Stephen Kershnar
The Left Ratchets
Up Its Control of Academia
Dunkirk-Fredonia
Observer
December 14, 2021
The left has a chokehold on
universities. This will shape the America for years to come.
Americans are roughly evenly split between
liberals and conservatives. Here I use party affiliation as evidence of
political orientation. The Pew Research Foundation found that the ratio of
Democrats to Republicans is 1.1
to 1, that is, roughly equal (2020 data). Specifically, 33% of registered
voters identify as Democrats and 29% identify as Republicans.
First, consider top universities. Brooklyn
College’s Mitchell Langbert and Heterodox Academy’s Sean Stevens found that in
2019 at top universities - specifically the best private universities, public
universities, and liberal arts colleges in each state - the ratio of Democrat
to Republican professors is 9
to 1. The drift to the left appears to be increasing as the ratio among
younger tenure-track professors is 11 to 1. Among female professors the ratio is
an incredible 16 to 1.
In some fields, the ratio is even more skewed. Langbert and Stevens
found that the Democrat-to-Republican ratios for some departments are as
follows: anthropology (42 to 1), English (27 to 1), and sociology (27 to 1).
Second, consider
the Ivy League. In 2016, The Washington Times’ Bradford Richardson
reported that Columbia and Princeton had 30 Democrat professors for every
Republican professor. In
2020, The Yale News’ Madison Hahamy reported that Yale professors gave
less than 3% of their
political donations to Republican candidates and affiliated groups.
The elite schools matter. Six of the
last ten presidents graduated from Ivy League schools and another two graduated
from the Ivies’ peers (Duke and Naval Academy). Seven current Supreme Court
justices went to the Ivy League or Stanford for both undergraduate and law
school. Ditto for the senate majority leader. The Ivies and their peers produce
a significant portion of the leadership of Silicon Valley, U.S. military, and
Wall Street. The faculty’s ideas likely explain - at least in part - the nearly
homogenous public views of the leaders of these fields concerning affirmative
action, Big Tech censorship, illegal aliens, interventionist wars,
transgenderism, vaccine mandates, voter IDs, etc.
Third, consider top tier liberal
arts colleges. Examples include Williams,
Amherst, and Swarthmore. Langbert found that the ratio of Democrat to
Republican professors at these schools is 10 to 1. Incredibly, 39%
of the colleges – 20 of the 51 - did not have a single Republican professor. In
New York State, these schools include Colgate (19 to 1), Hamilton (25 to 1),
and Vassar (35 to 1).
Lest one thinks this is just a
feature of the faculty, Sarah Lawrence University’s Samuel Abrams points out
that university administrators skew even further left than the faculty. Their
liberal-to-conservative ratio is 12 to 1. In contrast,
Abrams points out, most occupational categories have more conservatives than
liberals. As a result, the administrators will not be keeping the faculty’s
political biases in check.
The
University of Colorado’s Spencer Case argues that the lopsided ratios are in
part the result of discrimination. He cites research from several sources. The University
of Toronto’s Yoel Inbar and the University of Cologne’s Joris Lammers found
that 38% of social and personality psychology professors said
that they would hire a liberal over a conservative if forced to choose between
two equally qualified candidates. A significant minority said they were willing
to discriminate against conservatives regarding grant review, paper review, and
symposia invitations. In 2010, University of North Texas’ George Yancey found
that roughly 30% of sociologists would
be less likely to support a job seeker if they knew that he was a Republican. Cambridge
University’s Uwe Peters et al. found that a significant minority of surveyed philosophers
were explicitly willing to discriminate
based on political orientation. The further to the left a philosopher is, Peters
et al. found, the more she is willing to discriminate. Case points out that
this willingness to discriminate aligns with conservative professors’ perception
of hostility. Nearly half report censoring themselves.
There is no clear solution
to this problem.
First, at least
some of the leftist bent among faculty is due to demographics and
self-selection. Writing in The Atlantic, Adam Harris points out that in
the 2018 election, college-educated white voters were
noticeably more likely to
cast their votes for Democrats than white voters without a degree. Demographic
and self-selection factors are difficult to disentangle from
discrimination.
Second, there is
no way to prevent this discrimination without having outside people hire and
promote faculty. The willingness to discriminate is too strong to be
voluntarily set aside. Outside people would lack the expertise to make these
decisions or would come from the same class as current discriminators.
Third, affirmative
action for conservatives would come at the expense of merit. Conservatives
would end up underperforming. This would result in people looking askance at
conservative faculty just as they do regarding current affirmative action faculty.
The
problem here is Robert Conquest’s second law of
politics. It states that, “Any organization not explicitly right-wing
sooner or later becomes left-wing.” If this is correct, then conservatives will
have a significant presence at a university only if it is explicitly
right-wing. There are some universities that have such an identity – for
example, Brigham Young, Hillsdale,
Liberty, and SMU – but they lack the national importance of the elite
universities. In addition, they are often sectarian and, thus, lack broad-based
appeal. The elite schools continue to have the best faculty and students. A
conservative attempt to capture an elite university would be prohibitively
expensive (the schools have large amounts of money that would be used to fight
the capture) and, if successful, would likely endanger its elite status.
The
best alternative is to offer alternative programming. Conservative
organizations try to do so. Perhaps the most high-profile instance of this is
the Federalist Society, which provides a vital counter to the left in law
schools (Disclosure: I was a member). Still, it is unclear if this alternative
programming does much to counteract the leftist programming.
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