I have no doubt that academia is liberal. But bias against liberals is quite strong in other sectors of society. Try being liberal in the officer corps of the military or in large sections of American business. Or in any political life in the South. If you choose to be vocally out of the political mainstream in your chosen vocation you pay a price-nothing surprising about that.

Liberals dominate all fields of academia, except those that they don't.

The Economics Department at Harvard has quite a number of past / present advisors to Republican presidents (like the current head of the President's CEA), but this somehow doesn't count as "social science" for Brooks and others. Marty Feldstein lectures to something like 1,000 Harvard students students a year, way more than your average literature prof., and he tells them the wonders of the market and the evils of the government.

When a comp lit professor tells students that they ought to be anti-free trade and the economics professors all agree, with no exception, that the student should be pro-free trade, I wonder which point of view has the bigger impact? What about the anti-GATT student who is thinking of grad school in Econ?

In many state schools (and at schools like Penn), large fractions of undergrads major in "Business", hardly a hot bed of radical liberal thought.

Less importantly, chemistry departments are typically full of conservatives, who tell students not to worry that research agendas are being set by corporate research funds, and to merrily invent new chemicals to put in food.

As with the media, it is true that liberals dominate academia, except for all the places that they don't (like Economics Departments, Business Schools, religious colleges; and in media, the Wall Street Journal, Fox News and so forth.)

Economia,

Are you talking about "free trade" as in "Archer Daniels Midland 'free' trade" or as in "'free' trade?" You might want to clear that up before making offensive generalizations about economists.

DD,

You are on record about the leftward, um, disposition of the APSA members. Are you re-thinking this or do you see a balance between it and another, large discipline? Go Sox!

Condoleeza Rice was a college professor before she was put in charge of national security, and Paul Wolfowitz as well.

Her point would be sad if it were true, which in fact it is not.

I've written about why it isn't here.

Seems like the easiest way to answer the question of ideological discrimination vs. self-selection would be to survey the political views of advanced grad students (say, ABD) vs. assistant and associate professors in their field.

Forgot to enter my name on that last post.

I think Erin O'Connor makes a critical, often overlooked point in her essay. It is not the overtly political stance of the individual academic that matters here (who sees which lever you pull in a voting booth?), but the way in which large segments of the intellectual landscape have been roped off as no trespassing zones. You can go there, people tell you, but you won't be allowed back if you do.

Nick, your idea to survey people in various career stages, while sensible, just won't work. What you need is a seat at the table of hiring committees. When I was on the market a few years ago I made it to the short list at several good schools, but no further. I made some inquiries with friends and acquaintances who happened to be at the table, so to speak, and what I learned was that my dissertation was too "white male" centric. Good work, but "bad" history. Not that I hadn't been warned--many teachers and fellow students advised me to add more "history from below" to my largely intellectual historical framework. I ignored them, I paid the price.

The good news is, even the humanities are subject to fresh winds blowing through their musty corridors. My field was British Imperialism, which had all but DIED in the go-go 90s. 9/11 happened, and everyone wanted to know how/if we were the "new " British Empire." Niall Ferguson rolled onto the scene, already having made a good name for himself as defender of the long-discredited BE. Bingo! Timing and talent win the day. Too late for me, but I still enjoy watching from the sidelines, through the tears. When approached for advice, however, I invariably say "two words, law school."

Kelli,

Exactly why wouldn't the comparison work? If there isn't a significant difference in ideology between advanced grad students and assistant professors, ideological discrimination in hiring must be minimal (I don't think anyone can seriously claim there's substantial ideological discrimination in graduate admissions). If there's no significant difference in ideology between assistant professors and recently tenured professors, you'd be hard pressed to claim that that there's much discrimination in tenure decisions. Seems pretty simple to me.

You're right that adopting certain focuses or research approaches can be detrimental to career prospects, if it involves going against trends and fads within the discipline. However, I'm not sure to what extent this can (or should) be avoided, and I don't see any reason to assume that it'll cause a systematic bias against people on the ideological right, at least in the social sciences. In poli sci, given recent efforts to make the discipline more like economics, you could just as easily make the opposite case.

The ideological screening in the humanities begins in the first undergraduate courses in which grades are often assigned on the basis of "correct" politics rather than coherent argumentation. Students who are not on the Left are more or less driven away by repeated acts of intellectual violence.

I am not a conservative; I'm on the moderate Left. But, again and again, I have felt threatened with the academic equivalent of excommunication for not supporting far Left litmus-test issues with enough enthusiasm.

Of course, there are Right-wing enclaves that are equally oppressive, but they do not have a lock on the status mechanisms of higher education.

Nick (and anyone else who wants to join the fray),

I purposely did not address the question of where ideology fits into the tenure decision because I never witnessed the process up close. From what I have observed second or third hand, tenure decisions rest on empirical facts--how much you published, where it was published, and (to a much lesser degree) what your students thought of you. For years before this decision is made you have detailed reviews telling you if you are on track, based on these specific criteria, plus a few others. Moreover, there are liberal AND conservative journals of repute in all fields, ditto publishing houses. If your stuff is decent it CAN get published and you are halfway there.

In short, I don't believe tenure decisions are the place to find evidence of ideological bias in academia (but if others want to tell their stories I'm happy to listen).

Nor are you likely (as THB suggests) to screen in the admissions process. No one is THAT political fresh out of college; it takes years of reading Foucault and Derrida and Said to get there. That's what grad school is for.

No, where the discrimination comes into play is the hiring process, pure and simple. That's where really no one is looking over the hiring committee's shoulder to make sure there is ideological diversity in the applicant pool. There are anywhere from 50 to 500 applicants for a basic tenure track job in the humanities. Weeding out the ones that don't fit to a tee (intellectually, ideologically, in every way imaginable) is easy here. There is no recourse for applicants and little chance of a lawsuit.

I'm not saying ideology is everything. Far from it. If the hiring committee has in mind a historian who can cover modern Latin America, Russian diplomacy and the culture of lesbian Geishas in Seattle they can probably get pretty close. There's a good deal of politics (personal, not big "p") and a healthy heaping of luck, as I mentioned earlier. But it really doesn't help if you say the wrong thing about Edward Said and his acolytes to a committe that includes one or more of said acolytes.

Glad you asked. Look forward to your response.

Ok, so you think that the hiring process is the stage where ideological discrimination occurs. You still haven't explained why comparing the ideological tendencies of advanced grad students and junior faculty in the same field wouldn't go a long way toward answering the question. If there is a pattern of significant ideological discrimination, prospective job candidates should be on average noticeably more conservative than those eventually hired. Individual anecdotes don't prove anything about the extent of such discrimination.

I would add that one does not usually get into a "good" grad school unless one is already overtly politicized. One's sample essay, one references, one's affiliations--all must communicate the right combination of ideological buzzwords and social connections that assure graduate admissions committees that there will be no intellectual diversity in the incoming cohort. Anyone who by accident (or long-term mimicry of Leftist conventions) gets past these gatekeepers will be driven out by internal pressure, or, if they are as tough as nails and get through, by the final screens of the job market and the tenure process.

Again, I am not a conservative, but I believe in intellectual diversity. I am also not willing to believe that all conservatives are stupid or greedy. I believe that ideas can only progress by open dialogue, and this we clearly do not have in the humanities.

I would add that one does not usually get into a "good" grad school unless one is already overtly politicized. One's sample essay, one references, one's affiliations--all must communicate the right combination of ideological buzzwords and social connections that assure graduate admissions committees that there will be no intellectual diversity in the incoming cohort. Anyone who by accident (or long-term mimicry of Leftist conventions) gets past these gatekeepers will be driven out by internal pressure, or, if they are as tough as nails and get through, by the final screens of the job market and the tenure process.

Again, I am not a conservative, but I believe in intellectual diversity. I am also not willing to believe that all conservatives are stupid or greedy. I believe that ideas can only progress by open dialogue, and this we clearly do not have in the humanities.

THB,

The point I was making about conservatives is that they are either stupid or greedy. I don't think many are both. And, to be fair, "stupid" and "greedy" are not the best words. I'd substitute "narrow" and "self-interested" instead. Also, if theories of ideology have taught us anything, it's that many people will end up believing things that advance their material interests while having no idea that the reason they believe those things is that it advances their material interests. So we'd have to qualify the "self-interested" part for that, also.

Furthermore, to show that I'm not interested in starting a flame war, I'd say that the term "conservative" itself, in the sense I'm using it here, is mostly meant to refer to people such as Tom DeLay. The "higher moral justification for selfishness" bit used to term rightist thought in general still has a lot of explanatory power, however.

"believing things that advance their material interests while having no idea that the reason they believe those things is that it advances their material interests."

Does this not cut both ways--on the Left and on the Right?

Of course. But what's better for the society as a whole: increases in professors' salaries or tax-cuts for the wealthy?

I can't argue with that, Chun. You are indeed unavoidable.

What I find really interesting about these types of discussions is that it seems that we have, in this country, tried very hard to reduce political orientation to a dichotomous variable as if all conservatives and all liberals think exactly the same on all issues. Look around folks. This is a weird weird world. We have Jews for Jesus, Gay Conservatives, Liberals for prayer in school, and conservatives who support Dr. Kevorkian. Furthermore, people no longer are allowed to define themselves politically but are "outed" by people from the opposition. I often wonder if Nelson Rockefeller, by today's nomenclature would be conservative or liberal. Personally I am a fiscal conservative and a social liberal (much in the same way as Nelson Rockefeller). That used to make me a moderate but I now find myself on the far left of the political spectrum. This simple redefinition of what counts as liberal is proof enough that even if the colleges are bastions of liberals, by the new definitions liberals just ain't what they used to be.

People are just more complicated than the dichotomous labels of liberal and conservative allow. My own suspicion is that college campuses tend to be more socially liberal than the society at large, but not radically so. (Although I would guess that those in college administration are substantially more socially conservative than the faculty). But I am not sure why this is of such great concern. It is probably also true that business boardrooms are more conservative than the society in general. In fact, it would be extraordinary indeed if we had a perfect replication of the population in general in any important institution in the society. Surely what is important is not absolute equity but rather that there is ENOUGH diversity of views in these institutions that the voices in the opposition can still be heard.

In my own meanderings through academic institutions I have indeed seen conservative views discouraged in some classrooms just as I have felt intimidation for my more liberal (actually moderate) points of view in other classrooms. I have seen no systematic suppression on either side. Whether in business classes, the humanities, social sciences or education the suppression of opposing views (or simple disinterest on the part of the professor for discussion) comes from narrow minded professors on the left and the right.

To quote the Bible (the Christian one) all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. However, when one sins against our ideology he is an idolater. When his is one of us he is simply a backslider and subject to forgiveness. Surely a survey of political views on college campuses would be interesting fodder for cocktail parties. But to argue that it is in some way relavent to the overiding political landscape or responsible for the polution of the thought processes of the youth is laughable. Since at least the 1960's we have heard of the liberal biases in public universities (as well as the press and electronic media). In that time we have seen the "Reagan Revolution" and the rise of the political right to great prominence. If this is the product of the liberal bias in our universities, colleges and other public institutions, those on the political right should be DEMANDING its continuation.

Hello.
My name is David Goldberg. I am a senior at Emerson College in Boston, and I am writing an article for a campus magazine about bias in American academia. I came across this page browsing the internet for relevant info, and was struck by this conversation.
I was hoping that I could quote from what you've written here. I have no way of telling whether you are grad students, or profs, or what (I have some ideas), and it would be much apprecitated if anyone could send me names or occupations, and permission to quote you as "a grad student at the University of Chicago," or wherever you are and whatever you do. Some of your comments are really insightful and pertinent, and would be useful in my article. Any help with this matter would be a appreciated more than I can express. Thanks.
-David Goldberg

I think that college professors--intelligent people in general, for that matter--tend to lean to the left.

Does anyone know where I can find statistics regarding the liberal / conservative makeup of academia?