Conservatives Need Not Apply?

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | September 10, 2026 | James V. Shuls

[karpov]

While I was in graduate school, I regularly participated in a research program that paid students to taste test food. Many social science disciplines conduct research this way. While these methodologies may be sound, relying heavily on convenience sampling creates limitations. Those dinosaur nuggets I rated highly in my late 20s may not test nearly as well with an older demographic. These sorts of limitations apply when we consider the research on political identification or bias in higher education—we are limited by our sample.

Consider a recent analysis of political giving from faculty and staff at Florida’s five largest universities conducted by my colleagues in the Institute for Governance and Civics. Using Federal Election Commission data, they found “nearly nine out of every ten dollars of faculty and staff political contributions went to Democrats.” This approach has been regularly used to study what professors think about politics. The only problem is that the vast majority of faculty don’t give to political causes. Other methods, such as examining party registration or surveys, are similarly limited. In a recent study, Schools of Thought: Using AI to Assess the Ideological Orientation of Academic Departments, I attempt to address this limitation by utilizing A.I. to evaluate the research and writing of scholars. After all, every scholar should have a publication record.

In the paper, I identified 50 academic departments with some overlap with many of the newly formed civic centers. This list includes, but is not limited to, English, economics, and political science.

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TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: academia; college

[TheDon]

Interesting.

“Here, a “civic center” means a new kind of academic unit at a university, not a municipal building.

Over roughly the last decade, a number of mostly public universities (often at the urging or funding of state legislatures) have created schools, institutes, or centers devoted to “civic thought” or “civic education.” Examples include Arizona State’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, UNC–Chapel Hill’s School of Civic Life and Leadership, Ohio State’s Chase Center for Civics, the University of Florida’s Hamilton School, UT Austin’s School of Civic Leadership, and FSU’s Institute for Governance and Civics, where the author works. They typically hire their own faculty and teach courses on American founding documents, Western political thought, classics, and economics.

The article describes their outlook as focused on Western and classical traditions and on merit over equity. It also calls them right-leaning. That fits their reputation: supporters see them as restoring intellectual balance on campus, while critics, including many faculty, see them as politically driven, conservative-leaning units created by legislatures. The article contrasts them with “traditional academic departments” such as English, political science, and economics, which cover some of the same subjects.”

[PAR35]

Those dinosaur nuggets I rated highly in my late 20s may not test nearly as well with an older demographic.

I used to occasionally make pocket change from a commercial food testing company. They dropped me when I reaced a certain age milestone. Companies don't care about what older folks like to buy.

Also got dropped from a Nielsen ratings program when I reached a different age milestone. (This was pre-Google monopolization of online advertising).