"Nine out of ten college professors self-identify as Democrat or Green - Diversity surrenders"

[ckeaton]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 11:11am

::Subject header courtesy of Drew Curtis' @ Fark.com::

Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual
By MARK BAUERLEIN (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

"More than nine out of 10 professors belonged to the Democratic or Green party, an imbalance that contradicted many liberal academics' protestations that diversity and pluralism abound in higher education."

Nothing new here, I guess. Just interesting to see it in print.

Read on:
Full Article

[Plum]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 11:21am

It depends on the prof, it really does. My political science professor acknowledges his liberal bias, but he also asks good questions- he doesn't just let my (largely liberal) class be complacent in its thinking. And a lot of the readings we've been doing (Milton Freedman, Andrew Kimbrell) are actually quite conservative in some ways.

And really, I think any school with an economics department is already spreading politically conservative bias, just because that's the nature of the mainstream of that field.

[ckeaton]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 11:24am

Perhaps.
I just hope that everyone that attends college in America is brave enough to think for themselves, based on their own beliefs. It would be a shame for professors to sway weak people based on their supposed authority. I remember that some tried, though most were preaching to the choir.

[Plum]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 11:28am

I think people are influenced by their parents at least as much as by teachers, first of all.

And second, "sway weak people"? If they're that weak, anything can sway them, including FOX News. So I wouldn't worry too much.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 11:43am

BOY does this depend!! I've had teachers that were to the right of Attila the Hun. My sixth grade teacher taught us more anti-Communist rhetoric than anything useful.

[JohnPopa]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 11:51am

The bigger question is how can we get rid of that one conservative professor out of every ten?

[Plum]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 11:54am

Like I said, ditch the economics department. :P

[JohnPopa]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 11:58am

And don't let coaches teach :)

[MaTakeALookAtMe]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 12:03pm

This is not that surprising. Speaking in stereotypes here, but conservative, at least in my neck of the woods, generally do not place as much emphasis on higher education, using the rationale that it encourages people to forget where they came from, to question their values, etc... I know because I came from a family and a religion that discaourages higher education

[WOSQ]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 1:06pm

At the risk of appearing flippant although I am serious, I have always found the term "Conservative Intellectual" to be an oxymoron.

Conservatism, at least as it is defined today, is very much about not questioning leaders and following blindly their logic. There is no real conserving (saving) today except for the status quo.

Conservatism today seems to be anti-evolutionary and anti-cautious.

A college education needs to first and foremost, teach its students to think and to ask questions. It needs to instill curiousity.

[ckeaton]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 1:20pm

Freemasons vs. Rome and all of that.

[Chloe]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 1:23pm

Very true, WOSQ. There's a reason they're called "the liberal arts!"

But seriously, this put me in mind of a letter in my local paper right after the election, in which the writer asserted that Bush's win proved that it was all about how there was only black and white, right and wrong, and all those people talking about shades of gray were idiots. This attitude is so contrary to the openness necessary for true learning.

[B.B. Wolf]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 1:54pm

"liberal" being used in the term "liberal arts" has nothing to do with political thinking. It's dealing with liberal in terms of "expansion", "new", "revolutionary", "creative". And the fact that most professors are liberally minded isn't new or surprising. Or bad, really. It's related to the same reason why the majority of the media is liberally minded: It's proximity to metropolitan areas. Across the board, large cities in the US are overwhelmingly blue. That's where the major universities are AND where all of the news is broadcast from. Washington and NYC haven't been red in decades.
On a side note, Milton Friedman is a libertarian. This means that in terms of economic issues he's VERY conservative. But in terms of social issues, he's VERY liberal, moreso than even Democrats in some cases. So the term "conservative" that is thrown around nowadays just doesn't cover the spectrum. Sure, it makes lumping people into little categories harder. But hey, we're all big kids, we can deal with a little complication.

[Plum]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 2:07pm

That's why I said "conservative in some ways." Freedman's philosophy just scares the crap out of me, though. It's horrid.

[B.B. Wolf]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 2:07pm

Really? Why?

[Plum]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 2:09pm

The invisible hand isn't God.

Sorry I can't explain further- I have a truly horrifying psych class to go to. :)

[B.B. Wolf]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 2:12pm

Hmmm. I don't remember that when I studied him.
Regardless of his personal beliefs, no one has a clearer view of they way the government should interact with the economy than he does, IMO.
After all he DID win the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Invisible Hand? Yeesh, I need to go reread him cuz I'm drawing a blank on that.
Good luck in the psych class.

[Plum]

Posted: 11/12/04 at 4:16pm

C'mon, you know economics but you don't know the invisible hand? That's straight Adam Smith, and you can't do economics without Smith. :)

There isn't a doubt in my mind Freedman deserved the Nobel Prize in economics- I hate the field in general, or at least its mainstream.

And I disagree with his views. The more I think about things, the more I realize that his brand of complete libertarianism just won't work. Free markets aren't the solutions to all our ills, efficiency isn't the be all and end all of life, and not everything can be measured in dollars. And people aren't Hobbesian creatures, acting as atoms, and wouldn't be even if they lived in total isolation.

But try saying that to an economist, or a lot of their behavioral psychologiest brethren.