The Political Orientation of College Faculty

College Search & Selection
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<p>Actually, it doesn't surprise me at all that a strong majority of young academics self-identify as "moderates." The statement that "the road to tenure is probably not improved by being identified as a strong conservative" is just about half-right; the full truth is, the road to tenure is not improved by rocking the boat politically, either on the left or on the right. The safest path is to keep your head down and not make any enemies, and generally that means having your politics take a back seat so as not to generate controversy. In short, tack "moderate" until you get tenure.</p>

<p>As for the relatively higher levels of conservatism among the 65+ cohort, it may be partly the aging process---though the less charitable version of that is that older people are by and large more resistant to and uncomfortable with change. But I also suspect it's partly a function of generational politics. The 65+ cohort includes everyone born before 1943: pre-boomers, who went to college and grad school in the 50s and early 60s, a generally more conservative era in American politics and cultural life. The left-most cohort is the 50-64 group, those born between 1944 and 1958: the high boomers who went to college and grad school in the late 60s and 70s. Think Vietnam era, the counterculture, the New Left, Earth Day, the rise of modern feminism. It will be interesting to see whether this group becomes more conservative as they age, or whether instead they continue to carry their generally left-ish political and cultural sensibilities with them, as they have into their 50s and 60s--long after many would have expected them to "outgrow it."</p>

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<p>"Bill": I generally agree with your suppositions here, that laying low is the best path to tenure. But that also begs the question that was originally discussed.....the fact that, aside from being politically correct or pragmatically wise, conservatives must always lay low or risk losing their jobs. I was born in the 50's. I was fairly liberal before and up until the time I graduated from high school. Then military service intervened (Vietnam Era, though I was not sent to Vietnam, thank goodness) and I was "awakened to reality". By the time 1976 rolled around, I was teetering to the right and by 1980, following Carter's Presidency I was a card carrying Republican.<br>
But I also note that many people mellow after retirement and raising kids and often become more liberal and tolerant..as if the fight in them has gone away. My parents (both deceased) were certainly in that camp. I hope I dont get a set of dentures and a democrat voting card at the same time. LOL.</p>

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<p>Interesting story on this, front page of today's NY Times under the headline "On Campus, the 60's Begin to Fade as Liberal Professors Retire":</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/arts/03camp.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/arts/03camp.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>They're not taking about the 65+ cohort but the 50-65 cohort, the older members of which are just now reaching retirement age. It's a typical journalistic account, nothing in the way of statistics, just anecdotal evidence from interviews of 3 or 4 people in the Wisconsin-Madison sociology department. But I guess the premise of the story is that if old lefties are retiring and being replaced by younger self-identified "moderates" even in Wisconsin's sociology department, it must be a real trend.</p>

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<p>I think this is just flatly false. Tenure is tenure. It's almost impossible to remove a tenured professor from his or her job for any reason other than criminal activity or gross malfeasance. I challenge you to cite a single instance of a tenured professor being ousted because of his or her conservative political views. It just doesn't happen. On the faculties I've been on, conservatives have always been in the minority but there have always been some, and they've always been just as outspoken about their political views as any liberal member of the faculty, without fear of retribution, and certainly without fear for their jobs. Overwhelmingly, that's the norm in American academia.</p>

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<p>You have COMPLETELY misread my comment and taken it out of context. NOWHERE in my commentary did I suggest or state that tenured professors would be removed, though I would ring CHURCH bells if we could somehow "blow up" the tenured system and make these people accountable to students and parents who pay the bills, let alone the University.</p>

<p>In ALL tenured contracts they can be removed for cause which is usually defined as being convicted of a felony, or some sort of sexual deviancy.</p>

<p>What I WAS referring to, and it was CLEAR from my statement in context, was the INABILITY TO GAIN TENURE if you are too outspoken politically, notably for conservatives.</p>

<p>Before you state that I posted a falsehood, please check your facts.</p>

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<p>^ Sorry, I just misunderstood what you were saying. I don't think your import was all that clear from the context, but I take you at your word that you meant to refer only to non-tenured faculty, and admit it was my mistake in misreading you---an honest mistake, not a deliberate misrepresentation. </p>

<p>But that said, I just don't see any evidence that outspokenly conservative political views are any more dangerous to a young faculty member's prospects for tenure than outspokenly liberal or left-wing views. I've never run across a case of someone being denied tenure for holding or expressing conservative political views. As I said before, when there is a tenure denial, the denied candidate may want to attribute it to politics, but if there is politics involved it's more typically in the nature of the usual petty personal politics of academia, not ideological disagreement. And to the extent there is any kind of ideological tinge to it, I think it happens at least as often on the left as on the right. Conservatives are underrepresented in academia because they come into academia in small numbers, not because they're disproportionately denied tenure or disproportionately vulnerable to tenure denial for speaking out.</p>

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<p>Okay, gotcha. Happy Fourth!</p>

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<p>From today's Inside Higher Ed...</p>

<p>In</a> Defense of Ayers :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for News, Views and Jobs</p>

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<p>Your point being, Hawkette?</p>

<p>I love how we just celebrated yesterday a national holiday commemorating a man who killed tens of thousands of people, yet people get up in arms over a man who engaged in violent property damage forty years ago, a man who has since publicly regretted his violent actions.</p>

<p>Coincidentally, Ayers activities in the Weathermen were most assuredly not related to his later work as a scholar/teacher, the very work for which he was selected to serve on a Republican commissioned non-profit board. </p>

<p>Shall we bring up Sarah Palin's much more explicit ties to a secessionist party? A party led by a man who has said, "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. ... And I won't be buried under their damn flag."</p>

<p>We could, but we won't. As none of this has anything to do with academic freedom, which is very much alive and well on American campuses, nor the election facing this country in three short weeks, which should be an election about issues and character, not about trivial and tenuous mudslinging.</p>

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<p>cay,
Can you elaborate on your statement,</p>

<p>"a national holiday commemorating a man who killed tens of thousands of people"</p>

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<p>Columbus was an international terrorist of the highest order.</p>

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Columbus wrote:</p>

<p>"As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts." The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold?</p>

<p>The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."</p>

<p>Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.</p>

<p>Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."</p>

<p>But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.</p>

<p>The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.</p>

<p>Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.</p>

<p>When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.

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<p>Would you please provide the source of the passage above?</p>

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<p>Hawkette, Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of the New World led to its occupation, subjugation and ethnic cleansing.</p>

<p>Thanksgiving Day "celebrates" the beginning of a systematic European effort to conquer North America, and in so doing exterminate the "subhuman" native population.</p>

<p>You can wave your hands in protest or whatever, but the fact of the matter is, America is founded on a bedrock of violent conquest, suffering and slaughter.</p>

<p>We can't turn back the clock (and nobody's saying we should) but we can look at our own history and see more than our fair share of blemishes.</p>

<p>Besides, "terrorism" is in the eye of the beholder, pretty much.</p>

<p>From the British point of view, George Washington was a terrorist leader and traitor who violently overthrew the established government with a bloody rebellion.</p>

<p>Does that make what he did wrong? No.</p>

<p>From the Mexican point of view, the Mexican-American War was an unprovoked, bloodthirsty and brazen effort to seize half of its land by armed conquest, making James K. Polk little better than a predecessor to Hitler.</p>

<p>History is complex. There are no knights in shining armor.</p>

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<p>More evidence on the political orientation of those in academe:</p>

<p>Education</a> Election: Donors from Academe Favor Obama by a Wide Margin</p>

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<p>I thought you'd let this thread die since you did not post the recent Chronicle article about politics in the classroom which cited the book "Closed Minds?" and research by the Woessners. </p>

<p>Together, those studies found that most professors do not divulge their views, although students in politically-oriented classes seem to have little trouble figuring them out. More to the point, their findings suggest that student views aren't really swayed by their professors. They studied students in political science classes and found that their views didn't change much. To the extent that the students become a little more liberal, that was just as likely to happen when the professor was a Republican as when the professor was Democrat.</p>

<p>This research seems pretty applicable to the topic.</p>

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Education Election: Donors from Academe Favor Obama by a Wide Margin

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<p>When conservatives like Colin Powell and Christopher Buckley are supporting Obama, maybe this says less about academe and more about John McCain.</p>

<p>Still having trouble digesting the fact that Columbus was a terrorist, Hawkette?</p>

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There are no knights in shining armor.

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<p>Except for Bush and his deputy, McCain.</p>

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<p>that makes sense since democrats outnumber republicans by a suprisingly large number</p>

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<p>Cayuga,
If you think that Colin Powell (or even John McCain) is a conservative, then I doubt that you have ever met any….</p>

<p>As for Columbus, it is clear that teaching interpretations/priorities have changed over the past several decades since I was in high school and college and your more recent experience. I think that Encyclopedia Brittanica sums up our varying perspectives well in the passage below. </p>

<p>“Numerous books about Columbus appeared in the 1990s, and the insights of archaeologists and anthropologists began to complement those of sailors and historians. This effort has given rise, as might be expected, to considerable debate. There was also a major shift in approach and interpretation; the older pro-European understanding has given way to one shaped from the perspective of the inhabitants of the Americas themselves. According to the older understanding, the “discovery” of the Americas was a great triumph, one in which Columbus played the part of hero in accomplishing the four voyages, in being the means of bringing great material profit to Spain and to other European countries, and in opening up the Americas to European settlement. The more recent perspective, however, has concentrated on the destructive side of the European conquest, emphasizing, for example, the disastrous impact of the slave trade and the ravages of imported disease on the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean region and the American continents. The sense of triumph has diminished accordingly, and the view of Columbus as hero has now been replaced, for many, by one of a man deeply flawed. While this second perception rarely doubts Columbus’s sincerity or abilities as a navigator, it emphatically removes him from his position of honour. Political activists of all kinds have intervened in the debate, further hindering the reconciliation of these disparate views.”</p>

<p>hoedown,
Here is the article that you referenced:</p>

<p>The</a> Public View of Politics in the Classroom - Chronicle.com</p>

<p>I don’t consider the work of Jeremy Mayer and the Brookings Institute as a balanced source. Unless you consider the work of David Horowitz to be a balanced source. </p>

<p>However, I do agree with the idea put forth by Matthew Woessner that there is a large part of America that believes that leftist politics/opinion, whether part of a political proselytizing action plan or not, are far too dominant among faculty on college campuses. And such perceptions are continually reinforced by reports like the one above that says that donations to Obama are EIGHT TIMES larger than donations to McCain.</p>

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If you think that Colin Powell (or even John McCain) is a conservative, then I doubt that you have ever met any…

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<p>Trust me. I've met many in my day. And if Christopher Buckley isn't a conservative than why did the National Review publish his columns all these years? </p>

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I don’t consider the work of Jeremy Mayer and the Brookings Institute as a balanced source. Unless you consider the work of David Horowitz to be a balanced source.

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<p>Likening the centrist Brookings to David Horowitz is analogous to likening a fine California Pinot to the boxed stuff you can buy for $5 a liter.</p>

<p>Full disclosure: I used to be an employee of Brookings.</p>

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<p>No, check your dates.</p>

<p>That article you just linked to was dated April. The article I discussed appeared in last week's chronicle. Mayer was just one of three authors of the book it discussed. </p>

<p>Writing "eight times" in all caps doesn't make the finding shocking to me. The article does a nice job outlining why faculty may be more likely to support a democratic candidate. The fact that they are more likely to be liberal (which hasn't been news since before Ladd & Lipsett) is one part of it--just one. I wish they'd cut off their comparison in August, not September, given the change in McCain's fundraising status, but I'm sure that's a small matter.</p>

<p>I think it's interesting that Woessners' work suggests that increasing political "diversity" among faculty might not have any effect on students in terms of their political shifts.</p>