Howard Kurtz reports today on a new study on the lack of intellectual diversity on campus College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds. I haven’t been able to find a copy of the actual underlying study, so if someone knows where it is, please point me to it. So I’ll rely on Kurtz’s summary here.
According to Kurtz’s summary:
By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans.
The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative.
Broken down by departments:
The most liberal faculties are those devoted to the humanities (81 percent) and social sciences (75 percent), according to the study. But liberals outnumbered conservatives even among engineering faculty (51 percent to 19 percent) and business faculty (49 percent to 39 percent).
The most left-leaning departments are English literature, philosophy, political science and religious studies, where at least 80 percent of the faculty say they are liberal and no more than 5 percent call themselves conservative, the study says.
As I said, I haven’t been able to find the underlying study, but as reported by Howard Kurtz, the finding here are consistent with the findings of Dan Klein’s research, which I commented on a few weeks back. At that time, I was struck by a couple of things. First, that although a lot of people nitpicked at the study, none of them were able to rebut the central conclusion of the study. In fact, most of the criticism seems to have been done by critics who apparently didn’t read all of Klein’s underlying research which looks at both policy views and party affiliation.
Second, no one has provided any evidence that contradicts the central findings of these studies, whether Klein’s or the apparent conclusions of the new study. I’m sure that advocates of the status quo will find something to pick at in the new study as well–but if the findings of these studies are fundamentally flawed, at some point wouldn’t someone find something to the contrary? If the evidence was otherwise mixed, then nitpicking at particular studies is one thing, but when the evidence begins to accumulate, at some point it seems like nitpicking is somewhat unresponsive to the underlying issue.
If there is evidence out there that shows a libertarian/conservative takeover of academia, I haven’t seen it.
The evidence is mounting that there is an ideological one-sidedness to university campuses today. The relevant question is whether it is having an effect on the education of American college students. Interestingly, one observation in the Kurtz article is striking:
When asked about the findings, Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors, said, ***
“It’s hard to see that these liberal views cut very deeply into the education of students. In fact, a number of studies show the core values that students bring into the university are not very much altered by being in college.”
This is consistent with what I hear from many of my own students–university campuses have become so cartoonishly left-wing that many students are essentially just tuning out their professors. Students report that they just go through the motions of pretending that they are converted, then they just regurgitate the mantra on exams in order to get a good grade. Meanwhile, many students dismiss their professors as risible ideologues (a good example here).
Perhaps the fact that students are largely unchanged by their university experience is the most damning comment of all about what is going on at universities today.
Finally, is anyone else surprised that Religious studies is self-reported as one of the most liberal departments? I would have thought if conservatives were present anywhere, it would be in religious studies.
Update:
I see my co-conspirator literally was simultaneously writing on the same article as I was.
Update:
As for my question at the end–the answer is “yes,” apparently I am the only one who is surprised. I heard from several readers who studied religion in college or grad school and they are not the slightest bit surprised and report that most university religious studies departments today are devoutly multiculturalist (many religious university religious studies professors study non-Western religions) and tend to be quite hostile to Christianity. I didn’t take any religious studies courses in college, so I wasn’t familiar with the sociology of the profession, which was very interesting to me.
I for one am not surprised that religion departments are liberal based on my undergraduate experience. Secular biblical studies for instance seems very liberal to me with the focus being on showing that the traditional views about the Bible are way off in areas like original authorship (did Paul write all the letters attributed to him?) and accuracy of the texts (did Jesus say what the Gospels record?). See the Jesus Seminar for a good example of this liberal/post modern dominance.
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