More Studies Say That Professors Are Lefties

THIS ISN’T news. But Critical Review has just published a couple of scholarly papers that find university professors to be overwhelmingly Democrat in political orientation.

In Faculty Partisan Affiliations in All Disciplines Christopher F. Cardiff and Daniel B. Klein demonstrate that, yes, university faculty are overwhelmingly liberal and Democrat in partisan affiliation.

But the affiliation is not uniform. Liberal arts and humanities faculties are overwhelmingly left-wing. Business faculties are almost balanced in orientation. Democrat to Republican weighting ranges “from sociology (44:1) to management (1.5:1).”

It would be interesting to know how much the affiliation correlates with government grants. Sociology, for instance, is a discipline almost completely oriented towards government organization of society. Management is almost completely oriented towards business organization. You would expect sociologists to be oriented towards government spending, and business faculty less so.

In Professors and Their Politics Daniel B. Klein and Charlotta Stern takes a look not at the party affiliation but the policy views of professors. They find that professors, both Democrat and Republican, “favor government action more than the ideal types might suggest.”

Ideological diversity (as judged not only by voting behavior, but by policy views) is by far the greatest within economics. Social scientists who deviate from left-wing views are as likely to be libertarian as conservative.

Our environmental friends have something to say about this uniformity. It is dangerous for the planet. Diversity is essential for sustainability and indeed for simple survival. So when we see uniformity and monoculture our warning flags should be posted.

The question is whether the response to this unhealthy uniformity should be a frontal attack, as advocated by David Horowitz and Students for Academic Freedom, or whether an indirect approach would be better.

We know from analysis of the business world that inward-looking institutions become, over time, extremely brittle and vulnerable to change. Their members start to extract more resources from the institution than is compatible with sustainable growth. Eventually, like the Soviet Union, they collapse without warning.

Of course universities (and indeed all the education system) operates not on a profitability model but a political support model. They attract resources not by offering a superior product and low prices but by a combination of cultural and political power. People are taught to revere educational institutions and to defer to the opinions of professors. And if you cross a college professor in the public square you find that he has ways of making life difficult for you.

The problem for the education establishment is that they are spending about seven percent of GDP, and most likely wasting about 3-4 percent. Eventually that is going to cause a problem. After all, we could use that money for something useful.

Suppose you are an earnest reformer, anxious to find money to fund your vision of a better world. As you cast your eyes around for funding, wouldn’t your gaze sooner or later come to rest upon the great special interest herds of cattle grazing in tax supported pastures and not yielding very much in the way of milk or of beef?

And wouldn’t you notice that the biggest herd of all, with the most meager yield, was the education herd?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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