Yesterday's Iowa City Press Citizen provided a political snapshot of the University of Iowa. The university has come under scrutiny after it was learned that history professor and author of Triumph Forsaken, Mark Moyar, was denied a faculty position due to ideological discrimination. Here are few highlights:
1) Out of the 1,775 UI faculty registered to vote in Johnson County, 1,173 register Democrat (66.1 percent), 397 have no party affiliation (22.4 percent), and 205 are registered Republicans (11.5 percent)
2) According to the article, there are twenty-one departments with at least ten registered faculty voters with one or fewer Republicans, including the College of Law, teaching and learning and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
3) There are seven departments with at least ten registered faculty voters with zero registered Republicans, including history, anthropology, and religious studies.
4) Political science Professor Tim Hagle remarked: "I think people that get hurt most are the students. They are not getting a
balanced view. They get out of college and realize they didn't hear about this
or that argument. Or, if students come in with conservative views and the
professor shoots down their ideas."
5) History Professor Sarah Hanley, an active participant in various 1960s movements, said she doesn't think the department is biased:
"I have great faith in the integrity of faculty members to not put political views on students," she said. "I just had a Western civilization class where I could have hammered away on politics, but I didn't. In the history department, you don't talk about politics," Hanley said.
Hanley thinks the UI campus numbers are skewed because Johnson County is heavily Democratic, she said. To participate politically here, you have to be a Democrat, she said, noting that most local public officials are Democrats.
Regardless, she doesn't think it is a bad thing for campuses to lean heavily toward one political party.
I would wonder if Professor Hanley would feel the same way if the history department at Iowa was made up of twenty-one Republicans and zero Democrats. Therein lies the problem: the lack of exposure to various ideas means students are introduced to narrow sets of arguments and interpretations. Why do cultural studies seminars lists works from Michael Focault, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri but rarely mention Friedrick A. von Hayek or Francis Fukuyama, who have made their imprints felt on world affairs? Or others from the conservative intelligentsia like Russell Kirk, Leo Strauss, or Thomas Sowell? There's also the more personal aspect of ideological bias -- the assumption that all the strangers in the room are liberals. The result is conservatives who feel marginalized in academia.
Also, see this Washington Post editorial by political science Professor Robert Maranto entitled "As a Republican, I'm on the Fringe."
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