This story published by the Chronicle of Higher Education is really interesting and a bit surprising. UC Berkeley is well-known as one of the most left-wing campuses in the country and has been since the 1960s. As you might expect the faculty at Berkeley is about as far left as you could imagine. But an anonymous survey of faculty found that a surprising percentage of them are concerned that in some ways things have gone too far. 

Of course no one is willing to credit the Trump administration for this revelation. The faculty are still hoping the school will follow Harvard's lead and join the resistance to Trump's efforts. Nevertheless, many of them are aware there is a problem.

Of the 290 people who answered the survey question, 16 percent indicated that they think the criticisms are “invalid” and should not be acted upon. Fifteen percent said that while “some criticisms may be valid,” no action should be taken right now “because it would undermine university autonomy.”

But nearly half of respondents — 47 percent — answered that some criticisms are “valid” and that action should be taken “deliberately through regular governance processes.” An additional 16 percent agreed that some criticisms are well-founded and think that “we should take action urgently.”

It's not a scientific poll so take those figures with a grain of salt. Still, at a moment when universities see themselves as under fire from the Trump administration, it's surprising that only about a third of respondents feel no action should be taken now and nearly two-thirds think action needs to be taken. One of the issues some said needed to be addressed was antisemitism.

“I am not a Jew, but if I were, I would be extremely cautious, if not fearful, while being on campus,” wrote one of several people who voiced concerns about antisemitism at Berkeley...

“For years, our DEI police and their faculty deputies have taught us to denounce dog-whistle politics, recognize and decry microaggressions, acknowledge stolen land that we have no intention of returning, and always be sure to specify our preferred pronouns, all the while ignoring or dismissing the frequent fog horns and macroaggressions of antisemitism.”

Even more surprising, some pointed to the school's left-wing monoculture as a problem. 

The institution’s lack of conservatives — and the resulting ideological rigidity on campus — was another theme. “I proudly worked for the Biden administration,” wrote a faculty member, “and somehow pass for right wing in our very narrow intellectual environment.” Another professor said that while left-wing constraints on speech “are not equivalent to the Trump administration’s penchant for terrorizing noncitizen scholars with arbitrary deportation,” there “continues to be an unfortunate sense that if you endorse a position that’s associated with the right you are somehow committing a serious faux pas.”...

“Failure to admit that we reward hewing to an orthodox line is to engage in hypocrisy or sheer self-delusion,” observed another person...

The academy “decided some time ago, but with a big increase in energy and intensity in 2020, to use the accumulated authority and prestige of our institutions and disciplines to advance ideologically driven political agendas, and we told the lie to others (and often to ourselves) that that wasn’t what we were doing,” one faculty member wrote...

Put a bit blunter, by another faculty member: “Universities are under attack (often by idiots), but they deserve it and should get their houses in order.”

Look, I get it, you all hate conservatives. But on this issue they have a point and that's not because they're idiots, it's because they're not smug leftists living in a bubble of their own making. Put another way, they have a perspective you don't have. One commenter in the survey called Berkeley an "echo chamber" and another wrote "We have what business people call a ‘bozo explosion’ problem." I confess I had to look that one up, but a bozo explosion but it's apparently a Silicon Valley thing.

It’s depressing to watch a mean, lean, fighting machine of a company deteriorate into mediocracy. In Silicon Valley we call this process the “bozo explosion.” This downward slide seems inevitable after a company achieves success–often during the years immediately following an IPO.

Here are a few of the the authors suggestions for avoiding this problem, which might apply to Berkeley:

• Insist that managers hire better than themselves. For example, an engineering manager should hire a programmer who is a better programmer than she is, not worse. By the way, this principle starts at the level of the board of directors when hiring the CEO.
• Eradicate arrogance. Arrogance manifests itself in two principal areas: first, when your employees describe the competition using terms like “clueless,” “bozo” (ironically), or just plain “stupid.” Second, when your employees start believing in “manifest destiny”–that is, that your company deserves, and will achieve, total market domination. Your competition probably isn’t stupid, and trees don’t grow to the sky.
• Understaff. Hire fewer people than you’re “sure” you need to accommodate that hockey-stick growth you’re “sure” you’re going to achieve. When you’re in a rush to fill openings to respond to growth, you make mistakes. Unfortunately, many companies adopt the attitude of “Hire any intelligent body, or we’ll lose business–we’ll sort everything out later.”

Anyway, it's interesting to see that few of them want to acknowledge the Trump administration is doing anything constructive here even though a majority do see a problem. Mostly, they seem to have an idea that they'll handle it on their own once the pressure is off. But will they? Apart from the outside pressure they likely won't handle it at all, at least that's my guess. The people who don't think change is needed will speak up loudly and, minus the outside pressure, the others will decide it can wait or isn't worth the trouble. Ten years from now they'll be shocked to discover they still have a serious antisemitism problem on campus and the staff is still a left-wing monoculture (often pretending not to be one).

It's too much to expect miracles but it is interesting that even at one of the most left-wing campuses in the country, many of the faculty realize there is an underlying problem.