A recurrent question regarding the dominance of left/liberal perspectives among university professors is the extent to which this lopsidedness arises from discrimation against those with non-left viewpoints that excludes them from the academy versus self-selection by conservatives and libertarians out of academia and into other professions, such as law and business.
The issue has arisen again in light of a new study by Woesner and Kelly-Woessner "Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don't Get Doctorates." The paper is a chapter in a forthcoming book by the American Enterprise Institute on "Reforming the Politically Correct University." The papers from the conference are available here. I've read a number of the papers posted there and they are very interesting.
The paper is also discussed on The Economist's Voice here.
There is also a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the study here.
Dan Klein, who has written extensively on this issue, has written up a comment on the Chronicle story that he has asked me to post on his behalf (I do so below). Dan raises one concern that I share about the study. It is difficult to sort out the self-selection from discrimination hypotheses because the decisions on what subject to study will be shaped at least in part by one's perception about the likelihood of success in a given area of study. Thus, for instance, if a scholar perceives that one occupation will subject her to discrimination that will limit her career accomplishments while another would not, then at the margin many are going to pursue the one where that is not the case. And, in fact, prior studies have found that the ideological disparity is greatest in those fields with the most subjective standards (such as English and History) and the gap is narrowest in those fields such as economics and sciences that are generally perceived as less subjective. I have also seen it asserted (although I can't find the discussion right now) that within political science itself those who do use more formal modeling and quantitative methodologies is much more equal in ideological orientation than those who use "softer" techniques.
Dan's primary point of emphasis in his comment, as I understand it, is that this data on the self-seleciton hypothesis doesn't account for his finding that among those who have already received their PhD "conservatives" are more likely to end up outside academia than liberals. So that, for instance, taking the pool of those who have already received a PhD in History, those who are conservative are less likely to hold an academic position than a similarly-situated liberal. Such disparities, Klein argues, are unlikely to reflect self-selection because those who pursue a PhD in History (for instance) have implicitly manifested an interest in being a professor, regardless of ideological orientation.
Since Dan doesn't have his own blog and in the interest of getting his argument out there for debate I reproduce his full comment on the Chronicle story. With respect to Dan's negative view of the Chronicle, I don't read it very much so I don't express any independent view on whether I agree with his opinions. I do, however, certainly share Dan's view that Inside Higher Ed is far more independent of the higher education establishment than the Chronicle and is much more insightful in its coverage. Here's Dan's comment (it is fairly long, so I've placed a good portion of it under hidden text)
Deleted at Daniel Klein's request. See explanation here.
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:
victimized in the liberal academy. This is not to say that they do not experience some hostility in
individual courses or among certain disciplines.
It isn't, then what does it say?
After spending a couple paragraphs discovering the shocking fact that conservative undergrads actually appear to have more fun at college than and they don't feel victimized in the mythical "liberal academy", the authors still cling to their thesis that students must still experience some unreported hostility.
Damn it, what fun is it if you refuse to act like victims!
First, suppose it's reasonable to try to get a Ph.D. for several reasons, not just to be a professor. In economics people can use their Ph.D.s to become consultants, work in government, etc. I don't know how this is in political science, history, or other fields; maybe in those, there's no reason to get a Ph.D. except the desire to be a professor.
Second, suppose that there's some discrimination at the student-selection and degree-granting stages, but a lot of discrimination at the professor-hiring stages. This seems plausible: Some people just have great entrance exam scores and don't telegraph their conservative views in their applications, so there's a limit to how much you can discriminate against them at the admissions stage. And schools may be unable to deny a Ph.D. to a dissertation that meets certain objective standards; or they may be willing to grant a Ph.D. to get rid of a student if they think he won't try to use it to get an academic job. On the other hand, it's very easy to deny someone a faculty appointment.
If those two things are true, then if you see that conservatives with Ph.D.s are less likely to go into academia, that could still be evidence for self-selection due to perceptions of bias.
I got a Ph.D. in political science because I was interested in what I was studying, rather than from "a desire to be a professor." I don't know whether this is more common among conservatives than among leftists. Or perhaps such behavior is statistically insignificant in both groups, which would make the question unimportant.
[1] I say "supposedly" because there's a lot of subjectivity involved in determining how prestigious a particular subfield is and how meritorious or "important" a particular research result is. You won't get anywhere performing rigorous, meticulously designed experiments into subject matter your academic peers think trivial or insignificant.
It's not fair to conservatives who must constantly test their ideology against facts. Take, for example, intelligent design. Is it discrimination that biology departments are filled with people who believe in evolution and that their conservative intelligent design counterparts are shut out?
http://www.triumphforsaken.com/index.php?pr=About_the_Author
I'll drop him a line to see if he might have time to comment.
Although the intelligent design/evolution "debate" has recently reared its ugly head again lately in the media (the media absolutely love covering this), I don't I know many conservatives who believe in intelligent design. Most theists I know (conservative or classic liberal or modern liberal) don't subscribe to intelligent design because they understand that the evolution/intelligent design "debate" doesn't advance the ball much either way in the realm of things, but is rather only a weapon to wield against Biblical "literalists" (which make up a fairly small percentage of those on the "right" (or left), frankly).
Perhaps another example might better support your argument that only modern liberals possess the tools necessary to accurately grasp reality?
A different subculture goes looking for all those things on college campuses. Maybe more conservatives would look there if the environment were more congenial to them -- if they knew they would have chances for both professional collaboration and social life with people they liked. But, as it is, many campuses look like more trouble than they are worth. I know I see them that way, and I'm only about a millimeter and a half to the right of center.
That's pretty much the situation in academia today. Snarky's remarks above are, in my experience, quite typical of a a small but very loud faction of the academy. You do eventually figure out that you are wasting your time pursuing a PhD.
By the time I received my BA, I had two books in print, and some peer-reviewed articles published. And yet when there was an effort by one of my professors (who was, indeedd, Old Left) to get "with distinction" added to my diploma, there was apparently some tongue wagging by other faculty members about this because one of those books was a scholarly history of weapons regulation that didn't take the PC position.
Fortunately, much of the faculty there were fossils--enough Old Left that they still regarded the pursuit of truth in history as a legitimate goal, and it didn't prevent me from completing an MA. But the one thing that is very clear is that the Vietnam generation of academia is completely and utterly trapped in a deconstructionist model where there is no objective truth, and therefore, history can be rewritten to suit whatever today's political needs might be.
Maybe. But it wasn't my motivation in grad school, and I confirmed that I didn't want to work as an academic in political science after trying it for a year. It's true that I eventually became a law professor, but that was about the furthest thing from my mind when I went to law school. All of which may just suggest that I'm not a good example of anything at all except maybe irresponsible career planning. But it's at least conceivable that this could be a statistically significant phenomenon.
The vast bulk of college classes can't be very political at all. Biology? Chemistry? Electrical Engineering? Shakespeare? Computer science? French language classes?
I took many sorts of classes in college, and at a college that was considered pretty liberal. In my whole time, and I was an English major, the only overt liberal bias was when I took one class on contemporary american history. One! And even then, the professor took pains to explain both sides, both conservative and liberal, even though it was clear where his sympathies lay.
So we learned the Dickens had sympathy for the poor and the orphaned and tried to call attention to this so-called 'injustice.' I guess our prof was really just a commie pinko for telling us that.
The one that jumped to my mind immediatly was this one. People tend to adopt the same political views as their friends. To some extent this is self-sorting but largely it's the fact that people are influenced by their friends. Thus those people who are more succesfull in integrating into the academic community (which unfortunatelly matters a lot) will be more likely to be liberal by the time they end their Ph.D.
Also self-selection of friends matters too. If everyone in your program is really liberal so you choose to hang out with people you met from the buisness school you are going to find academia much more alienating and hard to enter than those who primarily make friends inside their fields. However, there is nothing particular to the liberal/conservative issue here. I'm suffering at much the same disadvantage because I choose friends based on how they socialized and often that means my friends aren't in mathematics.
You're kidding, right?
The left bias in academe is very strong, and it *does* keep intellectually-inclined conservatives from going into PhD programs. I've spent my entire adult life in this business. There's no way to be certain *how many* more conservative faculty there would be sans bias. But the number would certainly be larger. And the intellectual pluralism would be a good thing for us and our students.
I just had a LONG meeting with my senior thesis student this afternoon. She recently has been accepted by a graduate program at Harvard. She is now wondering how much she will have to hide her opinions. What am I to say? That the bias in academe is a conservative fantasy, so go ahead and have your 'National Review' subscription delivered to the departmental mailbox? Not a chance: I'd like her to have a shot at the career she clearly wants.
"I'm suffering at much the same disadvantage because I choose friends based on how they socialized and often that means my friends aren't in mathematics."--Yeah, no joke!
Your hypothesis can be tested. If you are correct, then the gap between "liberals" and "conservatives" would be LARGER in "reality-based" fields, such as sciences and engineering. In fact, available data strongly indicates exactly the opposite--ideological disparities are the smallest in the sciences and in the more quantitative social sciences and largest in the humanities and softer social sciences.
Speaking from personal experience, back when I was a liberal I had two foreign language professors who openly made conservative remarks; I found it refreshing.
Having spent my career teaching in foreign languages, I'm struck by the way people in the Liberal Arts automatically assume that their peers are also politically liberal. Although I've never seen any overt discrimination, I can certainly imagine how a prospective grad student who was not a liberal would be turned off by the environment.
My experience in the computer science and math departments was that politics simply never came up. I suppose there might have been some bias behind the scenes, but it wasn't evident to a student who was only minoring in the subject.
In the History and Political Science departments most professors were liberal, however, in my experience they also took great pains to ensure that they presented topics fairly. If a particular student made comments of a marxist nature (I'm convinced every poli-sci class has that student) the professor would often counter with the oppisite argument for the purposes of generating discussion.
Oddly enough, however, the most overtly political professor I remember from undergrad was in the Economics department, and we was undeniably Conservative/Libertarian. (Judging from articles from the Economist and Reason he posted on his bulletin board) From all acccounts he was perfectly fair in grading (everyone did bad on his tests), but he did take some pleasure in demolishing the typical liberal economic arguments.
It may be that he stood out because he was somewhat unique on an otherwise fairly liberal campus, (at a small nationally ranked liberal arts college) but neither did I see substantial institutional bias against conservatives.
I don't dispute that. What I am suggesting is that the effects that any liberal bias might have on the typical undergrad is minimal at best, at least in my experience. I wouldn't doubt that the history and English departments are filled with liberals, and that they would prevent any conservatives from joining their faculty.
But as a student, I would say, so what? If you can show me where it really makes a difference in say, a biology class, then go ahead. Otherwise, all this griping is about conservatives unable to get certain jobs at universities.
I don't dispute that. What I am suggesting is that the effects that any liberal bias might have on the typical undergrad is minimal at best, at least in my experience. I wouldn't doubt that the history and English departments are filled with liberals, and that they would prevent any conservatives from joining their faculty.
But as a student, I would say, so what? If you can show me where it really makes a difference in say, a biology class, then go ahead. Otherwise, all this griping is about conservatives unable to get certain jobs at universities.
I sympathize. I find it interesting, though, how similar her plight is with many other people. Try hiding your sexuality from your bosses at corporations that don't like gays, for instance. Not fun.
So you see, when the shoe is on the other foot, suddenly, it's an issue. I hope your friend doesn't think that gays should remain closeted as she now understands to a small degree what it is like to hide your identify from people.
I bet a similar situation obtains in almost all engineering and science departments.
My point was that with gays at many places, they have to hide not just opinions, but their entire lifestyle. If in a conservative workplace where being gay is not acceptable (as your friend is concerned that being conservative is not acceptable), then you can't bring your partner to a firm's social events, can't have a partner's photo on your desk. When asked what you did over the weekend during casual conservsation, you can't say my boyfriend and I went to the movies, or my partner and I worked in the garden. You have to be careful on every word that you say so as to not betray the fact that you are gay.
As one real life example, I have a friend who works at a Republican polling agency. If they found out he is gay, he's fired. He and his partner decided to get married, then go to Paris for the honeymoom. While there, the partner suddenly died of a heart attack.
So he has to deal with the emotions and excitement of planning a wedding, getting married, trip to Paris, death of a spouse, all within the span of one week, and then come to work and not mention a word of this to anyone and pretend that nothing interesting happened to him at all.
Pretty heavy burden, wouldn't you say? So yes, I firmly believe that no one should have to hide their true identity in any workplace. There are exceptions, of course, you can't be anti-semitic and work for a Jewish organization. and I certainly wouldn't want to hear any hate speech from a co-worker.