Oct. 8, 2007

The Liberal (and Moderating) Professoriate

Faculty members identify as liberals and vote Democratic in far greater proportions than found in the American public at large. That finding by itself won’t shock many, but the national study released Saturday at a Harvard University symposium may be notable both for its methodology and other, more surprising findings.

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The 72-page study — “The Social and Political Views of American Professors” — was produced with the goal of moving analysis of the political views of faculty members out of the culture wars and back to social science. The study offers at times harsh criticism of many of the analyses of these issues in recent years (both from those hoping to tag the professoriate as foolishly radical and those seeking to rebut those charges). The study included community college professors along with four-year institutions, and featured analysis of non-responders to the survey (two features missing from many recent reports).

The results of the study find a professoriate that may be less liberal than is widely assumed, even if conservatives are correctly assumed to be in a distinct minority. The authors present evidence that there are more faculty members who identify as moderates than as liberals. The authors of the study also found evidence of a significant decline by age group in faculty radicalism, with younger faculty members less likely than their older counterparts to identify as radical or activist. And while the study found that faculty members generally hold what are thought to be liberal positions on social issues, professors are divided on affirmative action in college admissions.

In a day-long meeting, the findings were presented by the authors, Neil Gross, an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard, and Solon Simmons, an assistant professor of conflict analysis and sociology at George Mason University. While Gross and Simmons saw their findings on faculty moderation as particularly significant, they were challenged during the day on that conclusion. Lawrence H. Summers, the economist and former Harvard president, did his own cut on their numbers and said that his analysis pointed to a problematic liberal domination at elite research universities. Several other speakers also said that they were troubled by the extent of ideological lopsidedness that they saw in the analysis, and brainstormed about reasons for that imbalance.

While some questioned the analysis Gross and Simmons provided, there was widespread praise for the way the survey was conducted, with Summers and others predicting that their data may become the definitive source for understanding professors’ political views. The work was supported by the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, which generally focuses on math and science education and the history of science. The survey results come from 1,417 full-time professors last year, and includes full timers at various stages of the tenure-track (and off it). A separate analysis of part timers is not yet done.

On political orientation, the survey asked professors to identify themselves in one of seven categories, from extremely liberal to extremely conservative and the results leaned decidedly to the left.

Political Orientation of Faculty Members — 7 Categories

Extremely liberal	9.4%
Liberal	34.7%
Slightly liberal	18.1%
Middle of the road	18.0%
Slightly conservative	10.5%
Conservative	8.0%
Very conservative	1.2%

While that breakdown would at first glance back the claim that academe is run by “tenured radicals,” Gross and Simmons say that is too simplistic. They analyzed the responses to a series of questions on social and political views of the two “slightly” categories and found significant differences between the “slightly” and “extremely” answers for both liberals and conservatives. They also found significant commonalities among the two “slightly” categories and the middle category.

Based on that view, they argue that there are in fact three identifiable political groupings in academe, and liberalism does not come out on top — the moderate group does.

Political Orientation of Faculty Members — 3 Categories

Liberal	44.1%
Moderate	46.1%
Conservative	9.2%

When this analysis is then applied to institutional sectors of higher education, and to disciplinary groups, the results point to strong liberal tilts in the humanities and social sciences, and at liberal arts colleges, but much less left domination in many other parts of higher education.

By disciplinary groupings, health sciences were found to be the most balanced ideologically — with identical 20.5 percent liberal and conservative, and the rest in the middle. Business is also relatively even in views, with a slight tilt to the right, with conservatives having 24.5 percent of professors and liberals 21.3 percent. Moderates were more prevalent than liberals in computer sciences and engineering (by a wide margin), and in the physical and biological sciences (by a narrow margin).

The sector breakdowns demonstrate the importance of including community colleges, whose faculty members are more likely than any other sectors to identify as conservative. While some previous studies on faculty politics have suggested elite research universities as the places with the most ideological uniformity, liberals appear to be most dominant at liberal arts colleges.

Political Orientation of Faculty Members, by Sector

Sector	Liberal	Moderate	Conservative
Community colleges	37.1%	43.9%	19.0%
Bachelor’s, non-liberal arts	38.8%	48.5%	12.7%
Liberal arts colleges	61.0%	35.1%	3.9%
Ph.D.-granting, non-elite	44.3%	51.9%	3.8%
Ph.D.-granting, elite	56.6%	33.1%	10.2%

For those wanting to look at changes in higher education politically, the data released Saturday suggest that the left and the radical left are strongest among older faculty members and have lost considerable support among those entering the profession.

Political Orientation of Faculty Members, by Age

Age	Liberal	Moderate	Conservative
26-35	32.5%	60.0%	7.5%
36-49	41.5%	49.9%	8.6%
50-64	49.4%	42.7%	7.9%
65+	36.9%	52.3%	10.8%

Gross and Simmons also analyzed the prevalence of radical political identities, and tabulated the figures by age for those on the left (some conservatives of course also consider themselves radicals, but the numbers have been greater on the left in academe, and critics of higher ed focus on the radical left). Here too, the authors found that younger academics are much less likely to identify as radicals or activists of the left than are older faculty members.

Percentage of Faculty Members, by Age, Identifying as Left Radicals or Activists

Age	Left Radicals	Left Activists
26-35	3.8%	1.3%
36-49	9.9%	11.5%
50-64	14.3%	17.2%

Marxist identity was also low, but with less identifiable shift by age group (the range was 3.9 to 4.7 percent) and with the strongest disciplinary support in the social sciences (17.6 percent) and humanities (5.0 percent), with negligible support elsewhere. Gross and Simmons cautioned, however, that in fields like sociology and literature, scholars who identify as Marxist are in many cases talking about specific approaches to their research and analysis, and not necessarily about a political ideology they wish to see in operation.

While the analysis based on political orientation points to a growing centrism in the professoriate, there are of course choices — such as presidential votes — that more clearly divide the house. Asked about their choices in the last presidential election, more than three-fourths of professors backed John Kerry. Only in the health sciences did Bush carry academe (and he did so narrowly there). In the social sciences, Ralph Nader and other candidates won the same share of the vote as did President Bush, while Kerry had support from 87.6 percent of academics.

Presidential Preferences of Professors in 2004 Elections, by Discipline

Discipline	Kerry	Bush	Nader	Other
Physical and biological sciences	77.4%	20.8%	0.9%	0.9%
Social sciences	87.6%	6.2%	1.8%	4.4%
Humanities	83.7%	15.0%	0.0%	1.3%
Computer science and engineering	61.9%	33.3%	0.0%	4.8%
Health sciences	48.1%	51.9%	0.0%	0.0%
Business	65.4%	32.1%	2.6%	0.0%
Other	81.6%	17.5%	0.3%	0.6%
Total	77.6%	20.4%	0.5%	1.5%

The survey also asked professors for their views on a range of social and policy issues, some of them directly involving higher education. Among the highlights:

Strong support for abortion rights: 74.7 percent believe it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain an abortion for any reason.
Strong support for gay rights: Only 17.2 percent believe that it is always wrong for two adults of the same sex to have sexual relations, while 68.7 percent believe it is not wrong at all.
Doubts on bias against women in science: Asked what accounts for the relative scarcity of female professors in math, science and engineering, 24.5 percent said that the issue was mainly because of discrimination while 74.5 percent said it was mainly because of differences in the interests of men and women.
Split on affirmative action: A slim majority of professors backed affirmative action in college admissions, with 11 percent favoring it strongly, 39.7 percent favoring it, 31.9 percent opposing it, and 17.4 percent opposing it strongly.
Doubts about Iraq: Strong majorities believe that the number of troops in Iraq should be cut and that President Bush misled the nation in the build-up to the war.
Avoiding sides in Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Asked if they sympathized more with the Israelis or Palestinians, 20.9 percent said Israelis and 10.7 percent said Palestinians. But 51.3 percent said they sympathized with both and 17.1 percent said that they sympathized with neither.
Tenure’s value: Strong majorities see tenure as a good thing but also see it as sometimes protecting incompetent faculty members.
Political splits in satisfaction with campus environment: Liberal professors are more likely than conservative professors to feel good about their jobs and the nature of academic discourse on campus. In addition, more than 68 percent of faculty members agreed that one goal of campus diversity should be to foster diversity of political views among faculty members.

Larry Summers Analyzes the Numbers and Academe

Gross and Simmons plan a series of additional analyses of their data. At Saturday’s symposium, scholars offered a range of takes on why professors split as they do on political matters, and whether the split matters.

Summers, the former Harvard president, was the first to discuss these topics, and he did so only weeks after the latest political incident involving him — an invitation to address the University of California Board of Regents that was rescinded because of faculty opposition.

Noting that he had served in the Clinton administration, Summers said he identified strongly as a liberal and a Democrat, but that while in Washington he viewed himself as being on “the right half of the left,” in Cambridge, he landed “on the right half of the right.”

In advance of the symposium, Summers ran some numbers from the study. He focused on elite graduate universities and on what he defined as core disciplines for undergraduate education (excluding health professions, for example). When conducting such an analysis, Summers said, he found “even less ideological diversity” than he thought he would, and that in the humanities and social sciences, Republicans are “the third group,” after Democrats and Nader and other left-wing third parties.

To date, Summers said, he has largely viewed the political imbalance as one of “able people making choices.” He said that if you are a smart individual, and you like the market, profits, and “striving for profits,” you have “a wide range of choices in life,” of which an academic career is but one. If you are a smart person who doesn’t like the world of markets and profits, “you have a much narrower range of choices,” he said, and academic careers may be quite desirable. In this way of thinking, he said, it’s not surprising to find more liberals than conservatives on college faculties.

At the same time, he added, the extent of the imbalance and some informal research he has conducted “give me pause” and has him wondering about the possibility of bias against right-leaning thinkers. He examined the scholars being asked to give Tanner Lectures (a top lecture series at leading universities) and the political leanings of economists and political figures among honorary degree recipients at a top university (which he declined to name). Liberals receive more such honors by far, he said.

It’s not that there are no conservative professors, he said, but their share is so small as to raise questions that deserve more attention. Summers wondered if the situation isn’t like it was in the early days of baseball’s racial integration, when people trying to say equality had arrived could point to the relatively equal performance of black and white stars. “But it appeared that there were not any African-American.250 hitters,” Summers said. “The only [black] players who played were stars.”

Summers said it would be “extraordinarily unwise and dangerous” for government to try to force more balance in hiring. And he said it would be “a real horror” if, in the name of respecting all views, Harvard’s astronomy department hired an astrologer or the biology department hired a creationist. But while there is a “tension” in calling for more diversity of views, while excluding views such as those, he said it was worthy to seek more ideological diversity.

One reason he thinks this is important, Summers said, is to help liberalism. “As someone who is a strong Democrat and is a liberal, and does not think that we have won the argument with the country over the last 40 years, rather to the contrary, it makes me wonder whether if you do not engage in intense dialogue with those whom you disagree with in substantial number whether your own arguments will be sharpened and honed to maximum effect,” Summers said.

Summers described the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal group, as an organization for which he has “no sympathy,” but that he admires for regularly inviting some progressive legal thinkers to talk and debate at its gatherings. “I’m not sure that commitment is equally present in progressive communities,” he said.

There is another argument for saying that more ideological balance in higher education shouldn’t be a goal, Summers said, and it is one that he understands, but questions. This perspective relates to conservative success in much of American society. “From the perspective of many, they’ve got the White House, the Supreme Court, the CEO’s of 85 percent of the Fortune 500. They’ve got Fox News. They’ve got an increasing share of the media, so is the right way to have diversity to change the one thing that’s progressive?”

While Summers said that this attitude creates “a problematic role for universities to put themselves in,” he said that it explains the “extreme hostility” of some in academe to conservative ideas.

Other Hypotheses: Graduate School, Moving Past the ’60s and ‘Radical Pique’

A range of other theories were offered on the extent of ideological imbalance. Louis Menand, a professor of English at Harvard, said he was surprised and worried by the extent of ideological homogeneity and he focused on how graduate education may encourage and be hurt by this trend.

Menand said that when he was in graduate school in the ’70s, people could hope for a Ph.D. in five years and felt free to propose ideas that challenged conventional wisdom in the humanities. Today, with graduate students facing a decade or more for a humanities doctorate, which Menand called an “obscene” amount of time, graduate students enroll only in programs in which they agree with their professors’ take on the discipline. With that much time involved, and an iffy job market, “who would do this if they didn’t share our views?” Menand asked. And the graduate students who enroll tell professors that the professors’ views are just right, he added, instead of trying out new theories.

“The profession isn’t so much reproducing itself as cloning itself,” Menand said. “If it was easier and cheaper to get in and out, the discipline would have a chance to get oxygenated” by people with new ideas, he added.

Several others also said that different historical perspectives were needed to analyze the issue. Julie A. Reuben, a professor of education at Harvard, noted that much of the discussion of professors and politics is based on the assumption that the ’60s were responsible for the trends embraced by the left and attacked by the right. Reuben noted that William F. Buckley published God and Man at Yale in 1951, charging his professors (he had just graduated) with not being sufficiently Christian, pro-American or pro-market.

Critiques of higher education, she said, need to be understood in their longer history, not just viewed through the prism of a few flash points.

Jonathan Zimmerman, director of the History of Education Program at New York University, also agreed that “it was time to stop talking about the ’60s.” Zimmerman noted that the percentage of academics voting for Republican presidential candidates was in the 30s through the 1980s, but then dropped. Some of that may have been the popularity of Bill Clinton, but Zimmerman said that for many academics “something really important and troubling happened in the ’80s and ’90s.” He elaborated: “I think the experience of living amid the rise of the new right had a profound effect on the lives of the professors.”

There has been “an erosion of liberal faith in citizens,” Zimmerman said. He noted that in the ’60s, liberal professors fought for student rights, but that when universities give students what they want today, professors deride administrators for giving in to “consumerism.”

Many professors these days, Zimmerman said, have as a signature quotation on their e-mail Hermann Goering’s quote about how easy it is to manipulate people into backing war. Whatever one thinks of the war in Iraq and that particular quote, Zimmerman said he found it odd that professors were using a Goering quote on their e-mail.

But it relates to the distrust of the people, Zimmerman said. Radical chic, he said, has been replaced by “radical pique.” He added: “The story we need to tell is about the alienation of professors from the publics.”

Gross, one of the paper’s authors, said that in emphasizing the moderate group of academics they found in the survey, he was not discounting the liberal tilt. But he said that what most intrigued him was not the ideological imbalance but the way it differed from what people expected.

“For us what stood out was the disconnect between the dominant public rhetoric, which suggests that professors are not only extremely liberal, but uniformly so,” with the reality that “most of us are not as radical as has been suggested.”

— Scott Jaschik

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Comments

One thing the article leaves out is the possibility that when someone comes around asking about political identity the young untenered prof will say he is a moderate. A self confessed conservative will not advertise his views if he is in a dept full of old radicals. There is no freedom of speech if you are a conservative who has no tenere or if you don’t have the rank of full professor yet. There may be more conservatives out there then some would like to admit.

closet conservative, at 7:25 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Variation and Consequences

This is just personal experience, but in grad school at the New School (New York City) some faculty and fellow students did not consider me a leftist, but in subsequent years, as a professor in two small liberal arts colleges in the Midwest, some have labeled me a Marxist. I suppose that would be the safe guess since social scientists and liberal arts colleges show the strongest tendencies to the left. But I don’t self-identify as a Marxist. So I wonder about the validity of aggregating opinions when the definitions of left and right, liberal and conservative, or radicalism, activism, and Marxism, may vary quite a bit from region to region, or perhaps even by institution given shifting internal dynamics. In other words, people may be positioned in a particular way, and may position themselves, depending on the political balances and debates within the institution.

There’s also the big question of what it matters that there are concentrations of leftists and liberals in academia. Clearly one consequence is that Horowitz and other critics feel isolated, but higher education seems to have been churning out quite a few moderate and conservative graduates over the years. Might it be that college does not, or cannot, shape the ideological (re)formation of students to the extent we think? Or might it be that the great majority of professors don’t engage in brainwashing?

Andrew Schlewitz, at 7:55 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Dr. Summers: keep apologizing?

Whether he likes it or not, Dr. Summers is a poster child for declining public support of academia, along with the Duke “Gang of 88.”

When someone deviates from the dominant paradigm in academia (e.g., white male working class “privileged” and repressive), the ideological lynch mobs in liberal arts and elite academia start banging their pots and pans and shouting “unfair, biased.”

No matter what the facts may be. No matter what their actual academic expertise (certainly not constitutional law). No matter how many times others politely ask for their right to “academic freedom.” From today’s Wall Street Journal editorial page:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119179910354751467.html

So the real-politik kicks in. The tax-paying public — ~75% of whom have decided not to go to college — begins to withdraw financial support.

The working schleps think: why should I pay for a bunch of uncouth elitist yahoos who insult my culture? The non-Democrats recall the quote from Geo. Will, PhD: money donated to colleges “is a donation to the Democratic Party.”

And so the academic money flow-starts to shut down. Of course, notwithstanding the financial crises in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, K-12, public infrastructure, excessive litigation, unchecked illegal immigration, et al.

Declining public support of academia causal to moderating voices in academia? Hmm ...

Buzz, at 8:10 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Where Have All the Leftists Gone?

To me, the most interesting finding of this study is the dramatic decline in younger faculty identifying themselves as “left activists”: from 17.2% among those 50-64 to 11.5% among those 36-49 and only 1.3% among those 26-35. This may be the best evidence yet of the success of the conservative crusade in recent years against leftist faculty. It’s difficult to believe that there’s actually been a tenfold drop in “left activists” among the values of young professors. This isn’t necessarily evidence of a political purge, although that’s quite possible in many cases. For the first time, it’s very easy to Google job applicants and find out their political values than in the past. And the crusade against left-wing professors by Horowitz and others may lead faculty and administrators alike to seek more moderate professors. It could also reflect increasing academic standards for professors in hiring and tenure, which mean that younger professors must spend much more time doing research and have less time for activism (note that the decline for self-identified “left radicals” from 14.3% to 9.9% to 3.8%, a term which reflects value systems more than actions, is much less dramatic). However, these are still substantial declines in leftist faculty on campuses. We do need to worry about the lack of conservatives going into academia, particularly in the low-paying fields of the humanities and social sciences. However, we should also worry if left-wing professors are disappearing rapidly or feeling constrained in political activism. The best way to protect all groups and encourage this complete diversity is to assure full academic freedom for everyone on campus, and to promote more equity in faculty salaries.

John K. Wilson, collegefreedom.org, at 8:25 am EDT on October 8, 2007

The only reason professors appear to be ‘left’ is that the benchmark in the U.S. has been shifted so ar to the right.

A ‘liberal’ professor in the U.S. would be thought of as centerist or even right wing in Canada and in Europe. The United States has very few genuinely left wing professors, labled ‘extremely liberal’.

The proof of this can be seen in the issues: the Iraq war, the role of women, abortion, gay rights. These are no longer left-right political issues in most countries. Only the most extreme right raises the minority point of view on these at all.

As usual, the advice is to view American issues from a more global context. Observers will find that the professoriate, which is part of an international community, stands to the right of the global political spectrum, which is to be expected.

As for the redefinition of what constitutes ‘moderate’ and ‘liberal’, well, we have only articles like this to blame, that feed rather than correct a narrow prejudice.

Stephen Downes, at 8:40 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Another Day, Another Silly Survey

It’s difficult to know what to make of this survey. Most younger professors grew up in an era in which “liberal” was a dirty word. So it is no surprise that they would be less willing to label themselves as such. If we could see some responses to questions about individual issues, we might have a better idea of what, if anything, is going on here. (The deep split in attitudes toward affirmative action, by the way, would come as no surprise to anyone who has spent any time with real university faculty.)

Ultimately, of course, this study, and all those similar to it, are pretty useless. The important questions, which are all too rarely the subject of empirical research, are these:

1. What explains the ideological differences between the professoriate and the rest of American society? (The answer, by the way, is almost certainly self-selection rather than hiring bias, but it would be nice to settle the issue once and for all.)

2. To what degree do professors’ political attitudes affect their classroom instruction? (The answer, in all likelihood, is far less than most people imagine.)

I suppose we could add a third question, namely the extent to which the disproportionate number of liberals in academe influence the attitudes and opinions of graduating seniors (the so-called indoctrination question). But we really don’t have to since we already know the answer to that one: people with college degrees vote Republican in higher numbers than their less educated counterparts. Thus, either indoctrination is not occurring, or it is failing miserably. Either way, who cares?

Finally, it is getting a bit tiresome listening the latest bitter regrets from the relentlessly self-absorbed Larry Summers. He squandered the most prestigious job in the academy by treating the presidency of Harvard like it was a managerial position at Wal-Mart. He insulted dozens of his finest employees, either directly or indirectly, and then seemed shocked when he quickly lost his effectiveness as a leader. If he still thinks that his problem was the liberal bias of the academy, then he really does need to check into the Betty Ford Clinic for Ego-holics.

Unapologetically Tenured, at 8:55 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Survey methodology

At least two questions arose for me in quickly reviewing the article and the report itself:a) what schools were sampled? b) did the authors look carefully at what kind of schools they were? One might add c) How did they come to define “liberal” and “conservative.”

The fastest growing segment of higher education in terms of enrollment over the last ten years was in private religious colleges, specifically the 100+ schools who are members of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities—these schools were up about 70%, where public colleges grew about 12%. In 2004, about 230,000 students were attending evangelical Christian colleges. Faculty growth at many of these colleges has also been dramatic—some campuses have doubled the number of instructors in the last 15 years. Many parents and students will tell you that they chose CCCU colleges and universities precisely because of the perceived liberal perspectives of the public and elite marketplace.

It would be a mistake to view Christian college faculty as monolithically conservative, or even that they would agree on what goes into “conservative.” While there are many moderate and a few politically liberal faculty on these campuses, more and more we are seeing “social liberals” who care for the concerns of the poor but who are also profoundly culturally conservative. They are likely to be strongly opposed to “abortion rights,” for example, but to support issues of social, economic, and racial justice. They are likely to have deeply held religious beliefs about personal moral responsibility for one’s actions, yet increasingly are recognizing systemic injustice and seeking to address it. They are likely to call themselves moderates or conservatives; some would describe themselves as the latter out of a theological view of human responsibility and depravity.

The Harvard study does not differentiate (at least in its printed version on the web) between the “liberal arts colleges” where 61% of faculty are “liberal” and the Christian colleges—mostly split between true liberal arts institutions and Masters’ I or II schools (and what happened to _that_ category?)—and the private religious colleges, where one might be lucky to find 10% self-identifying as “liberal.”

While this study will be very useful, some of these issues of mystery about sample and representation—and what appears oversight of a whole range of very influential colleges—make the results less compelling.

Dean Rich, Dean at Bethel University, St. Paul, at 9:00 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Teachers v. time-wasters

” .. Either way, who cares?”

News-flash: taxpayers care. Students care. Alumni care.

The present study is well-done, and contributes to scholarship.

A different hypothesis: teachers v. political time-wasters.

Teacher: broadly knows subject, provocatively poses questions and expects competent answers (e.g., Larry Summers), keeps discussions open (not always Larry Summers), available to students.

Political time-wasters: poorly prepared (e.g., Ward What’s-His-Name), attempts to sell students failed theories (e.g., Communism — Soviet or otherwise), frequent snide remarks about out-going U.S. President, spends more time picketing than on academics; criticizes more than analyzes.

Who cares? Only discerning students under financial pressure, who can’t waste money or time.

Buzz, at 9:15 am EDT on October 8, 2007

” ‘If you are a smart person who doesn’t like the world of markets and profits, ‘you have a much narrower range of choices,’ he said.”

What if you are a smart person who can’t deal with cut-throat profiteering, stuffy business suits, and/or too many numbers? Couldn’t there be reasons why, other than political identity, people enter Academia, education and other non-business-related industries? I think more of it has to do with temperament, the way we were raised, what we believe in and why as opposed to the ridiculous cultural/political wars suggested in this statement.

For example, after graduating from high school and working for two years prior to re-entering college, I knew I would never make it in the business world. I had to figure out what I MIGHT make it in—this meant choosing something I loved, had some capacity (and stomach for), and could see myself working hard for.

Buzz, the American people think higher education isn’t worth it, that they pay too many taxes for it. Your point is well taken. However, I suggest you look at the real reason higher ed doesn’t appeal to the tax payer: they pay more and more for it and see less and less. But it has little to do with “liberal” education students might or might not receive. Look at the student loan industry. Students and parents pay, they get socked with triple digit fees, penalties, and interest, they pay the loan off three times over only to see that loan accrue and accrue. When they fall into eventual default because of hard times, their SSI and pensions are garnished. They have no consumer protection. They are harassed by creditors. Who pays for it all, plus the price of education? Tax payers. What millions of people see are students who, even with a college education, cannot succeed while everyone continues to pay and pay.

Scenario number two: schools lie to their prospective students. They collect Title IV funds. The students and the parents get ripped off. What happens? The school gets taken to court and defends itself by saying, “It’s the fault of the Feds and their regulations.” They drag it out in court instead of taking care of the students, and they are allowed to continue doing business as usual. And guess what? Tax payers continue to pay and pay. Those of us who take out loans pay three or four times as most people do because we pay our taxes, our loans, the schools, and the lenders. But we pay in more important ways: We pay with our futures. We pay with our dreams. And eventually, we pay with our health.

So people, you can duke out political ideology as much as you want and try to pin the blame for faulty education on some philosophical discussion that has little to do with educating students or the real world. The real issues are standing in your bread lines and living in your shelters: students, parents and tax payers pay and pay and get ripped off. It takes its toll on all of us personally and socially.

Do you really think people care what party professors endorse when they can’t climb out of poverty? Use your “smarts.”

kgotthardt, at 9:35 am EDT on October 8, 2007

college enrollment figures

This isn’t a huge deal, but was curious where Buzz got the figure that about 25% of tax paying public attend college.

I don’t have household data on hand, but do have individual level figures.

According to CPS numbers, around 24% of people ages 14-34 enrolled in college in 1981. That figure in 2005 was 32%.

According to IES data, about 78% of all college enrollees were at public institutions in 1981; in 2005 that number was 80%.

Andrew Schlewitz, at 9:40 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Academics know how the other half lives

Maybe academics, particularly in the humanities, are liberals because we’ve experienced poverty as grad students and because outside of Academia those of us in humanities disciplines don’t have any salable skills. Even if we eventually get tenure, we’ve spent a good deal of our lives poor and economically insecure. Having taken the route we did, the high-risk option of going for an academic job, we don’t have any options in the real world other than cab driving, waitressing or secretarial work. Or have you seen any good jobs out there in the real world for philosophers lately? We know how the other half lives and many of us are in real and present danger of living that life ourselves.

H. Baber, at 9:45 am EDT on October 8, 2007

I am a little puzzled why the researchers re-created the wheel when there is a large amount of data available to researchers on this subject at UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute. A colleague and I are currently looking at the relationship between faculty ideology and the change in student political orientation, and our sample is much larger and the data more reliable since HERI’s surveys have been widely administered for a long period of time. I am not sure their database can compete with HERI, contrary to Mr. Summers’ statement.

Gordon Hewitt, Hamilton College, at 9:50 am EDT on October 8, 2007

What Summers Really Squandered

UnapologeticallyTenured gets it wrong with his diatribe about Larry Summers. First, note how “freedom of speech” translates into action in the case of Larry Summers. Summers said something that was (a) rather mild (any statistician can explain to you how MINOR differences of 10% in standard deviations of mathematical ability between men and women would predict a 6 to 1 ratio of tenured faculty, even if there are no differences in average ability); (b) supported by some research by respected academics (read Darlene Kimura, Larry Hedges, etc.). As a result of Hopkins saying something many academicians agree is tenable, Nancy Hopkins nearly fainted and the full power of the thought police was mobilized.

At that point in time, Summers had a wonderful opportunity: Confront the moronic rabble with facts. Call an elite conference of the world’s top experts on sex and mathematical ability. (I do not mean Nancy Hopkins, or, for that matter Ariana Huffington). Challenge them to examine and evaluate the scientific status of what he said.

By failing to show the courage to finally stand up for academic freedom, Summers relegated himself to the trash heap of history. Emboldened by their success, campus feminists will soon be shutting down any attempt to talk about (let alone understand) the true source of male-female differences in academic ability and achievement.

Summers’ failure was one of courage, much more than one of egocentricity: A wonderful opportunity, horribly squandered.

Regarding the main point of the article, let me say this. No matter how they describe themselves, faculty who support the silencing of rational discourse on individual differences are not “Moderate", and certainly not “Conservative". I’ll leave it to you Liberals to decide whether you want to claim them.

JimInNashville, at 9:55 am EDT on October 8, 2007

You Forgot Something

I have been in the teeth of this battle as an editor and columnist in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill community for 30 years, often in hand-to-hand combat with area university radicals — most notably the infamous Stanley Fish. My well-known weekly (The Spectator,published from 1978 to 1997) published a cover story in 1993 interviewing Duke’s Dr. Kenny Williams, who decided to go public over the decline of academic standards at Duke due to the machinations of the radical scholars.

Another of my publications, Triangle Busisnes Journal, won the Benjamin Fine award for education writing for a series on the decline of secondary public education in the environment caused by the radicalization of the curriculum. Go to www.metronc.com to view my editorials on the subject in the monthly Raleigh Metro Magazine.

I think the emphasis on the political persusaion of professors does not confront entirely the disintegration of learning on campus caused by 30-plus years of assault on the corpus of Western thought. Whether or not professors are Democrats or Republicans or Green party, they should not be using their classrooms and gradute study interactions to indoctrinate students.

Although the article maintains this is no longer relevant, the urge to organize and proselytize that lingers from the radical 60s is the root cause of the problem. If professors would simply keep their views to themselves, the problem of campus disaffection from the rest of society would hardly be noticed.

One intresting line of thought in the article is the irritation at society on campus since the 90s. Could it be that the collapse of the paraqgon of sociaist idealism — the Soviet Union — dashed their dreams of human utopia? This salient fact is not mentioned.

Bernie Reeves, Editor & Publisher at Raleigh Metro Magazine, at 10:00 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Moderating Proferroriate

The academy is not what it was, so the professoriate is not what it was. The growing corporatist administration and organizational culture allows quite a few “professors” who don’t have the time, inclination, or — honestly — the ability to engage with political philosophy... and therefore to secure bold political positions.

Derek, Knowledge Manager, at 10:05 am EDT on October 8, 2007

LOL Mr. Reeves!!

Surely you jest? “If professors would simply keep their views to themselves, the problem of campus disaffection from the rest of society would hardly be noticed.” No one asks YOU to keep YOUR views to yourself. Expressing views and “indoctrination” are two very separate things. If I say, “This is my opinion,” then too bad. That’s my opinion. Everyone is entitled to one and you know what they are like....everyone has one.

I forgot to add a comment about “activists” being on that list of political preferences. BAH. We become activists because someone took advantage of us or hurt us in some way, or because we have been affected by the problem, not because we are some Democrat or Republican weirdo with nothing else to do. Unless, of course, we are activists in political campaigns. Then we are often just people who love bandwagons and handing out bumper stickers.

kgotthardt, at 10:20 am EDT on October 8, 2007

conservatives and liberals

It seems, and it seems to have been touched on to some degree, that the underlying motivator to who goes into teaching in general and maybe higher education in particular is that most conservatives think that if everyone took care of themselves, then that tide will lift the boats of those willing to float of their own accord. Folks of this ilk tend not to be teachers, maybe “doers.”

The liberals, on the other hand, see that it’s not just about the individual, so they focus not just on themselves, but on helping others make their way in the world. I won’t go so far as to say it’s a selfish versus selfless world view that matters, but somewhere this seems to play a significant role. And, yes, I know I’m generalizing to a great degree, maybe even too great.

bradley bleck, instructor at Spokane Falls CC, at 11:00 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Three Things

Needless to say, what we are all attempting to do is match our own professional experience and political prejudices with the “results” of the survey.

In that vein, I share John K. Wilson’s view that “to me, the most interesting finding of this study is the dramatic decline in younger faculty identifying themselves as [left radicals or] ‘left activists’ [between 1975 and today],” admitting, of course, that mine is a loose interpretation of both his comment and the data.

I am not surprised by either the phenomenon or the numbers – they are completely consistent with my experience – I am just pleasantly surprised that someone believes they have the data to demonstrate it.

Second, I actually enjoyed reading the study, but let me tell you why (1) I hate the way we continue to frame this issue and (2) I think this study adds very little to anything that should either interest or concern us. First, I generally agree with Gordon Hewitt that the study does little more than “reinvent the wheel,” admitting, of course, that it has added some bright shiny spinners.

Third, in recent years I have heard enough about this phenomenon to be convinced. On the other hand, in my undergraduate classes I would describe the political leanings of my male students as being almost uniform across a liberal-conservative “continuum” with a slight dip in the center (it’s bimodal). I would describe the political leanings of my female students as being almost uniform across that “continuum” with a small hump in the center (it’s unimodal). I would not deny, however, that, on the average, students with whom I interact become somewhat more “liberal” (I would call it tolerant) during their collegiate experiences ... and thank God for that.

I think a much more interesting study would focus attention on a half-dozen or so social and political dimensions and then examine (1) faculty profiles vis-a-vis those dimensions, (2) the extent to which faculty profiles determine pedagogical “strategies,” and (3) the impact that 1 and 2 have on student profiles on the same dimensions upon their graduation ... and then, assuming the availability of resources, repeat the student analysis five or ten years down the road.

If we had data from such a study, we would not have to live with all of these uneducated conjectures about someone’s (parents’, legislators’, taxpayers’, etc.) dissatisfaction with higher education.

Frizbane Manley, at 11:10 am EDT on October 8, 2007

Revisionist Theory

Better yet, in the study proposed by Manley in his previous post, let’s determine students’ profiles (1) as entering freshmen, (2) as graduating seniors, and (3) five or ten years down the road. Those results should quench our thirst for understanding “attitudinal” change ... and either confirm or contradict our prejudices about those awful professors.

Frizbane Manley, at 1:20 pm EDT on October 8, 2007

Woody Allen slaps his forehead.

What genius social scientists would ask professors to label themselves as Left, Moderate, or Right? There are a bazillion reasons to label yourself as Moderate. The most important reason is that folks tend to see themselves as being above criticism, so they shun the labels that are more easily criticized, namely, Left and Right. This research shows that the researchers are of really poor quality. What does it show about the media figures that give the research an approving nod?

James Mayhall, at 2:15 pm EDT on October 8, 2007

Consider the current political spectrum

Supposedly the sum is always greater than its parts — or, more accurately, so different from its parts that it confounds studies like these. In other words, this study seems pretty hung up on the ideology of individualism. I’m still not convinced that you can say anything about an institution by toting up how its faculty votes on particular issues — especially in a larger political climate that no longer features a left wing to the political spectrum.

“Liberal” used to be dead-center, in keeping with the fact that Western culture embraces the political ideology of liberalism. Social democrats occupied a position slightly to the left of that liberal center, and conservatives were slightly to the right.

Today, however, social democrats are considered so far beyond the pale that they risk being put on the terrorist watch-list — the no-fly list, at the very least — while liberals are considered the lunatic fringe of the left.

So what remains is a political spectrum that runs from ordinary conservatives in the center to neo-conservatives on the right. (Fascism doesn’t look quite so far off in the misty distance as it once did!)

And that is the context in which surveys of academics are conducted.

In my experience, the academy is rivaled in its conservatism only by the Church. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with the voting habits of the faculty.

Diana Relke, Professor at U. of Saskatchewan, at 3:20 pm EDT on October 8, 2007

Who?

Diane, I am going to suggest you adopt a practice of testing your statements before posting by substituting the names of flesh-and-blood individuals for abstract nouns and see if the resultant statement remains plausible. Something along the lines of

“Walter Mondale is considered so far beyond the pale that he risks being put on the terrorist watch list — the no-fly list at the very least — while Michael Dukakis is considered the lunatic fringe of the left".

You might go so far as to correspond with Mr. Mondale to ascertain if he is still permitted by the Dept. of Homeland Security to board aeroplanes or with Mr. Dukakis to ascertain if anyone has lately informed him that he has for several decades occupied the “lunatic fringe". Mr. Dukakis is (by reputation) meticulous and industrious to such a degree that there is a distinct possiblity that you will get a polite reply by the man himself (provided that your initial letter was not composed on a typewriter making use only of the red ribbon and the capital letters).

Art Deco, Garden Gnome at Whatsamatta U, at 9:20 pm EDT on October 8, 2007

“In my experience, the academy is rivaled in its conservatism only by the Church. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with the voting habits of the faculty.”

This is probably the truest and most insightful comment in this whole discussion. In my experience, the personality type most prevalent in the typical faculty is what can only be described as “born bureaucrat". I think the poster who expressed fears that outside academe the only viable possibilities for him would be taxi driving or dishwashing sums this personality type up perfectly. The “dangerous radical” pose often seen in older (usually tenured) faculty is at bottom typically nothing more than an attempt to hide this truth from the self.

Tired Adjunct, at 9:20 pm EDT on October 8, 2007

Same subject

Tired Adjunct, from another tired adjunct, liberals at my institution seem very concerned with “systems” and organization. Conservative professors I know (from elsewhere) are more concerned with academic freedom. The inclination to uniform teaching and thought is “liberal” and the aspiration to free expression is conservative. Being new to this, I find the whole mess most confusing.

Kate, Instructor at Lakeland Community College, at 8:30 am EDT on October 9, 2007

The Network Problem

Summers is wrong about the political imbalance being a matter of individual choice. After all, what about all those conservatives who have taken low paying jobs at think tanks like Cato, Heritage, or AEI? Or the public interest lawyers working at low paying jobs at places like the Pacific Legal Foundation? My firm belief is that those institutions provide a pool of individuals who would be perfectly happy to settle into the academy, if they had a fair shot at finding an academic job.

For my extended take on the question, see my blog post The Persistent Political Bias of the Academy at http://www.stephenbainbridge.com/...s/political_ideology_of_the_academy/

Stephen Bainbridge, at 11:50 am EDT on October 9, 2007

Response to Stephen Downes

By “most countries,” don’t you really mean, “most white Western countries"?

(Even there, one might add, many white Western countries have more restrictive abortion laws than are permitted by the U.S. Supreme Court. I daresay the abortion debate in this country would look quite different if our abortion laws were as strict as, say, Germany’s.)

Stuart Buck, at 1:50 pm EDT on October 11, 2007

summers vs. summers

Larry Summers: “It’s not that there are no conservative professors, he said, but their share is so small as to raise questions that deserve more attention. Summers wondered if the situation isn’t like it was in the early days of baseball’s racial integration, when people trying to say equality had arrived could point to the relatively equal performance of black and white stars.” — Is this the same Larry Summers who, on January 14, 2005 said:http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html

The second problem is the one that Gary Becker very powerfully pointed out in addressing racial discrimination many years ago. If it was really the case that everybody was discriminating, there would be very substantial opportunities for a limited number of people who were not prepared to discriminate to assemble remarkable departments of high quality people at relatively limited cost simply by the act of their not discriminating, because of what it would mean for the pool that was available. And there are certainly examples of institutions that have focused on increasing their diversity to their substantial benefit, but if there was really a pervasive pattern of discrimination that was leaving an extraordinary number of high-quality potential candidates behind, one suspects that in the highly competitive academic marketplace, there would be more examples of institutions that succeeded substantially by working to fill the gap. And I think one sees relatively little evidence of that. —That is, on January 14, 2005 Dr. Summers used Ricardo’s “principle of comparative advantage” to argue that there is no discrimination based on gender at American universities.

Yet here he is arguing that there is discrimination based on political orientation at American universities.

Has Dr. Summers renounced Ricardo or revealed himself to be an even bigger buffoon than previously assumed?

Deborah Frisch, at 8:50 pm EDT on October 11, 2007

Summers v Summers

Deborah, I don’t get your point. There is no lack of female 250 hitters on university faculties, ergo no discrimination against females. Summers claims 350 hitters can get jobs no matter their political leanings. It seems to me he is completely consistent.

It might be true that an ambitious university could move up a bit by hiring 270 hitters, but on the other hand its unclear that would happen. In baseball, there is an owner who maximizes profit (which might, at one time, have suggested incorporating race as well as ability in hiring decisions, leading to problems for black 250 hitters). In academia, the hiring decisions are typically made by entrenched faculties, and it is far from clear their motivation is to improve academic quality at the expense of hiring conservatives. Also, its far from clear that if a few universities did improve themselves by hiring 270 conservatives, there would be market forces driving others to follow to the point where there was any kind of balance in academia as a whole.

Eric, Summers v Summers, at 12:25 pm EDT on October 12, 2007

Summers vs. Summers

Eric: Deborah, I don’t get your point. There is no lack of female 250 hitters on university faculties, ergo no discrimination against females. Summers claims 350 hitters can get jobs no matter their political leanings. It seems to me he is completely consistent.

I didn’t deem it cost-effective to try to digest the 250 vs. 350 part. I got stuck on the premise for even going there which was Larry’s implicit hypothesis:

LS 10.8.07 hypothesis: The under-representation of conservatives in academia relative to their representation in society in general is in part, a consequence of the fact that the liberal majority in academia discriminates against the conservative minority. That is, Larry is alleging that there is social discrimination in academia against political conservatives.

My point was that on January 14, 2005 Larry Summers did not merely reject the allegation of social discrimination against women in the upper echelons of science in academia, he deemed it a non-starter, on the basis of Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage. He said it was ILLOGICAL to hypothesize gender discrimination. If gender discrimination’s a non-starter, then political orientation discrimination’s a non-starter.

So the hypocrisy is not at the level of the 250 vs. 350 hitter analogy. The hypocrisy is at the level of:

a. On 1.14.05, LS invoked Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage to deem the “discrimination on the basis of sex” hypothesis to be a non-starterb.On 10.8.05, LS suggested “discrimination on the basis of political orientation” is worth considering

Deborah Frisch, at 11:00 pm EDT on October 15, 2007

Eric, here’s a debunking of the former Harvard president’s “conservative professors in the 2000s are like black baseball players in the 1950s” shtick.http://www.portfolio.com/views/bl...sors-are-like-black-baseball-players

Deborah Frisch, at 11:00 pm EDT on October 15, 2007

Larry Summers’ situation only dramatizes what we senior citizens have known since the 1950s. You don’t pass college courses, or keep your job as a university president, if you contradict the opinions of tenured professors or present to them statistical data that challenges their beliefs politically, sociologically, culturally, or morally.

Senior Citizen, at 7:20 pm EDT on October 22, 2007

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