Bias

Mark Twain said in his Autobiography, “ Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.’” Now we have those statisticians (professors) investigating themselves further proving that professors live in la, la land. I still remember the picture of two professors talking to each other. One said, “I didn’t vote for Bush and I know you didn’t either. How did he get elected?”

David E. Stoffer, at 6:40 am EST on January 22, 2007

Bias cubed!

Just what we needed....another slanted study by one of the MOST slanted organizations in education, the American Federation of Teachers. As one reader implied, this is getting really tedious.

feudi pandola, at 8:15 am EST on January 22, 2007

I can’t imagine any of the professors I know wondering why Bush was elected. We have enough familiarity with history to know exactly why. As for not voting him, its certainly not something we should be ashamed of.

Jerry, at 8:15 am EST on January 22, 2007

Exactly

“However, even on this theme, he notes that the studies tend to exclude community college faculty members and to focus on faculty at elite institutions — probably skewing the results.”

With this insight the authors of this study only serve to buttress the point made by many others, namely that right-of-center faculty cannot secure tenure track positions at elite and four-year colleges and thus have to settle for community college jobs. This fact, apparently acknowleded as accurate by this study’s authors, means there are fewer center/right scholars performing research into important issues of the day since community college faculty often do not have the time to conduct research. This in turn probably means that the research that so many members of our society rely upon has the great potential of being skewed toward a liberal, or postmodern-decontstructivist perspective.

I ask, has any person out there who majored in Education ever heard of Siegfried Engelmann or has anyone who majored in Economics recall studying Hayek? How about Psychology majors, ever heard the name Arthur Jensen mentioned let alone study his work? I highly doubt it. As an undergrad I never heard the aforemention scholars. Instead I was fed a steady diet of the cultural relevance perspective (i.e. one parent is just as good as two and communes can be a successful alternative to free-market capitalism).

Let a person present a reasoned argument complete with strong empircal evidence in any social science or humanities department that runs contrary to the pre-conceived notions that are prevelant in those departments today and see how short-lived any consideration will be given to hiring or promotion of that person. It won’t happen.

thomasowellfan, at 9:05 am EST on January 22, 2007

“The new study was sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers and the work was conducted by John B. Lee, an education researcher and consultant who said that once the AFT commissioned the work, it did not restrict his approach or findings in any way.”

Uh — OK.

Kevin, at 9:41 am EST on January 22, 2007

For Your Consideration

I would like to offer a real-life anecdote of why studies like these are harmful to faculty. I was a new teacher at a private college, and the Department Chair and her supervisor were attempting to describe the culture of their campus as opposed to their main campus. They hemmed and hawed for a bit, and in trying to understand their descriptions, I naively asked, “Do you mean more liberal?” The both looked at me, horrified. “No! Not liberal!” the Chair declared. Her boss shook her head. “Never liberal!” From then on, I think they viewed me as suspect because I had used the evil word. The irony? I do not identify myself as a liberal, per se.

My self-labeling has always been an attempt to see where I fall in the continuum of ridiculous name calling. If I were to describe myself in more specific terms, I guess I would say I am slightly left of center, and certainly not radical. In my own terms, and in my voting status, I am Independent. Nevertheless, these people preferred to assume what they would, based on the cultural reputation of liberal arts professors: ‘Oh, they are just a bunch of raving liberals. Everyone knows that.’

The two women finally ended up describing their campus as “the bastard child.” Hmmmm. I would think “more liberal” would have been a kinder description.

kgotthardt, at 9:51 am EST on January 22, 2007

A Couple of Responses Before I Return to My Day Job

Larry,

I enjoy your comments. It’s valuable for us to hear an educated non-academic perspective. But I would take issue with your suggestion (if I’m reading you correctly) that, since everyone has biases, we don’t need to concern ourselves when these biases inform the results of our research.

The obligation of any good social/natural/mathematical scientist (or any impostor who plays one on television) is to apply the scientific method rigorously and to go willingly wherever the evidence leads. Can this be difficult? Of course. Do our preconceived biases sometimes cause us to fail in this task? Certainly. But that is why we subject our work to peer review, something that the authors of “bias” studies rarely do.

Under no circumstances, however, are we permitted to work the maze backwards, i.e., to start with conclusions and then collect and interpret the evidence in such a way that it necessarily conforms to the story we wish to tell. There *is* something wrong with this, and this is the problem at the heart of ACTA’s laughable “Ward Churchill” study.

I won’t lie. I do take a little extra pleasure in debunking “research” from organizations whose goals I detest. And maybe, in borderline cases, that might affect my judgment. But this is not a borderline case; the design and execution of the ACTA study is so utterly risible that I can assure you I would, as a peer reviewer, reject any paper for publication that displayed a similar methodology, regardless of its political content. (Indeed, I regularly recommend rejection of hopelessly flawed manuscripts that liberally cite my own work; if you know academics, you know how painful a conflict of interest that can be, but I do it because it’s my job.)

Kelly232,

It is true that all research is probably flawed, and that flawed research is not automatically invalid. But some flaws are so overwhelming and embarrassing that they do, in fact, render the work in question useless. Among the flaws that qualify:

1. Drawing a sample containing obvious and easily correctable biases.

2. Failing to define concepts or variables in a way that allows for full understanding and easy replication.

3. Arriving at exaggerated conclusions which are not supported even by the biased evidence that is presented.

By these standards, which are basic to all serious scientific research, the ACTA “Ward Churchill” study doesn’t even make the grade as “junk science". Rather, I would call it junk propaganda.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 10:45 am EST on January 22, 2007

Bias in the academy

What is the point of this article? Does the author think there is no political bias on university faculties?

There are several questions that need to be answered?

Is there a substantial conformity of views on a number of important issues including the following?

1. The Iraq war 2. Abortion rights 3. gun control 4. Affirmative action 5. Speech codes and anti-harassment rules 6. The existence of pervasive racism, gender discrimination and sexual violence on college campuses. 7. The Arab/Israeli conflict 8. The presidency of George Bush 9. Identity politics 10. The death penalty 11. Law enforcement and crime prevention 12. Foreign policy 13. Environmental issues14. Military recruiting on campus

My experience is that there is a great deal of agreement on these issues and it influences a lot of university governance including hiring, curriculum, student affairs, graduation speakers, funding for conferences and outside speakers, and the handling of alleged conduct violations by students and faculty.

If there is political conformity among faculty, does it affect what and how subjects are taught?

My discussions with students indicate mixed results. Many faculty members, probably a substantial majority teach classes and express their opinions without forcing them on students. In a small number of cases faculty members are so convinced of their opinion that they believe that contradicting them is wrong and grade accordingly. A few teachers are reported to be intimidating and hostile to students who disagree with them and create atmospheres in their classrooms that make it difficult for students who disagree to remain in class. The students who most frequently report bias are students with strong opinions of their own who challenge teacher’s assumptions with which they disagree.

If there is bias, does it matter?

To some extent, that depends on whose ox is being gored. Conservative views are marginalized, particularly on the issues of the war and affirmative action. Personally I think this is not a good thing because it fails to engage the arguments of those who disagree.

Here is where politics comes in. The purpose of politics is to promote ones opinions and to gain power to implement them. That is a legitimate purpose in the political arena. But in an academic environment it should not be the goal, particularly in the classroom. In order to have a full debate on issues it is important to have contrary views presented by people who actually hold them.

Would a law system that required the defense side to be represented by the prosecuting attorney ensure that the defendant was adequately represented. More important, would justice and thus the wider community’s interest be served by railroading defendants. In the same way, is the student well served if everyone who teaches them about the subjects of race, gender and class share the same monolithic views of these subjects.

The worst part of this process is that in most political debates there is merit on both sides of the discussion. There is a great value to presenting two sides because in the long run, progress comes from synthesizing the best points of both sides. The university is an ideal place for this kind of discussion and debate to take place. If one side of these debates is so poorly represented numerically that their positions are marginalized as offensive or unacceptable, then the process of synthesizing does not take place and it leads to the evolution of increasingly strident and one sided views.

While it is wrong to think that campuses have evolved into simply being mouthpieces for a collection of views on contemporary issues, in my experience they have strayed way too far in that direction.

Jonathan Cohen, professor of mathematics at DePaul University, at 10:55 am EST on January 22, 2007

One Important Reason this Study Matters

Ms. Neal’s contention that the report incorrectly frames the “debate in terms of politics rather than professional standards” is laughable. Ms. Neal’s organization has been politicizing the debate over academic freedom since they released their post-9-11 report attacking faculty. They are also actively promoting legislative solutions, such as bills recently introduced in Virginia and Montana. So to suggest that this is not about politics is absurd.

That is also why it seems to me that this study is very important. Anyone who sat through the academic freedom hearings in Pennsylvania or endured testimony of Horowitz, Neal, de Russy et al. in other states knows that state legislators are repeatedly told that there is an established set of research out there that proves liberal bias in higher education. Consequently, this report is very important—not for convincing other academics that these reports are shoddy (or based on “researchiness” as we like to say over at Free Exchange)—but rather for countering the political narrative that is out there about research in this area.

There are already five states that have legislation filed promoting so-called “academic bills of rights” or “intellectual diversity” statutes and you can bet all this research will get rolled out again—it will be nice to have a credible study to counter that message. In this case it isn’t an academic argument, but a political one about academics.

Then again—I’m biased!

cpswww.freeexchangeoncampus.org

cps, Coordinator at Free Exchange on Campus, at 11:11 am EST on January 22, 2007

Enough of these pre-determined studies...

While we are on the topic of self-promoting studies that favor the preset biases of the presumably “conservative” investigators...

Let’s not forget the lame Berkley study that said that cranky Berkeley daycare center babies are more likely to be “conservative.” (Heck, I imagine half the tiny tots interned in these camps are one verse of Kumbaya away from eating veal and earing fur, and are one reading of the Rainbow Fish from becoming Ayn Randers!) Heck, put me in there and I’ll come out a bonafide neocon.

And also let’s not forget the recent story in Psychology Today that gooed and shloshed over “conservatives” being fear driven along with all things negative and “liberals” being “open minded” and all things good.

And I’m now supposed to see this report as “different” and less credible because it’s favoring conservatives.

Gimme a break, kids!

My point is that those who poo-poo these “conservatives are harassed on campuses studies” are likely to cleave to studies pushing the inverse like brown on organic rice. And vice versa. BS has no party affiliation.

Bill, at 11:45 am EST on January 22, 2007

I’m intrigued by the AFT study, as intrigued as I was by the studies it examines. Sadly, it seems few on the comments page are so. I have to wonder how many have even taken the time to read the study in question? How any self respecting scholar can just say “Ah, ha, (blank) sponsored the research therefore it must be wrong” speaks volume about the sad state of debate in this nation. Each side is obsessed with the idea that cabal-like organizations are working to deceptively decieve the masses...There is though this question, is there a liberal bias in academe? Is it manifested in hiring, promotion, publishing, teaching? I think any good social scientists would have to admit that this question, to be sufficiently proven, would take a lot of research. Googling a sample of online syllabi would I hope not cut it (not that such a study is worthless). It seems to me the unwillingness of scholars, right or left, to examine this question with empirical honesty is tragic. It seems that many are terrified that perhaps they will not be able to demonstrate empirically what they suspect all along. But what happened to enthusiasm for empirical deiscovery, following the data where-ever it leads one, even if it upsets ones pre-conceptions? I’m not expecting to find such disinterestedness from any think tank (Ms. Neal is a regular poster on National Review, not exactly the home of academic disinterestedness; the AFT likewise has known political alliances). There work is interesting, and should be judged on its merits, but all too often it is marred by partisanship. But certainly there more academics out there willing to examine this question like scholars. How any scholar could consider themselves as first conservatives or liberals and second scholars is shameful: does anyone think reality (which is what we are supposed to be trying to describe faithfully) will comply to such a degree with our ideologies? Give me a break!

Ken, at 11:51 am EST on January 22, 2007

Liberal bias is real, especially on unionized campuses

I teach at a Massachusetts community college that is unionized. During last November’s election, all union members (more than 500 of us) were asked by our local union leadership to “document all the things we did in our classes” to get students to vote for the Democratic (extremely liberal) candidate.

I was horrified and wrote back that I did not bring politics into the classroom, nor would I. My job is to present a balanced view of the world so students can make up their own minds on issues.

Many professors, however, did openly and often push the Democratic candidate and his views in their classrooms. I don’t think the makers of this study would really like to sit in on classes—it would totally ruin their unrealistic day dream that bias does not exist.

Concerned, at 1:55 pm EST on January 22, 2007

Sick of the Food Fight too

Now that the ranting has died down, would all message posters who have actually conducted social science research please stand up? Would the people who have actually taught college students please stand up? The rest of you: sit down, shut up and learn.

I spent this morning in the classroom — teaching, not lurking on the listserves and beating up on everyone who disagrees with me. In my lecture, I presented points of view from the left wing and the right wing. My students had a debate. They listened to one another. They know where I stand on some issues – a fair proposition, so that they understand my own biases. And today, they learned a bit about how to critically analyze an argument and how to present facts effectively to support their POV.

In my opinion, I have spent a successful morning. Have you?? Not William Sumner Scott, J.D., who writes that “random sampling is likely to be hit and miss.” William, go read a stats book, because that statement is just plain ignorant. In demographic and social science research, random sampling has its own rules, which are intended explicitly to minimize sampling error. I’ll keep this short, but if you want to learn, go read up on error terms.

Not Terry, who writes that “conservatives … don’t care what the answer is …. they want to dominate the classroom and impose their own views on young people.” No, Terry, those are IDEOLOGUES. Ideology has no party affiliation. And PLEASE don’t speak for the rest of us liberals who believe that conservative-bashing is a weak and ineffectual way to make a point.

Sign me, “Sick of the Political Games — and the Food Fight too”

Hoosier Prof, at 1:56 pm EST on January 22, 2007

Funny

Being forced to pay AFT service fees, I am amused by allegedly “non-partisan” groups that uses the U.S. Postal Service’s “non-partisan” rate to send pro-Democrat material at election time.

IMHO, such groups are hardly in any moral or authoritative position to claim “objectivity.”

If the AFT/NEA/AAUP are so certain of their great qualities — let them use the billion-dollar pension funds of their members (I know, I’m paying the dues) to start up its own colleges.

Quit sponging off taxpayers — show some courage, if any is available.

C.T. Bigsby, at 2:01 pm EST on January 22, 2007

More on political bias in the academy

Let’s get away from trying to quantify things which by their very nature are difficult to quantify and look at this issue in a more subjective manner. Would anyone feel comfortable getting up at a meeting of a faculty of liberal arts and saying any of the following:

“Marriage is the union of a man and a women".

“Our admissions policy should be based solely on the basis of proven capacity to do college level work as measured by standardized tests, high school grades, recommendations of teachers, difficulty of courses taken and the academic reputation of the school from which the applicant has applied.”

“Our school should not undertake the expense of paying benefits to same sex couples because two working adults are both capable of providing such benefits for themselves.”

“A fetus is a living being with an immortal sole and to prematurely end its life through an abortion amounts to murder".

“We should not advertise scholarships and summer programs for the sciences which accept applications only from women".

“Our job descriptions should read ‘we do not discriminate on the basis of gender or race, all are encouraged to apply’.”

“We should cooperate with the federal authorities in determining whether foreign students enrolled in our classes are actually attending as a way of determining possible terrorism suspects".

“While the subjects of race, class and gender are of central importance in understanding human behavior, it is not clear that housing their study in special departments won’t produce advocacy rather than inquiry".

Last March extremely serious accusations were leveled at members of the Duke lacrosse team. A week after the charges were made would anyone have felt comfortable at a Duke faculty meeting getting up and saying that

“while the players may have a reputation for underage drinking and making noise, the players are denying the charges and until proven otherwise they should be given the benefit of the doubt.”

How does the student affairs department of a college respond to procedural violations. If a student organization holds a bake sale and neglects to mention the charity for which the sale is conducted would the group be punished? Probably not. At DePaul University, a conservative student group did not state that the purpose of their bake sale was to protest affirmative action and they were punished for the failure to follow procedure.

A lot of people who write in comments at insidehighered.com are dismissive of the criticisms of David Horowitz and Ann Neal among others who write about political bias in academia. I think such commenters should ask themselves if they are objecting because they don’t think the bias exists or because they like having a monopoly on accepted wisdom on a variety of public controversies.

The point of this comment is not to promote or criticize any of the above points but to highlight the difficulty of having an open and honest discussion of the issues that underly each of the comments

Jonathan Cohen, Professor of Mathematics at DePaul University, at 3:55 pm EST on January 22, 2007

Professor Cohen offers a good test and, I think the only real one. Think about how your own department would fare with these questions.

Then keep the answer to yourself and for g*d’s sake move on to the next issue.

stm60, UConn, at 4:36 pm EST on January 22, 2007

Unapologetically Tenured, First of all, I think we generally agree. My general point is that in this area, everyone’s biases are so deeply ingrained, that we might as well give up. Compare this with medicine, for example, where the end goal of making the sick well is widely shared. While there may be some disputes as to what constitutes “sick” and “well” rarely will people argue that patients are “well” when they are “dead.” So, in that regard, medicine is easy. Of course, doctors have recently discovered that there might be grey areas between dead and alive, and clarity, unfortunately can come about by reference to some system of morals.

In the field of “deducing political bias” every term, sample, and question is loaded with inherent political bias. Even the method of detecting bias in the researchers, itself, is loaded with bias. I can’t see any way around it. The base on “neutral” question is so inherently political, that there is no way around it. Peer review would just inject another lay of political bias.

Let me give you an example. You and I agree to conduct a study regarding whether a department is “liberal” or “conservative.” We obtain an agreement form all members of the faculty to answer the questions as best they can and on time. (Okay, I am stretching things into a fantacy world a bit.) We sit down and work out a set of questions that will be indicative of “liberalness” or “conservativism.” Since we agree on most things, formulating 20 takes about two days.

Some examples of questions include: 1) Does the constitution provide a right to view pr0n in the privacy of one’s home? 2) Should we attack Iran ? 3) Should people from foreign countries without evidence of their legal status be able to adjust their status to that of permanent resident and later citizen ? 4) Should George W. Bush get a 3d term?5) Should Bill Clinton have been impeached ?

Then, we hire outsiders (with no knowledge of American politics) to present these questions to the faculty. We get a bunch of answers. The reviewers offer suggestions, and the questions are modified. We redo the study again with a new department.

But, what has happened? The biases of the peer reviewers have now been incorporated into our study. For example, the question, “Does the constitution provide a right to view pr0n in the privacy of one’s home?” has been modified to “Should people be able to view pr0n in the privacy of their home.” This seems innocuous enough, but some would comment that the deletion of the reference to the constitution, itself, reflects a political viewpoint that normative judgments should not be made with reference to said document.

I think this is sort of like the problem with “moral relativism.” Sure, it is a nice thing for the pundits to say, but it is virtually impossible to detect a moral relativist without assuming, for the sake of argument, that one’s own “morals” are static.

Anyway, I am with you. We should probably focus more on the process of developing curriculums and evaluating individual professors.

Chuck, I am trying to understand your argument. Apparently, you think my argument is invalid because of my profession? As to whether lawyers are liked or disliked, I can’t be too sure. Law schools seem to have plenty of applications, and people seem to demand to see lawyers all the time. So, I think that your statement regarding whether lawyers are liked might be based a disagreement with my views.

Unfortunately, you don’t really debunk my argument. So, I can’t offer any response then to say that I am sorry that you don’t like me. I suggest you take the LSAT.

Prof. Cohen, In systems of law outside the united states, criminal trials are not necessarily resolved via an adversarial process. Indeed, in some places that are first world countries, judges act more as prosecutors, and there is no attorney-client privilege. I don’t know if this is more or less just or better for society, but, for better or worst, most Americans consider the 6th amendment to be just another term for “justice.”

Larry, at 4:36 pm EST on January 22, 2007

Sorry to be flippant, but isn’t this a little like arguing whether the sky’s blue?

During my time in college and grad school, it was always assumed by my profs (whenever the subject came up, and I’ll admit it didn’t much) that I was a Democrat. It was taken for granted that most of their colleagues were Democrats. You could count the number of openly Republican profs in a lot of departments on your right hand and have enough fingers left over to hold a cup of coffee.

Now, to what extent does this actually seep into grading/hiring?

That’s a good question and I seriously doubt many would consciously let it affect their decisions, but the problem is that when everybody around you day in and day out is a Democrat, someone you encounter who’s a run of the mill Republican may seem like a quasi-fascist. Most profs made a serious effort to not let politics seep into the classroom, but if you had to tally up the number of instances and compare them, you’d wind up on the left side of the aisle.

“Many have questioned, for example, the lack of data on applicant pools for faculty positions, and compared the disparity in political inclinations to that of Wall Street, where there are not suggestions that any Republican tilt is the result of bias or results in any discrimination against Democratic investors. Lee also compares the military, where recent polls have found a Republican tilt in opinions, but no evidence that soldiers service to their country is affected by whether they are seeking to protect members of one party or another.”

Re: the military: in what way would it be? Not following orders for any reason would at minimum severely damage there careers and under some circumstances could lead to them getting shot. For the Wall Street Journal, it’s editorial page is Republican and there’s a clear rightwing tilt there, but I don’t know that the same is true in the rest of the newspaper (that their journalists are rightwing).

SB, at 5:10 pm EST on January 22, 2007

I conduct social science research and I teach.

SB encountered liberals and generalizes that to all campuses. We had liberals driven out of our dept because of the remaining faculty’s evangelism and attitude toward gays. It was ugly.

When I used the word “conservatives” I was referring to the organized far righters who populate this website in support of Horowitz’s agenda, and their brethren. I don’t believe they care anything about education — this is only about power and they see themselves as “culture warriors” not as truth seekers (the mission of the academy).

I feel under attack by these folks. Just as in other levels of education, they should feel free to keep their kids home if they don’t like what is taught, and leave the rest of us alone to get on with our business. There are fine academies for conservatives (e.g., Pepperdine, Bob Jones), so why insist that everyone teach their favorite doctrines or that no child should ever feel intellectually challenged by a divergent viewpoint? These are the forces of the dark ages trying to drag us back into a time when knowledge was subordinated to religious doctrine. There is too much at stake to give in to their bullying.

Terry, Assoc Prof, at 6:30 pm EST on January 22, 2007

It took a few moments to stop laughing, having read the above comments. If there is a group of more pompous, self important blowhards, with less to say, in the known universe, it has yet to be discovered. Here’s an idea; shut up and teach.

Bob C, at 7:05 pm EST on January 22, 2007

“There are fine academies for conservatives (e.g., Pepperdine, Bob Jones), so why insist that everyone teach their favorite doctrines or that no child should ever feel intellectually challenged by a divergent viewpoint? These are the forces of the dark ages trying to drag us back into a time when knowledge was subordinated to religious doctrine. There is too much at stake to give in to their bullying.”

Terry come to think of it, you’re making my point here:

Conservative = dragging us back to the dark ages

Republicans = subordinating knowledge to religious doctrine

If I met a prof who thought that, I’d call that prof biased.

As someone who usually votes Republican, I wouldn’t attend Bob Jones at gunpoint—it is not emblematic of Republicans believe and pretty much antithetical to more libertarian ones like me. Pepperdine, I wouldn’t have a problem with, but if these are the places you’re referencing, I think the conservative takeover of academia has a long way to go. Here’s a bet-for every conservative school you can name, I can name 10 left-leaning ones.

SB, at 8:15 pm EST on January 22, 2007

Even more on bias

Ken stated above

“I don’t think any faculty member would get up at a meeting and make comparable politically charged statements from the other ’side’ of the political divide (i.e. “anyone who takes the Bible literally should not be taken seriously here” or “women who stay at home to take care of kids are not full human beings")

I think this statement essentially proves my point. To the poster of this comment “marriage is between a man and a woman” is too inflamatory to be stated publicly. The last time I looked that is the definition in the dictionary. If he doesn’t like the current one, I suggest the author of this post write his own politically correct dictionary. I think if you go back to my list of statements in an earlier post you will see that they are simply statements of positions that are considered (not necessarily accurately) to be conservative. In other words, conservative views are too awful to be mentioned in public or at least at faculty meetings.

He or she is confirming my point that to many people on the faculty of college campuses, it is taboo to oppose affirmative action, oppose gay marriage, oppose military recruiting on campus, oppose job ads that don’t suggest favoritism towards women and minorities, oppose abortion, oppose programs that are open to women only, and subject identity programs to the same scrutiny as more traditional ones.

The poster is not merely disagreeing with these views. He says that of course nobody would state them at a faculty meeting because they are too outrageously political. That is very strange because these are largely statements about university policies and topics that are regularly discussed at meetings of faculty.

There is really a problem and instead of making statements about the nefarious purposes of right wing ideologues, the posters should sit down and try to figure out what is upsetting their supposedly conservative opponents.

I spent many years involved in various liberal and left wing causes and one of the things that led me to abandon politics was that people became terribly insular. I spent most of my time trying to convince people that disagreed with me. For that reason I learned to listen to and to respect people with whom I had differences. What I saw in my political colleagues is that they grew increasingly insular, spending more and more time defining themselves in increasingly narrow ways. Rather than learn what others were thinking, they would gather in ever smaller groups and focus their personal venom against people whose views were only marginally different from their own.

I eventually gave up politics, returned to graduate school and devoted my time to academic pursuits. Eventually I noticed the same kind of creepy politics was beginning to become an important part of academic life. The insularity, the self-righteousness, the insistence on ideological conformity, it is all there and it is not harmless. And it interferes with the kind of sober decision making that is essential to the intelligent running of institutions with operating budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Jonathan Cohen, Professor of Mathematics at DePaul University, at 11:00 pm EST on January 22, 2007

Filet of Snark

Oh, come on, Sole Man, if we spent all our time on this forum beating each other up over typos, we’d all be ducking cheap shots. Professor Cohen’s contributions are always well thought out and respectfully delivered, even if I may generally disagree with them. Save your snarking for the many trolls who haunt these precincts.

As to Professor Cohen’s comments, I guess I have two main reactions. First, I would readily concede that liberals and leftists are over-represented in the academy, at least in certain fields. I remain convinced that this is primarily a matter of self-selection. Most Ph.D. students in the social sciences and humanities are also left-of-center politically, and I don’t know of any department that considers—or, indeed, even has information about—applicants’ ideologies when making admissions decisions. And if most grad students are liberal, then most faculty are going to be liberal.

Having said that, however, in all the places where I have studied and taught, the sort of issues Professor Cohen raises are debated all the time. Affirmative action, in particular, is quite controversial among rank and file faculty, and many are not reluctant to voice their opposition. This is less true of administrators, I suppose, but they are responsible for carrying out the policies of the upper administration. I know of no college or university where the president or chancellor (or the provost, for that matter) is chosen by a vote of the faculty.

And anyone who thinks that all faculty members are pro-choice on abortion probably needs to spend more time talking to his or her colleagues.

I’ve helped to hire conservative faculty, I’ve voted to tenure and promote them, and I’ve had lively discussions with them after which we generally agree to disagree.

On the other hand, I’m not sure how I’d react to a colleague who favored discrimination against gays and lesbians. Conservatism is one thing; bigotry is something else entirely. I understand the Biblical argument against homosexuality, of course, though its proponents are curiously careful to cherry pick the prohibitions in the Old Testament that they prefer to endorse. And I couldn’t care less how “marriage” is defined so long as the government enforces equal rights scrupulously. But bigotry is bigotry, and I do believe that one of the goals of the academy should be to help, where possible, to erase bigotry from public life.

Finally, as to David Horowitz and Anne Neal, I do not consider either worthy of being taken seriously. Horowitz is like the toddler who runs through the house naked during your dinner party. When people stopped paying attention to him as a leftist, he jumped the fence and starting steaking through someone else’s dinner party. Anything to get attention.

Anne Neal is simply an ideologue. She has an agenda, and her agenda is to crush liberals and leftists wherever they may appear to roam. As far as I can tell, her only qualification to assess the academy is that she once went to college.

I agree that it is valuable to debate the various issues affecting higher education, and I would never shy away from such a discussion. But I would hope that my adversaries would be intellectually honest and qualified to speak to the questions at hand.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 5:45 am EST on January 23, 2007

Mr. Danby, What standards of “logic” are you advocating that people apply? (You didn’t mention any.) I don’t think I am giving you any homilies. Instead, I am trying to point out that every single study on this issue will be nothing more than politics. Not that there is anything wrong with this. Most studies of medicine will be biased in favor of finding cures for disease.

SB, I think you identified the problem. “….it ought to be pretty easy to put out your own studies saying the opposite.” I think it probably is. Ask the right questions. Question faculty about how they judge others, and the need for “rules” (especially rules that support their positions), and you will find a bunch of people that want to maintain their personal status quos. Heck, I went to a fairly “liberal” (according to Wikipedia) undergrad, and most – if not all – of the faculty there, while usually Democrats were concerned with 1) protocol; 2) social niceties; and 3) keeping their departments safe from the “wrong kind” of people.”

Larry, at 8:05 am EST on January 23, 2007

The AFT report comes across as missing the mark to anyone who has been keeping up with the way Duke Faculty have responded to the fiasco there. If there is a self-selection process at work to increase the number of left-of-center faculty, as UT suggests, that should be a concern. That argument was considered to be racist when applied to low enrollment of women and minorities. Then again, perhaps the defenders of the 88 Duke faculty who continue to support the pro-Nifong agenda there, like the AFT study, are proof of the depth of the bias imbedded in higher education today. Lord Acton was correct. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It applies to faculty as well as politicians.

Anon, at 9:25 am EST on January 23, 2007

Sorry, Mr. Albert

Mr. Albert, I guess I don’t know who you are. I found the first PhD with your name. The one that teaches at McGill seemed to be quite intelligent and respected. He also seems like a nice guy. Sorry for confusing you two.

And yes, it is an honor to be banned from posting at a blog. I don’t really see how any of these people that make their livings trolling people about “liberal academe” are courageous. Maybe if they spent some time in jail like Nelson Mandela, Vietnam POWs, or to a lesser extent MLK they might be courageous. But getting paid to write rhetoric isn’t really courage. It’s a job.

Larry, at 10:25 am EST on January 23, 2007

About “Dr. Albert”

Larry, don’t apologize for misidentifying Dr. Jacques Albert, Ph.D. As a commenter on my blog pointed out last October, he is actually James DeLater, and he is not, for the record, the only person I ever banned from my blog. In three years I had 5.5 million visitors; I banned only six people, five of them academics. In the blogosphere, it’s fairly well known that I had an open-door commenting policy, and that you had to be one of the most severely unhinged creatures on the Internets to get a ban from me. Professor DeLater was the only person I’d banned in the hopes that he would stop damaging himself.

But more important is the question of why DeLater continues to leave comments — here and on other blogs — under the name of another professor. Perhaps, at the very least, someone at IHE should let the real Dr. Jacques Albert know that James DeLater is posting comments under his name.

Michael Bérubé, at 1:43 pm EST on January 23, 2007

SB, I never used the word Republican in my comment.

You seem to think that holding a bias is the same as teaching with a bias or doing research with a bias. You did not understand my first comment. EVERYONE is biased. Everyone holds opinions. Everyone has beliefs and attitudes. Everyone is embedded in a context and has a perspective. The essence of good methodology is to keep the bias out of the work. It is the same with teaching. You keep your bias out of your work.

You seem to think that proving that there are more liberals in academia is the same as proving that there is a bias in the classroom. One doesn’t necessarily follow from the other.

The most plausible argument for liberals in academia, in my opinion, is that conservatives are busy chasing money and don’t find enough of it in academia to interest them. Liberals and conservatives have different values. The values of academia are inconsistent with those of conservatives.

Terry, at 9:00 pm EST on January 23, 2007

Clarifications for “Larry” and MB

“Larry": Sorry for the misunderstanding about my identity; by the way, one of the many reasons I’ve been a champion of David Horowitz, Anne Neal, Candace de Russy and ACTA et alii (and their programmes of academic reform vis a’ vis bias in the academy) is that I’m a patriot and proud life VFW member (Post 1224) who happens to be a scholar, translator and academic (yes, I’ve been shot at, “Larry", and, as even MB might admit, I don’t get “woofed” by BIG-REP academic faineants easily—even if they do play hooky—er—hockey—de temps en temps). Know that I do appreciate your challenging comments and your curious explanations of legal matters vis a’ vis the academy—I’m still waiting for the St. Augustine reference, however (sed noli modo?).

MB: For the record (ahem), I am, was, and will be Dr. James Albert DeLater (author, editor and translator); I didn’t ASSUME another professor’s name (but my apologies to Professor Jacques Albert of McGill University, whom I do not know but whom I respect, if nothing else because he teaches a REAL SUBJECT)—actually, I’ve used “Jacques Albert” for years as a nom de plume, so your speculations and phantasies about me are, comme d’habitude, quite groundless, for I hadn’t heard of Professor Albert until your oppos reported to you that I could be he. (Your oppo-research roaches scurried round a bit [heh, heh] to answer my challenges to the anti-patriotic screed regularly retailed on your soon-to-be passe’ [?] website, nicht wahr?). “Unhinged", MB?—simply for supporting measures to free students and faculty from serial bias, intimidation and indoctrination at the hands of academic leftist ideologues, sir? And isn’t that what you called David Horowitz, who’ll perhaps be your debating partner in future? Is patriotism and traditionism (e.g., education begins with Latin, Greek and mathematics and then everything else) voiced by academic so outre’ a stance that it makes flinch both the stars and the dictionary?

Jacques Albert, at 5:30 am EST on January 24, 2007

Self-Selection

Since I was the one who brought up the issue of self-selection, let me say this: when I hear someone say that an argument “is so ridiculous that it doesn’t deserve a rebuttal", I know that I am dealing with a person who has nothing to add to the conversation.

The combination of ignorance and paranoia displayed by the the most extreme members of the academic (and non-academic) right is both amusing and frustrating. It is amusing because it describes a hiring process that is completely unfamiliar to any real college professor. It is frustrating because it requires us to rebut arguments that are “flat-earthish” in both their simplicity and their wrongness.

Contrary to what some people may think, search committees do not have a discard pile where they place the vitas of any conservative who has the audacity to apply for a job. First, job applications rarely, if ever, discuss political ideology. I suppose that there may occasionally be clues that could be uncovered with a careful enough reading (does the applicant assign books by, say, Howard Zinn, on his/her syllabi?), but the first screening is rarely done with a fine-toothed comb.

Second, and more important, there are values that affect the day to day lives of departments that are far more important to search committees than views on abortion or affirmative action (even if such views were knowable based on the information provided). Research departments, above all else, want to recruit colleagues who will publish books and articles in the most prestigious outlets. Teaching departments want to hire gifted instructors who will inspire students and, not incidentally, make the department look good at the institutional level. (I am obviously exaggerating a bit here—most research departments care about teaching, and many teaching departments expect publication—but you get the point.)

So exactly where are all these right-wingers who, despite obvious promise as scholars and/or instructors, are being passed over in favor of less qualified liberals? I can tell you where they are—they exist only in the twisted fantasies of people like David Horowitz and organizations like ACTA (which, oddly enough, includes among its luminaries a number of conservative scholars who have found success at the highest levels of academe despite the forces supposedly arrayed against them).

Further, it is extremely rare for a graduate school applicant to reveal any information at all about his or her political views. It is even more unusual for an admissions committee to notice or care. Instead, Ph.D. programs admit the best available applicants and find out about their ideological predilections only after they arrive on campus, if even then.

Anyone who has taught in a Ph.D. program in the social sciences or humanities can tell you that the majority of their grad students tend to be on the left end of the political spectrum. However, this is not because they are chosen on that basis, but because they happen to be the folks who applied.

As others have noted, this is the same sort of self-selection that causes military officers to be overwhelmingly conservative and social workers to be preponderantly liberal.

Most of us who are in the business of hiring colleagues and admitting students are simply not that devious or single-minded. We’re too busy doing our jobs. If you knew anything about academics, you’d realize that Horowitz and ACTA are taking you for a ride.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 8:50 am EST on January 24, 2007

The real point

UT, I was only kidding about the immortal fish. Professor Cohen’s typo wasn’t important — and I know that anyone can silp up on a keyboard now and then. The real point is that it would be quite strange (at least in my department) if someone stood up to declaim about abortion at a faculty meeting. As you yourself put it, “there are values that affect the day to day lives of departments that are far more important to search committees than views on abortion or affirmative action (even if such views were knowable based on the information provided).” Professor Cohen’s comments are (I agree) usually cogent and thoughtful, but this scenario — in which the lone pro-lifer is cowed into silence during a department meeting by the stultifying pro-choice consensus all around him — is tendentious and deeply misleading.

Sole Man, at 11:01 am EST on January 24, 2007

Really?

” .. Anyone who has taught in a Ph.D. program in the social sciences .. can tell you that the majority of their grad students tend to be ..”

Oh, please. As if Catholic conservatives such as Tom Monaghan haven’t set up PRIVATE social programs. They don’t rely on “gimme, gimme” government programs.

Continued failure to see reality is either delusional or moronic. Neither qualifies anyone for a faculty position. Such persons should get out before they are found and rooted out.

C. Bigsby, at 11:45 am EST on January 24, 2007

Missing the Point

I am amused by the criticisms of Lee’s intriguing and challenging study. Most assume that Lee is denying the presence of liberal bias in institutes of higher education, and respond either with anecdotal accounts of such bias, or attacks on Lee’s own assumed bias.

Such responses totally miss the point of Lee’s study. Lee does not purport to address the issue of bias among college faculty. Rather, he examines the methodology of some often-cited studies that find such bias. In looking at the studies, he uses the guidelines of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for evaluating the objectivity of research. (These guidelines, incidentally, are in accord with widely-recognized experimental methods.) He concludes that the studies fail to meet basic methodological critera for valid studies.

Please note that Lee never addresses the underlying issue—whether or not bias exists among college professionals in a way that affects their teaching, hiring, and promotion practices. All he says is that the studies he examines aren’t competent to give us the answer.

As far as I can tell, Lee’s criticisms are well founded. Perhaps the two most telling criticisms are that the studies draw conclusions well beyond the scope of their research and that they confuse correlation with causation.

It appears to be true that compared with national averages, Democrats are over-represented among professors in four-year colleges and universities. But the correlation between being a professor and being a Democrat does not imply causation—that an institution’s liberal bias favors Democrats over Republicans when professors are hired, or that liberal professors indoctrinate or browbeat their students, or that liberals are favored for tenure.

An alternative, and equally valid, conclusion would be that the qualities that fit people to become tenured professors — intelligence, exposure to a variety of ideas (lots of education), and the ability to evaluate evidence logically (training in critical thinking) — also cause people to be liberals. And before you jump on your high horse and say I’m implying that conservatives are stupid, illogical, and uneducated, remember that this explanation is not only equally valid, it’s equally invalid. Like the “liberal bias” conclusion, it confuses correlation with causation. To know whether either conclusion has merit, you’d have to do a study that fulfills, at a minimum, the objectivity standards of the OMB. Even better would be a full double-blind study, if such could ever be designed.Earlier comments have mentioned the “Ward Churchill” study’s use of course syllabi from 65 courses at 48 colleges and univerities to determine the presence or absence of bias. That study concluded that the course descriptions show how “narrow, single-minded, and tendentious much of higher education has become.”

Lee notes that the study selected syllabi using certain key words, such as “activism, egalitarianism, domestic violence, multi-racial, oppression, and radical.” (For a full list, click on the link to the study report and see page 10.) It’s unlikely that such key words would generate a representative sample of college course syllabi, even in the social sciences. Nor are the 65 courses selected, out of many hundreds offered, enough to allow for solid conclusions. Therefore, a study limited to those syllabi would not give valid results for college courses in general. What’s more, the Ward Churchill study does not define its criteria for determining the presence or absence of liberal bias. Even if it did, the most such a study could validly conclude is that course syllabi in those subjects do (or do not) reflect bias. As other comments have pointed out, the researchers could not know how the matters were handled in the classroom, and thus can’t validly draw conclusions about whether “in classroom after classroom, on campus after campus, courses too often look more like lessons in political advocacy and sensitivity training than objective and balanced presentations of scholarly research.” ("How Many Ward Churchills” pp. 2-3, http://www.goacta.org/whats_new/How%20Many%20Ward%20Churchills.pdf)

As Lee points out, the other studies similarly draw conclusions well outside the evidence. Lee’s study, on the other hand, is careful not to do that. He doesn’t argue for or against the presence of liberal bias in colleges and universities. He doesn’t claim that the studies’ affiliations necessarily cause them to be biased. Rather, he concludes that the studies don’t meet the OMB critera for objective research, and he gives you the information and tools to draw the same conclusions for yourself, if you care to do so. Now that’s objective!

Katherine Dale Makus, at 5:01 pm EST on January 31, 2007

Put-up time

” .. he gives you the information and tools to draw the same conclusions for yourself, if you care to do so.

Having worked in both corporate market research and academia, I’ve seen billion$ spent on research that was contradictory, inconclusive, and ultimately useless.

Therefore, if the AFT (I’m forced to be a member) thinks their clearly-ideological approach (gub-mint is great) is so superior — I would invite the AFT (and NEA and AAUP) to use the billion-dollar pension funds of their members to set up their own colleges of political thought.

That would settle the argument definitively. Assuming the AFT/NEA/AAUP approach was superior, the AFT/NEA/AAUP students would perform in a superior fashion and financially support the AFT colleges.

In other words — actions and results speak louder than thousands of studies. What is the AFT waiting for?

C. Bigsby, at 9:52 am EST on February 1, 2007

“I am amused by the criticisms of Lee’s intriguing and challenging study. Most assume that Lee is denying the presence of liberal bias in institutes of higher education, and respond either with anecdotal accounts of such bias, or attacks on Lee’s own assumed bias.

Such responses totally miss the point of Lee’s study. Lee does not purport to address the issue of bias among college faculty.”

Jaschik writes:

———Lee’s analysis finds some support for the first theme. “Taken together, these studies at best suggest that college faculty members are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans,” he writes. However, even on this theme, he notes that the studies tend to exclude community college faculty members and to focus on faculty at elite institutions — probably skewing the results.

The second theme takes a more thorough beating in the study. “Among the most serious claims the authors make is that this liberal dominance results in systematic exclusion of conservative ideas, limited promotion opportunities for conservative faculty, and expression in the classroom of liberal perspectives that damage student leaning,” Lee writes. “These claims, however, are not supported by the research. Basic methodological flaws keep a critical reader from accepting the conclusions suggested by the authors.”———

You’re right. He doesn’t say what we’re arguing over here.

However, if that isn’t directly saying it, it is being insinuated. He’s also arguing here over the results of studies showing that universities are left-leaning (not merely that there’s a specific level of bias that shows up from it).

“But the correlation between being a professor and being a Democrat does not imply causation—that an institution’s liberal bias favors Democrats over Republicans when professors are hired, or that liberal professors indoctrinate or browbeat their students, or that liberals are favored for tenure.”

I’m willing to completely buy that if there was no bias, whatsoever, in any hiring/appointments in academia, universities would still be left-leaning. My main problem is with someone who’d argue over the fact that it is left-leaning—and it looks like no ones arguing over it at the end of this thread, but further up there are apparently a few people who’d dispute it.

“An alternative, and equally valid, conclusion would be that the qualities that fit people to become tenured professors — intelligence, exposure to a variety of ideas (lots of education), and the ability to evaluate evidence logically (training in critical thinking) — also cause people to be liberals.”

See-say I wrote an article (I won’t, but just say I did), positing that the reason the majority of the military is Republican, is that they’re the ones who possess the requisite qualities – bravery, patriotism, and a willingness to fight for the democracy.

(I realize you offered a caveat to this afterward, but) when conservatives read quotes like this about academia, this is what it looks like to them.

I’d add at least one other thing to it. With at least some conservatives and libertarians nowadays, they’re shrugging off becoming a professor because it’s taken so much for granted that it’s dominated by liberals that they don’t bother with it (this wasn’t the key factor, but it played a role in my decision).

SB, at 3:35 pm EST on February 2, 2007