Depends on which CEOs you’re talking about.
Social conservatives tend to bash on lots of companies and the products they sell. Video games, TV, movies, music, clothes, cereal. How much influence advertising, or sex and/or violence in the media has on kids is really debatable, but it has to have some or advertising wouldn’t exist.
You’re making me sorry that I haven’t kept my higher ed library very up to date. Students aren’t really my primary interest. However, we’re not without resources here (if you’re flexible about dates). One of the best sources of information about college students and their viewpoints comes out of UCLA. The Higher Education Research Institute there administer a pretty widely-used survey of incoming freshmen across the country. More interesting for us, they follow up with a select sample of these students as seniors to see how they’ve changed. Some of the questions ask about political attitudes, both their agreement with certain kinds of policy issues and their self-assessment of whether their politics lean right, left, or middle of the road.
If students were being influenced (or brainwashed), or there was a liberal “agenda,” we would see a leftward movement in student’s political views.
Well, the best source I have looks at the 1985-89 cohort. Sorry that’s it’s dated, but this liberal bias isn’t a new concern, really, is it? Interestingly, the researchers saw very little movement at all. Some students got more left, but an equal number got more right, and most didn’t change at all. They poked around with other variables to try to see why this was but any way they looked at it, it seemed that the “liberalization” of a college education (which had, in fact, been theorized about and even documented in earlier studies) was gone. One critical fact was this was a time when conservatism among students was a little more common than in earlier years (er, sixties and seventies, anyone?). So the newere theory is that when it comes to political attitudes, there is more of a peer effect in college. In other words, its less what your professors believe, and more what your classmates believe.
Now, is this still the case? Sorry to plead lazy, but I’ve got a big project due and can’t go scrape up what, if anything, has been written on this lately. Something to gnaw on. If there is a liberal brainwashing, it’s either a new phenomenon, or students aren’t answering honestly.
Why would said conservative student choose to go to this institution? There’s always Bob Jones U, where they don’t even let you dance. Education is a free market; if you don’t like a university that you visit, don’t go there.
This legislation is assinine. Should Bush have to state an opposing argument for war or social security? Certainly his opinion affects thousands of people. Like I said, simply assinine.
To clarify: I think that the “liberal bias in academia” complaint is conflating two separate issues.
1. Many private colleges and universities formally endorse socially liberal principles in their official policies. The administrations of a lot of top schools have built into their official institutional missions a number of liberal positions about religious, gender, gender-identity, sexual-orientation, etc., equality, which many social conservatives reject.
You may feel that this is extraneous to their core academic mission, and you have a perfect right to your opinion, but AFAICT, you have no grounds on which to claim that they can’t do this. If you did, you would also have to claim that, say, conservative Christian private colleges can’t build conservative principles into their official institutional missions. Many such colleges refuse to hire gay, or non-Christian, or sexually active unmarried, etc., applicants because it’s against their explicitly stated principles. It would be unreasonable to expect them to do otherwise.
Similarly, if an Ivy League university has formally committed to a policy of academic and employment non-discrimination on the basis of sex or sexual orientation or gender identity, then you cannot expect them to welcome religious/social conservatives who advocate that leadership positions be reserved for men, or that homosexuality should be criminally punished, etc. The institution has a right to expect that the people who represent it will not undermine the principles that it has declared to be crucial to its mission.
2. It’s alleged that liberal professors are pushing a “liberal agenda” in situations where it doesn’t belong in the institution’s mission. E.g., professors exhorting their students in class to vote for Kerry, or giving students bad grades just because they support conservative positions, etc. This I would agree is wrong, but I haven’t seen any evidence that it’s happening on a significant scale.
In short: where liberal principles are explicitly part of an institution’s mission, you should not expect opposing conservative principles also to be represented. Where liberal positions are irrelevant to the institution’s educational work, you have a right to expect that they will not be pushed on students and that students will not be penalized for supporting different positions.
Debaser: I must have imagined all those pit threads where people mock the Christians with their teaching non-evolution theories.
Mocking creationist teachings in Pit threads is one thing. Saying that private Christian colleges don’t have the right to set their own mission statements according to their principles is quite another.
You are equally free to mock the liberal principles of gender equality, acceptance of gender diversity, affirmative action, etc., in Pit threads, should you so choose (yes, I know you wouldn’t do that because you’re not a social conservative). But if you argue that Ivy League colleges shouldn’t adopt such principles as part of their mission, then you also have to argue that conservative Christian colleges shouldn’t adopt conservative Christian principles in their mission.
And it seems to me that that’s a pretty repressive and heavy-handed position to take. Especially for somebody who’s supposedly defending academic freedom and diversity.
Debaser: *You might have a point if you argued that conservative CEO’s are spreading a conservative agenda to their own workers, or within the companies that they run. *
Okay then, I’ll drop the argument you objected to and take that position instead. Now, considering that the number of people in those CEOs’ companies is far greater than the number of students on liberal college campuses, by your own reasoning, the epidemic of covert conservative indoctrination in the workplace is far worse than the one of liberal indoctrination in academia.
Or maybe—which I think is more probable—the vast majority of people running both corporate and academic institutions are just doing their jobs and not unfairly forcing their political views on other people.
Would your “etc” above include “only hiring liberal professors”? If not, why? I would certainly argue that a college not having any conservatives on the staff in and of itself is pushing a liberal agenda.
But of the first or the second kind? I think Kimstu did a very good job defining two different types of bias. Your rebuttal seems to be addressing the first, the natural, kind rather than the second, objectionable kind.
Wow, I go away for a while to administer a final exam, hold office hours, and get some work done on my current research project and come back to find that not only to I suck on the public teat, I apparently advance a liberal agenda in my calculus class by my very presence, in the absence of a conservative rebuttal.
What other magical powers do I have, Debaser? Can I stop time? Heal the sick?
In all fairness, I have to say I can’t recall any conservative candidates applying to the department in the years I was there. The conservatives consisted almost entirely of me and the “old white guys”.
Conservatives just weren’t interested in mainstream liberal arts academia, by and large. They were going mostly into the private sector, the military, certain government jobs, and in some cases public service branches.
It’s a vicious cycle. The campus revolutions of the '60s and '70s produced a crop of predominantly liberal academics who are now running the show. Conservatives either don’t show up or, like me, bail out after deciding that the daily strang und durm ain’t worth it.
But here’s the thing – I don’t believe that we should start emulating the whiny piss-and-moan, run-to-the-government-for-help tactics we so often criticize in the left. If we want change, it’s up to us to effect it. Like the civil rights pioneers, if we really think it’s worth it we should be willing to get in the trenches and fight it out.
But no. This measure is a coward’s refuge. If conservatives want more representation in academia, then by God it’s up to us to take over that arena as we have the political arena.
And there’s no reason we can’t. The students today are majority conservative. They’re ready for us. It’s no use crying and bitching that those mean ole liberals are keeping us out. If you really want more representation in the ivory tower, then fight for it or shut up.
As for me, I weighed the options and decided it’s really not that big a deal if we leave the ivied halls to the liberals. Why? Because the liberals delude themselves into thinking they have an enormous effect on our society and culture by controlling the academy. They don’t. The kids muddle through, roll their eyes, do their bit, get their sheepskins, then get on with real life.
What ever happened to bootstrap conservativism, to rugged individualism? No more crybabies. If you want it to happen, shut yer yap and make it happen. But please, don’t let’s cry to Mama Fed to do the work for us.
You obviously do not understand conservative logic. Some dumbass profesor like Ward Churchill says something idiotic about the victims of 9-11, so conservatives therefore conclude that 85% of all college professors are liberal ideologues brainwashing their captive student audiences who are too stupid or intimidated to think for themselves. And idiot politicians therefore need to rescue these “persecuted” students who dare to break away from the “correct” teachings. Why, I imagine our jails are filled with these poor persecuted students! Unless what conservatives are really doing is attempting to create yet another boogeyman that they can use to scare red-staters into ignoring their economic self-interest to vote for the party that will try and fail to rid our colleges of these persecuting liberal ideologues while at the same time outsourcing jobs to India. :rolleyes:
You basically represent everything that is wrong with higher education in America. You probably drive a Volvo to boot. You miserable, lazy bastard.
Wanna go out sometime?
I agree with you for much of this, except that I think academia is far too important to leave to the political left alone. I’ll not let it go without a fight.
In a similar vein, I think liberals made a huge mistake when they lost interest in or became hostile to national defense, international security and military careers after the Vietnam war. In my job as a defense contractor, I run into an overwhelming preponderance of Bush supporters. This would not have been the case some thirty or forty years ago in my industry, and I think the military and military-industrial complex is worse off for it.
Feh. You liberals and your “derivatives.” What use is the rate of change to someone who doesn’t believe in change at all?
I tried responding to more of you post yesterday but the hampsters weren’t cooperating.
This change brings your analogy closer to reality, but it is still seriously flawed. A CEO isn’t to his employees as a teacher is to his students.
It’s the job of a CEO to determine the strategic direction of his company. If you want to argue that most CEO’s being conservative might result in them guiding their companies in some sort of conservative direction, then you may have a point. (I’d respond that since the modern democratic party is way out to the left on the verge of socialism, it’s natural for the leaders of private industry to be attracted to the other party.)
It’s the job of college facutly members to teach students. I’m simply pointing out that if they are overwhelmingly liberal then you are going to get liberal ideas being taught.
For your analogy to hold up, CEO’s and teachers would need to have a much more similar job function.
I really don’t see how the attitude in that post was called for.
Great point. I’m inclined to agree.
I hope I haven’t come across as whining. I’m just addressing the simply reality of the situation. Conservatives aren’t represented on campus as much as they should be. Many are in denial about this in this thread, but it’s the truth. I still find it odd that a person would even attempt to deny this, it’s so obvious. In a perfect world the faculty, student groups available and courses offered would be an equal mix of conservative and liberal that reflects the proportions in society at large.
However, I don’t think I’m whining, and I certainly don’t want to run to the government to help! Saying that acadamia is dominated by liberals and it’s mostly a liberal viewpoint that is presented to students is a simple statement of fact. You might be right about the importance of it not being that great. If anything students tend to rebel against what they are taught.
I do think that it gives liberals an advantage. I have personal experience of friends who have been changed politically by liberal professors in college. However, it’s not until they go out into the real world and see that first paycheck, minus a huge amount for taxes, that most students tend to get involved with politics.
If the liberal advantage in the ivory towers of academia could be traded in for the conservative advantage of real world common sense, then I wouldn’t make that trade ever.
Debaser: Conservatives aren’t represented on campus as much as they should be. Many are in denial about this in this thread, but it’s the truth. I still find it odd that a person would even attempt to deny this, it’s so obvious.
I think you’re conflating “aren’t represented on campus as much as they should be” with “aren’t represented on campus proportional to their representation in the population at large”, though. The latter statement is pretty generally accepted as factually true (at least in that small sample of “top colleges and universities” that the surveys seem to concentrate on), but the former is simply a matter of opinion.
Who is to decide how much conservatives “should be” represented on campus? It seems pretty clear (and is emphasized by some of the conservative expressions of contempt and disdain for academia in this thread) that many conservatives don’t want to be part of academia, especially if they’re in the minority there (as in SampletheDog’s story).
Debaser: * In a perfect world the faculty, student groups available and courses offered would be an equal mix of conservative and liberal that reflects the proportions in society at large.*
Why, how very pro-diversity of you! And from a conservative, too!
As I pointed out above, though, when private colleges embrace liberal principles of equality and diversity about things like religious belief, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc., as part of their explicit mission, there are always going to be a lot of social and religious conservatives who don’t want any part of them. It’s not realistic to expect that such people will ever be proportionately represented at such institutions. And IMO it would be repressive to argue that such institutions can’t formulate their mission however they see fit.
As for other types of conservatives, who don’t have moral objections to religious tolerance and other forms of social liberalism that would make such institutions anathema to them, I certainly have no problem with having more of them at “top colleges and universities” if they want to be there.
But do they want to be there? It seems to me that some conservatives here are trying to have it both ways: on the one hand, they disparage academia as a “theoretical fantasy world” for “sucking at the public teat”, “ivory towers” divorced from the “real world”, which doesn’t have any significant “effect on our society and culture”. (Plus, the pay’s really low compared to non-academic jobs at the same education level, something which everyone here has been too high-minded to mention so far.) Certainly gives the impression that many conservatives have a low opinion of academia and don’t want to be associated with it.
On the other hand, they grumble that conservatives are underrepresented in academia and complain it isn’t fair. Well hell, if you despise academia so much, I can certainly understand why most of you don’t choose to work there, but in that case you’ve only got yourselves to blame if conservative views are underrepresented there, right?
Debaser: Saying that acadamia is dominated by liberals and it’s mostly a liberal viewpoint that is presented to students is a simple statement of fact.
Nope. You still haven’t provided evidence that a skew towards the liberal end of the political spectrum in academics’ personal political beliefs necessarily results in “mostly a liberal viewpoint that is presented to students”. So far, all we’ve seen of any statistical significance are surveys about academics’ own political affiliations. You keep insisting that that automatically results in a liberal bias in their teaching. You may be right about that, but you haven’t shown any evidence for it.
Debaser: I’d respond that since the modern democratic party is way out to the left on the verge of socialism
This is a bit of a hijack, but I can’t help pointing out—:eek: 
?! On what political spectrum are you basing this evaluation? Surely, by any standard of political opinion for the developed world as a whole, the US Democratic Party comes out far, far to the right of modern socialism: it’s probably even somewhat right of the center of the spectrum. Even going just by the distribution of American political parties, I don’t think you could make a case for the Dems being “on the verge of socialism”: the Working Families Party and the Greens, just to name two, are left of the Democrats but right of the Socialists.
I don’t think so. Perhaps because I think that they should be represented on campus in proportion to their representation in the population at large. To me their one and the same.
Yes, they can formulate their mission however they see like. And, yes, it’s entirely possible that that mission is turning away conservatives. However, as I and others pointed out earlier, the university having a liberal mission statement is probably the result of the universtity having a liberal staff. Chicken, egg.
You may be right. I’m simply willing to acknowledge that the undrepresentation (aka “bias”) is there. This gives liberals an edge over conservatives, and it’s worth being aware of and maybe discussing from time to time. It may well be our own damn fault, but it is the reality.
It’s impossible to show evidence that would meet your requirements. If you have mostly liberal teachers, you are going to get mostly liberal views being taught. This is just human nature, and is completely unnavoidable.
I could go around digging for cites of specific examples, like students being punished for having a Rush Limbaugh book, or teachers having a skewed curriculum. But that doesn’t “prove” anything. It’s anecdotal evidence.
I think we just disagree about the basic human nature involved. It’s impossible for humans to act like unbiased robots who only stick to the facts. Some are better at it than others, but if 85% of teachers are liberal then there’s going to be liberal views being presented more often and more convincingly than conservative views.
Yes, I shouldn’t have said this because it could hijack the whole thread. I’ll state my case for this quickly and then we can agree to disagree:
The only useful metric to measure the left/right position of the US political parties is the US population. Only 20% of people in the US are ‘liberal’, 45% are ‘conservative’. The democratic party right now is being run by ulta-liberals. Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are probably the most influential and powerful members of the party right now. They are all way, way out to the left of most Americans. The Republicans have moved to the center much like Clinton did in the 90’s and they are benefitting from it. The Democrats continue to move to the left, and continue to suffer at the polls because of it.
Debaser: *Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are probably the most influential and powerful members of the party right now. They are all way, way out to the left of most Americans. *
Maybe (I think the “leftness” of Dean and Clinton, for example, is generally exaggerated). Still, even someone like Pelosi, who is certainly much more left than the Democratic Party as a whole, is still considerably to the right of the Socialists. So I don’t think it’s very meaningful to describe the modern Democratic Party as “on the verge of socialism”.
Using similar arguments, I could describe the Republican Party as “on the verge of fascism”, but that also wouldn’t be very meaningful in describing the actual political reality. The terms “socialism” and “fascism” have specific meanings that tend to get lost when they’re used for rhetorical effect like this.
Is it a problem that business schools hire almost entirely free-market advocates while not hiring Marxists? How do we fix that problem?
I think the complaints in this area are rather silly, and more feed into a sense of comfortable martyrdom than they reflect any real problem.
Frankly, I’m not convinced a strong disparity exists, anyway: for me to see a disparity, I need to see how people qualified to take these jobs compare to people who have them. If 85% of New Englanders with doctorates in the humanities voted for Gore, it’s hardly surprising that 85% of professors at liberal arts schools in New England voted for Gore, is it?
Danile
Perhaps, but when discussing universities (and particularly the elite universities that are the source of those statistics) you’d do well to look at a broader constituency. The US has successfully built up a reputation as the place to go for higher learning, particularly graduate degrees. In general, the more elite a program, the more international its makeup is. If we take it as given that the US is as a whole is rather to the right of Western Europe, Oz/NZ/Canada, etc., then it stands to reason that, by and large, elite programs are going to skew to the left of the American public. I’m not sure I see how that’s a problem for the US, as it’s part and parcel of the so-called brain-drain, which is very beneficial to the US.
Any perceived attempt on the part of American governments, state or federal, to influence the politics of the academy is going to as a side effect discourage foreign students from flocking to American universities (though this is already happening do to post-9/11 visa hassles) and diminish or eliminate the US’ ability to attract the best and brightest from around the world. This wouldn’t bother me greatly, since by comparison Canada’s universities would become more attractive, to the benefit of our country, but it should concern you.