IT IS ANOTHER depressing indication of the ubiquity of partisan politics that recent studies have found that liberals are heavily overrepresented in academia. Several reputable studies have established that very heavy majorities of college professors, in almost every field, identify themselves as liberals. Findings such as these will come as a shock to almost no one familiar with the modern university environment. Signs of liberal preference among faculty will be evident to anyone who has strolled through rows of faculty offices at the University and observed the stickers, cartoons and articles posted on the walls. However, no one can seem to provide a good explanation as to why this is. Despite loud conservative cries that these statistics represent invidious discrimination, however, there are many compelling reasons counseling against a crusade for "intellectual diversity."
There are two claims made by the "intellectual diversity" crowd: liberal predominance at universities reflects discrimination, and that liberal professors unduly influence students to follow their own viewpoints. These premises, to conservatives, point to a need for legislative action. Both of these premises, however, seem flawed.
"It's something of a myth that there is an 'over-representation,'" Assoc. College Dean Richard Handler said in an e-mail. Handler also believes that the traditional labels "liberal" and "conservative" do not capture the real political and ideological feeling within university faculties.
Handler, like many liberals, attributes the aversion of academia to conservatism in part to the affiliation of Republicans and conservatives with "Christian fundamentalism" that is allegedly hostile to scientific inquiry. This explanation is one of three hypotheses put forward by a recent study, which appeared in the research journal The Forum, "Hide the Republicans, the Christians, and the Women: A Response to Politics and Professional Development Among College Faculty," which attempts to refute the notion that intentional discrimination keeps conservatives out of academia. Their argument that modern conservatives are hostile to scientific inquiry is clearly overstated and misleading, as the rate of liberal prevalence within the humanities is higher than the rate within the hard sciences (though the gap is narrowing).
However, the essential thesis of this report, that self-selection keeps conservatives out of universities, seems exactly right. Michael Barone's thesis from his Hard America, Soft America, seems dead-on: Universities represent an outpost of "Soft America" -- financed predominately by government and not subject to the private-sector constraints of the market, and thus is far more attractive to non-liberals than liberals. It is wrong to infer discrimination on the basis of these statistics.
Indeed, it seems that the position of many conservatives on this issue is brazenly inconsistent. The usual conservative reluctance to expand the role of government has apparently been disregarded in the push for an "Academic Bill of Rights," which would seek to use the government to combat the liberal tilt and "political bias" at universities. And the focus on government-fostered "diversity," so repugnant to conservatives in the affirmative-action debate, now seems a compelling goal in this new context.
The second premise offered by supporters of "intellectual diversity" is the "indoctrination" model, where conservative students are pushed to the left by their elders. This model also seems fundamentally flawed. Many of the leading conservatives in the nation, including George W. Bush and Clarence Thomas, came through Ivy League colleges when these universities were in the throes of campus rebellion.
Non-liberals have to adjust in some fashion to the liberal atmosphere. But in doing so, non-liberals may learn to see politics, in all its crassness, for what it truly is--a species of discourse in which there are usually no right answers. Dethroning political orthodoxies and biases is what college should be about. Exposure to these viewpoints promotes greater tolerance of alternative viewpoints, an important lesson in a world where political intolerance so often predominates. Moreover, liberal bias forces conservatives to critically evaluate and defend their own positions. Students can see just how incorrect or overstated many of the positions taken by modern liberals are.
The debate over "intellectual diversity" represents a divisive corner of the culture war. The conservative fears of discrimination and indoctrination, however, are vastly overstated. In the absence of more compelling evidence, government oversight here seems unnecessary.
Noah Peters' column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at npeters@cavalierdaily.com.
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