“i meet hundreds of college teachers every year from all over the world, and they fall into the same proportions as the rest of the population: 20% right/libertarian, 20% left, and the rest don’t care. that they all might be communists is faulty, prejudiced thinking, which is common enough.
I hope you get tenure, although that is unfortunately what protects a lot of bad teachers also. Your proportions above of 20% leftist at Universities, especially in the field of History, is however, laughable. I think you need to go to a variety of public universities to get the real poop. However, good luck on your tenure effort.
i’ve included both public and private schools in my proportions list. really, i’ve given it a lot of thought since the subject comes up among us academic types quite often.
people get the impression that college history is taught by lefties because the lefties get the most media coverage, and make the most noise. most teachers just teach, it’s their job, and they couldn’t care less about politics beyond its influence on history, per se.
i leave my politics out of my classroom, by the way. but if a student offers an opinion, i feel it’s my responsibility to make them defend that opinion, regardless. it’s part of our school mission, to get our students thinking. we’re good at it, i feel, and that’s why we charge so much for classes. (i’m less than 50% joking.)
Your proportions above of 20% leftist at Universities, especially in the field of History, is however, laughable.
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Not so fast. I taught at a major University in So Cal (History, btw) and our department was no more liberal than any other department and FAR FAR more conservative than Women’s Studies, Education, Library Science, and Sociology to name a few that I associated with professionally.
To assume that every History dept is a bastion of liberalism is what is laughable.