Author Stephen Hicks, himself a professor at Rockford College Illinois, has found "a fascinating recent survey of [American] university faculty political beliefs." Here's some 'highlights' from the summary:- "Faculty at colleges and universities of all kinds in America are overwhelmingly liberal in their political ideology, creating a strong campus political culture. Categorized according to both self-identification and voting patterns, faculty are heavily weighted towards the Left."
- "The majority of faculty are liberal and Democratic, and thereforethe full spectrum of beliefs and political behavior of the American public is underrepresented on campus."
- Faculty hold a certain number of beliefs that are pervasive, but not monolithic. They include:
• Criticism of many American foreign and domestic policies.
• Propensity to blame America for world problems.
• A tendency to strongly support international institutions such as the United Nations.
• Strong opposition to American unilateralism.
• Criticism of big business.
• Skepticism about capitalism’s ability to help address poverty in developing nations. - "Recruitment, hiring, and tenure review processes have either failed to adequately prevent this political imbalance within disciplines or have actively perpetuated and deepened political unity."
- "Social science and humanities faculty are the most liberal and Democratic, and least diverse in their political culture. Fully 54% of the social science and humanities faculty identify as Democratic and 60% as liberal, and only 11% as Republican and 12% as conservative, a 5-to-1 ratio. [Which begs the question of what the remaining 17-23% see themselves as?] Of social science faculty who voted in 2004, they were more than four times as likely to have chosen Kerry (81%) over Bush (18%) while humanities faculty were more than five times as likely (81% for Kerry, 15% for Bush)."
- "Business faculty are the most diverse in their political beliefs and behavior. Still, only 30% of business faculty de-fine themselves as Republicans and 35% as conservatives..."
- "Significant percentages of faculty acknowledge that not only students but also other faculty may feel restricted in their expression..."
RELATED: Politics-US, Education, Philosophy
3 comments:
You know, the only thing more scary than liberal socialist Democrats at Universities would be right-wing religious extremist GOP voting Christians in their position.
Be interesting to see the data on how many of these academics have seen time in the armed services. Sweet f a is my guess.
Perfumed princes protected by rough, simple men.
Safe, secure, self important and irrelevant.
I agree with Mr. de Boer. What was funny at my college was the way a lot of us would exchange glances and smirk as the philosophy prof. went on about how he should get paid as much as a brain surgeon cuz he was taking care of our brains bla bla. We knew we'd have to get jobs in the real world. Most of us anyway.
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