Joe Knippenberg directs us to this study (pdf alert), nicely summarized here, which provides an in depth analysis of the political opinions of college faculty. Not surprisingly, academia leans heavily to the left. Indeed in the social sciences the Marxists outnumber the conservatives.
One interesting finding is the prevalence of academics who call themselves moderates. Here is a flaw in the study's methodology. The study asks academics to identify their own political ideology. Another method would be to ask the academics their opinions on an array of political issues (they were asked about some), and the researchers could assign an ideology based on the responses. The problem with the researchers' methods is that academia is so far to the left that many professors who are perfectly liberal think of themselves as "moderate" because compared to other academics they might be.
An example. I once knew a college professor who was a garden variety liberal. He was pro-choice. He was pro-gay rights. He supported the expansion of the welfare state. But he was also a military veteran who, consequently, did not loathe the military. For this reason alone he was considered a conservative by his colleagues. This man, who was by any measure a political liberal, thought of himself as a moderate simply because he was closer to the political center than all of his radical colleagues. You have to understand that for many academics the simple act of voting Democratic as opposed to Socialist is considered an act of heroic moderation.
Update: Skimming the actual study one sees more methodological problems. The researchers generate misleading statistics by renaming as "moderate" those who call themselves "slightly liberal" and "slightly conservative." Coincidently, the former were 18% of respondents while the latter were only 10%. They do the same with party affiliation. They call respondents "independents" who lean toward one party but think of themselves as independent. In fact, we know through voting studies that these "leaners" almost always vote for the party towards which they lean. So while 51% of academics consider themselves Democrats (as opposed to 13.7% who are Republicans), about 71% vote Democratic while about 21% vote Republican.
Recent Comments