Bias in the Academy

Madison Review ^ | February 23, 2005 | Jonathan Kelly

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A February 25, 2004 article, archived at the website of Accuracy in Academia, an organization devoted to documenting excesses in the academic world, discusses a recent campus dispute. A group of students at the College of William and Mary held special “bake sales” in which they charged white students more money than black students for baked goods in an attempt to display the absurdities of affirmative action. Some school administrators shut down this demonstration on grounds that it was "illegal," but could point to no statute or school regulation that would say so. Thus, the administrators eventually backed down and allowed the anti-affirmative action “bake sales” to proceed due to the students’ freedom of expression.

Events such as this display the preponderance of leftist politics such as affirmative action, socialism, multiculturalism, etc. on many university campuses--and also why many students find enormous fun in defying their arbitrary manifestations.

It is interesting to consider the extent of ideological diversity in the academic world between professionals of liberal or conservative persuasion. A New York Times story from Nov. 18, 2004 helps to illuminate the subject. According to the Times , a national survey co-authored by Daniel Klein, associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University, was conducted on political affiliations of academic faculty. The survey, sampling over 1,000 academics nationwide, shows that Democratic professors outnumber Republican professors by at least 7 to 1 in the humanities and social sciences.

In another study, Klein and Charlotta Stern, a sociologist at the Institute of Social Research in Sweden, asked members of scholars’ associations which party’s candidates they had mostly voted for over the previous decade. The ratio of Democratic to Republican professors within the scholars’ associations ranged from 3 to 1 among economists and 30 to 1 among anthropologists. The researchers also found a much higher share of Republicans among the nonacademic members of the scholars’ associations.

Some have argued that the imbalance exists because conservatives are not interested in academic careers, but that they prefer money-making ventures by virtue of their headlong belief in the free marketplace. But this is shallow reasoning that is difficult to reconcile with certain facts.

As the Klein-Stern study shows, the scholars’ associations accommodate more Republican scholars from outside the university world. There are also many conservative scholars in various policy think tanks. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that many of these scholars would welcome careers in the academic world?

The September 2002 issue of American Enterprise magazine discussed a poll conducted by Frank Luntz Research of 151 professors from a cross section of Ivy League universities. According to the results, 0 percent of the professors identified themselves as “conservative,” 6 percent chose “somewhat conservative,” 30 percent chose “somewhat liberal,” and 34 percent chose “liberal”.

A cause of this political imbalance may be related to the hiring practices at many universities. Dr. Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, suggested to the Times that small, independent groups of scholars in charge of recruiting college faculty are allowed to determine the hiring decisions and research agendas at many universities. Such groups are prone to domination by a single faction that uses majority voting to outnumber and oppress dissenters. If the group is numbered with leftists unwilling to promote diversity of ideas, it may be difficult for rightist scholars to win professorial positions.

The suppression of non-left views in hiring is troublesome enough; the attempted indoctrination of political preferences in academic life is more troubling still. In 2004, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni conducted a survey of 658 students polled at the top 50 U.S. colleges. A total of 49 percent of respondent students said that professors “frequently comment on politics even when it has nothing to do with the course.” A bloc of 48 percent said some “presentations on political issues seem totally one-sided,” and 46 percent said that professors “use the classroom to present personal political views.”

An educational system in which one philosophy claims dominion over others is antithetical to the purpose of learning. In order to attain genuine education, as opposed to indoctrination, students must be free to explore all views and to voice their own beliefs, regardless of whether they run contrary to the dogmatisms of academics.

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Here's a neat student article.

[RightWingAtheist]

Thanks a lot. I'm a proud conservative currently doing his Ph.d, and is looking forward to an academic life. The ivory tower needs gadflies!