At UCSB, from 1981-1983 (I was only on campus one year), the majority of faculty were "New Deal" Dems, with 4-5 ultra radical leftists, including Wilbur Jacobs the Indian historian and Roderick Nash, the environmental historian. There were, at best, 2-3 "conservatives," but they kept quiet. Miracle of miracles, my advisor there, W. Elliot Brownlee, was a Wisconsin grad and a liberal, but to his great credit he let me "do my own thing" and graded me on what I knew, not how I towed the line. (Maybe that's why my dissertation was voted one of the three best in the country by the Economic History Association). At the school I now teach, the 16-member faculty has perhaps two registered Republicans (me included), a Kennedy Dem who usually votes Republican, and the rest ranging from moderate leftists to ultra libs.
On the Civil War, the literature is now so vast, you almost have to decide which battle you want to study. Shelby Foote's massive five volume series is great, but I'm partial to Allan Nevins' more sweeping "The Ordeal of the Union." It's "old-time history" at its best. People gush over "Battle Cry of Freedom," but I've never liked that. Then there is a libertarian view in "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men" by Jeff Hummel---good, but deeply flawed.
Douglas Southall Freeman's "Lee's Lieutenants" is terrific from the southern viewpoint, and anything by T. Harry Williams or McFeeley on Lincoln and his generals is good for the nothern viewpoint. But you MUST see Richard Bensel's work, "Yankee Leviathan," which analyzes liberty in BOTH the north and south (excluding the slavery issue) and concludes that in some 150 separate points of comparison, a white northerner was much "freer" than a white southerner.
Oh, I see that the link I posted was something I sent my son about bad airports. My error. Here is the correct link for campus bias: Correct Link.
Engineering faculties are naturally much less political than the humanities. I don't know the political leanings my engineering faculties because the subject never came up. I taught briefly in grad school but went into private industry for my career. In industry the engineers and scientists I worked with, who were mostly PhD's, were almost all Republican. Quite a difference between the humanities and engineering/science.
Thanks for the recommendation on Bensel's book. I'd never heard of it before but will order it through Amazon if it's available. I've never read Shelby Foote though I've heard many good things about his books -- I'll have to get one of them as well.
With respect to Civil War history, I favor the Southern side as you can doubtless tell by my posts. I have Xerox copies of hundreds of pages of old newspapers from the war. Newspapers are not always the most accurate reflection of what's going on, but more often than not I've found them to contain good detailed information I can't find in history books. The newspapers also give me leads to things I look up elsewhere.