Posted on 12/06/2004 11:58:39 PM PST by kattracks
Although conservatives complain loudly and often about liberal bias in the mass media, the truth is that one is far more likely to read a conservative perspective in The New York Times than hear it from a college professor. At least the Times publishes an occasional conservative on its op-ed page. At many universities, just finding a Republican anywhere on the faculty is problematic.Two recent studies by Santa Clara University economist Daniel B. Klein prove my point. In one study, he looked at party registration of the faculty at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. He found 7.7 registered Democrats for each Republican at the former and 9.9 Democrats per Republican at the latter.
In certain departments, Republicans are literally nonexistent. There are no Republicans in either the anthropology or sociology departments at Stanford or UC-Berkeley. At Berkeley, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is 11 to one in the economics department and 14 to one in the political science department. Stanford is a model of intellectual diversity by contrast, with a Democrat/Republican ratio of seven to three in economics and nine to one in political science.
In a larger study, Klein looked at voting patterns from a survey of academics throughout the country. He found that in anthropology, there are more than 30 votes cast for Democratic candidates for each one cast for a Republican. In sociology, the ratio is 28 to one. Republicans do best among economists, who only vote Democratic by a three to one margin. In political science, the ratio is 6.7 to one. On average, across all departments, Democrats get 15 votes for every one going to Republicans.
Not surprisingly, the ideological orientation of college faculty skews heavily toward the left. According to a survey in the Chronicle of Higher Education, 47.9 percent of all professors at public universities consider themselves to be liberal, with another 6.2 percent classifying themselves as far left. Only 31.8 percent say that they are middle of the road, and just 13.8 percent are conservative.
Obviously, this puts the vast majority of professors far to the left of the population as a whole. But interestingly, they are even well to the left of their students. A survey of last year's incoming freshmen found only 24.2 percent calling themselves liberals and 2.8 percent classified as far left. More than half said they were middle of the road, and 21.1 percent were conservative.
Liberals pooh-pooh these data, sometimes implying that they result because conservatives aren't bright enough or sufficiently intellectual to make it as university professors. The truth is that it is very, very hard to get a tenured faculty position at a university. And the hiring process is unlike anything in a private business. In most cases, one needs a unanimous vote of professors in one's department to get tenure. This puts a high priority on intangibles like collegiality, which often translates into sharing the same politics and ideology.
Bias works in other ways, as well. It is extraordinarily difficult to get an article in a top academic journal or get a book published by a university press unless it slavishly parrots the liberal line. That is because such things must be peer-reviewed by experts in the field before they can be published. This makes it very easy for anonymous reviewers to blackball those with a conservative point of view, effectively killing the careers of those who must publish or perish.
Finally, it is essential these days to be taken under the wing of an established professor in your field and be mentored if you have any hope of getting a teaching position at a good school. With so few conservatives on the faculty -- and many of those hiding their politics to avoid retribution -- the deck is very heavily stacked against any conservative hoping for an academic career, no matter how qualified they may be.
Students pay a heavy price for this state of affairs. In certain fields like political science, it is simply impossible to receive a good education unless exposed to conservative thought. Nor are students likely to receive an adequate appreciation or understanding of the conservative perspective if it is only taught by those hostile to it. According to a new survey by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, almost half of students reported hearing only one side of political issues in their classrooms and that professors often use their positions to promote personal political views.
Unfortunately, fixing this problem will take a long time. It is certainly not amenable to a legislative fix, such as a quota for conservatives. The only thing that will help is to shame universities into treating intellectual diversity the way they now treat race and gender. But first they have to admit they have a problem. That hasn't happened yet.
Bruce Bartlett is a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Townhall.com member group.
(Just kidding)
L
The Left likes its academic monopoly. And as long as it doesn't have to change, it will fight tooth and nail to retain the status quo.
Liberalism is the facile solution to any problem; conservatism asks "the second question" and therefore finds limitations to facile answers.You would think that college professors would therefore be conservative, and this is true - but only within the narrow confines of how they do their own jobs. Everyone is conservative about the field of their own experise. The trouble is the temptation to project the appearance of wisdom outside the field of one's actual expertise. Liberals succomb to that temptation, and the natural result is that they herd together in superficial group-think.
It really shouldn't surprise us that movie stars with great looks and a whole high school education succumb to that temptation; it's a bit scary to see college professors seconding the same hare-brained schemes which some high school dropouts can see through.
a girl friend of mine in college thought that "dan ortega is one of the good communists" + not surprisingly, her career zinged right along. tenured, chair of her department.
A hopeless tactic. No, the solution is to build new universities that are fully committed to western civilization and objective truth, that rigorously discriminate against wool gathering and bathos, fully willing to flunk and fire anyone spouting drivel, treason, or immorality.
Then staff them in the first generation with think tank conservatives and the students of the remaining conservative cadre in the old universities. And then encourage a significant portion of those who graduate from them, to teach, themselves.
It will take decades and billions, but it is well worth it. Nobody will care about the Stanford faculty when everyone knows they are putting out crap and there is better stuff available. They've wrecked valuable institutions - build new ones. And don't let them back in to wreck those, too.
Save some time and money; "commandeer" some existing ones.
A friend of mine (moderate Demodog) just asked me this very question yesterday. My answer "those who can, do... those who can't, teach" did not entirely satisfy him, though he could see it possible. This will be a timely article to leave for him.
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Not many seem to EVEN CARE that this is going on.. In that sense republicans are EXTREMELY DUMB...
And our culture is quite friendly to people who can really build things, that any appreciable number of others actually want. When Amazon wanted to change mail order and bring it into the web age, they didn't start by trying to revamp Sears and teach it to dance. Starbucks didn't take over McDonalds and change the menu to coffee and scones. Michael Dell didn't angle for CEO of IBM.
They just went and did it.
Just as Fox News is labeled "whores for Bush" simply because they are not complete sell-outs for liberals causes/candidates, 100% compliance with their views and values is not only seen as preferable, but demanded. Anyone who resists is "fascist".
Although I find him a bit of a nut himself, I have to agree with Michael Savage when he says that liberalism is a mental disorder. Part of the disease is egocentrism that makes it impossible to see things from any other point of view.
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