<p>Question for those of you who are students or recent grads:</p>
<p>Is it true that the students are fairly conservative while the teachers tend to unfortunately be very politically correct/ liberal? </p>
<p>Please be as specific as possible (maybe certain academic departments, certain student clubs...) including any personal stories if you have them</p>
<p>and if so, is the administration held captive by the far left faculty who run the school?</p>
<p>Thank you</p>
<p>I agree that many of the students are on the conservative side and there isn't a lot of outrage over the Bush administration or Iraq - it's not a very politically active campus in my opinion. Still there are many liberal students and it's relatively balanced. </p>
<p>Not sure why professors being liberal is something "unfortunate" - I think it's fortunate since I am also a liberal, but if you are conservative you will be able to find some professors who are also. My economics professors gave mostly pro-business, conservative economic lectures in my opinion but those were just the intro courses and I don't do economics anymore. Some of the humanities professors and also psych tend to be on the liberal side in my opinion.</p>
<p>Liberal 36.3%
Moderate 36.7%
Conservative 22.2%</p>
<p>I think the remaining ~5% were made up of extreme liberals or conservatives.</p>
<p>I agree with Dukeclassof09, students don't seem to be that concerned. Don't get me wrong, there are students who are passionate about their beliefs and are involved in organizations such as the Duke Conservative Union, etc. Certain departments have more liberal professors (anthro, lit, english, history, AAAS - gang of 88), but I've found in my classes professors are excellent about being as partial as possible when you know which way they lean. Basically I think the campus is much more balanced inside and out than my extremely liberal high school.</p>
<p>It only takes common sense to find out where you would get conservative/liberal teachers by department, just consider their profession. The biggest political push by the student body recently has been against Nifong heh, but it really is a great mix, I would say most are moderate and may slightly lean one way or another. I've heard some funny stories of Econ teachers being "politically incorrect" by stating statistics that are unfavorable to one group or another, but generally you have to be politically correct to an extent, they are trying to keep their jobs and not **** students off, but it doesnt interfer with their teaching and they arent too snobby about it. Duke has a vary diverse population, so I wouldn't say that the school is dominated by either party.</p>
<p>Of course the majority of students and profs are liberal (it's college), but less so than at other elite schools. There are more southern students, so that may have something to do with it. The professors are definitely more liberal than the students, but there are some conservatives in the econ and poli-sci departments (Feaver for international relations!).</p>
<p>There's a sense of apathy, but you can find politically active organizations on campus. I'm in the Duke Conservative Union and College Republicans, and we regularly hold campus events and go to conferences (we went to CPAC in D.C. this year). It's a small group, but it's there if you're interested.</p>