As Tim noted, Howard Kurtz reports today on the latest empirical study of political bias on
college campuses.
The
numbers are bad. According to Kurtz, college faculties “lean further to
the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have
imagined.” I was especially struck by the 87 percent liberal versus 13
percent conservative division on elite campuses. I haven’t yet seen the
original study, but it appears to include relatively conservative programs
like engineering and business (although even these turned up as liberal on
balance). Subtract those more conservative programs and humanities and
social science faculties at elite schools would appear to be over ninety
percent liberal. The study’s authors are cautious. They take these
imbalances as “preliminary” evidence of “possible discrimination” against
conservatives. Any conservative who’s been on a college campus lately
knows the score on that one.
John Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American
Association of University Professors, was delegated the unenviable task of
dismissing the survey. He pretends the faculty’s liberalism has nothing
whatever to do with the curriculum. Yeah, right. Of course Knight, the
man who supposedly safeguards academic freedom for all of us, neglects to
mention that academic freedom exists to nurture and protect a marketplace
of ideas. By that classic standard, real academic freedom no longer exists
in the American academy.
Another important finding here is that the leftward drift has gotten far
worse over time. Back in 1984, just a few years before Allan Bloom and
William Bennett began the war against campus political correctness, 39
percent of faculty members described themselves as liberal. Today the
figure is 72 percent (87 for elite schools). The actual content of the
campus culture wars may not have changed much in 20 years, but the larger
situation has changed. At this point, conservatives aren’t just outgunned
on campus, they are almost entirely excluded–especially on elite
campuses. Where is the next generation of conservative intellectuals going
to come from?