[BroncosFan]

Great article. His explanations seem on the ball. You never find junior (untenured) faculty who are on the Right. Some of them will confess conservative sympathies in an off the record conversation, but, in general, espressing principles that place you in the minority isn't a great way to advance your career. This author seems to be in that boat (vagabond prof at a less than elite institution). Thankfully, some of the finest tenured political thinkers at the best universities are out of the closet conservatives, i.e. Harvey Mansfield, William Gienapp and Stephen Peter Rosen at Harvard; the aforementioned Prof Kors and Walter MacDougall at Penn; Jeremey Rabkin at Cornell. These guys are definately in the minority, but unlike their liberal peers, the actually TEACH an awful lot of courses.

[Always Right]

Universities are the temple of leftists. It is where they indoctronate. Besides, most leftists can't make it in our capitolistic society, and the universities offer an easy way out of actually doing something productive.

[Gefreiter]

I have a draft-dodger theory.

The reason the Left is so dominant in universities is because of the tidal wave of PhDs minted through the middle and late 60s. Have a look at any given faculty; their credentials are readily available to the public.

I don't think it's a coincidence that during wartime, and under conscription, the numbers of grad school applicants and graduates exploded, likely related to the deferment awarded students.

Now, not all of them are Marxists, and not all were draft dodgers' some surely went on to advanced study for their love of their field. But I think there is a common ideological sympathy between people who avoided military service by hiding in school (or Canada or wherever else) and people who are openly supportive of Marxism. I also believe that my theory helps explain why there are so many less-than-stellar faculty members out there: because they weren't in school for love, but out of cowardice; their scholarship may, upon examination, support this idea.

In a related problem, faculties are so bloated, full of these shirkers, that it is exceedingly difficult to even get an academic job at all. Even for fellow travellers, let alone if you lean to the Right, the job market in academia is ugly.

The Left is the collective gatekeeper to higher ed.

[swilhelm73]

One theory that can, I think, be dismissed as readily as right-of-center ideas are typically dismissed by most of the professoriate is the suggestion that Leftish views of the sort listed above are simply correct, and that the typical academic, being (so it is thought) more intelligent than other people, can see this more easily than others.

This is certainly what deep down in their hearts much of the left believes to be the cause of their dominance of academia. One can see this, for example, in the recent incident at Duke.

One point to consider here too, if you believe that a certain elite truly are better suited to govern society, then why would you support democracy?

Much like capitalism, democracy presupposes that allowing all of society a voluntary role in decision making will lead to better result then allowing a self-selected elite sole control of all such decisions. Two heads are better then one, and 280 million are certainly better then a few thousand leftist academics.

One can certainly see the left's growing intolerance for democratic governance both in the European Union debacle and in their attempted theft of the presidential election in 2000.

PS: Democracy means simply government by the people and includes both direct and various representative forms. So before someone pops in to say it, I am well aware America is not, and was never intended to be, a direct democracy.

[MD_Willington_1976]

Could it be because most of them don't work and pay their own way through...Since money is just handed to them... Cause society must pay for them..of course lol

[King Black Robe]

Let me try:

1. The "good old boy" theory. That is basically #1 above with a better name. But it doesn't explain how they got there in the first place. (Hint: People reveal a lot about themselves in their accusations of others.)

2. The Billy Jack theory. This examines the historcal positions of left and right. Leftists have not always controlled academia and the media. Many of them used to be outsiders against "the establishment." Outsiders strategize while insiders defend. Unless the insiders recognize the threat, they are at a huge disadvantage. Outsiders understand the importance of controlling information. Insiders take it for granted.

3. The "I am smarter than the sum total of everyone who lived before me theory." They are out to prove this no matter how Picasso their logic becomes. Things do not have to balance, make sense, or line up. The world begins with them and all things are to be redefined by them. They also think they are smarter than God, and the world is just dang lucky they came along.

[headsonpikes]

I like Rothbard's account(#6).

It appeals to my cynical streak.

[theDentist]

Why Are Universities Dominated by the Left?

No Heavy Lifting

You really don't have to "produce" anything

Students don't recognize sugar-coated sh** being spoon-fed them, and if they dare question you: "F"

Lotsa kids over the legal age away from home for the first time.

[Thom Pain]

"Why Are Universities Dominated by the Left?"

Because the (equally non-productive) government jobs were all filled and they (Left) can't function in real jobs (defined as those that actually contribute to the GDP).

[moehoward]

bump

[JOE43270]

This is a good article. The real problem is that all this needs to get out to the people on the street so they realize whats going on before the USA is so far left that it is hitler's Germany or stalin's Russia!

[HenryLeeII]

Why Are Universities Dominated by the Left?

Because today's intellectuals are dishonest idiots!

[chachacha]

Because this is where some parents send their kids for baby sitting after they graduate from the public school baby sitting system.

It's obvious most of them have no clue what schools or colleges are preaching. If they did half of them wouldn't be seen in these liberal cesspools.

What on earth do these parents do when they see their kids on TV or, hear of others from the same college burning, looting, rapeing, drinking and who knows what else.

My Johnny would be on a one way ticket to his own grubstake. Mom & Pop would be pulling the rug out for sure.

BUT, not today we just turn a blind eye and hope for the best.

[ccmay]

I agree with most of what is written here. I think explanations 1, 3, and 6 are the most likely to be correct.

That said, I wish this writer would lay off the semicolons and hyphens and five-part compound sentences and every one of the instances of "viz." This verbal diarrhea gets in the way of his message. Maybe he thinks it is necessary to write that way in order to be taken seriously by the Academy.

-ccm

[MississippiMan]

First, liberals fully understood/understand that to control the masses, you control the information. They now control every stage of the educational process that feeds information to the masses, and they also control the media to keep the propaganda going after the educational process is finished.

Second, I believe conservatives on the whole are predisposed toward DOING, while liberals are predisposed toward thinking and talking and telling others what to do, as opposed to taking action themselves.

MM

[michigander]

Why Are Universities Dominated by the Left?

Because those that can, do. Those who can't, (attempt to) teach.

[longtermmemmory]

Why are law professors so far left? Answer: They are refugees from the legal profession. They could not hack it in the real world so they sought the safe tenured environment of a professorship.


They dominate legal think tanks and ABA organizations. If any conservative want a "safe" target, pick any law school.

[muir_redwoods]

"Why Are Universities Dominated by the Left?"

Because they only thrive where no objective standard of accomplishment is used to measure them.

[LS]

As a conservative professor (who just completed a book on the history of the U.S. and had to deal, at least in passing, with this topic), I'm still unclear as to why academics, like journalism, is so overwhelmingly dominated by the left. Some slant, one could expect. But the dominance is overpowering.

Since I'm a historian, my take on it is this: in the early 1950s, McCarthyism had many universities firing professors who were innocent or, usually at worst, marginal socialists (often not "card carrying communists"). While I think there were many CLEAR communists operating in the system, I don't think it was close to the number that were ostracized. However . . . .

Once that period ended, the universities felt they had to "make up" for their previous actions, and swung radically the other way, now essentially arguing that NO ONE'S politics could be considered when hiring them. This ensconced many of the leftists who then, being good leftists, never once had a similar notion of fairness about other peoples' politics. In other words, although the universities once played fair, once the leftists got in a majority, all that stopped.

A second, more destructive feature, involved the left's domination of the disciplines, editorial boards, and grad schools insofar as it involves the writing and refereeing of articles and dissertations. Without getting into too much academic mumbo-jumbo, it cam down to this: METHODOLOGY DEFINED THE APPLICANTS/STUDENTS. For example, doing "biography" or "military history" (in my discipline) was no longer considered "cutting edge." Instead, the leftist profs demanded leftist methodologies---quantitative/social history (instead of old fashioned business history or biography), race/class analysis (instead of old fashioned straightforward ideological history). So "conservative" students politically now had an even tougher time because to "get in the club," you had to adopt methodologies that were abhorrent to your very nature. I've served on many search committees where applicants with what we would call "traditional history" topics are immediately weeded out as "not deep enough" or not "cutting edge enough."

Again, speaking only for the discipline of history, the ONLY way a conservative can survive is to 1) be good enough in the methodologies that you can master them while simultaneously using them to undercut leftism (as many economic historians have done); 2) go into business history (one of the few fields relatively untouched by this stuff); 3) be black or a "protected" minority, then you can do whatever the hell you want and they can't say anything; 4) lie---basically look like a liberal for 6 years until you get tenure then do what you want.

My personal approach was a combination of 1 and 2, combined with a publication record as a graduate student that even liberals could not ignore. Even so (and I like my employer), I did not end up with offers from Berkeley or Penn, but from a small midwestern school. I remain convinced though that talent cannot be repressed, even by leftist ideology.

[Quix]

UHHHHHH, HELLO?

He left out the main functional, practical reason!

As I saw from documents in my Special Collections acting director job at my university library . . .

Soviet Communists decided early on to seek to fracture our society by spending millions of dollars insuring the placement in as many universities as possible those who would teach their party line--especially that there was no absolute right or wrong and that many special interest groups were disadvantaged to horribly abused by capitalism and needed rescued.

This notion used to be sneered at until the "fall" of the Soviet Union and KGB files outlining the 10's of millions of dollars spent on these projects came to light.

No, I don't have the refs. I have read of some such on FR, in past threads, though.

[blanknoone]

self ping