The other day I posted on a Robert Maranto column in the Washington Post about the bias against conservatives in academia. The Post now prints a rebuttal by political scientist Eric Uslaner. His argument can be summed up thusly: conservatives don't go into academia because they are more concerned about making money and even though there is an overwhelming bias toward the Left in academia, Uslaner hasn't seen any outright bias.
Patrick Deneen pretty much has the goods on Uslaner. Uslaner complains that Maranto can provide no scientific evidence that liberal domination of the academy leads to bias, yet Uslaner's own evidence against such bias is all anecdotal. I don't know how one would go about scientifically proving such bias, but one can do a scientific thought experiment. Uslaner is certainly correct that most academics do not bring their biases into the classroom. But a certain percentage do, let's say 10% (a number that I suspect is low in some disciplines). That still means that liberal bias will far outnumber conservative bias due to the fact that left-of-center political views are dominant in academia. A conservative student is likely to find a class or two (at least) where he or she is made to feel unwelcome. Maybe conservatives trend toward business degrees because, due to the nature of the subject, that is a place where they are less likely to feel unwelcome. Further, Uslaner would have to admit that there are entire disciplines (such as ethnic studies, gender studies, peace studies) that are based on ideological assumptions unfriendly to conservative points of view.
While the above discussion will be of more interest to the typical reader, but as I find arguments over liberal bias in the academy tiresome, I find Deneen's larger point more penetrating and thought provoking as it gets to the nature of the university. Here, I think, is his point:
The dominance of a liberal - or better put, progressive - worldview among university faculty has more to do with the transformation of the University from a conservative institution to an "agent of progressive change" in our culture. Universities until relatively recently were conservative or better put "conservators," particularly inasmuch as they were charged with transmitting knowledge and collective wisdom of the past to future generations. Universities were the repositories of the past and conveyors of tradition to the future. More often than not colleges and universities were religious institutions and its professors were just that - men and women who professed faith to the young. If there were sophisticated surveys that measured worldviews and dispositions (and not mere party affiliation, since then - as is often the case now - Republicans were apt to be the more progressive of the two parties), one would find that faculty at most colleges and universities even just a few decades ago would likely have been "conservative" as a matter of disposition, valuing above all the transmission of knowledge and liberal learning among their charges. The contemporary agendas of "research," "originality," and "problem-solving" were not a part of the college agenda.
This is similar (but not the same) to the explanation some give for the preponderance of progressive views among journalists (more prevalent the larger the media institution). Journalism in the late 20th Century began to see its mission as reporting on problems/injustices and then proposing solutions. Journalism became a progressive enterprise, an agent of social change. The university now sees itself as an engine of change rather an institution that passes on a heritage (see Deneen's discussion of "post-everything" in English departments, for example).
Interestingly, many, if not most, of conservatives I am aware of in academia are drawn to small liberal arts and/or teaching centered schools. There one can actually focus on teaching undergraduates rather than producing new research. Readers may be surprised at how little teaching goes on at bigger schools, such as the Big Ten schools. I recall the contempt for undergraduate teaching expressed by the graduate students at a Big Ten university where a friend of mine got his PhD. This lends credence to Deneen's argument that the places that grant PhD's are especially antagonistic to those with conservative dispositions (if not conservative politics).
I have argued before that as an undergraduate one is more likely (although not certain) to get a better education at a smaller teaching centered school than a large research university, although each serves a purpose. Deneen's argument provides more evidence for that argument.
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