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Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Universities leaning left
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The commonly-held view that university faculties tilt left is confirmed by studies being released today by the American Enterprise Institute to advance a forthcoming book, “Reforming the Politically Correct University.” The conclusions:
• “Conservatives and libertarians are outnumbered by liberals and progressives” by 2-1 in economics, 5-1 in fields such as political science, and 20-1 in disciplines like sociology and anthropology, report professors Daniel Klein of George Mason University and Charlotta Stern of Stockhold University. Their study is based on research into voting behavior, voter registration, ideology and policy views. The bias is likely caused by “groupthink,” they say, the theory that those rewarded by organizations are those whose views are similar to those of the dominant members.
• Two other researchers — Matthew Woessner of Penn State Harrisburg and April Kelly-Woessner of Elizabethtown College — report that conservative students are substantially less likely to pursue doctorate studies. That’s due in part to “unexplained differences in career motivations,” AEI reports, but “evidence also suggests that conservative students lack academic role models and have more distant relationships with faculty.”
• In a similar vein, researchers Stanley Rothman of Smith College and S. Robert Lichter of George Mason University offer “strong statistical evidence” that social conservatives have to publish more books and articles than their liberal peers to get the same kinds of jobs.
• Another study of literature departments finds that “a stultifying uniformity reigns, as literature departments study a wider variety of works only through the lenses of race, class, and gender oppression.”
• Linguistics has departed from the original mission of investigating how languages and dialects differ among groups “to become dominated by a leftist-driven advocacy for the downtrodden, as the controversy over Ebonics, or ‘Black English,’ shows,” according to AEI.
• In the political science field, “because over 80 percent of all political scientists are liberal or progressive, the political science discourse in universities is quite restricted,” another study concludes.
Two questions: Are these studies consistent with your views about colleges and universities? And how is it possible to move them from Kodak diversity to full inclusion for conservatives in the curriculum, instruction and leadership ranks?
