<p>CAsmom, you didn’t just post this to encourage discussion. You posted this to stir the pot. Look at the thread title. Look at your screen name. You had an agenda and you don’t (or maybe you do) like the direction of the discussion. </p>
<p>The study is bad scholarship. It’s not true research; it’s barely meta-analysis. People on CC are smart; they know bad scholarship when they see it. The subject is a perfectly fine one to discuss. Just don’t use this as the jumping-off point. It’s incendiary and biased and laughable.</p>
<p>CASmom stands for College of Arts and Sciences mom. I used to post on the NYU thread when my daughter was a student in their College of Arts and Sciences, which was referred to as CAS.</p>
<p>CASmom, why do you assume I was attacking you? Although you posted the original link, the discussion isn’t about you. I linked to that Business Week article for a couple of reasons. First, to point out that studies can show correlations, but the hypotheses drawn are all up to the interpreter. Second, that maybe there are a higher proportion of liberals in academia because the explanation posited by Kanazawa (a libertarian who “despises” liberals) was that those who reject conventional wisdom are more likely to be liberal. He believes it is a type of thinking that to a certain, no by no means perfect, degree correlates to intelligence. But as he states, that doesn’t mean they are right–conventional wisdom is sometimes correct. </p>
<p>Here is another more indepth article on the subject: </p>
<p>I think many of the best universities seek thinkers who look outside the box and push limits. To me, that is part of what academia is. Hence, the correlation with liberalism.</p>
<p>So, I actually read the entire study and frankly, as a study, it lacks scientific rigor and makes innumerable unsupported statements. The first 22 pages are simply statements of what the authors believe without any proof and the next approximately 12 pages detail how professors are liberal (which the authors posit must mean that they bring their political biases into the classroom). The study uses a lack of response by professors as an indictment of professors and in one of my favorite elements, condemns books on the basis of amazon reviewer comments. Here’s one example:</p>
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<p>I’m not sure how an anonymous reviewer on Amazon should be used for proof of anything, but it is sort of typical of the study.</p>
<p>You know, I think that some professors at college campuses have stepped over the lines and some courses are clearly politicized to an unacceptable degree. However, this study is unfortunately something that should be condemned by people on both sides of the political spectrum as it is poorly reasoned, lacks rigor and starts from a biased perspective.</p>