Some Librarians are Conservatives Too

One good result of today's procrastination sessions was my discovery of the Heretical Librarian blog. Its author is David Durant, a self-professed conservative librarian from North Carolina. In September 2005 he penned an article, "The Loneliness of a Conservative Librarian", for the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Durant finds librarians, as a whole, to be a group of leftist zealots. He has sundered his membership in the American Library Association, and learned never to speak his mind at ALA meetings. The blog--which links to other conservative librarian blogs--has been liberating for him.

Last year at the Medical Library Association meeting, one of the keynote speakers made a comment that was strongly critical of the Iraq war. This received strong applause, including from myself. Later in the speech there was a brief acknowledgment of  how horrible Saddam Hussein is.  This received weak applause, and people soon stopped clapping.  The liberals had carried the day, and would no doubt be listening to NPR very soon.

Durant is absolutely right.  Librarians are predominantly liberal, and not as tolerant of other views as we believe ourselves to be.  This is just human nature, perhaps.  But for a profession that supposedly values the open exchange of ideas, this is something that we must guard against.

I truly find George W. Bush to be a frightening President, who is worthy of impeachment for violation of our laws. That doesn't give me the right to castigate Mr. Durant for seeing things differently.  I may be mystified by his point of view, but I should keep that fact to myself.

Although I'm sympathetic to Mr. Durant's plight, there is a danger in going too far to accommodate divergent perspectives.  Right now David Horowitz is campaigning to restore "balance" among university professors, whom he claims tilt too far to the left.  They probably do, and just like librarians could stand to be more open-minded.  But the truth is that people with liberal, skeptical temperaments are attracted to the professoriate.  There is no doubt that bleeding-heart liberals have a hard time being hard in corporate boardrooms. Why isn't Horowitz campaigning for them?

Comments

[T Scott]

I think you have every right to criticize Durant's views -- but as an individual, not as a librarian. More thoughts here: http://tscott.typepad.com/tsp/2006/01/politics_and_pr.html