The Inside Higher Ed. story on the study is here.
A few interesting tidbits:
(1) There is a much higher percentage of conservatives teaching at (relatively low-paying, low prestige) community colleges than elsewhere. So much for the oft-heard theory that conservatives are so scarce at elite schools because they are selfish, ambitious, money-grubbers who lack the inclination to give up the "good life" to pursue the "life of the mind."
(2) Contrary to the stereotype of the conservative business school professor, professors of business voted 2-1 for John Kerry in '04.
(3) Among social science professors (which I assume includes economics, a relatively, but not absolutely, conservative field), Ralph Nader and "Other" combined received as high a percentage of the votes as George Bush in '04.
(4) Professors are almost evenly divided on affirmative action preferences. This is consistent with my experience; supporters are a lot louder than opponents, and there are a lot of quiet opponents out there.
(5) The youngest cohort of professors is significantly more moderate than their middle-aged colleagues, but the percentage of conservatives has stayed steady (and very low). The former point isn't a complete surprise. When universities were hiring like crazy in the 1970s, it must have seemed very attractive to political activists to obtain a tenured sinecure from which they could pursue their political activism. Nowadays, when it's so hard to get a tenure-track job, I would expect people not really committed to the academic life to be weeded out; it's pretty hard to focus on your activism when you are commuting to three different temporary teaching jobs, hoping to eventually land a permanent one.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Self-Selection and Ideological Imbalances in Academia:
- Intellectual Diversity in Academia--Discrimination v. Self-Selection:
- Affirmative Action for Conservative Academics?
- Pitfalls of Ignoring Libertarianism in Studies of Academics' Ideologies:
- Academics' Ideology and "Moderation":
- Ideology and Academia - Liberal Dominance Only in Those Fields Where it Matters:
- Professors and Intelligent Design:
- Interesting Study on Professors' Ideology:
Of course, this lends credence to the other, less charitable theory that conservatives are so scarce at elite schools because there's relatively fewer conservatives who have the abilities appropriate for teaching at elite schools.
::sigh:: It's election time again at VC - I wonder how many posts it will take before a collection of people who know better will justify their vote for Giuliani.
It's not that there aren't smart conservatives. It's just that the smartest conservatives have much different opportunities than mediocre ones, fffff. They're also more likely to have flexibility across their various interests - which is why the amount of conservatives willing to accept lower pay grades working for the government (which provides more long term financial benefits, as well as more ability to influence policy) is much higher than in academia.
But it's easier to spit off numbers and make wider accusations, you know, than actually reason through facts. DB takes one, "obvious" fact that helps his worldview, and uncritically uses it to defeat all his opposing ideas. He takes one "obvious" fact that opposes his worldview, and he easily dismisses it as explainable. That the real answer is far more nuanced is something that only will be realized by people who are willing to acknowledge the existence of nuance.
Add to that studies which show that people's flexibility and vision increase with education and intelligence, and the drive to be an academic may clearly be less strong amongst more mediocre candidates than major ones. And finally, in many fields to be an elite candidate one has to show at least a grudging acceptance that the dominate studies in the field often conform with a more liberal worldview than their own - but at a lesser school, its easier to simply be a master of your own little domain and ignore the leaders in the field, who tend to work at elite universities.
Professor Leiter has made some of these points, and a whole lot more concrete ones. I have *never* seen you make an effort to refute the points he has made.
Leiter
Leiter
Aw hell, this will take me too much time, so:
Leiter
As a mild libertarian conservative who got his Ph.D. at Yale, I find it hilarious that there are those who deny the academic political climate is hostile to conservatives. In my travels, these people can only be of three stripes:
1)Never spent much, if any, time in academics.
2)Think the median Democrat is "conservative."
3)Drank-the-cool-aid delusional.
Thanks again for the link.
m
Indeed, this seems to be common.
Out of curiosity, what does this piece of evidence suggest? That "conservative business schools" are more liberal?
If that were this case, then hasn't this evidence been ripped out of context since (a) by 2004, Bush demonstrated he was not a fiscal conservative, (b) Kerry ran as being more fiscally conservative than Bush, (c) many of the "elite" conservatives started to move away from Bush and saw Kerry as a better option, and (d) by 2004, there was enough evidence that Iraq was not helping the war on terror (allegations of torture, poor post-invasion planning, rise of bombings in Iraq).
If you are trying to make the case that business schools are not "conservative" (what ever that means since there are multiple ideologies that fall with the "conservative" category such as Theo-Con, Paleo-Con, Neo-Con, Fusionist, and Libertarian) then the political context of the 2004 election diminishes your choice of evidence.
If this is not the case, then please clarify what the evidence suggests.
As to Anduril:
Most studies do not define what it means to be a conservative or a liberal. That is the problem with these studies: is a person a liberal in the classic John Stuart Mill sense of the term? I liberal New Deal Democrat? A Liberal as in libertarian? A liberal in the Adam Smith tradition? A liberal as in Green Party? A Liberal as is Social Democrat?
ffff -- the theory of conservative stupidity doesn't comport with the finding (see Table 3) that conservatives are two and a half times as common at elite PhD-granting institutions than at non-elite PhD institutions.
I've never been sure what to make of the fact that the arguments that get made in this debate are a bizarre mirror of the debates over race discrimination. Suddenly conservatives are happy to accept disparate impact as prima facie evidence of discrimination and a need for remedial programs to achieve "diversity". At the same time, liberals are contorting themselves into pretzels while relying on stereotype-based, evidence-free assertions that they underrepresented class is just too dumb to cut it, or just not interested, or too greedy, or whatever it takes to deny the obvious realities on the ground.
I agree with you an (a). On (b), exactly what programs did Kerry claim he'd cut relative to Bush? On (c) I don't think polling data bears that out, but feel free to provide such data. And (d) is irrelevant to the point.
Also, the study seems to claim that academia is more moderate than most people think. One of the article's contentions is that, if you factor out humanities and the social sciences, the academic world is really quite moderate. This amuses me, because humanities and the social sciences are - except for maybe business - the only two fields where politics should ever come into play. They are also two very large fields. Put another way, hiring a conservative/libertarian astronomy professor might make your "intellectual diversity" profile look better, but in reality, it has little or no effect on the political slant of a school's educational environment.
I don't think that this is quite right. I am conservative, and in academia. The point that conservatives raise about discrimination is not a matter "prima facie evidence," from my experience. It is rather a mater of empircal evidence. If you are involved in academic affairs at a major research university, it is impossible to avoid bumping up against the overwhelming pre-disposition to malign conservatives as stupid and greedy. One hears this all the time, almost as if maligning conservatives is a secret handshake denoting membership in the fraternity.
On the other hand, lack of, say, large numbers of African-American faculty at this institution is not a result of bias: We are bending over backward to try to attract and retain minority faculty. And the Dean and Provost sweat it out terribly when a minority assisatant professor is coming up on tenure year, and still does not have a book.
In summary form: there is visible, ergregious bias against conservatives on university campuses, or at least on all that I have been associated with. There has not been such bias against minorities. Quite the opposite.
Just to confuse the matter: I support affirmative action hiring for faculty from under-represented groups. They do add something to the intellectual mix in most cases. And I've never seen a case in which an affirmative action hire was not up to the job.
BUT--When academics tell themselves that there is no bias against conservatives, they need to pause and look at the race issue as well. One reason there are so few minority academics is probably because many bright young minority college students don't think that academia will be friendly toward them. They can't "see themselves" here.
This same dynamic helps explain the dearth of conservatives in academia: Conservative undergrads here tend to go off to law school, since they have picked up the sense that they won't be welcomed with open arms by the academic "community."
I suspect Kerry's net wishlist for federal government spending was larger than Bush's, but I wonder if fiscal conservatives recognized that a Republican congress would fight against Kerry's budget but support Bush's.
(b)- (On how Kerry argued he would be more fiscally responsible):
From the second presidential debate:
From the third presidential debate:
While these may not be the best examples, Kerry argued that he would be, as has been, more fiscally responsible than the President.
D is not irrelevant to the point because it offers reasons why "conservatives" broke from the Bush Administration.
For example, they describe Dan Klein's work as belonging to a group of studies "closer to thinly disguised works of political advocacy intended to back up the charge of 'liberal bias' in academe" (p. 12)
I urge folks to read all these studies and arrive at their own conclusions about their methodology and merits. But Prof. Bernstein might be more careful here, lest he step on unintended toes.
But in sociology? What ability would that be?
You're right, of course, that the authors attempted to address the concerns that I expressed--which have been well known for quite a long time. The factors they bring into play are quite disparate, it seems to me. While the social issues can fairly be said to separate the sheep from the goats, so to speak, the same cannot be said of all the issues. Iraq, for example, is a very contentious issue across party lines, so one can hardly expect it to offer a clear handle on conservative vs. liberal identities. The same is probably true regarding tenure. I will say that one area that surprised me somewhat was the breakdown on affirmative action.
So, I would say I'm not entirely satisfied with their efforts to smoke out conservatives and liberals. From my perspective on the social issues such as abortion and homosexuality, it seems clear from the study that the professoriate is far more liberal than the general population on such issues, which tend to be hot button issues dividing--and thus identifying--conservatives and liberals. To that extent the study supports, I think, my contention that many of those who identified themselves as "moderate" are actually "liberal" as measured my the usual standards by which most people would describe those categories. Certainly one's attitude toward tenure rarely enters into such considerations, except perhaps within the professoriate itself.
But elite credentials are utterly worthless when the degree is in French literature or anthropology. Companies do not hire because because they have a PhD in just anything.
A substantial number of graduate degrees are in areas that the private sector could care less about.
And do you actually know graduate students? They all tend to be 23. Do you really think that they have the "flexibility and vision" that lets us assume that, by default, their views on politics are somehow more in tuned with reality than a 23 year old working at a job?
How is (d) irrelevant to the point? Are you assuming that conservative business school profs are going to make voting decisions based solely on a candidate's fiscal policy without taking into account his positions on other issues that, while not directly related to the professor's area of expertise, are quite clearly of interest to business profs qua citizens? That seems rather implausible.
But we are talking about getting jobs in universities and four-year colleges, as opposed to community colleges. Do you mean to suggest that many black academics face negative bias in hiring decisions? Or that conservatives don't? If the answer is that black academic job applicants benefit from affirmative action, while conservatives of whatever color face bias, then there really is good reason for conservative to treat the cases differently.
Do you think that most, or many, conservative academics are calling for "remedial programs"? I have yet to see much evidence of this. This is another salient difference between the two. Conservatives grow used to hearing about the "pressing need for diversity." Yet we see that, say, members of the AAUP have a very narrow defintion of "diversity." No one here has called for affirmative action for conservatives. But we do often point to this odd use of the word "diversity." Perhaps this is what you are picking up from me and my bretheren.
Again, I support affirmative action for minorities at my institution. And I do not think affirmative action for conservatives is a very good idea, for reason which don't concern us here. But I would not complain if the Faculty Senate made some effort to promote a more intellectually diverse T and R faculty.
My college roomate, who was a music composition major, is now an investment banker at JP Morgan. My law school roomate, who has a masters in Classics, is a venture capitalist working at a small tech oriented VC partnership in NY. If the person has talent, the businesses ultimately don't care what major they had.
Has anyone considered that professors tend to vote liberal because liberal politicians are more likely to support policies that benefit universities and professors?
There may be an "underestimation" of the importance of non-domination by "liberal" agendae at the Community College level.
The importance of the influences of the "Major Universities" may be over estimated.
It should not be surprising that the Theory of Public Choice may find application to the fields for employment in the educational systems.
What does seem surprising is that in Academe, unlike "Real Life" continuing experience and maturation does not produce the melioration of radical viewpoints.
In the real world, people "grow up."
In Academe, they apparently don't have to, and don't.
R. Richard Schweitzer
s24rrs@aol.com
2. Do all or most full time community college profs have PhDs? I'd think yes, but am not actually sure.
During the Viet Nam war, before the draft lottery, those majoring in Education were given a deferrment from the draft.
As a result, large numbers of students, including many of my friends, made Education their major in order to avoid the draft. This was common knowledge at the time, and it was routinely discussed because, for 18 - 19 year olds at the time, the draft was an imminent reality.
Then, to keep their draft exemption, large numbers of them continued on into teaching -- which maintained their draft-deferred status, unlike most other professions. [For instance, police officers were also exempt. But that's a dangerous profession, too, and the whole purpose of draft dodging was to avoid personal danger.]
These draft-dodging students were certainly aware that other American boys had to step up and fight for our country in their place, since we had numerous debates at the time about this very problem. But their guilt was insufficient to make them step up and do their duty. In fact, many of them laughed at the "stupid" guys who were drafted. Given the choice the draft-dodgers faced, they were certainly content to let those other boys serve in their place.
So American colleges and universities had a very large influx of draft-dodgers in the late 60's.
Of course, these 'educators' had to rationalize their guilt and cowardice, knowing that they had put their tails between their legs and hid out, rather than serve our country like most American boys did.
So for 35+ years they've taught impressionable students that the draft-dodgers were the heroes, and the soldiers who served were the villains.
Today's students are simply reacting to this continuous false indoctrination by those same guilt-ridden draft dodgers who, rather than serving our country in its time of need, cut and ran.
And many faculties are now dominated and run by the large numbers of 60's-era military haters and Ward Churchill types who fight tooth and nail to keep ROTC out of their schools, because it reminds them of some uncomfortable truths about their own lack of character.
But their criticisms of Klein are really quite harsh--they go well beyond the fault-finding necessary to justify a new study.
I wonder if Prof. Bernstein or some other VC contributor might ask Klein for a response?
(1) That professors voted for Kerry over Bush has absolutely nothing to do with their conservative bona fides. I mean, didn't the Conservative magazine (or some related journal---I'm sure someone will correct me if wrong) endorse both Kerry and a Democratic majority?
(2) I apologize to those who bother to read my occasional, repeated rants about this topic, but I can't help it---silly labels are for silly people. These labels are devoid of meaning at this point. So while no one on this site can give a great answer to what a conservative or liberal actually IS, it's hilarious that so many are so sure that the latter is responsible for all the country's ills.
This just means that they're intelligent, independent-minded thinkers, not held to a party-centric way of thinking.
For what it's worth, ideological bias appears primarilly at the time the faculty line is proposed and the advert is written. Academics know that some fields--mine, for instance--have a larger percentage of modertaes and conservatives than do other fields, some of which are exclusively for the left-liberal wing.
So when the dean gives a department the green light to hire an assistant prof in, say, 19th Century US history, the ad can be written to say "Field open, but desired subfields include Queer Theory, Gender and Race, and/or cultural history." That's pretty much like the old "No Irish Need Apply" signs. It is code.
Those of us who do political, diplomatic, intellectual, economic (and God-forbid military!) have no shot at the jobs.
And we put it out of our minds . . . until someone comes along and suggests that we could be at a better university "if we were good enough." No. In fact most of us couldn't.
You can only think otherwise by thinking you know, independent of the 2-1 figure, what the distribution is of liberals and conservatives on business school faculties. If one sets aside such priors, the possibility that Iraq led some conservatives to support Kerry means we can't conclude that 2-1 support for Kerry translates to a 2-1 liberal/conservative split on business school faculties. Hence Iraq is not irrelevant to figuring out what, if any, conclusions we can draw from the 2-1 figure.
"Does it mean that conservatives would have been more likely than liberals to support Kerry in 2004 on account of Iraq?"
Also, the meme about community colleges paying less is true in many cases, but not all. In California, community colleges pay new humanities professors in the $60k range, while the Cal State system pays in the $50k range to start.
The day classes were all general ed requirements that were not offered in the evening. The professors were all avowed liberals (and damn proud of it). English was tolerable. History and PoliSci less so. The Humanities and (God help me) Ethnic Studies were absolutely intolerable. (Did I mention that white male Christians are the source of all evil in the universe?) Not to mention the fact that every single one of them was absolutely convinced that his/her class was the most important thing you could possibly have in your day, never mind the three other classes you are taking, and trying to make a living on the side.
Just noting that they don't have great alternative job opportunities, for a variety of reasons. As a subsequent poster noted, many of these profs have outside jobs while teaching. They don't even have to make the tradeoff and may be teaching for supplementary income because their outside jobs don't pay well.
So these results do not answer the self-selection theory about conservatives and academia
From the second presidential debate:
The fact is that the president is driving the largest deficits in American history. He's broken the pay-as-you-go rules.
It was pretty clear then as now that what was meant by 'pay-as-you-go' wasn't cutting expenditures to balance the budget; rather, it was increasing taxes/killing tax cuts to cover 'deficits' while leaving the budget-breakers untouched or even expanding them. The PAYGO proposals in 2001-3 explicitly spelled this out, fully exempting entitlement programs.
Why would any economist vote for a measure like that? It just provides an excuse to raise taxes and selectively cut a few programs favored by the opposition while claiming the mantle of 'fiscal responsibility'. PAYGO's been in place since January, but spending's up, what? How many hundreds of billions? And it certainly didn't stop SCHIP.
it's been noted before (as your personal experience reinforces) that ivory tower types tend to be more liberal (those seperated from the real world) and those in the real world dealing with real people (vs. theory and the abstract) tend to be more conservative.
similarly, i posted a while ago (and got slammed despite vast amounts of evidence) that profs in the humanities are more likely to be left of center, than profs in the "hard sciences" although profs in general skew to the left of the pop at large.
college campuses are about the last place you can find actual marxists - people wed to a theory that has been so resoundingly disproven, it's absurd.
And who says students at community colleges are less interesting, anyway? I know people who take classes in such places who have also attended elite universities, and of course there are also many who will never do so. If you really want diversity, community college is the place to find it.
More to the point, as the election gets closer, I note most blogs (conservative and liberal, but mostly conservative) tend to spend less time retrospecting and more time cheerleading and/or demonizing. If you review the last few weeks of posts, only a few of them don't fall into the cheerleading/demonizing categories - and most of those, like EV's posts, are clearly nonpolitical. Compare that to a few months ago, when there was substantial discussion about contraversial policies. This at a time when there is a great deal of interesting issues going on, from the S-CHIP legislation to the new torture memos, to various wiretapping issues.
Blogposts about how stupid Naomi Klein or Sandy Berger (which do you know we can modify slightly for comedic value?) serve very little useful purposes for discussion and are simply designed to reinforce political orthadoxy and remember why our political identities are important (never mind the torture and death behind the curtain).
On another point, it should go without saying that just because Kerry attacked Bush for being fiscally irresponsible doesn't mean that his actual proposals were more fiscally conservative.
On another point, it should go without saying that just because Kerry attacked Bush for being fiscally irresponsible doesn't mean that his actual proposals were more fiscally conservative.
More seriously, to get a job in the humanities at a decent 4-year institution is a brutal process. Six-eight years for the Ph.D., and an incredibly tight job market even for quite successful graduates -- meaning you might not get a job at all, or your first few jobs might be one-year gigs at a series of schools in obscure places. And this ain't like the law teaching market, where folks who don't get jobs or don't get what they consider acceptable jobs can just carry on being lawyers.
This discussion could use a bit more consideration of what type of person is willing to put him/herself through ALL THAT for the possibilty of a decent tenure-track teaching job a decade or more down the line after starting the PhD program. I don't know exactly where that would lead, in terms of the ideological diversity question, but I do know that the self-selecting starts early. And I do know that the people who get PhDs in humanities are -- more so than law students, as a generalization -- people who truly love the intellectual/theoretical aspects of their field.
I think this is one of the reasons why when split you professors along democrat/republican lines (based on who they voted for in the last presidential election) it's about 10:1 and when you split them along liberal/conservative lines (based on some sort of review of positions held) it's a little less than 3:1. Other reason above have been proposed that would partially account for this also.
I wonder whether within law some fields are disproportionately left- or right-leaning. Maybe there are more left-wing labor lawyers than right-wing ones, but in every contest each side has to be represented, right? Do a few right-wing types do all the work on behalf of employers, while many more left-wing types work on behalf of unions and individual employees? How about other areas of specialization, any in which there might be a great skewing? Are plaintiff attorneys more likely to lean left, and make political donations accordingly, because their views are in general left-leaning, or because it is in their professional self-interest to break that way? All idle musing on my part, since I have no data to support any of it, just surmise.
Within medicine, I don't know either. But if I wanted to seek out liberals, I think I would do best to go to a meeting of psychiatrists, whereas if I were after conservatives, I would go to a meeting of surgical specialists. While there is nothing inherently "liberal" in psychiatry, nor necessarily humanist (as the history of the specialty during Nazi times shows), that's the way they most often seem to break. (I don't recall any group of psychiatrists back in '64 questioning the mental stability of LBJ, though there were those who made a big splash questioning Goldwater's.)
If I go through the Gross/Simmons study, will I find detailed information about the ideologic make-up of law schools and medical schools? Any comparisons of those teaching there to those out in the world practicing? (It would be hard, wouldn't it, to say whether academic sociologists were more left-leaning than non-academic ones, because there aren't too many of the latter for comparison purposes, are there? Plenty of "free-ranching," "real world" lawyers and doctors though to permit a comparison of academics to non-academics.)
Perhaps not intentionally, but it seems this is a bit of an unfair statement.
It's already been pointed out that Bush doesn't have an exemplary record of fiscal conservatism, and that may have factored in.
However, when one considers the fact that the country as a whole voted "1-1" for Bush or for Kerry (saying 50% vs 48% is quibbling) this "2-1" measurement loses force.
In this context what we see is although there is a persistent bias toward kerry, Business Professors are among the lowest bias.
If 48% of the general population voted for kerry
Physical and Biological Science +29% for kerry
Social Science +39% for kerry
Humanities +34% for Kerry
Computer Science and Engineering +10% for Kerry
Health Sciences +0% for kerry
Business +15% for kerry
Also interesting is the other.
The Social Sciences Appears to be the most Kerry Centered Group, but also had the second highest "other vote" arguably leading to the presumption they're voting for more liberal candidates.
But the Highest vote for "other", but the second lowest Kerry Centered is computer science and Engineering.
Who are the computer scientists voting for? it might be libertarian.
Any bets on the age differentiation here?
I'm not sure what this means except that academics often talk both sides of a problem, and that's more or less a given.
Conservative ideas just are not as good as liberal ideas. To buy into conservative ideology, you have to be less intelligent. Period.
What is the conservative answer to all problems? Personal responsibility, right? It doesn't take a genius to come up with the same answer to every problem. Conservatives gravitate towards simply answers, because they lack the intelligence to recognize that different situations call for different tools.
How often do you hear conservatives try to use simple supply and demand curves and adopt the simple assumptions that economists make and apply them to all areas of life. Basically, the world-view of the typical conservative is very simplistic.
Now, there are exceptions. Like David Bernstein. But then, he is a libertarian, not a conservative.
For all of you bitching about bias against conservatives, please explain why libertarians are much more likely to be represented in academia than conservatives/ Is it because the liberals who supposedly dominate academia prefer libertarians, who we tend to perceive as self-centered narcissists, to conservatives, who we tend to perceive as neanderthals?
The bottom-line is that conservatives are overrepresented among the less intelligent. (And, intelligence, by the way, is something that can change in a given person over time.) Why do you think that the South and the Bible belt vote overwhelmingly for Republicans?
In a meritocracy, there would be less conservatives and libertarians in academia. Not only that, there would be less conservatives than libertarians, even though conservatives greatly outnumber libertarians in the real world. There is something about libertarian ideology that draws people with a certain limited sort of intelligence. Guess what, this is exactly how it is in the real world.
We don't need ideological diversity in our universities. What we need is a meritocracy. And conservative ideas just don't cut it.
I'll take a stab at the "labor lawyer" question. Admittedly, this is based on anecdotal experience, but I did practice labor law for over a decade, and I've been training labor lawyers as a law school prof. since 1999.
My impression is that, while there are both ideological types and non-ideological types on both sides, there are probably more ideological types on the union side. That's simply because the employer side pays a lot more. So, if you are interested in labor law in a purely intellectual way, or if you just like working in labor relations but have strong preferences for a side, why not work for the side that pays more? Also, union side folks usually work in firms or institutions that are dedicated to representing unions (and, increasingly, employees in employment law matters), while management-side folks often just got a job at a big firm that did lots of types of law, and got placed into the labor/employment "section."
Also, when I say "ideological" above, I mean "pro-union": I've met folks who were pro-union but conservative on other issues; and I've met folks who were anti-union but relatively liberal on other issues. Plus, in my experience, working in "the real world" for a sustained period often -- although not always -- takes the most radical edges off people on both sides. Eventually, many-most practitioners realize that there are some good folks/arguments on the other side.
Still, as a generalization, I would say management-side attorneys are more conservative than union-side attorneys. More than you wanted to hear on this small issue, I'm sure.
Troll-o-meter
for above poster
Mediocre-------------prettygood----------------kickass!
1-------------------------5-----------------------10
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I would strongly suggest the "other" in the social sciences is largely from economists voting for the LP/Constitution Party. Nader was listed separately, and the social sciences had a larger than average Naderite contingent, so unless they were all voting in places where the Communist Party is actually on the ballot, I don't know who else a left-wing social scientist would vote for. By 2004, I would think the average conservative economist had largely given up on the Bush Administration, but felt that Kerry would have been no better. Free Market economics being what it is, the LP/Constitution Party would be a natural landing spot for the economists.
This is all speculation, of course.
I do have an honest question for someone in academia: does personal politics really play a role (for teaching/publishing purposes) outside of the social sciences and humanities?
I'm not very familiar with JUCO/C.C. academia, but it seems that many teachers there do so on a part-time or nightly basis, while also maintaining their outside careers (as opposed to fulltime professors). Maybe they feel an obligation to give back to the younger generation. Maybe they are just scratching a vocational itch. Maybe they like the supplemental income. Maybe they are easing into retirement. Either way it undercuts your point that conservatives do not avoid academia in favor of more lucrative opportunities in the private sector since many of them seem to be maintaining some sort of financial ties to the private sector.
As a sidenote, I've also had many people tell me that the best teachers they ever had were those who taught from the perspective of their many years of employment in the "real world" as opposed to the career academics. That was generally my experience as well. And it seems to be particularly true of law school.
I guess that's a possibility.
I was under the assumption that Economics Professors fell under Business rather than Social Sciences.
At least where I went to school the Economics professors were in the Business Building with Business and Accounting professors as well.
Sociology, Anthropology Et all were in the same building with History and Political Science. (English had it's own that it shared with the languages)
It also seemed that way because in my experience Economics professors were among the most conservative groups of professors. There were also a significant number of conservative professors in the Math and Comp-Sci building, but I didn't spend enough time there to get to know more than a few of them.
More broadly, I wouldn't assume that the world of community college profs is so entirely distinct from 4-year institutions. Yeah, the profs at the Ivy Leagues probably never did a stint at community colleges. But, at least based on the folks I know, a decent number of people at respectable colleges across the country have taught at community colleges. The teaching market is really amazingly tight.
That month of being AWOL during a close election campaign was impossible to overcome, and Kerry lost a very close election as a result. He might even have won despite the Swift Boat veterans, but for one other thing: unlike Bush, Kerry consistently refused to release his service records by signing the SF-180. Many people believe Kerry refuses to disclose his military record because he received a Dishonorable Discharge from the Navy for traveling to Hanoi and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
But hey, Kerry can easily refute those charges. All he needs to do is sign the 180.
Don't hold your breath.
The ones who tend to reduce everything to a supply and demand curve are libertarians, not conservatives- and we're damn proud of it!
If you support the War on Drugs or morals legislation, you are disregarding supply and demand curves- not obsessing over them!
Beyond your bashing of Kerry, who actually served in Vietnam, killed an enemy soldier and got wounded there, I note that you don't defend the draft-dodging of Bush and Cheney (again, in Bush's case, we all know what National Guard service meant back then). Since your original point was that draft-dodgers all wound up liberal, I thought you would be pleased with these significant counter-examples.
Since this is pretty far afield of the original point of this thread, I'll stop here.
I don't think that's entirely fair. Isn't it probable that the department really does want someone who knows about Queer Theory? Of course, that mostly excludes conservatives, but I suspect that, if they did turn up a really good queer theorist who wanted to abolish the minimum wage, have prayer in public schools, and send more troops to Iraq, they wouldn't rule him out. And I certainly doubt that a smart, liberal, military historian would have much of a chance.
So a part of the problem may not be any kind of disguised plot to keep out conservatives, but just the fact that the many things liberals and conservatives disagree on include, e.g., the most important and effective ways to study history. (Of course, this doesn't yet explain why liberals seem to be so thoroughly winning this kind of argument within academia.)
And it's not an easily soluble problem. After all, you can't really tell people, in hiring professors, to discount what they think of the value of the work potential hires are doing, right?
Including our last two presidents.
Where I teach, there is not a great difference between what the business and non-business profs make (we make modest 5-figure salaries). And as such, we have a shortage of PHDs in business (though we have a number of JDs, EDDs and folks who hold numerous Masters degrees, or JDs + other graduate degrees like myself).
We have plenty of PHDs in our liberal arts (and other) divisions. And except for business profs, from what I understand, our profs get paid comparably to 4-year colleges in the area. In fact, we pay more (and offer more generous benefits) than many private 4-year colleges.
Also, some private liberal arts colleges do not pay their business profs. the big 6-figures that law schools do, and some community colleges pay their business profs better than private liberal arts colleges do.
(As an aside: It's funny to me that, on conservative sites, a troll is anyone who departs from orthodoxy, whereas liberal sites usually reserve that moniker for those who drop in and spout all-you-dang-liberals-are-wrong,-BUSH-RULEZ-style comments.)
Given how competitive academia is, the overwhelming majority of folks hired as full time profs. at community colleges are credentialed to teach at 4-year college. We don't have many (though we do have some) PHDs from the IVYs (it's obvious that if you have one of those you probably secure a job teaching at a 4-year college). However, most of our new hires (except for in the business div) have PHDs, most from good 2nd and 3rd tier schools like Temple, Rutgers, Lehigh, Penn State and so on.
It's really tough for us in the business div. to secure PHDs in business given that we don't pay 6-figure salaries. But we've got me who has JD, MBA, and LL.M. degrees from Temple, another JD from Rutgers, our chair has a JD from NYU. Our econ coordinator has three Masters degrees -- one from Temple, one from Penn, and the other from I can't remember. These are the typical credentials of community college professors in business depts. Not "MBAs" from Podunk College. These jobs are almost as coveted as are positions at 4-year colleges, and almost as hard to secure.