[quote]tim290280 wrote:
loose site.[/quote]
apparently you weren’t part of the English faculty…
Im suprised the number of conservatives in the faculties was so high. I mean the main Republican Bush doesn’t believe in global warming or evolution. There is no legitamate debate for intelligent design or against global warming. People who chose to ignore science have no place educating others.
[quote]paul bunyan wrote:
Im suprised the number of conservatives in the faculties was so high. I mean the main Republican Bush doesn’t believe in global warming or evolution. There is no legitamate debate for intelligent design or against global warming. People who chose to ignore science have no place educating others.[/quote]
The debate about global warming is quite real. When the IPCC had their big meeting in 1995 there was no consensus at all if it is occuring and why. The IPCC basically rewrote everything after everyone went home to point the finger at carbon dioxide emissions.
This issue has become so politicized (and the pro-carbon dioxide global warming team has the lions share of the blame) that I find most people are incapable of intelligent debate or discussion of the issue.
I do agree with you on the evolution aspect.
[quote]paul bunyan wrote:
Im suprised the number of conservatives in the faculties was so high. I mean the main Republican Bush doesn’t believe in global warming or evolution. There is no legitamate debate for intelligent design or against global warming. People who chose to ignore science have no place educating others.[/quote]
I love how the PC/Junk Science crowd champions free thought, but only if you agree with them.
[quote]paul bunyan wrote:
Im suprised the number of conservatives in the faculties was so high. I mean the main Republican Bush doesn’t believe in global warming or evolution. There is no legitamate debate for intelligent design or against global warming. People who chose to ignore science have no place educating others.[/quote]
I cannot begin to list all the flaws with this post, but let me just point out a few of the most obvious:
-
Bush isn’t a candidate for a college faculty position, and doesn’t define the beliefs of any registered Republicans on those issues, to the extent they’re relevant. If you were to tell me that an individual candidate for a professor position at a college didn’t believe in the theory of evolution, that’s one thing – to say “Bush doesn’t believe in evolution, thus, all Republicans and all conservatives [Note: not the same thing, mind you!] don’t believe in evolution” is retarded.
-
I don’t know whether Bush believes in evolution or not - aside from being irrelevant to whether a college biology professor candidate believes in evolution, it doesn’t even address the matter of ID, which Bush did endorse (and which can encompass a belief in evolution, even if it isn’t science).
-
There is a general consensus that some level of global warming is occurring. What’s debated is whether it’s caused by human activity. A subdebate is what part of human activity may be causing what fraction of global warming.
-
Even if one were to assume you were making some sort of point w/r/t biology teachers or climatology teachers, I really don’t see how your two examples would address the prevalence of liberals across subjects as diverse as history, psychology, and even economics.
-
a) I don’t care if an English professor chooses to ignore “science” (defined for the sake of your point as evolution and global warming) – that person can still teach English quite well. Ditto for all the other humanities that I can think of right now.
We’ve already had this discussion before… what’s the point?
Hahahahaha. Nice finger pointing. Perhaps the massive oil and coal producers and consumers who have funded counter-studies are partially to blame for turning it into a political issue?
By the way, most people are incapable of intelligent debate or discussion of any issue.
Boston,
I thought only liberals were interested in the humanities? I mean, it’s not very related to money is it?
Maybe they could teach that malarky to those that want to learn it, instead of forcing it on those that actually want to learn about gasp real science?
[quote]vroom wrote:
We’ve already had this discussion before… what’s the point?
This issue has become so politicized (and the pro-carbon dioxide global warming team has the lions share of the blame) that I find most people are incapable of intelligent debate or discussion of the issue.
Hahahahaha. Nice finger pointing. Perhaps the massive oil and coal producers and consumers who have funded counter-studies are partially to blame for turning it into a political issue?
By the way, most people are incapable of intelligent debate or discussion of any issue.[/quote]
vroom, no doubt the oil companies etc. do fund the “counter-studies”. Does that alter the validity? Possibly.
The IPCC blatantly changed the whole report after everyone went home. Did that change the validity? Absolutely.
Everything the IPCC touches is incredibly tainted now.
That is why I put most (not all) of the blame on them.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Boston,
I thought only liberals were interested in the humanities? I mean, it’s not very related to money is it?[/quote]
vroom,
I’d say that in the aggregate it’s probably true that conservatives would be less likely than liberals to gravitate toward a career in the humanities – though one shouldn’t underestimate the draw of some of the non-economic benefits associated with being a tenured professor (e.g. vacations, control of schedule, sabbaticals, etc.).
However, I think there would be enough interested individual conservatives that I think the miniscule level of overall participation of conservatives in academia for the humanities cannot be simply the result of an aggregate self selection of conservatives away from academics. This is particularly true when one considers that there are a great many conservatives who have gone to “think tanks” from what are essentially liberal arts backgrounds – think tanks don’t pay particularly well either.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
I do think that this extreme level of intellectual bias is problematic if it means that the students aren’t getting exposed to various ideas and viewpoints – especially when the reason they aren’t is that some ideas just aren’t politically correct.
[/quote]
This is incorrect. In certain fields of study political ideology will not be an issue.
Professors and/or teaching assistants shouldn’t be expressing their ideas or opinions at all. It is not the job of teaching faculty to expose the students to their own viewpoints rather to expose them to all viewpoints. The argument should be that the faculty spends an equal amount of time on each viewpoint.
As far as liberals/democrats being in the majority of college teaching faculty I offer one idea:
It is the nature of the “liberal-minded” person to realize that there are other ideas and opinions besides their own and being such have found themselves suited to a life of academia where they can open minds to “otherness”. Conversely, the “conservative-minded” person true to their natures spend their daily life focused on “self-preservation” hence the term “conservative”, which disqualifies many persons from a life of academia–the biggest asset to a college professor is the ability to question the mainstream–which I don’t think they can do unless it’s questioning the “liberal” media.
This is obviously a gross generalization, however, one that I believe to be true becaue I witness it everyday.
I don’t believe that there are more smarter libs than conservs. It’s probably equal. As a counterpoint I ask: What is the percentage of cons to libs who are CEOs of corporations? I bet it’s close to the same statistic offered in the presented article–again for the same reason I offer in th above paragraph–self-preservation is well suited to jobs involving money.
Boston, I’m afraid this is all very anecdotal and opinion based. This very bias issue has been raised before.
As the recent post above states, true academia is all about questioning the state of affairs and looking for alternatives, whereas conservatism is more about having beliefs and values and wishing them preserved.
Real academia is about research and getting published. How would you suggest melding peer reviewed scientific research and conservative viewpoints together such that they would be more compatible?
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
though one shouldn’t underestimate the draw of some of the non-economic benefits associated with being a tenured professor (e.g. vacations, control of schedule, sabbaticals, etc.).[/quote]
You have a point there, but not what you think.
I haven’t had a vacation in 10 years; I have little or no control over my schedule, and if I take a sabbatical I’m pretty sure it’s career suicide.
Remember that you don’t get to have tenure by just teaching class. That’s about 5% of my work. There’s an enormous amount of work to be done around classes to get there, and even more to maintain a level of recognition that allows you to be relevant after you get tenure. If you stop being relevant, you’ll find yourself really quickly becoming obsolete, and then you basically stop having a real job.
Now, why did I say you had a point? Well, because, invariably there are exceptions – professors that excel at politics and end up getting tenure with little or no actual work. And, surprise, surprise: most of them are Conservatives.
That is actually the main reason why there is such contempt in academia for Conservatives: because a lot of the politics in Academia that we all hate is driven by an intellectually lazy Conservative minority.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
However, I think there would be enough interested individual conservatives that I think the miniscule level of overall participation of conservatives in academia for the humanities cannot be simply the result of an aggregate self selection of conservatives away from academics. This is particularly true when one considers that there are a great many conservatives who have gone to “think tanks” from what are essentially liberal arts backgrounds – think tanks don’t pay particularly well either.[/quote]
Well, think tanks tend to be a better stint for political animals that are more concerned with status and power than with actually doing something for the good of the American people… or at least their students.
Now, that does not mean that all Conservatives are like that; it just means that because of what vroom said the kind of Conservatives I can deal with tend to be attracted to business endeavors. I have many Conservative friends in the business world.
The kind of Conservatives that gets attracted to academia is precisely the bottom-dwelling kind I cannot deal with. So they get kicked out as soon as we can. Unfortunately, we’re not always quickly successful. Took a while to get rid of Condi, for example.
One final note: the perception that liberals are most overwhelmingly a majority in liberal arts is somewhat skewed. In pure and applied science liberals are an even more overwhelming majority. The difference is that liberal scientists and engineers tend to be more laid back and less vocal, sometimes almost apolitical, while liberal arts liberals tend to be extremely vocal – to the point of damaging the liberal cause by behaving like crackpots so often.
(yeah, I’m not that popular with liberal arts professors… Calling them crackpots is not a good conversation starter. ;-))
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
It is the nature of the “liberal-minded” person to realize that there are other ideas and opinions besides their own and being such have found themselves suited to a life of academia where they can open minds to “otherness”. Conversely, the “conservative-minded” person true to their natures spend their daily life focused on “self-preservation” hence the term “conservative”, which disqualifies many persons from a life of academia–the biggest asset to a college professor is the ability to question the mainstream–which I don’t think they can do unless it’s questioning the “liberal” media.
[/quote]
Bingo! And that is especially true in science – any scientist that doesn’t question him/herself constantly is definitely a bad one. Unfortunately many Conservatives tend to believe too much in absolute truths (or, as Bush would call them, “principles”) and that’s always bad.
Einstein became a great scientist when he questioned everything and essentially started from scratch, using his quest for simplicity as a driver. The day he started believing in “principles” – like "Black Holes MUST NOT exist!) he stopped doing anything useful.
[quote]
BostonBarrister wrote:
I do think that this extreme level of intellectual bias is problematic if it means that the students aren’t getting exposed to various ideas and viewpoints – especially when the reason they aren’t is that some ideas just aren’t politically correct.
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
This is incorrect. In certain fields of study political ideology will not be an issue.
Professors and/or teaching assistants shouldn’t be expressing their ideas or opinions at all. [/quote]
I agree with the standard for everyone – and in physics you’re probably right that it holds. However, in economics, political science, psych, sociology, etc. and the humanities, there is no way this occurs.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
It is not the job of teaching faculty to expose the students to their own viewpoints rather to expose them to all viewpoints. The argument should be that the faculty spends an equal amount of time on each viewpoint.[/quote]
This is also true, and it serves to underscore the problem – if all the faculty – or even a huge majority, represent the same side of a disputed area, then the universities aren’t doing their jobs of exposing the students to the various viewpoints.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
As far as liberals/democrats being in the majority of college teaching faculty I offer one idea:
It is the nature of the “liberal-minded” person to realize that there are other ideas and opinions besides their own and being such have found themselves suited to a life of academia where they can open minds to “otherness”. Conversely, the “conservative-minded” person true to their natures spend their daily life focused on “self-preservation” hence the term “conservative”, which disqualifies many persons from a life of academia–the biggest asset to a college professor is the ability to question the mainstream–which I don’t think they can do unless it’s questioning the “liberal” media.
This is obviously a gross generalization, however, one that I believe to be true becaue I witness it everyday.[/quote]
Suffice it to say I’m very skeptical of this. Aside my disagreement with the premise based on conservative or liberal mindsets, using your definitions, there are plenty of items in university life that would play to the “conservative” mindset you laid out, particularly the “publish or perish” aspect and the importance of faculty politics, which can be extremely nasty from all I’ve heard.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I don’t believe that there are more smarter libs than conservs. It’s probably equal. As a counterpoint I ask: What is the percentage of cons to libs who are CEOs of corporations? I bet it’s close to the same statistic offered in the presented article–again for the same reason I offer in th above paragraph–self-preservation is well suited to jobs involving money.[/quote]
You’d be surprised how many political liberals are CEOs of major corporations – I’d definitely wager the percentage is a lot higher than the number of conservatives on the English Lit faculty at any given state university on either coast. Of course, that’s just my impression – I don’t think there’s been a major study of CEOs, and corporate donations to politicians tend to hit both parties due to self interest.
BTW, I’m not arguing that there is no self-selection bias in effect – I’m just saying that I doubt it’s strong enough to explain the huge disparities one sees on university faculties.
More near to my personal experience, here’s a post on a study relating to the lack of political diversity among law-school faculty:
http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_08_28-2005_09_03.shtml#1125252745
Political Diversity on Law School Faculties.–
In an earlier post, I mentioned John McGinnis’s forthcoming Georgetown Law Journal study of political diversity on law faculties. Adam Liptak has a fair account of it in the New York Times:
[i]The study, to be published this fall in The Georgetown Law Journal, analyzes 11 years of records reflecting federal campaign contributions by professors at the top 21 law schools as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. Almost a third of these law professors contribute to campaigns, but of them, the study finds, 81 percent who contributed $200 or more gave wholly or mostly to Democrats; 15 percent gave wholly or mostly to Republicans.
The percentages of professors contributing to Democrats were even more lopsided at some of the most prestigious schools: 91 percent at Harvard, 92 at Yale, 94 at Stanford. At the University of Virginia, on the other hand, contributions were about evenly divided between the parties. The sample sizes at some schools may be too small to allow for comparisons, though it bears noting that by this measure the University of Chicago is slightly more liberal than Berkeley. . . .
Whatever may be said about particular schools and students, professors and deans of all political persuasions agreed that the study's general findings are undeniable.
"Academics tend to be more to the left side of the continuum," said David E. Van Zandt, dean of Northwestern's law school, where the contribution rate to Democrats was 71 percent. "It's a little worse in law school. In other disciplines, there are more objective standards for quality of work. Law schools are sort of organized in a club structure, where current members of the club pick future members of the club."[/i]
Although not mentioned in the NY Times report, McGinnis’s article also examines those letters by groups of “experts,” eg, the public letters favoring or opposing Clinton’s impeachment or opposing Bush v. Gore. Despite hundreds of signatories to the various letters, McGinnis said only three professors (and I’m one of the three) has donated exclusively to candidates at odds with the implied political orientation of the signed letter.
UPDATE [further Updated]: The Times article raises the question whether it matters if there is political diversity on law faculties.
I have two answers–one substantive, one speculative. First, in my studies with the General Social Survey, political ideology is the strongest predictor of views across a range of hundreds of issues that I’ve looked at–stronger than race, gender, education, class, occupation, age, region, marital status, etc. Those who say that labels such as “conservative” and “liberal” are meaningless today are frankly uninformed. Most survey researchers know that these labels are quite salient.
Second, a professor at the Harvard Law School told me that in 1988 he asked every member of the Harvard Law School faculty with even a hint of conservative or Republican leanings whether they favored or had voted for Bush in 1988. Only one had (1 out of 60-80 faculty); all others favored Dukakis. He also said that in about 2 or 3 dozen entry-level faculty hires from the mid-1970s through about 3 or 4 years ago (when they hired an entry-level conservative), the Harvard Law School had not hired a single Republican.
Now consider this thought experiment: [Imagine that in 1988 all but one of the Harvard Law faculty had favored Bush1 over Dukakis. And] Imagine that over the same period of a quarter century [mid 1970s through early 2000s], the Harvard Law School had hired at the entry-level only those who leaned Republican. Imagine how different the Harvard Law School would be, how different legal education would be, how different the government (and public policy) would be, populated with lawyers trained by an overwhelmingly Republican Harvard faculty. Somehow I think it would be a different world.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Professor Bainbridge weighs in thoughtfully on the topic: ProfessorBainbridge.com
So does sociologist Chris Uggen: Chris Uggen's Blog: what's the matter with the university of kansas? how democrats won the heart of academia
In the post above, I linked to a post by UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge – and I think he has a very good explanation of what seems to me to be a very powerful factor in the selection bias – inertia combined with subconscious bias against a political viewpoint (note, this would be relevant in law, economics, and other fields in which published writings almost certainly have taken sides in contentious issues):
EXCERPT:
… for a candidate to survive the [law school faculty hiring] winnowing process, somebody has to pull their resume out of the slushpile and make sure it gets flagged for close review. Because most law schools lack a critical mass of libertarian and conservative faculty members, there is nobody predisposed to pulling conservative candidates’ AALS form out of the slushpile (and a fair number of folks inclined, whether consciously or subconsciously, to bury it). Meanwhile the latest left-leaning prodigy from Harvard or Yale has a mentor at one of those schools who makes calls to his/her buddies and ideological soulmates at other law schools. The recipients of those calls then flag the prodigy’s file, giving them a critical leg-up in the process. It is one of the few moments in the process when somebody is affirmatively trying to hire someone rather than just trying to get rid of the pile. And that, my friends, is why there would be a disparate impact even if there were no deliberate bias.
OMG, stop the presses, it must be a conspiracy!!!
Weren’t we talking about tin foil hats just the other day? Now I see the real reason you plan on cornering the tin foil market…
[quote]vroom wrote:
OMG, stop the presses, it must be a conspiracy!!!
Weren’t we talking about tin foil hats just the other day? Now I see the real reason you plan on cornering the tin foil market…[/quote]
Are you getting paid to mention “tin foil hats” on every thread?
Unfortunately, these types of “inherent mindset” arguments don’t speak well to the change that has been measured over the last twenty years – unless somehow the inherent mindsets also changed during that time.
To quote from another link I posted above:
EXCERPT:
A 2005 study by Rothman, Lichter, and Nevitte reports “a sharp shift to the left” since a 1984 Carnegie study that asked similarly-worded questions:
In 1984, only 39% of faculty members identified themselves as liberal, including only 6% that would describe themselves as “left,” compared to 34% who identify themselves as conservative, including 4% who see themselves as “strong conservatives.” The 1999 study found 72% of faculty to the left of center, including 18% who were strongly left (choosing “one” or “two” on the 10 point scale from “very left” to “very right”). Only 15% described themselves as right of center, including only 3% who were strongly right. It appears that, over the course of 15 years, self-described liberals grew from a slight plurality to a 5 to 1 majority on college faculties.
So, unless the studies are more seriously flawed than I think, there are a lot more liberals than conservatives in higher education and the proportions are becoming more skewed over time. True? Liberal representation, of course, doesn’t mean liberal bias. I have not carefully reviewed the research on this issue, but frankly I find some of “our” defenses for the disparity to be weak, anti-intellectual, and troubling on their face. They offer arguments based on supply-side economics (that conservatives really don’t want to work in academia), innate differences (that conservatives are naturally less intelligent or more dogmatic than liberals), or absolute truth (that free inquiry demands a left-leaning approach), then dismiss any remaining concerns with a wave of the hand and a hearty “Don’t worry about it!” Even if we really believed these arguments (and their applicability to this and only this disparity), how much of that 28:1 ratio among sociology faculty would they explain in combination? Isn’t it possible that at least some portion of the residual variance is due to discrimination?
I hate to lapse into a “some of my best friends are conservative” argument, but that’s where I’m headed. I know plenty of moderate Republicans and (small-l) libertarians with the aptitude and inclination to conduct good social science (yes, I realize that the qualifiers are patronizing and probably annoying to non-moderate Republicans and large-L libertarians, but this whole post is probably patronizing and annoying to everyone else). I once wrote a paper with a brilliant undergrad named Jennifer Janikula (formerly Jennifer Halko) who had headed the local College Republicans and interned for a Republican senator. Jennifer was skeptical of Bill Clinton’s argument that volunteer experience might make people more law-abiding. When our analysis failed to refute Clinton’s view, she had no problem writing up the results in an unbiased manner and publishing them in Social Forces. Had they come out differently, I think I would have been equally unbiased, though I likely would have harrumphed a bit in the conclusion about the data or design being insufficient to provide a definitive critical test.
As the last comments reveal, I still cling to ideals of value neutrality and an objective social science. In my view, hints of bias threaten the legitimacy of our claim on societal resources – I’m a public employee, after all, and the citizenry at large still pays a good portion of my salary. When I look at the numbers, however, I’d have to conclude that my “safe-left” politics (neither too hot, nor too cold and within spitting distance of most of my colleagues) have probably helped my career, just as my race, middle-class background and gender have opened doors along the way. Of course, like anyone else, I’d like people who share my own values and worldview to remain in power in academia, but there’s probably room at the table for a few more conservatives. Or is there really no problem if most 20-person sociology departments voted 20 for Kerry/Nader and 0 for Bush in communities split 50:50? I’m starting to worry in a “What’s the Matter with Kansas” way about sociologists losing the hearts and minds of America. Aside from real or perceived biases in instruction, would sociological knowledge flourish or founder if sociology faculty looked a little more like the rest of the citizenry on this dimension?