ATTENTION ALL DEMAGOGUES!From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed: The Liberal (and Moderating) Professoriate.
THE GIST: sure, in academia, conservatives are a minority, but moderates, not liberals, dominate. Community college faculty are the least liberal/radical of all.
The article:
Faculty members identify as liberals and vote Democratic in far greater proportions than found in the American public at large. That finding by itself won’t shock many, but the national study released Saturday at a Harvard University symposium may be notable both for its methodology and other, more surprising findings....
...The results of the study find a professoriate that may be less liberal than is widely assumed, even if conservatives are correctly assumed to be in a distinct minority. The authors present evidence that there are more faculty members who identify as moderates than as liberals. The authors of the study also found evidence of a significant decline by age group in faculty radicalism, with younger faculty members less likely than their older counterparts to identify as radical or activist….
Political Orientation of Faculty Members — 7 Categories
Extremely liberal 9.4%
Liberal 34.7%
Slightly liberal 18.1%
Middle of the road 18.0%
Slightly conservative 10.5%
Conservative 8.0%
Very conservative 1.2%
While that breakdown would at first glance back the claim that academe is run by “tenured radicals,” [authors] Gross and Simmons say that is too simplistic. They analyzed the responses to a series of questions on social and political views of the two “slightly” categories and found significant differences between the “slightly” and “extremely” answers for both liberals and conservatives. They also found significant commonalities among the two “slightly” categories and the middle category.
Based on that view, they argue that there are in fact three identifiable political groupings in academe, and liberalism does not come out on top — the moderate group does.Political Orientation of Faculty Members — 3 Categories
Liberal 44.1%
Moderate 46.1%
Conservative 9.2%
…The sector breakdowns demonstrate the importance of including community colleges, whose faculty members are more likely than any other sectors to identify as conservative. While some previous studies on faculty politics have suggested elite research universities as the places with the most ideological uniformity, liberals appear to be most dominant at liberal arts colleges…. [My emphasis.]
11 comments:
College professors moderate? How do you explain all them foreign cars out in the parking lot? Plus there's lot of gayness around here if you ask me. Gay isn't moderate. It's liberal.
Yes, those gay liberals, like we find getting outed in the Republican Party on a regular basis.
That's right! The ones with the "wide stance."
liberals = progressives = socialists = communists = targets
5:36 = idiot
11:15 - Take your head out of your ass. The old liberal is the new moderate, therefore, gay is now moderate.
Fascinating!
I mean: the post is fascinating.
Commentators, start thinking straight , i.e. get some educations.
Liberals tend to be more *tolerant* of gays, but gays come with all sorts of politics. And plenty of conservatives drive foreign cars. My firm is 70% conservative Republican, we've actually done the numbers, and many of them are driving foreign cars. Get real.
Liberals are not radicals. Look these terms up.
And: look at what it was considered liberal, say 40 years ago and now -
and conservative - and I think you'll see much has moved rightward. When I was born, Eisenhower was President, and some of his positions would be too liberal for a Democrat to hold today.
Top 10 good things about liberals:
10.
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1. They eventually shutup and die!
I am not at all surprised.
Gay is liberal? Really? Explain all those Republican gays, even right here in our own midst.
Gay is liberal? Oh brother, what a moron.
No doofus, gay is gay.
Post a Comment