I am a college student in Michigan and oftentimes conservative groups will complain that there aren’t enough lecturers or faculty that cater to Right. Is this true? Moreover, what is the underlying reason for this to occur? Do liberals, on average, have more education than conservatives? Or is it that this specific party affiliation (liberals) tend to take academia jobs?
Since no one usually answers my questions, I’ll wrap the aforementioned mess into one, coherent question: why is it that there are more liberals - students, faculty, lecturers - on campus than there are conservatives? Secondly, are there universities or colleges that could be considered largely conservative where liberals would be in the minority?
i don’t know that “liberal” is the best descriptive. I think that there are more CRITICAL people, per capita, on campus, because it is our business and life to read widely and analyze. Just my impression.
I’ve always heard that, on average, liberals tend to have more education than conservatives. However, I can’t find any cites for that. In fact, I can only find that people who consider themselves either liberal or conservative tend to be more educated than those not taking a side. But, I can say that academics is definitely skewed towards the liberal side. My best guess is that like draws like.
And, yes, there are definitely conservative schools. Many schools with a religious affiliation will be more conservative than liberal. Here is a list of conservative schools.
I’ll give you a response you might hear from a disgruntled conservative. I don’t necessarily subscribe to these views, but they are what I have heard from other conservatives while in college.
First, it only seems that there are far more liberals than others. This is because conservatives have their views ridiculed, and so they keep quiet.
(I always thought it was interesting that - considering liberals considered themselves to be so “pushing the envelope” and “in your face” - the most controvertial group on campus was College Republicans. No one could stir attention like the Republicans, who got along very well with the Libertarians, which also surprised me.)
Second, for some reason college faculties tend to be liberal. While the real world (in the USA at least) doesn’t take communism, socialism, and other such theories all that seriously, they are taken seriously by those in academia (faculty and students). Other darling theories and policies of liberals (anti-Israelism, pro-Palestinianism, being anti-Establishment, being anti-capitalist, being pacifist) are prevalent in colleges. Conservatives would feel very out of place in academia, so instead of having to deal with pompous, arrogant, holier-than-thou academians, they just move elsewhere.
I was considering doing graduate study, and a professor of mine (who was liberal himself) told me point blank that my Zionism (he, too, was an ardent Zionist) would not go over well in most colleges, and that I would have to be prepared to be challenged and ridiculed for my political beliefs.
Someone suggested somewhere that the reason there are more liberals than conservatives is because conservatives are, on the whole, more stupid than liberals, and so they don’t survive as well. Conservatives found this to be extremely arrogant and offensive, to say the least.
I just started attending college full time and I noticed in my English composition text book that over 50% of the example essays it contains are written about how USA blacks have been “mistreated” by white people. It does not contain one essay about blacks harming white people. The students are force fed this liberal crap.
WeRSauron previously said “This is because conservatives have their views ridiculed, and so they keep quiet.”
That’s because liberals can only ridicule views, and not provide logical arguments against them because they have none.
Well considering the fact that more and more attending college is becoming almost a ubiquitous experience and Dems/Republicans seem to split roughly evenly in America I find it hard to believe that conservatives are in any sort of severe minority when it comes to college campuses.
I think that from general experience it would be hard to tell the political association of a college student body just by attending the college. College classes IMO, even the smaller ones, tend to have a majority of the students not participating in the discussion in any way, thus those students can’t really be classified. And then since we definitely have more liberal professors than conservative you have a large chunk of people that love to hear themselves talk in class and will often suck up to professors/agree with them out of blind sycophanty versus any actual political ideology.
The most interesting course I ever took was on US history from some year to some year. Part of the course covered slavery.
I was absolutely shocked and amazed - and I was not the only one to express this - that the reading material we were made to read covered a number of perspectives. Various theories, perspectives, and ideas were exposed to us. We debated them. We explained them. And in the end, there were no clear answers. All of the myths we grew up with fell away in the course of one part of the course. I was so proud to attend that university. No one in the course expected such a treatment.
In some places, people are actually doing their job. What these places are and who these people are - that is what one needs to discover.
You know, if conservatives dominated universities, we would hear non-stop about how this was conclusive evidence that conservatives were smarter … . :rolleyes:
If conservatives dominated academia, then some conservatives, like some liberals now, would claim that this is proof that conservatives are smarter, and some liberals, like some conservatives now, would disagree and point out how that is not true.
It’s the nature of the beast. Conservatives and liberals are two sides of the same coin. Same nature, different beliefs.
I think this question is broader than the answers so far have suggested. Of course this issue is at the forefront of poli. sci. and history departments. However, the overwhelmingly liberal bent is evident in other departments as well.
I do research in molecular microbiology. It doesn’t take much time at the metaphorical water cooler to realize that the science departments are majority liberal. I wouldn’t think that one’s political leanings would be any more or less scrutinized in a science department than in a non-academic job. So, some of the reasons given for a liberal academe don’t apply to these areas.
I think there must be something that liberals find particularly appealing about academia. Perhaps the anti-establishment feel? The freedom to step out of the box?
You just started attending college and you’ve already read your entire English textbook? You read the whole thing, of course, since you’re quoting stats on the total content.
Back in my day, we had a few beers and spent some time with the ladies and read the book over the course of the whole semester.
…unless you’re trying to promote some other agenda…, valued guest.
What’s the name of the textbook? I’d love to see it. Name it. There’s a number on the back, post that too. What’s the name of the textbook you’re talking about?
But my professor remarked that the more “independent” and “different” and “anti-establishment” faculty members try to become, the more mentally homogenous they’re becoming. Many teach/say things on a similar track of mind, perhaps not noticing that they’re becoming homogenous when they’re trying to be more diverse. They try to be different but end up being the same.
Maybe it’s the preference for bureaucracy over entrepreneurship. When I was in academia I was a leftist, once I started to run my own business I became a libertarian/conservative.
If you go to frontpagemagazine.com you’ll find a lot of articles that deal with this topic. Also might want to read South Park Conservatives, it has a chapter on what’s going on in universities. Some recent articles in NY Sun about Brooklyn College education department are also relevant.
BTW, I predict that the situation will gradually change over the next ten years or so. I expect to see much more of a balance.
About the students. Is there any correlation to the number of liberals, and to those that had their education paid for by their parents? It’s an honest question, I’d hate to generalize, I honestly don’t know. It would seem that most students that have had their college paid for might latch on to the liberal philosophy much more so than students who actually work for their education. Or maybe vice versa? Maybe those who work for it might tend to be liberals. And since they’re strapped for cash, they might depend on others help more so then the others.
Scrapping all my idealogy on it, I’ll just ask. Is there an economic factor behind a students tendency be a liberal? Something other then the intelligence factor.
I would assume that Christian universities aren’t filled with hippies and left-wingers.
For one, colleges are usually in metropolitan areas, not rural areas where conservative populations are high.
If you think about it college is a fairly liberal idea, there’s not a lot of structure, you can basically sit around doing something else most of the time, go to class when you feel like it, study independently, complain - it’s great.
If you’re the kind of person who likes that atmosphere, maybe much, go to grad school, get your PhD, then what? Teach college. Bam! Liberal professor.
Well, i’m someone who’s currently in grad school, and who hopes to make a career out of being a college professor. I don’t consider myself a liberal; i consider myself a leftist.
In my experience, plenty of college campuses do have more liberals than conservatives among the faculty, although, as others have already pointed out, there are quite a lot of conservative campuses in the United States. Also, plenty of colleges that have a reputation for being liberal actually have a considerable number of conservatives on faculty, and also have their share of conservative students. The whole “liberal academia” is sort of like the “liberal media”—there’s some truth to it in some instances, but not as much as conservatives would have you believe.
Even when i’ve been on campuses where liberals are in the majority, i haven’t actually seen much open ridicule of conservative ideas. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, only that it’s not as ubiquitous as conservatives pretend. In fact, most liberal and leftist professors and grad students that i know go out of their way to encourage conservatives to air their views. While the accusation of being a liberal doesn’t worry too many professors, most are professional enough that an accusation of bias worries them greatly, and most do their best to evaluate arguments based on the extent to which they are supported by evidence, the level of analysis, and the internal coherence of the argument being made.
It’s certainly true that college faculty take those theories seriously. That’s what they’re paid to do. And college faculty, even liberal and leftist faculty, also take seriously capitalism, and conservatism, and religious fundamentalism, and any other “-ism” you care to mention. Whether you agree with any particular theory or ideology or not, anyone who wants to be considered an intellectual, or even just an intelligent person, should take them all seriously and do their best to understand them, rather than dismissing them out of hand.
A considerable part of teaching involves understanding and attempting to explain viewpoints with which you disagree. I taught an American intellectual history course last semester, and one of the things we studied was the pro-slavery ideology of Southerners like Edmund Ruffin, George Fitzhugh, and John Calhoun. I find most of their ideas abhorrent, but i think they need to be examined closely, and that we need to try and understand the arguments that they are making.
Similarly, there are plenty of conservative political theorists and economic historians in academia who take the ideas of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes seriously. How can you not take seriously theories that have had such a dramatic impact on the modern world? You’d have to be a complete moron to think that people like this can be dismissed out of hand just because you don’t agree with them. It’s the same reason that i, as a leftist, take very seriously the work of people like William Graham Sumner, F.A. Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter, and Milton Friedman.
Not sure why this surprises you. Quite a lot of “Libertarians” actually look quite conservative once you get beneath the labels and find out exactly what positions they support.
Also, there are quite a few libertarians who, given a choice between reduced liberty on social/cultural issues, and reduced liberty on economic issues, will opt for the former. I’ve had one of this Board’s best known libertarians admit as much to me. And such a choice tends to place them more firmly in the Republican than the Democratic camp. And this split is further exacerbated by the two-party, winner-take-all nature of the American electoral system.
This is probably true on some campuses. But on others, Zionists have quite a strong presence. And where they do have a presence, they give as good as they get when it comes to challenging and ridiculing the political beliefs of those with whom they disagree.
That is certainly true. Just pick up George Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 and you’ll find an examination of a wide range of extremely intelligent and erudite conservatives.
Well, i wouldn’t be quite so simplistic about conservative greed or liberal altruism, but i think there is something to this. At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, i’ll use myself as an example, although i’m not especially unusual.
I went through college with straight A’s, i scored in the top 1% on the GRE, and i was offered full-ride fellowships to history departments in multiple universities in the US and Australia. Most of the grad students in my department (and in other departments) had similarly stellar undergraduate performances and GRE grades.
The career we have chosen requires, in total, about 10 years of university (or more), and, at current salary levels, tops out at about $100,000 a year. And you only get that sort of salary after achieving the rank of full professor, which generally requires years of work and at least two scholarly books and multiple articles in refereed journals. This career is also one of the most competitive around, with far more qualified applicants than there are positions. Plenty of extremely smart people with PhDs from top universities are struggling to get by on adjunct work.
I’m not complaining. I knew the deal before i signed up, and i also think that the life of an academic has a lot going for it, if you get a good job. The opportunity to work on things that interest you, without someone constantly looking over your shoulder; no nine to five grind; good leave and sabbatical arrangements—all these things are attractive to me.
But i don’t know too many straight-A’s conservatives who are willing to go through 10 years of post-secondary education for a career that is unlikely even to get them into 6 figure salary range. Hell, i know some people who will consider themselves to be struggling if they aren’t making 6 figures within a couple of years of graduation.
Note: i’m well aware that the above is something of a generalization, and i based largely on my personal experience.
This is an important observation, and i want to use it as a jumping-off point in an attempt to put at least one myth to rest.
Leftist and liberal academics are NOT, in my experience, in the habit of punishing students for having conservative views. As i said earlier, most professors fall over themselves to be fair in their grading. Some of the students who have received the highest grades in courses i TAed were conservatives.
Contrary to popular belief, the biggest challenge for the liberal professoriate is not conservative students. In fact, the biggest challenge faced by liberal professors is exactly the same challenge faced by conservative professors—apathy. A distressing number of college students just don’t seem interested in the stuff they are studying, and want to do the absolute minimum amount of work possible to get by. It’s can be a chore getting them to do even the most essential compulsory reading, and getting them to share their ideas and observations in class discussion can be like pulling teeth.
Believe me, as a leftist grad student and aspiring professor, i’ll take a class full of committed, engaged, hard-working conservatives over a class full of apathetic liberals any day. And i’ll take a class full of committed, engaged, hard-working liberals over a class full of apathetic conservatives.
Well, this sentence doesn’t tell us much about liberals. But it does tell us something.
Yes, I read the entire English text book. It’s called, “Patterns for College Writing, a Rhetorical Reader and Guide,” by Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. The ISBN is 0-312-40431-X. Stockton, you assume too much.
