New at Reason

March 8, 2007

Cathy Young ponders over whether anyone should worry about leftist college profs.

Comments

Guy Montag|3.8.07 @ 7:18AM|#

They are right. Leftist professors are harmless. I would have realized this years ago, but I am a man suffering from testosterone poisoning.

Now I realize that all of the problems of the world are the fault of my sex.

Can I buy you a drink to make up for it?

|3.8.07 @ 8:06AM|#

I can think of only one professor who was really partisan in class, and he was so transparent that it was laughable. The biggest problem with the guy was not the ideology, it's that he gave bad assignments. Give me an interesting editorial that makes me think and ask me to analyze it carefully and I won't care that it's an editorial. But if you give me a boring, predictable editorial and ask me to regurgitate it, then the fact that it's an editorial is really the least of our problems.

FWIW, I minored in economics, and I found that many of the ideas presented in econ classes (except that one partisan Democrat who taught macroeconomics) were either libertarian-friendly or politically neutral. I couldn't get a good partisan read on any of my professors (except that one partisan Democrat who taught macro). My environmental economics class was mostly about property rights and present value calculations, as well as attaching market values to environmental preservation. Regulations were regarded as being blunt instruments and less efficient than property rights.

So there's at least one social science department on my campus that was hardly leftist.

Grotius|3.8.07 @ 8:12AM|#

Well, even a campus dominated by liberal professors is going to see a lot of intellectual diversity amongst those liberals. A lot of those professors are also going to assign reading material which doesn't reflect their ideology. Furthermore you are likely to be exposed to competing ideologies on campus from other students. At least this was my experience as an undergraduate.

|3.8.07 @ 8:13AM|#

Personal experience isn't a valid sample, but I've seen effects from the libral bias. Most conservative people I knew in college just grined and beared it for the sake of their grade. The libral bias discouraged at least one Republican I know from going for a PhD. This makes a positive feedback loop that increases the bias in the next generation of academics. If there aren't enough conservative and libertarian peer reviews, libral philosophy gets mistaken for universal truth. It gets printed as objective fact in academic journals. Ideally, academia would be more balanced. Failing that, think tanks, websites, and new journals can restore balance to discussion.

Grotius|3.8.07 @ 8:19AM|#

jtuf,

If you read a lot of classical sources varying ideological positions just bleed no matter what the professor's position on the matter is.

|3.8.07 @ 8:20AM|#

More broadly, Lee's attempt to challenge findings that most college professors are politically left of center seems pointless. The studies may be flawed, but their conclusion falls into the realm of the obvious.

Maybe the challenge comes because what's obvious isn't always true. The survey Young cites to demonstrate the obvious fact that most college professors are left of center reveals that 47% identify as far left or liberal. Unless "almost half" is obviously the same thing as "most," Young's argument is hard to credit.

I have't been on a college campus in years, and I would have originally guessed that what Young supposes is true--that most professors are left of center. But she seems to demonstrate here that I would be wrong.

|3.8.07 @ 8:25AM|#

Because of the "background" bias of campus life toward the left, lots of people on campus self-identify as "moderate" or "centrist", when out in the big world their views are pretty decidedly left of center. Can you say "false consciousness"?

|3.8.07 @ 8:38AM|#

"Failing that, think tanks, websites, and new journals can restore balance to discussion."

Think tanks may provide "balance", but do we really want "balance" in the sense that we have one ideologically blinded person here so we need another there? It would be nice to have profs that are just not ideological and to hell with think tanks (which are usually engaged in straight up apologetics).

|3.8.07 @ 8:45AM|#

R C Dean- that is exactly where I was headed. Most people would not describe themselves as radicals, on either end of the political spectrum. I think I'm a pretty reasonable guy, but if I were to return to my alma mater, I fear others might classify me as blood kin of Attila the Hun.

And the obvious and appropriate response is, "So what?"

Grotius|3.8.07 @ 8:49AM|#

R.C. Dean,

On any decent sized college campus you're going to find intellectual diversity. If some people don't find it, if their views are reinforced rather than challenged, that is probably often because that's the way humans seem to operate normally.

|3.8.07 @ 9:06AM|#

Regardless of liberal bias, depending on what you're studying, that bias might never be an issue. I can tell you that in my engineering classes, liberal bias was a non issue. The guy could have been a flaming pinko, but a structure still stays up or collapses under the same principles of statics. In my liberal arts classes, everyone took for granted that the teachers had specific ideologies, but college students aren't universally wide eyed political neophytes looking for ideological flotsam to keep us afloat. Most of my friends had very specific views they had been raised to and they'd be damned if any professor was going to corrupt them. A few people I knew would float from ideology to ideology with each teacher, but they'll be like their whole life, I doubt they could how an ideology for more than the length of an influencing factor. Frankly, both liberals and conservatives alike fear the influencing of college and give students alot less credit than most of them deserve, but fear not, given 20 years of partisen bickering, those same students will fear for the next generation and deride educations' corrupting influence. Its just an endless cycle.

|3.8.07 @ 9:12AM|#

I'm not sure that the AFT is a great source for material like this.

|3.8.07 @ 9:14AM|#

Leftist professors aren't the problem with US edcuation.

This is the problem with US education.

biologist|3.8.07 @ 9:15AM|#

"That said, some of Lee's nitpicks make little sense. Take ACTA's 2006 report "How Many Ward Churchills?," which focused on cultural and political radicalism in college curricula. The report can certainly be faulted for inflammatory rhetoric-the title refers to the University of Colorado professor who derided the victims of the 9/11 attack as "little Eichmanns"-but it doesn't make sense for Lee to attack it for a lack of scientific sampling, since it never claimed to be a scientific survey."

Perhaps the report itself never claimed to be a scientific survey, but were partisans citing it as though it were a scientific survey? That would certainly justify a debunking.

Guy Montag|3.8.07 @ 9:29AM|#

"That said, some of Lee's nitpicks make little sense. Take ACTA's 2006 report "How Many Ward Churchills?," which focused on cultural and political radicalism in college curricula. The report can certainly be faulted for inflammatory rhetoric-the title refers to the University of Colorado professor who derided the victims of the 9/11 attack as "little Eichmanns"-but it doesn't make sense for Lee to attack it for a lack of scientific sampling, since it never claimed to be a scientific survey."

So now you are picking on the Native Americans for mispronouncing a pastry? Or are fo you mean that just like with that Coulter/Edwards thing, this too is over blown?

|3.8.07 @ 9:31AM|#

"It would be nice to have profs that are just not ideological"

Ken,

I agree that ojbective professors would be best. I've just given up on finding one.

|3.8.07 @ 10:05AM|#

My experience at a major New York graduate program was f**ked up.

The first day of policy class the professors asked all of the Republican students (about 10 out of 125) to stand up, then proceded to denounce them and then asked them if they still thought they were Republicans (about half then sat down).

And my policy paper grade went from a D- using Nixon's stance on HMOs to a B+ when I switched my point of view to Ted Kennedy's.

Also, single payer system was the answer to all questions about "fixing" healthcare.

I don't know if it changed anyone else's mind put it made me absolutely hate liberals.

|3.8.07 @ 10:14AM|#

On any decent sized college campus you're going to find intellectual diversity.

Sure, but the odds are very high that it skews left. And that, because they live in the campus echo chamber, your average lefty prof doesn't see himself as such.

Grotius|3.8.07 @ 10:16AM|#

R.C. Dean,

Whether it does so or not in many cases is (as I intimated above) beside the point.

|3.8.07 @ 10:16AM|#

I went to a major NY graduate program that skewed right. For what it's worth, the terrible professors had serious character flaws and rarely put their ideology in their grading. As for the few that did hold ideological grudges, I made it my responsibility to figure out what they wanted and give it to them while defending my beliefs......sort of like a boss in the real world.

Guy Montag|3.8.07 @ 10:17AM|#

Art,

My joking above aside, I had milder but similar experiences in the 1980s at Tennessee. Frequently in anything from Liberal Arts/Arts & Sciences department and Home Economics/Human Ecology was similar to what you are talking about.

We even had an Astronomy professor who could dredge Leftist/Feminist politics through the intro course.

This was quite rare in my Business classes.

|3.8.07 @ 10:35AM|#

self-identified "leftist" means what? Given this administration's tendency to put ideology over reality, it might just mean the professor thinks he deals with reality. Especially since it's the Right that has seemed to have embraced such lunacy as Intelligent Design and other similar whackiness.

You also might get people identifying themselves as "leftist" when the more accurate description would be "sceptical of quoted authority."

Went to a well-known engineering school, never got any leftist vs. rightist stuff at all. One of my friends (female) went to law school later and ran into a very ardent self-professed feminist professor, who kept claiming how math and science was a masculinist plot. K., who does not suffer fools gladly, filleted her very quickly.

LarryA|3.8.07 @ 10:41AM|#

In 1994, 82 percent of students in the class of 1998 agreed that "the federal government should do more to control the sale of handguns" and 61 percent agreed that abortion should be legal. In 1998, these opinions were held by, respectively, 83 percent and 65 percent of college graduates in that cohort.

Of course in 1994 most these students were coming out of thirteen years in a public school system that treats firearms much like the bubonic plague. One of our San Antonio, Texas school boards recently tried to pass a rule disarming the campus resource officers so their sidearms wouldn't traumatize the students. (It lasted less than a week, as parents and the officers took the school board to the woodshed.) I'm amazed 18% of the high school class of 1994 disagreed with gun control.

It would be interesting, if we had a wayback machine, to compare the attitudes of my high school class of 1965. That year almost every New York City high school had an active riflery program.

Are today's college students and recent graduates liberal? Of course they are. There's the old saying "If you aren't liberal at twenty you have no heart. If you aren't conservative at forty you have no brain." In my experience the professors who are most adamantly liberal are those who go from the Ph.D. program directly into teaching. Never having been in the real world, they simply haven't grown up.

|3.8.07 @ 11:00AM|#

Guy:
I appreciate the commiseration.
In the early 80s I never noticed the political bent of the professors.
That made it even more in your face when I went for my master's in NYC. I actually thought I was pretty liberal myself until that experience.

|3.8.07 @ 11:02AM|#

It is certainly true that college professors skew vastly to the left of the population as a whole, but it also isn't a big deal.

While it is ultimately bad for scholarship, the most leftist areas of study have the least direct impact on society. English, history, sociology, and whatever have little if direct application to the real world. Subject matters such as economics, law, and the hard sciences either cannot be made ideologically loaded or if the scholars wish to remain relevant they must put a damper on any ideological sentiments.

Law professors, for example, definitely skew left, but not as much as history professors, and while important to the understanding of the law, they wholly secondary to judges, legislatures, and the text of the law. No law school professor is going to tell you that private property is illegal. He might think it should be (which is doubtful, though liberal, law professors seem to be most comfortable in sort of the middle to left of the Democrats), but he knows no one will take him seriously if he said that.

|3.8.07 @ 11:13AM|#

Also would like to point out that some supposedly "leftish" ideas in law (e.g. no common property) actually have a very old history....associated with the Catholic Church. (Go read John of Paris and his argument that the Pope owned everything in the world.)

|3.8.07 @ 12:27PM|#

"On any decent sized college campus you're going to find intellectual diversity."

The few smart and skeptical people like yourself will. But what about the great mass of average students who aren't very inquisitive? I worry about the little guy here. He needs to be protected.

|3.8.07 @ 12:38PM|#

In the civilization survey course I teach, I have trouble making my undergrad students learn the basics specific to the course, much less inculcating them with my politics.

I always get a kick out the fact that rarely does a single one of them have the faintest idea what postmodernism is. So much for brainwashing from the English dept.

I imagine leftist bias is a far more serious problem at the graduate level.

|3.8.07 @ 12:55PM|#

I was in the beginning stages of a master's program in history when things went horribly wrong in the second semester - Introduction to Third World History, mandatory.
The professor, a suburban Maoist, claimed that most of the people who died during Mao's reign were unfortunate victims of bad weather and flooding. Her book was the most expensive one on the syllabus and the book store didn't buy it back.
After a class in the elevator one of my fellow grad students quipped the compliment, "You're really good in class because you actually know history." God bless Temple University.

|3.8.07 @ 1:00PM|#

I see left bias as a real problem. I wouldn't be happy with right bias, but I think it would be a different problem. Way back when I was in school, if I were to pull a figure out of my ass, I'd say 80% of incoming freshmen were Marxists. The Liberal Arts students never had their presumptions challenged. They're leftist professors exposed them to more sophisticated ideas but their underlying prejudice was reinforced.

Like Lost_In_Translation I was an engineer and my professors could have all been reservists in the peoples revolutionary army for all I knew. It just didn't enter into Ohm's law.

That was the real problem I had with the Lib Art crowd. They thought reading about an idea someone else had, and maybe having an opinion about it, counted as thinking. They never in their entire life had to test their depth of understanding against an objective standard (i.e. a mathematical proof or a working technology).

|3.8.07 @ 1:04PM|#

This makes a positive feedback loop that increases the bias in the next generation of academics.

I'm far more inclined to believe the bias is reinforced by the hiring preferences of the search committee, which is composed of the already tenured professors from the department.

Anyway, I tend to agree with Ms. Young that the damage from the pervasive left slant is suffered almost exclusively by their liberal students. Diversity of opinion is good, and it helps folks refine or scrap long held opinions. The article reminded me of a liberal colleague that was reduced to tears when confronted with opinions contrary to her anti-corperate environmentalist dogma. She really had no solid support for her argument and could only repeat, "I can't believe people really think this way." Apparently, until then, she had only been exposed to conservative and libertarian ideas through the cartoonish caricatures Ms. Young speaks of. And I'm not saying this particular woman couldn't have defended her ideas, or that they weren't perfectly defensible. Just that restricted exposure and liberal polemics didn't exactly prepare her to confront real people.

|3.8.07 @ 1:23PM|#

There are huge sections of the liberal arts where I'd think it would be really difficult to shoehorn in liberal or conservative views (although if someone can try to do that with astronomy I guess you can do it with anything.) When I was learning languages, I didn't give a damn about Left vs. Right--the major point was, at the end of all of this, can you go to the country and speak with the natives? Can you conduct business in the local language? Can you stuff enough Chinese characters into your head to read a newspaper?

I'd blame a lot of it on simply bad teaching and relying on second-hand sources (which are so often slanted) rather than going to the primary stuff. One of the reasons I like some of the U.K. programs--very bloody-minded about all of this. YES you are going to know Latin, YES you are going to know French and Italian, and YES before you write a paper you are going to go to the British Library and ruin your eyes pouring over Latin in Gothic script because You Will Be Reading The Original Material.

Compared to that, M.A. programs in the US are for wimps.

Grotius|3.8.07 @ 1:33PM|#

As far as history and the real world is concerned, well, a certain % of the best and brightest history PhDs enter think tanks and similar institutions. Their education has an effect on what they do their.

Guy Montag|3.8.07 @ 1:41PM|#

Art,

The most blatant were one Religious Studies instructor, one Astronomy Professor, all of the Political Science instructors and the Human Sexuality instructors. Kind of cured me of taking general electives for "fun".

In the Business classes, some let their politics be known but the most blatant one never held it against anybody; he was trying to get a good discussion going and gave extra points for "discussing". Did not help much when he was showing us how to balance a portfolio using simultaneous equations and included the memorable phrase "I am not sure how this works in the real world, but . . ." I suggested that it worked in a computer there, perhaps something faster than a VAX with a slightly different method.

He was big on Bill Clinton being a lock for reelection.

|3.8.07 @ 2:07PM|#

There is another disturbing trend:

100% of new military recruits are exposed to right wing views. Drill sargeants are too right wing. Now to Lamar at the "no shit" news desk....

Jake|3.8.07 @ 2:20PM|#

It doesn't make sense for Lee to attack [ACTA's "How Many Ward Churchills?," study] for a lack of scientific sampling, since it never claimed to be a scientific survey

Actually, ACTA president Anne Neal claims it is.
Here's the link:
http://cms.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1297&Itemid=54

Here's Neal's quote:
"We commissioned the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut to undertake a scientific survey of undergraduates in the top 50 colleges and universities...."

VM|3.8.07 @ 2:29PM|#

"That was the real problem I had with the Lib Art crowd. They thought reading about an idea someone else had, and maybe having an opinion about it, counted as thinking. They never in their entire life had to test their depth of understanding against an objective standard (i.e. a mathematical proof or a working technology)."

there's other types of thinking and reasoning involved here. As Gro points out, there are entire sectors that cannot deal with concrete objective standards.

And again, are you suggesting that the kids at Williams or Amherst or Bowdoin are getting hosed?

|3.8.07 @ 3:15PM|#

VM: I agree. To use a counter gross over-generalization, the problem with engineers is that they think objective standards are all that matter. And since when were liberal arts majors able to skip math and science classes?

|3.8.07 @ 3:37PM|#

Way back when I was in school, if I were to pull a figure out of my ass, I'd say 80% of incoming freshmen were Marxists.

damn dude - what the hell kind of school did you go to? 80%?! when i was an undergrad, i think most incoming freshmen more identified themselves with the house they intended to rush than some obscure political theory. and when you're 18 - marxism is pretty damn obscure.

the reason professor bias is not a problem is because 80% of students actually don't give a shit. they want the degree so they can get a job. the end.

|3.8.07 @ 5:08PM|#

business school good!

liberal arts bad!

ITT Tech good!

university of chicago bad!

so many of you THINK you're the intellectual descendants of the enlightenment, but you're much closer to hank morgan.

|3.8.07 @ 5:33PM|#

so many of you THINK you're the intellectual descendants of the enlightenment, but you're much closer to hank morgan.

Amen, Steven. Amen.

VM|3.8.07 @ 5:33PM|#

Clearly, Mr. Crane - you should resort to your real calling: part time stripping and doing hair.

C'mon admit it! You're JLM's boss! You're the boss of him.

|3.8.07 @ 5:49PM|#

i don't sell ho's, i sell candy.

Grotius|3.8.07 @ 5:52PM|#

Steven Crane,

so many of you THINK you're the intellectual descendants of the enlightenment, but you're much closer to hank morgan.

Well one thing we try not to be a descendent of is 18th century racism by Mssrs Kant, Hume, Voltaire, Montesquieu, etc.

How's that for the start of an ancients v. moderns debate? ;)

Grotius|3.8.07 @ 5:57PM|#

Steven Crane,

And while I'll always be thankful to Baron D'Holbach's for his Le Système de la nature, I think one can in a lot of cases say "Fuck The Enlightenment!"

VM|3.8.07 @ 6:07PM|#

Whoops - sorry for the belated reply, Ron M.! Exactly! Since when!

What this probably does underscore is that undergrad doesn't matter as much as some suppose. One can pursue arts and sciences as an undergrad, work a few years, and then get a professional degree.

[ducks bottle thrown by rabble rouser, "An MBA is useless, you piece of crap"]

Considering the holes in many high school educations, probably well-rounded college experiences, with lots of writing and book research would benefit a great many. (/kicks pebble ruefully)

Gro: you da man!

|3.8.07 @ 7:49PM|#

In my experience the professors who are most adamantly liberal are those who go from the Ph.D. program directly into teaching. Never having been in the real world, they simply haven't grown up.

I have thought this for years. I've seen something similar in married women who've never held a real job, except that they leaned conservative. Living in a bubble tends to close minds.

dhex|3.9.07 @ 12:06PM|#

"So much for brainwashing from the English dept."

you can't wash something that's not there. ZING!

my wife will be teaching a comp 101 course next semester, trying to fix the gateless gate as it were.

Guy Montag|3.10.07 @ 8:00AM|#

Actually, this could explain why David Weigel is always channeling Dr. Bernadine van Dohrn! Her influence at Northwestern infects every student who passes it's doors :)

|3.11.07 @ 5:47AM|#

Ron Morgan,

The math and science that liberal arts majors take isn't that rigorous. Math and science department make special courses for non-majors. Liberal arts departments make everyone take the same introductary course.

Grotius|3.11.07 @ 9:42AM|#

jtuf,

That is a school to school thing. There were no specifically required math or science courses at my undergraduate institution. There were general requirements though. X number of hours of math. X number of hours of science.