Culture

Survey Says: Politicized Profs a Problem

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A new Zogby online poll reveals that good, hard-working decent Americans are fretting over professorial political predilections:

As legislation is introduced in more than a dozen states across the country to counter political pressure and proselytizing on students in college classrooms, a majority of Americans believe the political bias of college professors is a serious problem, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.

Nearly six in 10 - 58% - said they see it as a serious problem, with 39% saying it was a "very serious" problem.

The online survey of 9,464 adult respondents nationwide was conducted July 5-9, 2007, and carries a margin of error of +/- 1.0 percentage points.

And 46 percent of respondents think the edukayshon at kollej is wurse than 25 years ago (29 percent said it was better; certainly, given the rise of mandatory courses and, in my observations, much more reading and writing, it is more time-intensive than it used to be).

More results here.

reason columnist Cathy Young on profs' politics here.

Meanwhile, Ayn Rand-loving academics are finding it tougher to get tenure than to find a soup kitchen in Galt's Gulch. Ohio's Ashland University has apparently given the boot to John D. Lewis due to his love of Objectivism:

Officials at Ashland have made their discomfort with objectivism abundantly clear. In January the university, in Ohio, rejected Mr. Lewis's application for tenure, and officials told him in writing that his support for objectivism was the sole reason for the denial.

More here. (Hat tip: Charles Oliver.)

Is there a lesson in Ratatouille about this?

Jesse Walker and David Horowitz debated the latter's "Academic Bill of Rights," which is designed to address issues of professorial ideological bias, here.