April 2011
Few
aspects of faculty demographics generate more attention than their politics. Why
is it, many want to know, that professors are far more likely than the general
public to be liberal? Many theories have been put forward, including the view
(much discussed in conservative circles) that academe is hostile to
conservatives and tries to either weed them out or convert them.
Two studies being released today provide more
evidence that bias is not the cause — and the studies provide some additional
evidence to back the theory (put forward last year by one of the authors of the
new work) that "self-selection" is the primary reason so many academics are
liberal. In brief, the self-selection idea holds that some professions have
become "typed" in American society in various ways that may relate to gender or
class but could also relate to politics. Academe is seen as more liberal, so
liberals are more likely to identify being an academic as something to which
they aspire. The argument is significant because it does not contest the
lopsided political nature of many faculties, but also suggests that higher
education is open to those conservative scholars who want careers there.
One
of the new studies was an "audit" of the reactions of graduate program directors
to initial inquiries from potential graduate students who said something to
indicate their political leanings. The research found no evidence of bias.
The
second study used a longitudinal database that had information on how thousands
of individuals thought about politics and the launch of their careers. This
study found that those who pursue academic careers are far more likely to be
liberal than conservative — again countering the idea that conservatives are
being turned away from doctoral programs, or that a leftward shift is a price of
success in Ph.D. programs.
"These studies together make a very strong case that most of the liberalism
among professors is the result of self-selection," said Neil Gross, associate
professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia, who is among the
authors of last year’s self-selection work and both of the new studies. (Gross
works in Canada, his work on these topics is focused on the United States.)
While Gross sees the new studies providing important backing for the earlier
research, not everyone (as he is the first to admit) is likely to be convinced.
The studies are only being released now and have yet to be widely reviewed. But
Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, said that they
don’t rule out bias. He said one of the studies suggests that self-selection is
part of the reason that faculties lean to the left, but that there is no way of
knowing from available evidence that liberal academics are not discouraging
conservatives from joining them.
The
study of how graduate directors respond to inquiries was conducted by Gross;
Ethan Fosse, a graduate student at Harvard University; and Joseph Ma, an
undergraduate at the University of British Columbia.
Posing as undergraduates getting ready to apply to doctoral programs, they sent
e-mail messages to graduate program directors in top departments of sociology,
political science, economics, history and English. The inquiries were similar in
describing their academic preparation, their undergraduate institutions, and
their interest in applying. Some of the e-mails made no mention of politics, but
some mentioned having previously worked on either the Obama or the McCain
presidential campaigns.
The
political references were brief, and followed by a phrase about the campaign
work having been "a learning experience," so as not to suggest that the
candidates were ambivalent about academic careers. (The authors acknowledge that
working on the Obama and McCain campaigns might not be perfect proxies for
liberal and conservative. "We worried that a stronger conservative prompt, such
as being a George W. Bush supporter, might — if claims about the extent of
hostility to conservatism in academe are true — lead some respondents to
question the legitimacy of the e-mail," they write.)
The
researchers then had independent (and politically mixed) observers rate the
responses from the graduate directors on frequency, timing of replies,
information provided, emotional warmth and enthusiasm. In a few cases, the
researchers found "traces" of a political impact, but "no statistically or
substantively significant evidence of bias."
The
paper notes a number of limitations to their study. Most significantly, the test
looked at an initial stage of contact between candidates and departments, not
the crucial admissions decision, when bias might also surface. Further, they
note that all of the publicity over alleged political bias might make graduate
directors censor themselves and not reveal their biases.
At the same time, however, the authors cite "research on stereotypes and social
biases in general, as well as on political bias and the associated affect
specifically [that] suggests that, when present, biases operate primarily in the
domain of automatic cognition. Since responding quickly to prospective student
e-mails is, in the language of ‘dual process’ models in psychology, more a
matter of heuristic than systematic processing, one would expect political
biases likely to affect a range of judgments to show up in our results." In sum,
the authors write that "if political bias toward graduate students were robust
in the fields we studied, our methodology would very likely have detected it."
The
paper notes the ethical issues involved in deceiving the graduate program
directors, but argues that they are justified. "[P]eople on both the right and
left consider the issue of political bias and discrimination in higher education
to be an important topic — conservatives think it exists and is unfair, liberals
tend to deny it but worry about the effects on academic freedom of conservative
allegations." Further, the paper says that "an audit study (requiring deception)
is one of the best ways of gaining empirical traction on the matter" and "that
it is not asking much of subjects to respond to two e-mails (though we realize
it is asking something); and that there are few risks to subjects from participating in the study."
The
second study is by Fosse, Gross and Jeremy Freese, chair of sociology at
Northwestern University. This study makes use of the Add Health database, which
was created to track the long-term health behaviors of 90,000 adolescents, but
which also includes questions about political orientation and educational/career
plans. The authors realized that although this database was not created to
examine the question of why professors tend to be liberal, it had the potential
to provide some answers. At various points (well after adolescence) the
participants were asked questions about political views and about whether they
were headed to graduate school.
One
"wave" of questions took place when the respondents were aged 18-26 and another
when they were 24-32. The idea was to determine whether political orientation
during the period when future professors are likely finishing their
undergraduate educations might be a factor in whether they subsequently were
enrolled in graduate school. (Those who did not complete a bachelor’s degree
were excluded since they could not go to graduate school.)
What the study found was that those seeking a doctoral degree in the 24-32 age
group were clearly more liberal than the population as a whole. In the entire
pool, 35 percent identified as liberal or very liberal, while 49 percent of
those seeking doctorates did so. In the entire pool, 23 percent identified as
conservative, while only 18 percent of doctoral seekers did so.
These figures match (generally) data on the political leanings of young
professors. "These numbers strongly suggest that much of professorial liberalism
is indeed a function of who goes to graduate school: filling job openings in
academe with a random draw from the pool of graduate students would still
produce a distinctly left-leaning occupation," the study says.
Further, other data show that while a significant minority of those studied
became more liberal in their doctoral programs, so did a significant number of
those who didn’t go to graduate school. In addition, doctoral students were
slightly more likely than those who stopped their education after their
bachelor’s degrees to become more conservative than they had been earlier in
their lives. These findings generally cast doubt on the idea that professors are
liberal because they are socialized that way in graduate school.
There are some inconclusive results in the analysis about whether some
personality traits (not linked to politics) may make some people more likely to
go to graduate school. But notably, the study found no relationship between
either materialism or early marriage and a disinclination to go for a doctorate.
(These findings rebut theories put forward by some observers that conservatives’
desire for more money than young professors tend to earn, motivated either by
greed or family obligations, explains the scarcity of right-wing academics.)
Whatever the results of these studies, many people remain bothered by the
lopsided nature of professorial politics. The annual meeting of the Society for
Personality and Social Psychology this year was dominated by a talk charging
that the disciplines represented in the organization may have a bias against
conservatives, The New York Times reported.
Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia polled the audience of 1,000
scholars and asked by shows of hands how many of them identified themselves in
various political ways. He found that about 80 percent called themselves
liberals, a few dozen said that they were centrists or libertarians, and only
three said they were conservatives. "This is a statistically impossible lack of
diversity," Haidt said, given that 40 percent of Americans identify as
conservatives.
Wood, of the National Association of Scholars (a group that has criticized what
it considers liberal bias in academic life), found particular fault with the
study of graduate admissions directors. He questioned whether McCain was a good
proxy for conservative leanings, saying that the senator "is virtually nobody’s
idea of a standard bearer of conservatism."
But
more broadly, he said that "they were looking for actionable bias in entirely
the wrong place." He argued that most graduate program directors would only
discourage someone who was "manifestly inappropriate" by virtue of a poor
academic record, no prospect for a bachelor’s degree or similarly clear lack of
qualifications. Bias in admissions, he said, would more likely come later, when
admissions committees vote on candidates.
Wood called the longitudinal study "the far more substantial paper," and he said
it does establish a role for self-selection in the political make-up of the
professoriate. But he said that there is still "a gap" in the thinking that this
rules out bias. Even if self-selection is "a primary driver for the liberalism"
of faculty members, that does not mean bias does not exist, he said. "They have
set up a false opposition."
It
also may be the case, Wood said, that faculty members have a responsibility for
the self-selection going on. "There’s a kind of chicken and egg problem that
they have done their best to avoid," Wood said. "Given today’s university, you’d
have to be pretty obtuse not to understand that going into the field is going to
mean a lifelong association with professions that are dominated by liberal
individuals and liberal ideologies."
Gross noted that the studies acknowledge their limits, but said that it was
significant that at the same time that more evidence is emerging for the role of
self-selection, efforts to find systematic bias (such as the inquiries to
graduate directors) were coming up empty. He also acknowledged that nothing in
the research he and others have done denies that some conservatives may feel
that academe is "unwelcoming" to them as a profession.
But
"unwelcoming," he noted, "is still a self-selection story, as opposed to an
exclusion story."
One
response by those who want to see more political balance in the make-up of
faculties, Gross said, would be to take these studies and make the point to
talented, right-leaning students that the door is open to them. More efforts
could be made to create and sustain conservative intellectual efforts, he said.
But
even if that happens, Gross predicted that claims about liberal bias in academe
would not go away. "That line of argumentation serves a pretty important
function for the conservative movement," he said. Modern conservatism has cast
itself as a populist movement, Gross noted, and populism "requires a bashing of
elites." Conservatives have a tough time bashing economic elites, Gross said,
"so there’s been a strong need to find alternative elites to bash."
From William F. Buckley Jr. on, the solution has been "to focus on cultural
elites," such as faculty members. Gross stressed that he was not suggesting "a
conspiracy" by conservatives, but just stating the reality that this line of
argument is one that has been made for decades, with considerable success. "It
provides a sort of collective identity for educated conservatives, that sense of
feeling excluded," he said. The challenge posed by his research, he said, is
that it suggests that choice is the primary reason liberals are more common in
academe than are conservatives.
Inside Higher Ed, March 21, 2011.
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