College Faculties a Most Liberal Lot (Headline, WA-Post, Kurtz)

[skip fox]

One possibility the authors don't mention is that at a certain point in even the most rudimentary of studies (let's say toward a professional degree . . . M.A., Ph.D.) that certain right-wing contentions (as defined during the past 20 years--the time of the study, esp. as defined by the religious right) begin to sound ludricous. Like a literal seven day creation, or a zygote being human, or . . . Well, at a certain point, most intelligent people who will look around and see how bizarre the right seems to be (at least through association with the literalists), or they see the right pandering to social issues which contradict their anti-Federalism in order to gain election, and they begin to question the entre package of right-wing beliefs, usually changing party affiliation.

(It's just a shame this doesn't happen earlier.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html?nav=rss_politics

[The Witch]

1. Have a post about this on Last Midnight.

http://lastmidnight.blogspot.com

Heard about it on Washington Journal today. Raises a few questions. Is this a good thing or a bad thing and how do we paint it as the good thing it is?

[skip fox]

2. I'm afraid it's another attempt by the right (who funded study) to push

for an Academic Bill of Rights (i.e., to quiet free speech in its second most important enviroment after the political arena).

[papau]

3. true - and they claim data is as "as self described" - so if folks do not

say they're conservative, they are evil teachers? I think it was something like 13% conservative, 20% liberal, and 2/3rds moderate - but Kurtz is not into fact checking. He has an agenda to push.

Sort of requiring the faculty to take a "I am not a communist" pledge if they want school to get a "good" score. Perhaps GOP folks tend to graft and writing Kurtz like for the Washington Post, rather than teaching?

Or do we need a quota system?

[Spazito]

7. Exactly!

The intent behind this and the other articles Howie has been doing on the "Liberal" dominance of higher education is hoodwink the US public into supporting the 'conservative' view of education, that of "You will be taught NOT to think for yourself".

[Clark2008]

11. Kind of like the Pew Poll of 2002

that showed that 24 percent of journalists said they were liberal, 22 said they were conservative and 54 said they were moderate, but all the conservatives touted the little fact that the percentage of liberal journalists had increased 34 percent in 10 years and forgot completely that most were moderates.

[Nikki Stone 1]

12. EXACTLY. Horowitz and his "Academic Bill of Rights" is out to take the

universities and create places where religious radicals will have their myths reflected back to them. I am not talking here about legitimate, thoughtful religious people. I am talking about those who believe that "creationism" is a theory just like evolution.

[skip fox]

13. Evolution is a theory like gravity is a theory or electricity, as

they say. Not like what a theory seems to be to these jokers.

[Nikki Stone 1]

16. Yes. A scientific theory requires certain stringent criteria to be

accepted. A religious myth, like the creation, does not meet any of those criteria. In addition, there are two Biblical theories of creation--which contradict each other in terms of the order of creation--and I always wonder which one the fundies want taught.

[JDPriestly]

4. Conservative "beliefs" are not compatible with

creative thought.

By definition, a conservative accepts traditional beliefs as true and seeks to maintain the status quo. A liberal, on the other hand, remains skeptical, eager to learn and explore new ideas and changes his or her mind about things based on new information. That's why liberals "flip-flop" a lot.

The conservative methodology is to understand and explain established truths well. The liberal methodology is to explore new possibilities and ask questions.

Conservatives tend to gravitate toward the ministry, business, banking, etc. -- areas in which stability and dependability are important. Liberals tend to gravitate toward creative and helping professions -- areas in which asking questions and empathizing are important.

The duty or task of a scholar is to remain skeptical, be creative, explore new possibilities and ask questions. Therefore, by definition, scholars are liberals. In the best of all possible worlds, of course, the best scholars, i.e., those that ask the most questions, i.e., the most liberal, teach at universities. So, you see, the question is not why there are so many liberals at universities, but why there are any conservatives at all.

[The Witch]

9. Well said!

I often think people need to look at the dictionary definitions of the words conservative and liberal. I feel a post to Last Midnight coming on...

[Nikki Stone 1]

18. While I like your style, the facts are a little different. Academics can

be just as fiercely defensive of their own status quo as any other group, especially if the status quo is their own theoretical models. I agree that the younger academics need a more liberal frame of mind to challenge what came before and provide better explanations for things. But the way academics is set up, the older tenured professors have control of curricula, academic journals, and doctoral committees. If you think a particular prof's theories are wrong--or just plain snake oil--you still usually have to toe the party line to get your degree ( 5 years or so of graduate study/dissertation) and then you have to be careful whom you offend while you are getting tenure somewhere (another 6 or 7 yrs.) By then, you may have lost your interest in anything except job security and your stock portfolio, especially if you have married and have had kids in the interim.

Noam Chomsky--who revolutionized the study of linguistics--couldn't get published or hired in this country. (His most famous work was published in Scandinavia.) Now, of course, he is revered, but he is one of the lucky ones. Most people who challenge the status quo are sifted out at some point or another, often during the battle for tenure.

[skip fox]

19. There are also a lot of professors (liberal, conservative, etc.) who would

who would rather push their own beliefs rather than teach in a classroom where all sensible inquiry is allowed/encouraged, given constraints of time and syllabus. I'm liberal here in judging "sensible" as well, but feel no remorse not even considering creationism except as current phenomen to be investigated, like the Ptolomic universe.

Most of my colleagues (by what I can guage from talking with them and the comments of students) are the same. This is a mid-sized state univ.: Univ. of Louisiana, Lafayette. A young pretty professional breed, it seems.

A few years back we had a Rush-Limbaugh conservative grad student. We helped in a number of ways (he need more time to take exams, etc.). He'd bitch about us and is probably doing so now (with a Ph.D.), but none of us would have done differently. He was even a friend of mine, though I kicked him out of the car once when he was screaming politics and I said "no more" (he wouldn't stop). It was in town and he got another ride. We were friends before and after.


I DO admit, that I have heard stories of intolerance here as well as in society. I do not condone it, but feel tenure is so important that we might have to accept some abuses--especially when the rest of us are acting responsibly and the issue of free inquiry and expression are vital to the profession, university, and society.

[JDPriestly]

22. I don't question that academics can be

dogmatic and intolerant, competitive and territorial, however, the values that move them to become academics -- especially in the liberal arts and, to a slightly lesser extent in science, rather than to become accountants or business men are essentially liberal. That is borne out by the fact that, as I pointed out, the upper echelons of the business world are mostly filled by conservatives while the upper echelons in intellectual fields, especially liberal arts are mostly filled by liberals. It's a matter of the values underneath the personalities. True red conservatives just aren't as interested in talking about human experience in terms of Shakespeare or Goethe or Homer as are true blue liberals.

Note the number of prominent conservatives like Karl Rove and George Bush who did not fare well in academic culture. They did not fit. George Bush, mind you, was a history major as an undergraduate. He sure wasn't paying much attention, was he. I would guess that he wasn't really that interested in analyzing and learning from what people did in the past. He likes managing things, socializing. For him, there is little point in analyzing the past because he accepts what he thinks is the conventional wisdom of the past as his value system. Deep down, he wants to keep repeating and continuing his idealistic version of the past. He isn't into challenging ideas; he wants to build an empire in which he and his kind are boss. Yes, some liberal academics build their own little empires at universities, but what originally brought them to academic life was their liberal value system. There are, no doubt, certain disciplines that attract conservatives such as accounting, but, by and large, academia attracts people with liberal values.

[ComerPerro]

5. Just another step in the GOP effort to sieze control of everything

Gerrymandering, carpetbagging, election fraud.

Currently they are trying to eliminate any remaining shred of checks and balances by undermining the court system until they can stack the courts with conservative judges who answer to Party first.

They have already purged the CIA of anyone who isn't a Bush loyalist.

The next logical step in taking total control is to eliminate every shred of liberal thought from college campuses.

Education is under attack by the right wing. Soon, school will be a privelage of the richest families only.

[Nikki Stone 1]

17. School will still exist--to warehouse kids--but thinking will be the

province of the wealthy. That's what the dumbing down of education is all about.

[skip fox]

6. Republican List of Things To Do in the New Millennium:

1. Eliminate free speech.
2. All else follows with relative ease. (Consult your secret playbook for details.)

[ieoeja]

8. "The more people learn, the more they become liberal."

Hee-hee. I LIKE this rightwing talking point.

[blm]

10. Washington Post Columnists a GOP Shilling Lot

and some of them SLEEP with their GOP masters and mistresses.

[Nikki Stone 1]

14. Right wing Randolph Foundation funded the study, a self-report survey

From the Post article:

"The findings, by Lichter and fellow political science professors Stanley Rothman of Smith College and Neil Nevitte of the University of Toronto, are based on a survey of 1,643 full-time faculty at 183 four-year schools. The researchers relied on 1999 data from the North American Academic Study Survey, the most recent comprehensive data available.

The study appears in the March issue of the Forum, an online political science journal. It was funded by the Randolph Foundation, a right-leaning group that has given grants to such conservative organizations as the Independent Women's Forum and Americans for Tax Reform. "

[gratuitous]

15. Yeah, and the overrich are almost exclusively Republican

What's the Post's point? Affirmative action for college faculties? I thought conservatives HATED affirmative action, the victim society and political correctness?

What a bunch of crybabies.

[skip fox]

20. They want a way to stifle free inquiry and free speech.

They will be consumately "fair." There's always a reason to be intolerant, and the reason is alway good.

:toast:

[ElectroPrincess]

23. Yes, it's an interesting phenomena to track on how many

folks are Democrats or Independents UNTIL they make their first million ... then it's GOP (Greedy Oil Party) all the way!

[libodem]

21. Good article in The Nation

April 4, 2005 The New PC: Crybaby Conservatives by Russell Jacoby "today's accusations against subversive professors differ from those of the past in several respects. In a sign of the times, the test for disloyalty has shifted far toward center. Once an unreliable professor meant an anarchist or a communist; now it includes Democrats. Soon it will be anyone left of Attila the Hun. Second, the charges do not (so far) come from government committees investigating un-American activities but from conservative commentators and their student minions. A series of groups such as Campus Watch, Academic Bias, and Students for Academic Freedom enlist students to monitor and publicize professorial conduct. Third, the new charges are advanced not against but in the name of academic freedom or a variant of it; and, in the final twist, the conservative critics seem driven by an ethos that they have adopted from liberalism: affirmative action and a sense of victim hood, which they officially detest." the infamous double speak

[AlabamaYankee]

24. Has anybody found a link to the article?

As far as I'm concerned the numbers are pure prairie bullshit. I bet I could do a survey of all business, engineering and Agriculture faculty at Land Grant Universities in the South and Midwest and come to the conclusion that university faculty are overwhelmingly conservative.

I want to do a thorough study of the article (I'm a Higher Ed grad) and see just where he's coming form, but I haven't been able to find this allegedly on-line journal or the article. And I think I'm pretty god at ferreting out stuff.

I'll keep looking and if I find anything I'll post it.

[AlabamaYankee]

25. Found the Abstract!

It's at http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol3/iss1/art2/ Since it's a subscription journal I have to wait until I get to my office to see if the university subscribes. Any other faculty types with access to their university's on line subscriptions?