Posted on 03/24/2013 8:42:30 AM PDT by dirtboy
Neil Gross is a sociologist at the University of British Columbia who previously held posts at the University of Southern California and Harvard, has a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, and received undergraduate training at Berkeley. He edits Sociological Theory and has written a book on the liberal philosopher Richard Rorty.
He has all the markers of an academic on the left, and Gross confesses in his introduction to this study of faculty politics that he has “very liberal social attitudes” and that his views on the economy and law are center-left. Nevertheless, he registers clearly the overwhelming ideological slant of higher education. Reviewing survey and voter registration data, he concludes that “the professoriate either contains the highest proportion of liberals of any occupation in the United States for the period 1996-2010 or is right behind another famously liberal occupational group, authors and journalists.”
It’s a galling situation for people on the right, and the response by people on the left only makes it worse. If the underrepresented group were a favored one, liberal observers would invoke disparate-impact theory, which holds that any situation that is demographically disproportionate signifies bias at work and needs public intervention. But in this case, the excluded group is conservatives, which makes the imbalance the conservatives’ own fault.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Here in Michigan, less than half the people who voted for Romney even bothered to vote in the state level education positions.
This is where the rpublican party’s lack of outreach and even organization comes in. The Repubs should have informed people, and urged them to vote!
We even had a good tea partier on the ballot for one of two open board of regents seats at UofM. Rob Steele was the tea partier who entered the race against John Dingell late and made Dingell actually fight to keep the seat.
He came within a couple thousand votes.
Whenever a leftist starts lecturing on the wonders and rewards of diversity just ask them about diversity at their college or alma mater - What is the ratio of conservative professors to liberal professors?
Thanks to this left wing bias, people like Bill Ayers and Paul Erlich remain employed at top universities.
It is why the economist who was always wrong - John Kenneth Galbraith, got to be the ‘big man in economics’ and a long term professor at Harvard.
It is why Paul Erlich - “The Man Who Was Always Wrong” got away with his predictions of a global starvation catastrophe in the 70’s and 80’s that never happened, global cooling and a new ice age by now and he even predicted that the UK would cease to exist... now he is the recipient of some $100million to research Global Warming and a professor at Stanford.
Conservatives are go it alone types. Socialists are herd types, hence they organize. At a minimum, any party needs an organ of communication, an inspiring leader, and a set of values. The Democrats have the press locked up. Their leader fits the ideological set of values. Their values are normalizing misfits, recruiting the socially inbred, and any other identity group that grazes off the commonwealth.
Reagan is dead. He can't no longer can lead and preach the virtues of an ideal America. His followups have been too flawed or don't have a set of virtuous values they consistently support. conservatives need a media outlet that can support a virtuous America that shows the value of virtue to all but the hardened socialist. Unfortunately, the left does not need a charismatic leader. They will endow him with all the charisma they want. The right needs a virtuous charismatic leader to move them to action. We are different. The same rules don't apply. Interestingly, Reagan was able to draw off many traditional Democrats by the sheer strength of his values and charisma.
Wow. What you wrote is brilliant. I am going to send it to all three of my conservative friends.
Being a tenured professor has to be one of the greatest jobs in the world. How dangerous is it? Not very. I guess you could fall down the stairs. How dirty is it? Not very. You might get some marker ink on your hand. How stressful is it? Not very. Have your TAs grade the papers. Do you have to deal with irate customers? Nope. You can flunk them if they complain. Does it require constant training? Well, they did go from chalkboards to whiteboards. Do you work for a demanding boss? Come on. They were in on the same gravy train. Do they have to worry about competition? When American students start speaking Japanese or Russian, but no. Can their business go bankrupt? The facilities are mostly paid for. They receive tuition, grants and government money. Being a university professor is a better job than being a Doctor or lawyer.
Actually, instead of conservatives getting turned off and not going into Academia, it should prompt the opposite reaction. Infiltrate and overturn. I say this as both a conservative and an Academic.
Whether it be a public or private university it is obvious the 0Bmama-Voters are only hiring their own. This can be gays hiring gays or blacks hiring blacks and so on. University administrators are heavily slanted to gay and lesbian all these clowns collect mega-paychecks while America’s private sector producers soldier on
Conservatives are excluded as much as possible in the soft departments, liberal arts. In engineering and hard sciences hiring is done more honestly....for now
I think a lot of the dominance of leftists/libs in higher education simply comes down to the fact that lib/leftists like the idea of indoctrinating people. Kind of like when you hear some idiot talking about wanting to save the world. Which usually leads to the idea of controlling people and stopping them from doing things they (libs/leftists) don’t approve of. The conservative mind does not lead that way.
Damn.... after reading that I quit reading your post, as you are either ignorant, or do not wish to be respectful of other FReepers by proof-reading your posts.
I suggest if it is the latter you might get more conversation by trying harder. If it is the former, there is no hope for you.
And don't forget the six figure salaries. I have said before, I want tenure at my job.
R u the dezign ated thred poleese, r what?
The “Big Education” cycle:
govt makes unlimited subsidized loans to students
schools raise prices to absorb available funds
schools pay legions of profs and admins excessive salaries
profs and admins donate to Democrats
and repeat
Very deep, well stated, and much appreciated.
” Infiltrate and overturn. “
BINGO!
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