In my last two posts, I put forward some reasons why Gross and Simmons' important new paper on academic ideology understates the prevalence of liberals in academia. It is only fair to also point out a way in which that study overstates that prevalence, or at least underestimates the proportion of non-liberal academics. It does so by collapsing academics' ideologies into three categories along a single continuum: "liberal," "conservative," and "moderate." Respondents to their ideology question had the option of describing themselves as "Very liberal," "liberal," "slightly liberal," "middle of the road," "slightly conservative," "conservative," or "very conservative."
Note that this one-dimensional ideological scale entirely ignores libertarians, who - roughly speaking - are "liberal" on social issues, and "conservative" on economic ones. Some libertarians may describe themselves as "conservative" on the Gross-Simmons scale. Others, however, might pick "liberal" or "middle of the road," or simply choose not to answer the question because they don'e see a choice they like. For example, if I average out my "liberal" positions on social issues with my "conservative" ones on economic issues, I could describe myself as "middle of the road" on average. But it's a very different kind of "moderation" from that associated with, say, DLC Democrats.
Ignoring libertarians may be defensible in studies of the general population, where they are relatively rare (although even among the general public, some evidence suggests that about 10 percent are closer to being libertarian than conservative, moderate, or liberal). It is much more problematic in a study of academics, where libertarians are a much larger fraction of the nonliberal total than in the general public. In my experience, about half of nonliberal/noncentrist law professors are in fact libertarians rather than social conservatives. Lawprofs are not included in the Gross-Simmons study. But economists and political scientists (two other groups with which I have some familiarity) are, and the libertarian-conservative ratio there does not seem to me much different than that in law. Even if we cautiously assume that libertarian academics are only half as common as conservative ones, the Gross-Simmons data imply that about 5% of academics are libertarians (vs. 9.4% conservative). And another 5% would be "slightly libertarian" (vs. 10.5% "slightly conservative").
How much does this skew Gross and Simmons' overall results? It is difficult to say. It all depends on how many libertarian academics would describe themselves as "conservative" or "very conservative" when they answered the author's one-dimensional ideology question and how many would describe themselves as "liberal," falling into one of the three categories the authors classify as "moderate," or simply refuse to answer the question. Given the deepening of the conservative-libertarian split during the Bush years, I suspect that the proportion of libertarians willing to embrace the "conservative" label has been declining; this trend is likely to be unusually strong among academics, most of whom follow politics closely. My best guess - and it's only a guess - is that about 50-70% of libertarians would refuse to embrace the two most "conservative" categories in the Gross-Simmons framework. Assuming that libertarian academics make up about 6-7% of the total (perhaps an underestimate), that implies that the true proportion of right of center academics is 12-13% rather than the 9% that the authors estimate. In some fields, such as economics and other social sciences, the proportion of libertarians among the nonliberals is likely to be significantly higher than that. If you count the putative "slightly libertarian" academics (parallels to the authors' "slightly liberal" and "slightly conservative" categories), the libertarian proportion would be about twice as high, perhaps 10-14% of the total sample.
In my judgment, properly accounting for libertarians would not overturn the conclusion that the left side of the political spectrum is overwhelmingly dominant in academia - especially when you consider the factors discussed in my previous two posts. It would, however, substantially increase the estimated proportion of academics who are neither liberal nor "moderate."
UPDATE: I was remiss in not mentioning this 2005 study of social scientists' political views by GMU economist Daniel Klein and Swedish scholar Charlotta Stern, which finds that "social scientists who deviate from left-wing views are as likely to be libertarian as conservative." This finding strengthens the case for including libertarianism as a separate category in studies of academic ideology.
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:
It may well be true that many liberal academics see little difference between libertarians and conservatives. But that doesn't mean that it is methodologically accurate to follow that approach in a study like this one.
I think, based on considerable experience, that libertarians are common among nonliberal political scientists, economists, and political philosophers. They are probably less common in other fields. But notice that these fields are among the most important WRT to political relevance.
Even with law I think you're overestimating; you are probably about right when it comes to the most prolific and prominent right of center professors, but I think there are a fair number of at least moderately conservative Republicans out there who aren't familiar to you because they are older and (like their liberal colleagues) rarely publish.
That may be true. But even if I have overestimated the number of libertarians twofold, that still implies that they are about 1/3 of all nonliberal law professors, which is quite substantial. I tend to doubt that there are a lot of nonpublishing conservative Republican lawprofs out there (or at least not many more than nonpublishing libertarians), but I admit you probably know more about this than I do.
Let me broaden the discussion here by suggesting several mechanisms by which the the statist/leftist control of the humanities and soft sciences in academia has become so prevalent.
Perhaps the simplest mechanism is to assume that faculties seek to maximize metrics of their productivity, typically the ability to procure grants. In academic fields of specialization that lack objective indicia of correctness or quality, like the soft sciences, grant procurement is necessarily mainly based on subjective and political factors.
Those faculty more likely to get bigger grants are also thus more likely to favor a more intrusive governmental control because they succeed in an environment where political factors are paramount.
The second mechanism that might induce the phenomenon is evolutionary: we assume the statists - who by assumption put political considerations first - will only hire other statists, and the independent thinkers hire only based on perceived merit. Assume as well hiring is by vote. Then eventually the statists will control the academy completely, as they gradually hire more and more of their own.
These mechanisms seem to me to be ineluctable and unstoppable, absent dramatic change to the underlying structure of academia, which is very unlikely. Therefore, not matter what happens, leftist control of the universities cannot be forestalled or wrested away; rather, that control is simply inherent in the definition of "leftist" and in the academic structure.
A side point, but unless you are ruled by your pocketbook, why do you associate "more intrusive governmental control"/"statism" necessarily with leftism? The American right is obviously quite interested in it as well--I don't think laws banning sodomy and sex toys are favored by most humanities faculty members.
All of this is probably true. But noninentellectual professors and those who don't care about political philosophy are more likely to be common in fields that aren't politically relevant. They are far less common, I suspect, in politically charged disciplines such as law, humanities, and social sciences - which are the ones where the ideologies of professors actually matter.
So basically I don't think it's substantively correct to say that self-identified libertarians should be exempt from being counted as conservatives. On the other hand, not all of them should be counted as conservatives; it would be interesting to see how they break down. Perhaps they could have had a checkbox-type question for "libertarian" along with "radical" and "Marxist"?
At the very least, you would have to add the war on drugs, regulation of pornography and "obscene" speech, Bush's education and medicare plans, cloning, stem cells, and a minimum of 6-7 other issues to this list. And I'm sure I'm missing some. Some other issues that unite social conservatives (e.g. - the Iraq war) split libertarians.
Yes, but the topic under discussion here is not presidential elections, it is the political positions of university faculty, whether this reflects bias, and whether it affects education. Advocates of minority views often vote for the closest candidate they think can win rather than for the candidate who most closely reflects their views, so elections do not reflect the actual distribution of political positions very accurately.
The authors' call-back of 100 non-respondents was a nice touch, and it certainly suggests that there are some moderate problems even after the weighting is in place. It isn't clear, though, that the differences between the respondents and non-respondents is statistically significant.
It would have been more interesting if this call-back operation had also been applied to the respondents, addressing another non-sampling issue, actually.
But 51 percent response? Weak results indeed. Federal surveys require designs for 80 percent.
Sure, there are issues on which you differ from other parts of the conservative coalition, but there are differences in the liberal coalition too. That's why they are "coalitions."
Of course, this varies by discipline and it seems there are statist types in some fields
Professors, you can talk about "God" and "intelligent design" and "liberals" and "conservatives" ad infinitum. But w/o first making clear what these terms mean for purposes of debate, the "debate" is meaningless. These terms mean different things to different people. Thus, arguing who's left or right and arguing about faith becomes a futile exercise. However, it does provoke passionate commentary, so if this is your main goal, it's working.
This is why I visit this site despite being a self-described "liberal," who's purportedly in the minority here. As a proud "liberal," I can respect conservatism and libertarianism as competing ideologies. And in my crazy evil liberal mind, I believe we're all brothers and sisters whose similarities far exceed our differences. It's also why I cringe when self-described libertarians or conservatives associate themselves w/the neocons in power. To those who do so: you're smearing the name of real conservatives and libertarians! These fuckers are neither: they're most properly identified as Authoritarians. Those who sheepishly follow them are Authoritarian followers, and those in charge are Authoritarian leaders.
It's also why there should be more posts about real liberals like Kucinich, and real libertarians like Paul.
So relative numbers is only one sign of the times. The real dead canary in the mine is the absolute self-righteous domination of academic frauds. And these people fight dirty; hence few up and coming libertarians or true conservatives.
More compelling is an analysis of the facts - particularly the voting records of faculty. I think it was AEI who published a study several years ago which confirmed, through an analysis of Presidential voting by college faculty, the liberal monolith which is higher education. We don't need to debate these facts, only to figure out what to do about it.
This will not be the time or place for me to clarify my views on these issues, but I would suggest that the idea that libertarian views are excluded from the survey is off the mark. The more interesting and underreported aspect of the survey is the deliberative ideology section in which we examine clusters of attitudes in issue domains. Here I refer reader to the later parts of the paper. The dimensional scales are a simple way to communicate ideas in a wider sphere in a way that can be compared directly to authoritative survey data on the general population. We are acutely aware of the tendency, going back at least to the Vietnam era, to distinguish two dimensions of belief and to highlight one of the poles as libertarian.
To my knowledge, there is no distinct libertarian cluster that emerges in the statistical examination of data. As a result of this and other discussions, I can promise that I will look for views in this persuasion more closely. If I have one regret on this score, it is that we did not include libertarian as an potential identity in our array. It was from this array that we made our claims about radicals, activists and Marxists. If anyone on this list would like to discuss these matters in person, I teach in Arlington and would be very willing to meet in the spirit of open communication and full transparency.