Dog Bites Man
The Washington Post reports on a study that finds that the vast majority of college professors are liberal. While this should come as no surprise to anyone who ever went to college, the degree to which the professoriat is liberal is worrying.
Among the findings:
Among all universities, professors are:
72% liberal and 15% conservative
50% identify themselves as Democrats, and 11% as RepublicansAt elite universities (the top 1/3), the gap is wider still:
87% of faculty are liberal and only 13% conservative"In contrast with the finding that nearly three-quarters of college faculty are liberal, a Harris Poll of the general public last year found that 33 percent describe themselves as conservative and 18 percent as liberal.
The liberal label that a majority of the faculty members attached to themselves is reflected on a variety of issues. The professors and instructors surveyed are, strongly or somewhat, in favor of abortion rights (84 percent); believe homosexuality is acceptable (67 percent); and want more environmental protection "even if it raises prices or costs jobs" (88 percent). What's more, the study found, 65 percent want the government to ensure full employment, a stance to the left of the Democratic Party."
"The most liberal faculties are those devoted to the humanities (81 percent) and social sciences (75 percent), according to the study. But liberals outnumbered conservatives even among engineering faculty (51 percent to 19 percent) and business faculty (49 percent to 39 percent).
The most left-leaning departments are English literature, philosophy, political science and religious studies, where at least 80 percent of the faculty say they are liberal and no more than 5 percent call themselves conservative, the study says."
Liberal professors tend to hire more liberal professors. Anecdotal evidence of discrimination against conservatives in academia abounds, although this study says that evidence of discrimination is "preliminary." For all their talk of diversity, universities seem to be almost entirely lacking in the one sort of diversity that actually matters - diversity of ideas.
[wik]Johno comments that
Yeah, okay. But what happens when a bunch of adults start hectoring students about right-thinking this and socialist that?
That’s right- the smart and attentive ones do what endless generations of kids have done: grow up, drift the opposite way, and end up as professors with center-right to conservative opinions.
Seriously… if the problem were as bad as for example David Horowitz would have us believe, the Yoots of Today would be hoisting the star and sickle and marching to the “Internationale” on their way to cut their penises off in recompense for man’s injustice to (wo)ma(or y!)n. And yet, heavens! that ain’t happening.
But that ain’t happening, and this will fix “itself” in a few years.
(Trust me on this. The one entrenched big-school liberal arts faculty I know well is changing its face with each new hire, abandoning the orthodox insurgent marxism of the 60s and 70s for a softer kind of wimpy leftism (as described above) with no backbone to it whatsoever. The Marxists staged a “revolution” in the 70s in the academy, and they are now moribund at best and laughingstocks at worst. In twenty years, all the Assistants and Associates will be trending right, I promise.)
Johno gets the Calvin Coolidge award for recommending effective non-action. My original intent when I read the article was not to write a “sky is falling” post. Things generally swing back and forth, but this swing has been bigger than others, and - this is the important thing - accompanied by constant claims that the swing never happened, and that all those Chairman Mao quoting postmodernists were really just middle of the road moderates. That someone had to commission a no-doubt costly study to demonstrate what any booze-drenched college freshman could blearily see in seconds is the real story. Which is what I was thinking when I saw the article, but lost track of as I wrote the post.
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NDR: heh.
NDR: heh.
Yeah, okay. But what happens
Yeah, okay. But what happens when a bunch of adults start hectoring students about right-thinking this and socialist that?
That's right- the smart and attentive ones do what endless generations of kids have done: grow up, drift the opposite way, and end up as professors with center-right to conservative opinions.
Seriously... if the problem were as bad as for example David Horowitz would have us believe, the Yoots of Today would be hoisting the star and sickle and marching to the "Internationale" on their way to cut their penises off in recompense for man's injustice to (wo)ma(or y!)n. And yet, heavens! that ain't happening.
But that ain't happening, and this will fix "itself" in a few years.
(Trust me on this. The one entrenched big-school liberal arts faculty I know well is changing its face with each new hire, abandoning the orthodox insurgent marxism of the 60s and 70s for a softer kind of wimpy leftism (as described above) with no backbone to it whatsoever. The Marxists staged a "revolution" in the 70s in the academy, and they are now moribund at best and laughingstocks at worst. In twenty years, all the Assistants and Associates will be trending right, I promise.)
There's another dimension as
There's another dimension as well, perhaps a class one. And that is, neither side really takes anyone seriously unless the person has a PhD.
Yeah, some are better than others, and yeah, they're not all that way. But snobbish faculty of every political stripe are the heart of more than a few top institutions.
Johno gets the Calvin
Johno gets the Calvin Coolidge award for effective non-action. My post wasn't a "sky is falling" post - just an observation. Things generally swing back and forth, but this swing has been bigger than others, and - this is the important thing - accompanied by constant claims that the swing never happened. That someone had to commission a no-doubt costly study to demonstrate what any booze-drenched college freshman could blearily see in seconds is the real story. Which is what I was thinking when I saw the article, but lost track of as I wrote the post.
B, in truth my rant wasn't
B, in truth my rant wasn't aimed at you so much, but at pudendacranial characters like David H. There's a number of bills out there in various States to allow professors to be sued (tort law) for maligning the ideas of students. Do I even need to say that this is the worst idea since... since... I dunno. It's such a massively stupid, horrible, awful, soul-killing, intellect-killing idea that I don't even know where to begin.
Personally, I think it is a
Personally, I think it is a bottom-up problem ;), but considering I have attended a number of notoriously liberal universities in a notoriously liberal discipline, I would not be surprised if it is shown that the numbers are exaggerated. The Randolph Foundation has been behind a number of surveys whose methods have been questioned.
Occam's razor -- you don't
Occam's razor -- you don't find much conservative (or more precisely GOP) economic philosophy in Universities because it doesn't stand up to peer review. You can cry "liberal bias" all you want to, but every time you direct that at an individual, you're calling them a liar. That's a lot of liars.
If you define conservatism as "people who don't have much time for namby pamby pinko mushy literature", small wonder you'll not find so many conservatives in those departments.
Can't say as I meet too many GOP adherents in my professional life as an engineer, other than the religious types. Engineers like to argue, and backing up the current administration's load of crap purporting to be an economic policy is pretty much impossible.
Use the razor. I'm sure we'll see a "conservative" university or two pop up somewhere, where the descent from fact into opinion will be encouraged at every turn, amid barks and complaints about lack of recognition...
Ross, I'm sure that Nobel
Ross, I'm sure that Nobel Prize winning economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek would agree with you that conservative economics don't stand up to peer review. Or the entire Chicago school of economics. We all know how well Keynsianism has stood the test of time, and it was the centerpiece of every major liberal policy initiative from FDR right through Carter. Even Clinton didn't smoke that pipe.
Most people aside from you don't define conservatism as “people who don’t have much time for namby pamby pinko mushy literature”, but shit, I'll give it a try.
I'd say about 65% of the engineers that I've worked with over the last four years were conservative. I'm not saying that that's a sufficient statistical universe to claim that engineers trend conservative, but it certainly is a counterexample to your claim that it is pretty much impossible for logical engineer types to support the current administration's "load of crap."
There are quite a lot of people in this country who do not accept as a given your viewpoint, and are not deluded, insane or mendacious because they disagree with you.
And why exactly do we need to deploy the razor here again? Conservative thought doesn't stand up to peer review? Sorry Ross, but that doesn't pass the laugh test. Conservative thought can trace a distinguished pedigree back to Burke, Locke and Smith in the Eighteenth century.
And every conservative academic will be leaping at the opportunity to ignore facts in favor of opinion, while they whine and complain. Perhaps you should show a little more respect for those who disagree with you. Just because someone has a different take on matters of policy does *not* mean that they ignore facts, diregard the truth, embrace opinion and emotion over reasoned discourse, or in fact any other bad thing. Your comment is more indicative of these bad habits than the conservatives you attempt to lambast.
Love you man, and welcome back.