I am NOT a company man! I am an empowered creative with a non-conformist outlook that is valued in our diverse workspace!

This essay in American Affairs Journal is full of insights into how educated professionals conduct themselves as corporate bureaucrats while portraying themselves as non-conformists. For instance:

A key benefit of any prestige university is the social network. In order to take full advantage of this, students must participate in party culture without losing control of their appetites. Fiction often con­fronts open secrets, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt follows a group of eccentric college students who destroy their lives after taking their professors’ Dionysian stories too seriously. This might point to obvious truths about moderation: self-control accompanies success. Yet vices and virtues are not doled out equally, and when leadership training is done in a hyper-permissive atmosphere, we narrow the type of character who emerges.

When I think back to the rituals of certain honor societies in my senior year of college, I think about various rituals that involved long, sleepless nights, hard work and hard celebration, and the bonds that were forged.  And I get it. It's a balancing act of work and play reminiscent of Daniel Bell's observations in Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Not everyone can pull it off, but it's a badge of honor for those who do.

Also, regarding why so many in the professional classes eat up the dumbest pop psychology like it's pita chips and humus from Trader Joe's:

Forty years ago, Christopher Lasch wrote that “modern industry condemns people to jobs that insult their intelligence,” and today employers rub this insult in workers’ faces with a hideously infantilizing work culture that turns the office into a permanent kindergarten classroom. Blue-chip companies reward their employees with balloons, stuffed animals, and gold stars, and an exposé detailing the stringent communication rules of the luxury brand Away Luggage revealed how many start-ups are just “live, laugh, love” sweatshops. This humiliating culture dominates America’s companies because few engage in truly productive or necessary work. Professional genre fiction, such as corporate feminism, is thus often told as a way to cope with the underwhelming reality of working a job that doesn’t con­tribute anything to the world.

There is another way to tell the story of the young career woman, however. Her commute includes inspiring podcasts about Ugandan entrepreneurs, but also a subway stranger breathing an egg sandwich into her face. Her job title is “Senior Analyst—Global Trends,” but her job is just copying and pasting between spreadsheets for ten hours. Despite all the “doing well by doing good” seminars, the closest thing she knows to a community is spin class, where a hundred similar women, and one intense man in sports goggles, listen to a spaz scream Hallmark card affirmations.

Regarding genuine non-conformity:

Trump’s antics are indicative of his different route to power. Forget everything else about him: how would you act if you never had a job outside a company with your name on the building? The world of the professional managerial class doesn’t contain many characters, and so they associate eccentricity with bohemianism or ineptitude. But it’s also reliably found somewhere else.

Indeed, the more ostensibly bohemian a professional pretends to be, the more adamant they are about the Code of Conduct. I can recall sitting in a seminar where a speaker with a distinctly "alternative" appearance was introduced, and the host made sure to mention that this speaker had been quite active in developing codes of conduct for professional organizations. I'm old enough to remember when this person would have been denouncing the Code of Conduct, not writing it. I have never been a hippie, punk, or bohemian, and the only time my skin gets pieced by metal is during medical procedures. Still, I miss the days when deviating substantially from some "normie" expectation meant a person was probably harder to offend, not easier to offend.

Now, to be sure, I think conservatives have lately drifted too far away from codes of conduct, as evidenced both by the Tweeter-in-Chief and also some chance encounters with conservatives. At the same time, I think there has to be a middle ground where we keep our hands to ourselves and avoid the dirty talk while at work, but also don't elevate the perpetually-offended to the highest moral pedestals.

I miss the days when it was the right-wingers who wanted the kids to turn down their music and stop watching those blasphemous movies. The other day I was watching Monty Python's Life of Brian, and partway through I realized that this movie would be roundly condemned for blasphemy today, but the condemnations would come from the left.  The right has (mostly) learned how to deal with jokes about religion.  Or, at least, they know they can't bankrupt a theater chain. But the left would go ballistic over the punching down, never mind that Monty Python also punched up, sideways, diagonally, and into the fifth dimension. And never mind that Eric Idle's Loretta character actually had her name and pronoun preferences respected, snide remarks from Reg not withstanding.

Oh, there you go bringing class into it again!

In the essay "The Intellectual and the Masses", Hoffer notes that for most of history the educated classes felt more solidarity with the powerful than the masses.  He attributes the modern intellectual sympathy for the masses to a feeling of precariousness among the intellectuals:  Historically, when the low-born were elevated in social station they generally turned their back on their class of birth in order to prove their worth.  If you feel that you can make your place among the high-born and enjoy the benefits you will try to prove yourself worthy.  If you feel that it isn't an option then maybe you'll advocate for the class that you're at risk of falling back among.

Also, as we have expanded the number of educated people (or at least the number of credentialed people) the value of an educational credential drops, so the intellectuals will have less reason to feel as though they enjoy privileges worth defending.  This is consistent with the modern economic situation.

On the other hand, I think that in America some of the precariousness felt by intellectuals is about more than just a feeling tied to their immediate security and prospects.  In the 19th century, a time of expansion and optimism noted by de Tocqueville, it was also observed that America was hardly a society that valued intellectuals.  Even in times of a secure economic and political order, an intellectual can feel as if he or she is of low status, especially in a democratic culture like America.

Finally, I like Hoffer's observation on how hard it is to strike an ideal balance, presuming one wants such a thing.  On the one hand, intellectuals with great freedom (usually via the patronage of the powerful) tend to have brilliant starts, but then the society can stagnate.  Intellectuals who feel a bit precarious will advocate for the advancement of the masses (which is a good thing), but an excess of egalitarian and democratic feeling in society does not necessarily lead to a flowering of the fruits of intellect either.  You need a certain amount of tension to keep people pushing but not so much pressure and challenge that creativity is put aside in favor of satisfying immediate needs.

Seriously, guys, she's turning me into a Newt! Help! Help! I'm being transmuted!

Top of page 164:

Predictions of shortages of scientists and engineers occur with some frequency, despite evidence to the contrary. 

Later on that same page:

But getting egg on their face did not stop the forecast pundits.

Page 165:

Third, shortages are often predicted by groups who have a vested interest in atttracting more students to graduate school and into careers in science and engineering.

Wait, she thinks that people's pecuniary interests might affect their forecasts?  What is she, an economist or something?  Oh, right.

Page 168:

To quote the American Institute of Physics, "The proportion of new PhDs accepting postdoctoral positions has been a better job market indicator than the unemployment rate for PhDs, which is traditionally low and does not fluctuate a great deal."

AIP has always been good at putting out reliable statistical data.  The same cannot be said for APS.

Pages 168-169:

More generally, the proportion of new PhDs with definite plans to take a postdoc generally increases when the size of the graduating class increases, consistent with the idea that job market prospects are depressed due to an increase in supply.

She's just begging to be burned at the stake.

We have found a witch; may we burn her?

On page 163 Paula Stephan questioned the premise of the sweet, sweet "STEM pipeline" money:

The number of individuals receiving PhDs also depends on underlying demographics and college graduation patterns.  For example, the large increase  in the number of women receiving PhDs is due in large part to the increase in the number of women graduating from college, not to a change in the propensity of those going to college to get a PhD.41 The same is true for underrepresented minorities.  Indeed, the most effective way to increase the supply of underrepresented minorities receiving PhDs is to increase the number receiving bachelor's degrees.  This is not a trivial observation: a policy maker would achieve larger increases by building the base of students eligible to go to graduate school than by investing, as many institutions do, in changing the propensity of those who graduate to go to graduate school.

In other words, the best way to make progress at the graduate level is to make progress at the undergraduate level.  But the best way to make progress at the undergraduate level would be to make progress in k-12.  And progress in k-12 would be easier if we improved underlying social conditions, because there are plenty of things in a person's environment that matter more than their school.  And that takes us to problems that are hard for anyone to solve and are impossible for the scientific community to solve.

Also, the 41 in the quote is for a footnote, in which Stephan breaks it down more precisely and says:

Richard Freeman estimates that 70 percent of the increase in the ratio of women to men getting PhDs is due to growth in the ratio of women receiving bachelor's degrees relative to men receiving bachelor's degrees.  Likewise, 63 percent of the increase in the ratio of underrepresented minorities to non-minority PhDs is due to growth in the ratio of minority to non-minority bachelor's degree recipients.  Source: Freeman's tabulations from data obtained from the Survey of Earned Doctorates (National Science Foundation 2011c and the Appendix) and the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.  See Stephan 2007b.

"Stephan 2007b" refers to a presentation at this meeting, but I cannot find a link to the presentation itself.

Oh, there you go, bringing class into it again!

I'm currently reading The Trouble With Diversity by Walter Benn Michaels, an English Professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC).  The basic thesis of the book is that the American left (such as it is) ignores class in favor of race.  I'm in chapter 3, and I guess my main observation on the first two chapters is that, like any author trying to sell a 200 page book to a general audience, he goes a bit too far with his thesis, trying to argue a bit too hard against including race in the analysis.  I think he would agree that race does certainly matter in many contexts and for many purposes, but he isn't communicating that balanced view as well as he should, because he's trying to push back on something and he only has 200 pages in which to push back.  If he had another 100 pages I think he'd caveat it more.

However, I think he's on fire in the first couple pages of Chapter 3, when he writes:

As almost every piece of literature that UIC distributes about itself announces, we are ranked among the top ten universities in the country for the diversity of our student body.  And that diversity, the literature goes on to point out, "is one of the greatest aspects of our campus."  The bad news about our current condition is that you may be jammed into a classroom so full that you can't find a place to sit.  But the good news is that 45 percent of the people jammed in there with you will be Caucasian, 21 percent of them will be Asian, 13 percent of them will be Hispanic, and 9 percent will be African-American.

(Emphasis added)

Now, it is quite plausible race has something to do with why state politicians under-fund his campus.  At the same time, class surely also has something to do with it.  They are not a flagship campus, and they get a lot of working-class students.  Race needs to examined, and class does as well, and leaving either one out means that you miss part of the picture.

ADDENDUM:  Here's a great quote on page 108:

The true victims of the injustice in our educational system are not the students who have been made to feel uncomfortable on the campuses of Duke, Northwestern and Harvard but the ones who have never set foot on these campuses or on any other.  What is surprising is that the battles over social justice in the university have taken the form of battles over cultural diversity, which is to say, of battles over what color skin the rich kids should have.  If you belong economically to the bottom half of American families (or even to the bottom three quarters), you will not benefit from having your ethnicity respected by the other students at Northwestern, you will not suffer by being made to feel uncomfortable by the partners in [law firm] Dewey Ballantine.  Diversity, like gout, is a rich people's problem.  And it is also a rich people's solution, as attractive to rich people on the left as it is (or ought to be) to rich people on the right.  For as long as we're committed to thinking of difference as something that should be respected, we don't have to worry about it as something that should be eliminated.

This was written in 2006.  If somebody read it to a campus protester today there would probably be a call for his resignation.