Why is Amherst So Liberal?

“Wholesale creeds and all-inclusive ideals are impotent in the face of actual situations; for doing always means the doing of something in particular … Nothing would conduce more, for example, to the elimination of war than the substitution of specific analysis of its causes for the wholesale love of ‘liberty, humanity, justice, and civilization.”

                              — John Dewey

We’ve read it in the news, we’ve seen it lambasted on TV, and many of us have probably even gotten an earful about it from our families: Amherst, to the disdain of conservatives across the country, is an extremely liberal school — a place where students and faculty alike come to bask in and deepen their knowledge of the injustices of the world, and decry its myriad evils.

Taken at face value, this wouldn’t appear to be much of a problem. But one must be sure to place the political leanings of the college and its students in their broader societal context. Amherst stands as a rarefied, elite institution in the United States with a near $4 billion endowment, accepting only around 7% of its applicants per year. A disproportionate percentage of its student body, already extremely wealthy, will go on to take jobs in finance, consulting, and technology. The political attitudes of Amherst’s students, faculty, and administrators, when weighed against the actions and interests of the institution as a whole, reveal a troubling paradox: How could Amherst be so liberal, so left-leaning, when its interests — indeed, perhaps, our interests — are so conservative and politically narrow?

Some would simply argue that the kinds of people attracted to elite higher education tend to be left-leaning. Others conjecture, perhaps conspiratorially, that conservatives are actively being kept out of the academy. I am inclined to say there are elements of truth in both views. Yet, I would argue that neither view goes deep enough in its analysis. Neither seems to explain why the conservative cultural elites of yore have found themselves wholeheartedly accepting a worldview that directly conflicts with their social positionality.

The paradox itself is the solution to the puzzle. Amherst and those who inhabit this institution are not liberal in spite of their elite status, but because of it. We are sold wholesale creeds about the evils of injustice and oppression — about the undying need for freedom, resistance, and love — not because of some herculean effort on our behalves to free our minds from the shackles of elite conservatism, but because our political beliefs neatly do away with the discrepancy between who we think we are, and how we act.

Tyler Austin Harper writes in agreement: “the actual function of elite universities is not, pace academe’s reactionary critics, to injection-mold students into radicals. It is, rather, to make students comfortable with cognitive dissonance: to help them cultivate a kind of studied blindness to the way that their purported liberal beliefs are actually in direct conflict with the values and standard operating procedures of the kind of prestigious and well-paying institutions they will spend their lives moving through or aspiring to move through … In other words, what elite universities actually prepare students to do out in the ‘real world’ is to compartmentalize.”

Now, to be clear, my gripe here is not with the fact that Amherst is extremely liberal — those who know me well know that I’ve come to identify as a democratic socialist. Nor is it to moralize or shame those students who choose to go into wealth-generating careers. I disagree with Harper insofar as he imputes a certain level of intentionality to the actions of our students and faculty. The fact of the matter is that the choices we make are always a function of the resources available to us. We make these decisions depending, more often than not, on how secure and supported we feel in making them.

I suspect that many Amherst students, myself included, feel deeply powerless in the face of the injustices of the world — that we do not know, from our distinct positionality as Amherst students, what we can do to make the world a better place. Amherst has supplied us with wholesale creeds about love, justice, and democracy, and yet our liberal convictions seem to fall flat in our efforts to make change. We can break down systemic racism to anyone who asks, and, yet, we struggle to find the words to say what we would do about it, especially after we graduate.

We should not, however, allow this frightening reality to resign us to political apathy. We must simply acknowledge that real-world problems demand real-world solutions — and that our fancy educations are woefully inadequate if they’ve left us bereft of any concrete normative vision.

I would be remiss here if I didn’t acknowledge the strides made by students, faculty, and administrators in this regard. Community engagement courses are offered every semester. The Loeb Center has made great strides in supporting students interested in social impact careers. Many students go to great lengths to engage with and serve the communities around them. But the puzzle presented above clearly accents the need for ongoing work in this regard: for faculty to teach us not only how to dissect problems, but solve them. For the administration to better support its students who seek to serve. Only then will the college truly live up to its motto: Let them give light to the world.