<p>From what I've heard, Dartmouth has the reputation of the conservative Ivy League school (This is not a bad thing. It may not seem like that to most of you guys. I just come from a place where "Conservative" or "Republican" have extremely negative connotations. However, I am quite conservative for someone from my community. Anyways, I digress). Is this statement true? Or was this true 50 years ago? How do the Ivies fall on the political spectrum? (I figure you could just go left to right).</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard from students while it does have the reputation of being “the most conservative ivy” in reality it is probably only 15% or less conservative, but rather has a very vocal conservative group. I think I heard according to a self-administered poll over 90% of Dartmouth student’s voted for Obama during the 2008 election.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is more or less as liberal as any campus I’ve seen here. We’re nowhere near Wesleyan or Brown in terms of leftishness, though, and the Dartmouth Review and College Republicans are pretty loud and active (though they’ve quieted a bit since Obama’s election).</p>
<p>None of the Ivies were particularly liberal until about fifty years ago, certainly not before the advent of need-blind admissions and the GI Bill following World War II.</p>
<p>That being said, Dartmouth was traditionally the smallest Ivy and always had the most to prove on the athletic field. So, every recruit they lost to someone with more scholarly, artistic, or otherwise non-athletic accomplishments, was a zero-sum equation as far as older alum were concerned.</p>
<p>The fact that today hardly anyone at Big Green blinks an eye at a less than championship sports season, speaks volumes about how far they’ve come.</p>
<p>How about the professors? I heard that the college started firing all the conservative faculty a short time ago . . . I’m a conservative, but I don’t mind being taught by some liberal faculty members. Would a conservative be marginalized all the time in the classroom, though?</p>
<p>You heard the school started firing all the conservative faculty?</p>
<p>Sources please? I highly doubt this.</p>
<p>While it’s true that the faculty are generally liberal, this is I think primarily a function of their higher education. Speaking objectively, studies suggest that education correlates well with politically liberal opinions. I’m a libertarian so I’m not particularly reveling in this, but them’s the facts.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard that faculty were fired for political views. That’d certainly violate the terms of their tenure, if they were tenured. There are quite a few libertarian professors around. And honestly, I’ve found it hard to tell professors’ political leanings based on what they say in class.</p>