While I'll admit that it's likely that on many of our more prestigious college campuses, Democrat-voting profs outnumber GOP-voting academics, that's certainly not true on every campus. I can tell you that it definitely was not the case during my tenure as a student at UT, where the collegiate culture I experienced strongly reflected the politics of the state and the region. My professors and fellow students were, on the whole, center-right to far-right in their political views.(emphasis mine) "Likely"? "Center-right to far-right"?
Here are the primary sources (here, here).
2 comments:
What baffles me about the whole "political imbalance in our colleges" issue is the question of what, exactly, people propose to do about it.
For instance, I'd feel safe wagering that the faculty at UChicago, where I attend, is markedly more liberal than the "average American." But the faculty members weren't hired because they're mostly liberals. They were hired because they're great teachers and/or contributors to their field.
So, if this is a "problem," how are we supposed to correct it? Should we mandate that colleges politically screen job candidates and balance out liberals and conservatives? Should we limit academic freedom and force a sort of "Fairness Doctrine" on classes that touch on issues that can be construed as politically relevent? Or what? I doubt that there's an answer that wouldn't make both liberals and conservatives extremely uncomfortable.
Most of the time, when I hear this complaint, it really seems to be either pointless whining or a plea for some sort of ill-defined, effectively impossible, special status for conservative groups on campus.
(Likewise, the idea that liberal professors indoctrinate liberal views into their students is just silly. My present social sciences professor, who's jokingly described himself as an "unreconstructed Marxist," is almost certainly liberal, but he managed to make Adam Smith just as engaging as Karl Marx.)
For the record, do you oppose, in principle, the so-called "fairness doctrine"?
But I think you're incorrectly presuming that all the hires (and certainly tenure decisions) at UC are based on merit and that an overtly Conservative or Republican professor would be treated fairly. Liberal Idiots (one who happens to be a professor) in the Tennessee blogosphere routinely dismiss Conservatism as a mental disorder or a mendacious character quality.
And I don't think that anything approaching "indoctrination" takes place in university classrooms, but I think it is silly to think that professors don't have an influence over the views of all but the most steadfastly ideological students; don't you agree?
In any event, I think acknowledging the near-monolithic ideological makeup of academia is a nice first step, frankly. That's something that even Katie can't bring herself to admit.
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