Viewpoint Diversity and Overton Windows in Academia

Maybe academics should be explicit about our boundaries

Your first-order views about a variety of economic, political, and social issues place you on a dimension of conservative, liberal, libertarian, authoritarian, and others. Academia is overrun with liberals and leftists, according to many complaints, while the military and police forces are overrun with conservatives, according to still other complaints. But where you are on the political and ideological spectrum does not predict what your views are about the Overton window. And most complaints about viewpoint diversity and ideological diversity in the academy should be about the size of our Overton windows, not our first-order views.

One way to understand an Overton window is to think about the boundaries of discourse that an editor will allow in the pages of their newspaper, television program, radio show, etc. In the realm of politics, policy, and social ethics, gay marriage is a classic example of an issue completely outside of the Overton window in media and politics most of the 20th century, then squarely inside it for about 20-30 years, and now basically outside of it again, marking its rise from radical issue, mainstream issue, to boring issue.

Supernaturalism is very much outside of the mainstream media Overton window. If you read the New York Times or watch NBC news, or read Time or the New Yorker today, whether a certain event happened because some kind of ghost, spirit, or poltergeist caused it to happen is outside their Overton window. No expert will be quoted offering this as an explanation of the war in Gaza, no opinion writer will entertain this hypothesis about floods or fires, and even readers who mention this kind of thing will probably be moderated out of the comments section. This is despite the fact that between 20%-41% of Americans believe in ghosts, or report some kind of supernatural ghost experience.

The “Woo Woo” Test

I have a good friend who is a long time public radio journalist where they follow the “no woo woo” test. When she interviews people, anything that enters into “woo woo” territory will never make it to air, even if it makes for a good story. I tried very hard years ago to interview a psychiatrist who taught at NYU, had a longtime private practice, and whom the Catholic Church hired on contract to investigate reports of demon possessions. It is important for the church not to send exorcists to every new report of a demon possession, when many such cases could easily be explained by mental illness. In the Eastern seaboard, they always went to this one guy. It sounded like a good story for my show. I talked to my reporter friend one day about the story, hoping to pitch it it to her for public radio, and she said there is only one way this story would ever make it on air; if every single one of his reports turns out to be a mental illness, using various established criteria for mental illness found in the DSM, and if there was something interesting about the pattern of mental illness in demon possession cases (like if it all happened to be low-grade carbon monoxide poisoning).

I talked to the guy and he said he did find many cases of actual mental illness. But he also said he came across many cases of actual demon possession. The tell-tail sign, he said, was levitation. Another sign is if the subject spoke ancient dead languages like Aramaic, which scholars could then translate into coherent statements. That made me really want to pursue the story because, well, how great right? But my friend said that the tape would not have passed the “woo woo” test, and it would never air on a legacy media outlet (probably rightly). I eventually killed the story even for my show, which has no such editorial constraint, but only because I couldn’t find a good philosophical angle. “Woo woo” to me is fine, but only if it is also philosophically interesting. I once profiled a woman who claimed to be the reincarnation of Anne Frank for an episode about personal identity and memory.)

Viewpoint Diversity, or Affirmative Action for Conservative Thinkers

Friend and philosopher Jennifer Morton recently published this New York Times Opinion piece arguing against the use of “viewpoint diversity” tests to hire conservative faculty to university positions, aimed at counteracting the “ideological bias” of universities. I know conservative people who have been pushing this for a while. I think it was very valuable for Morton to publish the piece; it challenged me, a very typical NY Times reader, who was curious and a little sympathetic to the idea of affirmative action for conservative faculty and students. But once you start going through the comments section, you see very quickly that Morton hit a nerve. Unsympathetic conservatives talk about just how heavy the ideological bias against them has been in academia for many generations; how the ideological divides in this country are the direct result of the college-educated indoctrination process. Unsympathetic liberals talked about why academia should purposely hire anthropogenic climate-change deniers, or divine creationists, into positions that are supposed to be for higher education. They see no educational value in hiring people who hold these positions, and no educational value in presenting these positions charitably and within the Overton window of discussion.

The Academic Overton Window is the research, viewpoints, and coursework/syllabi that are within the range of reasonable disagreement, and is educationally worthwhile to teach according to the judgment of the professor, department, and higher educational institution. It is not at all the same thing as the first-order views of the professors, departments, administrators, or higher educational institutions. Many of the things, in fact most of the things I teach, have nothing to do with my first-order views. I very rarely tell students my first-order views about, for instance, the ethics of industrial agriculture, when teaching about the issue. A person can have a very wide Overton windows but actually very narrow ideological views of their own, conservative or liberal, and vice versa.

For instance, a professor may themselves be pro-choice, for instance, but include many pro-life readings on their “Ethics of Abortion” syllabus to teach students the variety of ways pro-life advocates position their arguments. Ronald Reagan on abortion was on the syllabus in my college critical thinking class. Some of these pro-life arguments use religious premises about sanctity and innocence, others use scientific premises like the origins of pain or consciousness, others use secular moral principles like the wrongness of depriving something of a future. But there are plenty of pro-life positions that such a professor would also deems outside of the Overton window, because it is the professional judgment of such a professor that these views are “woo woo,” the same way my public radio reporter friend thinks about the psychiatrist who witnessed levitation. For example, I think some academics think any argument that rests on the premise “a woman’s only job is to have and raise babies, that’s why women exist” is outside of the Overton window. They wouldn’t assign an essay making that argument.

There are plenty of things outside of the Overton window in current academia that are within the sphere of discussion in the general public. Probably no better example is the variety of supernatural, paranormal, and astrological views held by almost half the population, and was indeed a significant part of academia a century ago. None of this stuff you will find in most academic spaces, except for the occasional student club (shout out, Vassar Supernatural Club!). In the sciences and history, lots of hypotheses about the distant past you hear on Joe Rogan and the History Channel are outside of the Overton window in academia. Biology departments do not teach divine creation any more, only evolution by natural selection or punctuated equilibirum. Archeologists don’t teach the evidence of aliens building the pyramids. There are no courses in cryptozoology, ancient civilization classes do not teach the hypothesis that the city of Atlantis was built with advanced technology. In others cases, hypotheses that used to be fringe make their way into the Overton window, like the Deccan Traps/volcanic eruption hypothesis for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Everyone has an Overton window, whether you are a liberal, conservative, anarchist, and even supernaturalist (paranormal believers who attribute activities to ghosts also laugh at me when I mentioned the possibilities of goblins.)

I’ve been sympathetic to the “there aren’t enough conservatives in academia” position because I’ve personally learned from conservative faculty when I was in college, in grad school, and in my social circles that include conservatives and libertarians. But it also came from teaching for 16 years at a very left-wing liberal arts college where, even though I agreed with my students on 99% of the first-order issues, I, and almost all of my colleagues, felt that their Overton windows were far too narrow. One example was their general stance on the military, or “murderers” as they would put it. There was no consideration for the idea of deference to civilian command, military service as public service, or the role of credible threats and credible offers in diplomacy. Western militaries were tools of colonial expansion, on their views, and few or no classes sufficiently challenged those views. We as faculty did our part to exhibit how much better their thinking, reasoning, and writing turned out if they widened their Overton windows, but there is only so much faculty can do. The narrow Overton window comes from their peers and social media, not from us.

After an exchange about Jen Morton’s piece with other philosophy colleagues, I’ve come to realize that, whatever you think about whether we should have affirmative action for people with conservative views in academia, we should distinguish between the problem of having too many liberal professors, and the problem of having too narrow an Overton window in what we teach, what we research, and the views we engage with in the classroom, at the university, and at our conferences. Maybe you think neither is a problem, or you think both are a problem; the point is that these are two distinct problems, and not seeing them as distinct is leading to very sloppy accusations.

A lot of conservatives and wide Overton window liberals see narrow Overton windows as a sign of ideological blindspots, or even worse, ideological bias. Narrow (or narrower) Overton window folks see wide Overton window people as sympathetic to unreasonable positions, positions that don’t deserve being in the Overton window because they don’t pass the “woo woo” test. Both might be right in particular cases! You risk a lot having too wide an Overton window; maybe fifty years from now teaching arguments about why its okay to eat factory farmed beef in a bioethics class will look just like teaching the theory of Young Earth Creationism in a geology class a hundred years ago. Right now the theory of divine creation and Young Earth Creationism in any class other than one in critical thinking or philosophy of science (to illustrate pseudo-science) is outside of the academic Overton window, and I think rightly so. If you wanted to insist that such views, held by many conservatives, are inside of the academic Overton windows, you will not be hired by most biology departments. And I don’t think this is an ideological bias or blindspot.

But on the other hand, I do think it is an ideological blindspot if the only teaching we do about the US military-industrial complex is one that highlights the role of the Western military as a colonial force. Its also an ideological blindspot if the only teaching we do about it highlights its role as “greatest force for good in human history,” as Trump and Hegseth recently ordered the military academies to teach. The Overton window should be very wide with respect to arguments about the role of the military as an institution in the US. Many of such arguments will be advocated by liberals, conservatives, authoritarians, and libertarians. But it most certainly is outside of the Overton window to discuss arguments that it is controlled by Jews or the New World order, or something like that.

Philosopher Daniel Greco thinks there isn’t going to be a good general rule or principle about how wide or narrow Overton windows need to be in the particular courses we teach, or in the research profile of an individual, or a department. These things change over time, especially in the sciences. What happens when conservative or liberal ideologies run against empirical claims that are well supported or thoroughly falsified? It really depends on the course; should we teach about the role that Creationism and Darwinism played in the fight of educational curriculum mid 20th-century? Absolutely. Should there be a a unit on Creation science in Evolutionary Biology 101? No (though many conservatives have long disagreed).

Secondly, fields differ. Geology is different from bioethics; being a religious conservative about geology, like some kind of conspiracist about radioactive carbon-dating, may justifiably be outside the Overton window, but what about religious conservative tenets about whether the earth was gifted to humans from God for humans to use as they please, for the sole benefit of humans? I don’t think the latter should be within the Overton window of a bioethics class, but is that because I have an ideological blindspot? I’d like to think not. For me its mostly because this is an unarguable premise for which there can be no progress to be made in a philosophical discussion. Any arguments for it rest on particular literalist readings of one particular religious text, a text that is also outside of the Overton window in my philosophy classes. But this is not a particularly well thought-out view, just what is behind my judgment not to include it on a syllabus about ethics and the ecosystem. I’m open to an argument that I should include it, I just haven’t heard any.

I think most academics would welcome discussion of whether they have ideological blindspots or biases in their Overton windows. Call me too openly liberal, but I agree with an old paper by Jennifer Lackey that even a Young Earth Creationist can successfully teach a good Evolutionary Biology class in college, so long as those views don’t enter into what I take to be the legitimate Overton window of discussion in such a course. If I were on such a hiring committee, I’d look at the syllabus and ask her about how she would teach it. If I was satisfied with her answers, I’d might make her an offer. Whether she turned out not to believe a word she said in class and went to Young Earth Creationist conventions would be none of my business.

But Dan Greco is right that the second-order issue of what should be inside or outside of the Overton window can be as thorny as the first-order issue itself. Dan believes hiring more people with first-order conservatives views would have the effect of widening the Overton windows on a campus even if its not absolutely necessary that we hire conservative people to teach conservative thought . He’s probably right. I should admit I don’t know very much about conservative or Marxist political theory. Most of my formal education in political philosophy ended with Rousseau. If I had a choice today to learn about conservatism from Robbie George at Princeton, and Marxism from Corey Robin at CUNY, or I could get Marxism from George and conservatism from Robin, knowing the syllabi would be the same, I’d go for the former. A priori, I would expect George to give me the more forceful and charitable takes on conservative views, and defend them better from my challenges than Robin, and vice versa about Marxism.

It turns out to be hard, and much to quick, to draw a direct line from first-order ideological views to unreasonably narrow Overton windows, and hard, and much too quick, to claim that if a particular conservative view is outside of the Overton window, it is therefore an ideological blindspot of liberals. Many pro-choice liberals in academia teach the hell out of pro-life views. But also maybe some of the things conservatives want inside the Overton window are reasonable and of educational value, and not Young Earth Creationism in Geology. Before we start making accusations of ideological bias or blindspots based on people’s first-order views, we should ask people what their Overton windows are about various issues they are in a position to teach and research, so at least we know what those are. Maybe we can be more forgiving about each others' windows, wide or narrow, before we proceed to duke it out when it comes to whether we think someone is blind or biased. We all might have very good articulable reasons for our first-order views, but second-order views about whether other views are within or outside of the realm of the reasonable, that’s harder to have such good articulable reasons.

So here are some of mine: first-order views are what I think. “Overton window in” are positions I think are worthy of inclusion, charitable reconstruction, and discussion in a classroom and in scholarly debates. “Out” are positions I think are outside of such discussion, though are perfectly legitimate for discussion in other kinds of contexts.

First-order view: Only wars of self and other defense are morally justified, and then only when such wars are a last resort, with all diplomatic means and concessions exhausted.

Overton window: In; some kinds of pre-emptive wars are justified. Some forms of terrorism are justified. Some wars as a show of force to make threats credible can be justified.

Out: Wars of extermination of a degenerate population can be justified.

First-order view: The Earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old, emerging out of a collapsing molecular cloud that formed the sun and the solar system about a hundred million years before that. No supernatural god was involved. Life evolves by speciation due to natural selection.

Overton window: In: various fine-tuning arguments that suggest design or a creator of the universe.

Out: Young Earth Creationism and Flood Geology. Divine Creationist theory of species.

First-order view: Some combination of civil libertarianism, well-regulated markets with strong anti-trust/anti-monopoly protections, strong social safety net, freedom of migration, the artificiality of nation-states, the need for stronger international integration on trade and security.

Overton window: In: Burkean conservatism, libertarian economics, Chinese legalism, socialism, anarchism, cultural preservationism.

Christian White Nationalism, out.

Jewish Israeli Nationalism, in.

First-order views: Atheism, secular ethics, naturalism.

Overton window: In Abrahamic Monotheism in Philosophy of Religion.

Out: Polytheistic Paganism or "Wiccans" in Philosophy of Religion.

First-order views: All people born deserve protection and medical care/accommodations, even at significant monetary cost to others, and some people should be allowed to autonomously and freely choose to end their own lives.

Overton window: In “Certain disabilities are severe enough at birth that parents choosing to euthanize such children is morally okay”

In: No one should be allowed to end their own lives, even if the choice is free and autonomous.

First-order views: Many animals and many ecosystems need to be protected from human use, human overuse, and human development.

Overton window in: A variety of animal and ecosystem extinctions are justified given the need for economic development to bring people out of poverty.

Out "God made earth and all under the sun for human to use at their will."

First-order views: The blinded randomized clinical trial with strong controls is the gold standard for medical science.

In: There are a variety of practices in folk medicine where one can find treatments for a variety of untreatable conditions.

Out: There are spells, incantations, crystals, and other such forces that have healing properties that are untestable by means of clinical trials.

First-order views: IQ, economic and educational achievement, moral character, does not pattern along categories that people have placed each other into, like race, gender, caste, ethnicity, or sexuality.

In: Many factors, including genetics and epigenetics, and also others, can explain some variance of these measures.

Out: Astrology, palm-reading, spirituality explains these things too.

First-order: Eating nonhuman animal meat is okay. Eating plants is okay.

Overton window, In: Eating meat is immoral. Eating plants is immoral, eating grains is immoral. Humans existing is immoral. Eating People is okay.