing polarization. By all means, let us pursue truth, attain consensus, and thereby eliminate the need for viewpoint diversity whenever we can. But intentionally suppressing viewpoint diversity before we have consensus around truth will hinder us in our pursuit of knowledge and will arguably hinder the functioning of our democracy as well. 

Siraganian Thesis 3: Viewpoint diversity assumes a partisan goal based on unproven assumptions. 

Siraganian criticizes viewpoint diversity advocates as having a political agenda that amounts to “wanting more conservatives” and argues that even this pursuit is based on unproven assumptions, including “that disciplinary knowledge is beset by confirmation bias and orthodoxy, rather than disciplinary knowledge establishing premises in order to examine beliefs, including biases and orthodoxies,” assuming that “academia is overwhelmingly leftist and that conservatives are consequently silenced.” She claims that economists David Hummels and Jay Akridge have challenged the “overwhelmingly leftist” assumption on the basis that the plurality of faculty are politically moderate. 

It is not clear that Siraganian has taken a critical look at the data herself. And, alas, it appears Hummels and Akridge were not sufficiently attentive to the studies they cite. In the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) data that they point to and praise as representing “the only long-term effort to gauge faculty political orientation,” the statement is in fact simply false. The 2016-2017 HERI report indicates 59.8 percent identify as liberal/far left, 28.1 percent as middle of the road, and 12.1 percent as conservative/far right. Their claim is incorrect. In fact, over the past years the HERI data indicate that the liberal-to-conservative faculty ratio has increased from 2.3-to-1 in 1989 to 5-to-1 in 2017, and more recent estimates suggest an increase to around 7-to-1 in 2024. As I argue in my essay, none of the data or estimates are perfect, but the cumulative evidence is compelling.  

With regard to the other supposedly unproven assumption “that disciplinary knowledge is beset by confirmation bias and orthodoxy, rather than disciplinary knowledge establishing premises in order to examine beliefs, including biases and orthodoxies,” this is perhaps more complicated; while it is well documented that we all have confirmation biases, it is also the case that disciplinary knowledge can help us in examining our beliefs, biases, and orthodoxies. The issue is that as the academy becomes more and more ideologically skewed, it becomes more difficult to notice or correct those confirmation biases or to determine when orthodoxies are based on presumption rather than knowledge. As for viewpoint diversity’s being a partisan goal, I would grant that for some advocates this may indeed be the case, a point to which I will return below. However, it is incorrect to assume that advocating appropriate forms of viewpoint diversity assumes a partisan goal. Appropriate forms of such viewpoint diversity can have considerable instrumental value to the academy in its pursuit of knowledge. 

Siraganian Thesis 4: Viewpoint diversity undermines disciplinary and specialized knowledge and standards as well as the autonomy of academic reasoning and scholarship. 

Siraganian’s fourth thesis could have been rendered correct by the insertion of the single word “can.” It is the case that viewpoint diversity can undermine disciplinary and specialized knowledge and standards as well as the autonomy of academic reasoning and scholarship. Siraganian, citing Louis Menand, rightly contends, “When we talk about the freedom of the academic to dictate the terms of his or her work, we are also and unavoidably talking about the freedom to exclude, or to limit the exposure of, work that is not deemed to meet academic standards.” Proposals to promote viewpoint diversity by overruling scholarly standards indeed undermine disciplinary and specialized knowledge. However, Siraganian’s fourth thesis goes beyond this, effectively suggesting that viewpoint diversity always has this effect. This is incorrect. 

In my essay, I put forward approaches to increase engagement with, and when appropriate, to cultivate, forms of intellectual and viewpoint diversity that preserve, and arguably even strengthen, academic standards, reasoning, and scholarship. I would certainly grant that many past attempts at trying to ensure viewpoint diversity via quotas and legal action can compromise scholarly disciplines and standards, and I would grant also that finding suitable approaches that preserve the autonomy of academic institutions can be challenging. But I think these are challenges worth meeting. 

Some approaches for greater engagement with viewpoint diversity could easily be carried out in the classroom. Instructors might consider implementing the following viewpoint teaching principle: “If many people believe X about topic Y, and many others do not, then a course on Y should ideally include the strongest arguments for, and against, X.” The basic idea of the principle is that if a belief or position is widely held in society, then students should have an awareness of the evidence and arguments for and against it. In cases in which there are no strong arguments for a position (e.g. when we have established knowledge), then only arguments against would be presented. However, even this is still beneficial in equipping students to present and understand such arguments, perhaps thereby enabling them to change their views and understanding more broadly. When the view concerns a contested moral, philosophical, economic, or political issue, the principle helps ensure more robust engagement with, and a greater understanding of, the arguments and positions. Students could likewise, in essay writing or in debates, be asked to provide the strongest arguments for the positions they do not hold, before proceeding with their own positions and potential refutations. All of these are ways to appropriately make use of viewpoint diversity while both respecting and even strengthening scholarly reasoning and standards. 

The matter of intellectual diversity of faculty is arguably more complex. One reason for the declining ideological diversity of faculty, however, may be the research areas in which hires are made. As the ideologies of faculty become increasingly skewed, certain research topics may be prioritized over others; topics that may be of more interest to conservatives, for example, may simply not be valued. A way to try to address this while maintaining scholarly standards and the autonomy of each discipline is to carry out faculty searches on topics that may allow for a greater intellectual diversity among the faculty. Both in my essay and previously I have suggested the following Intellectual Diversity Hiring Principle, which is reproduced in full here: 

When a research area requires attention to viewpoints that are held by a large portion of the population and that exert significant influence on policy or society, it would be advantageous to have someone on faculty who either holds the view or conducts research on those who do. More specifically, when such viewpoints concern values, or concern matters on which there is not scholarly consensus, it would be advantageous to have a faculty member who holds the view; in contrast, when there is evidence-based scholarly consensus that the relevant view is false, it would be advantageous to have someone who studies those who hold that view.  

With such topic areas, a department would still hire the strongest candidate, independent of political views or identity, but searches in such research areas would probably, over time, result in greater intellectual and ideological diversity among faculty, and a broader range of topics studied. The principle would of course need to be weighed against other research and teaching priorities of a department. However, hiring on military history, or Aquinas’s philosophy, or on behavioral genetics or character studies in psychology, or on pro-life approaches to support women’s health, would all probably increase the intellectual and ideological diversity of a faculty in ways consistent with scholarly standards. It would also arguably provide the instrumental benefits of such intellectual and viewpoint diversity described above. 

Under her fourth thesis, Siraganian argues against new civic thought centers that can sometimes increase the number of conservative academics. However, these centers could likewise be viewed simply as a mechanism to hire the best faculty committed to teaching and research on topics related to civic engagement as essentially an implementation of the above Intellectual Diversity Hiring Principle. To have the instrumental benefits of intellectual and viewpoint diversity for the university it would be important not to “protect” such faculty, but rather to have them as engaged as possible with the rest of university life. 

Siraganian Thesis 5: Viewpoint diversity is incoherent. 

In her fifth thesis, Siraganian argues that proponents of viewpoint diversity “are simply advocating for diversity in a particular direction and type that differs from the current reality and status quo.” She claims that “you cannot simultaneously defend rigorous arguments in support of the university’s striving for truth and support rigorous arguments for ideological (or intellectual or viewpoint) diversity” and that the “two aims directly conflict.”   

Viewpoint diversity as a final end is indeed an incoherent notion from an academic standpoint. The fundamental good toward which the university ought to aspire is truth.  According to Thesis 2, viewpoint diversity is, at best, an instrumental good. However, it need not be in conflict with striving for truth. Appropriate forms of intellectual and viewpoint diversity can, in fact, help in this pursuit of truth.  

As Siraganian argues, proponents of viewpoint diversity are advocating diversity in a particular direction and type that differs from the current reality and status quo. If done well, they should be arguing for viewpoint diversity on questions that are still disputed and have not been settled by scholarly evidence, arguments, and reasoning. It is in such cases that intellectual and viewpoint diversity contributes to, rather than opposes, the pursuit of knowledge. Advocating both a university’s striving for truth and appropriate forms of viewpoint diversity to encourage this is not incoherent. It simply needs to be done well. 

Siraganian Thesis 6: Viewpoint diversity has already been used, both in the United States and abroad, to attack higher education and stifle academic freedom. 

In her sixth thesis, Siraganian documents several instances in which the alleged lack of intellectual or viewpoint diversity has been used to attack higher education and stifle academic freedom. The attacks on higher education are, of course, a concern. However, higher education has been, and is being, attacked on multiple grounds. Some of these critiques are reasonable; others are not. Still others are exaggerated. The thesis, as stated, is unquestionably correct. It is not clear, however, how this is an argument against viewpoint diversity. It is for the alleged lack of viewpoint diversity that higher education has come under attack, not for its presence. 

Siraganian argues that not even “the existence of civic thought centers promoting viewpoint diversity has … deterred … right-wing groups from attacking higher education.” She goes on to note that from that perspective, “it’s hard to see even the partisan, pragmatic argument for supporting viewpoint diversity.” Arguably, however, what a university should do is what is best for accomplishing its mission in the pursuit of truth, and then stand for and defend that approach, come what may. As I’ve noted, increasing appropriate forms of intellectual and viewpoint diversity would in fact contribute to the pursuit of truth in a number of areas. The attacks on higher education are not an argument against viewpoint diversity. As my colleague Steven Pinker points out, “if you’re standing in a downpour and Mr. Trump tells you to put up an umbrella, you shouldn’t refuse just to spite him.” In any case, it is difficult to see how the present attacks on higher education, which should lead to resistance when the critiques are wrong, or reform otherwise, is an argument against viewpoint diversity. 

Siraganian Thesis 7: Viewpoint diversity is an argument made in bad faith. 

In her discussion of this final thesis, Siraganian points out a certain hypocrisy in some advocates of viewpoint diversity, noting that some will on one hand argue for “mandated viewpoint diversity in hiring and … [s]imultaneously … attack diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at every opportunity.” Certainly. some arguments for viewpoint diversity are made in bad faith, in a manner that betrays hypocrisy, or purely for purposes of political power, without regard to the university’s end in the pursuit of truth. But there are many other instances in which arguments in support of reasonable forms of viewpoint diversity are made to empower the university’s pursuit of the truth. An embrace of the latter may help prevent the former, but Siraganian rightly critiques the former.  

Positions that academics take on diversity hiring mandates, whether this concerns viewpoint diversity or demographic or other identity-based diversity, certainly do vary. However, as I noted in my response to Siraganian’s fourth thesis, there are ways of increasing intellectual and viewpoint diversity without forcing hiring to require particular political, ideological, or demographic identity groups. 

Moreover, at the very least, there ought to be efforts to reduce intentional discrimination against any such group. In the discussion of her seventh thesis, Siraganian seems to somewhat sarcastically dismiss such discrimination against conservatives. And yet the data are concerning. In psychology, 82 percent of conservative faculty feel that there is a hostile climate toward their political beliefs, compared to 7 percent of liberals. About one in three liberal academics will admit to being willing to discriminate against conservatives in faculty hiring, journal review, or grant decisions. Even for those, such as myself, who would be opposed to quotas on ideological or other identity-based grounds, there still ought to be efforts to reduce discrimination and hostility. All perspectives should be welcome, but all should be required to defend their views and should be subject to critique.  This is how we will come to better understanding and a better pursuit of truth. 

At the conclusion of her essay, Siraganian goes as far to say, “those of us who want good ideas to win and bad ideas to lose should understand that viewpoint diversity will not get us there; it can only ensconce more bad ideas.” That viewpoint diversity can “only ensconce more bad ideas” is quite a claim. John Tomasi and Jonathan Haidt rightly criticize Siraganian on this claim, arguing that her position amounts to asserting that  

whatever (and whomever) a discipline rejects as “intellectually unsuitable” must be so, because the members of the discipline are the ones who set disciplinary standards … even when a discipline rapidly changes its scientific views, or politicizes its standards for admissions, hiring and publications, it could not be because they have lost a healthy amount of internal contestation, or have turned self-selection and self-governance into ideological capture. The professors are the experts, after all. Whatever they decide must ipso facto be correct. 

As they note, this view of academia is “naïve, ahistorical and strangely uncritical.” 

We must certainly respect scholarly standards and knowledge The very criteria for discerning whether we have indeed reached that state of knowledge, however, is not whether we’ve managed to create a politically uniform faculty who all happen to hold the same view. Rather, it is whether the evidence establishing a position cannot be overturned, and whether it is clear that all relevant counterevidence is refutable. The ideological diversity of faculty has been in notable decline. Conservatives feel there is a hostile environment and are regularly discriminated against. The greater ideological conformity has led to student and faculty pressure to conform to progressive orthodoxies. A culture of self-censorship has developed with more than half of students reporting they feel uncomfortable discussing controversial issues in class, with considerably higher rates among conservative students. Siraganian states, “A situation in which the brightest and most curious thinkers feel they have to hide their true convictions would be a very bad state of things indeed.” But the evidence suggests this has already occurred.  

When cancel culture and self-censorship become prevalent, lack of engagement with viewpoint diversity inhibits the pursuit of truth. The time to act is now. However, as the vast majority of the faculty now identify as liberal or progressive, many may feel there is relatively little incentive to intervene. Perhaps the only compelling argument for internal reform (but one which hopefully is indeed still compelling) is that it would benefit both the pursuit of knowledge and also society; that it would lead to greater understanding of different perspectives, a sharpening of reasoning and arguments, an identifying of common ground, and decreased polarization. The overall culture of self-censorship, cancellation, and lack of exposure to viewpoints has adversely affected the university. The increasing ideological skew of the faculty is largely responsible. Universities need to address these issues to help restore their truth-seeking mission. 

If the AAUP is serious about its mission to “advance academic freedom … and to ensure higher education’s contribution to the common good” and if it desires to continue to “shape American higher education by developing the standards and procedures that maintain quality in education and academic freedom in this country’s colleges and universities,” then it would benefit from proposing standards and procedures that promote healthy intellectual diversity. This is one way the AAUP might, as it aspires, promote higher education’s genuine contribution to the common good.

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