American Faculties: Ideas, Ideologies and Students

 
 The Chronicle of Higher
Education<http://chronicle.com/icons/2003/a/flag_468_tn.gif>

Friday, November 19, 2004

FYI to stir some juices on this silent listserv. Whatever the
situation at Western, should these findings, in general, be of any
concern regarding what students hear and are told to read in courses?

This Just In: Democrats Outnumber Republicans on American Faculties,
Studies Find

By THOMAS BARTLETT <mailto:thomas.bartlett@chronicle.com>

There are more Democrats than Republicans among professors at American
colleges, according to a pair of studies released this week by the
National Association of Scholars.

The studies are an attempt to measure a so-called liberal bias on
campuses. While their findings might not be surprising, the studies
prove what many conservatives have long suspected, according to Stephen
H. Balch, the association's president. "Increasingly, American academe
behaves as if it were a church with a creed rather than a marketplace of
ideas," he said on Thursday.

One of the studies estimated the political preferences of members of six
social-science and humanities associations by asking them about the
party affiliations of the candidates they have voted for over the past
decade.

The study found that in the American Anthropological Association, for
example, there were 30 people who voted mostly Democratic for every one
who voted Republican. In other groups, like the American Economic
Association, the disparity was less stark, with Democrats outnumbering
Republicans three to one.

The other study examined the party registrations of professors at
Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.
According to the findings, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans is 7.6
to 1 at Stanford and 9.9 to 1 at Berkeley.

Not everyone is impressed by the findings. "The assumption that guides
such studies is wrongheaded," said Roger W. Bowen, general secretary of
the American Association of University Professors. He contends that the
political affiliations of professors are of little consequence in the
classroom and that colleges hire faculty members based on their
expertise, not how they vote in elections.

Daniel B. Klein, an associate professor of economics at Santa Clara
University, is a co-author of both studies. His co-authors are Charlotta
Stern, an assistant professor of sociology at Stockholm University, and
Andrew Western, an economics and political science major at Santa Clara.

The studies are available on the Web site of the National Association of
Scholars (http://www.nas.org/aa/klein_launch.htm). They will later be
published in the association's journal, Academic Questions.

 
Alan Altany, Professor & Director
Coulter Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching & Learning
Western Carolina University
Cullowhee, NC 28723 (U.S.)
Email: altany@email.wcu.edu <mailto:altany@email.wcu.edu>
Fax: 828.227.7340
CFC Web Site: http://facctr.wcu.edu <http://facctr.wcu.edu/>
SoTL at Western: http://www.wcu.edu/sotl/ <http://www.wcu.edu/sotl/>
MountainRise, SoTL eJournal: http://mountainrise.wcu.edu
<http://mountainrise.wcu.edu/>
 
 

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Received on Fri Nov 19 08:28:33 2004