Employees at each of U.S. News and World Report's top twenty-five national universities overwhelmingly favored John Kerry over George W. Bush in the 2004 election cycle. Giving ratios of employees at selected schools totaled 9-1 at Duke, 20-1 at Yale, 43-1 at MIT, 302-1 at Princeton, and infinity at Dartmouth, where not a single employee appeared on Federal Election Commission reports as donating to the Bush campaign. I've just completed a major study called Deep Blue Campuses (read it here) for the Leadership Institute's Campus Leadership Program. On campus, the talk is diversity. The reality is conformity.

Come on, Dan! Diversity is the left's rationalization to keep affirmative action alive. They certainly do not live diversity or believe in it. It is a bone thrown to voters of a different color and to voters who are overburdened with guilt for long-past vicious laws. As long as we continue to think within the black-white box we will not move forward to a post-race world.

We, or at least I, think of these leftists as liberals, but they aren't. They do everything they can to stifle dissent, unless it is they who dissent. There are liberals among the leftists, but they wield little power. There are liberals among the rightys, but they too wield little power. I do think rightys are more liberal than leftys, but then I may base too much of my opinion on the open discussion I have read here.

So some academics are liberal? Who cares? There's nothing wrong with that. One can be a liberal and also be a great professor. It's not like having liberal views makes one incapable of imparting knowledge to students.

I do not see why conservatives complain so much about this issue. The United States offers plenty of choices for college students and their parents. No one is sticking a gun to a parent's head and forcing the parents to send their children to Duke. To the contrary, parents could instead send their children to Bob Jones University, Regent University, Patrick Henry College, Thomas Aquinas College, Liberty University or any one of a number of other conservative colleges or universities.

Given the number of American colleges and universities, it really is a buyer's market. Any intelligent person should be able to find a school that is "right for them"--in terms of ideology, social opportunities and academics. Conservatives should stop whining about schools they don't like, and should instead target schools that are right for them.

As the text to this topic might show, it's not "some" academics that are liberals. It's "most" academics that are liberals.

And, I disagree that being politically and socially liberal doesn't have an affect on how professors profess.

Liberalism is a disease that infects all aspects of a persons judgement no matter what their profession.

Academics in particular.

"It's not like having liberal views makes one incapable of imparting knowledge to students."

Yes, it does. Do you honestly suppose a liberal and a conservative will portray, e.g., Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics with equal accuracy (assuming the former even uses that text)?

ASDF:

If this is what you believe, then you should send your children to conservative colleges and universities. That way your children will not be exposed to academics infected with the liberalism "disease" (your word).

I have taken classes with professors of many different political stripes: liberals, neo-cons, social conservatives, libertarians, etc. I have been able to learn from all of my professors, and I have found that a professor's ability to impart information is more important to me as a student than is the professor's political party affiliation.

Brad:

I think that both liberals and conservatives could do a great job teaching Aristotle's "Nichomachean Ethics." A good professor would flesh out the major ideas of the book: the golden mean, the two kinds of virtu, etc., and would explain those ideas to students in a clear manner. He/she might also compare Aristotle's ethics to the ethics of other philosophers, and would ask the students various questions based on the text--i.e., what is Aristotle's understanding of X? What does he mean when he says Y? Is he right about Z?

A liberal could do this just as well as a conservative. And the notion that liberals would not use the book itself is preposterous. No idea where you get that from.

A lot of the criticism of the professors' politics at ivy league schools comes from the religious right. Thomas Jefferson thought that much of religion was irrational and many of today's professors still do. Jefferson's quote, "For I have sworn on the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." can be seen on his memorial in Washington. It sounds like a good idea for all, but I think Jefferson was looking squarely at the various religious intrusions that he spent much of his political career warding off from the young republic's political structure.

Guido

Reader,

I agree with the statement:

“….a professor's ability to impart information is more important to me as a student than is the professor's political party affiliation.”

But, when I went to college, it wasn’t the conservative professors that were imparting more than just their presentation of the curriculum. In fact, it was easy to tell the libs (the majority) from the cons in that the libs were the most vocal and demonstrative with regards to their social and political leanings.

From what I read, hear and know about today’s institutions of higher learning, things haven’t changed and in fact have probably have gotten a bit worse.

Today’s colleges and universities appear to be havens for liberal thinkers. So, if it were that I could send my kids to a university that’s philosophies weren’t mired in liberalism, I probably couldn’t.

Doesn’t matter though. They have a good enough base to be able to sort out bull$hit when exposed to it.

Asdf:

My experience has been different. I have found that it really varies from professor to professor. I have had some liberal professors who were rather vocal about their political views, and I have had some conservative professors who likewise were vocal. One neoconservative professor I had a few years ago thought that Israel was the motherland, and he thought that students who did not support Israel uncritically were supporters of terrorism and were anti-Semitic (no, I'm not exaggerating his views).

Professors like that tend to be an aberration in my experience. Most professors really want students to learn, and really are passionate about what they teach. Most professors do not want to let their own views prevent students from thinking critically about the material--some of my professors have even told me that they worry that students might read some of their articles, and then might think that it is not okay to adopt a position contrary to one of the articles.

As for your children, I would say that it should be easy for them to avoid overtly liberal professors while they are in school. All colleges and universities publish course descriptions. And just about every professor publishes a syllabus. It's not hard to figure out which classes are being taught by professors with a political agenda. Biology 101 will almost certainly not be politicized, whereas "Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition" almost certainly will be. As if the course descriptions are not enough, most radical professors are well-known on college campuses, and students signing up for their classes generally know what they are getting into. In short, nobody enrolling in Ward Churchill's classes is surprised to find out that he is a radical liberal. Students who do not want to be exposed to him can simply avoid his classes. It's not difficult.

As for avoiding liberalism altogether, that too can largely be accomplished. There are a decent number of explicitly conservative colleges and universities in the United States, and those schools are filled with conservative faculty and students. I don't want to repeat myself, but check my initial post for the names of some of the schools. One of those schools may be a good option for you if you are serious about sending your children to a conservative institution. In general, the conservative schools seem to teach the standard texts but from a more conservative angle. Many of the schools also have an explicitly Christian focus.

I think part of the sadness and frustration is the politicization of every d---ed thing under the sun. (See, there it is again!)

WHY does it matter? Because of the college students I know who receive worse grades on their papers for disagreeing with Marx; who get in trouble for asking their Shakespeare professor to stick to the Elizabethan Era and leave off, already, about Halliburton; who get shouted down as racists or fascists by their peers; and watch agape while passing vigils "Mourning the Death of Humanity" after the 2004 election. (Actual examples, by the way, and the vigil made the front page of the campus paper, above the fold, the Friday after Election Day.)

Reader, I'm glad your experiences are different. It gives me hope that knowledge and wisdom are still the point of University. Naturally political theories and proposed social solutions are then implied, and rise from knowledge and experience - but of late there's a lot of carts coming up before the horses. And isn't there something crass in having to divide even learning into lefty and righty camps - liberal college, conservative college, etc? Can't we just breathe a little and stop taking it all so seriously?

Do a professor's politics play an important role in their ability to teach, to grade objetively, to impart knowledge across a broad non-subjective spectrum....Hell YES! If you think not then it would appear you have not been on a college campus in the last oh...75 to 80 years. This is certainly not a new phenomenon nor is it one that is about to change.

Hell I had a gay english teacher, go figure, who gave a buddy of mine and myself grades we did not deserve because he had it in for us and two other guys in the class. When one of us was not there he would ask the other where we might be. I got a better grade as did my friend then every girl in that class.

Not only do politics influence the quality of education but heck even sexual orientation can greatly influence grades.

Most college professors are from the left side of the isle. Some are from the far left some just lean a bit left. I have had teachers who are Democrats and I have had teachers in college who were communists.

Oh by the way, I went to a Catholic university so it cuts across all lines.

Have any of you ever thought that maybe getting an education requires one to be rational? And if one is rational, one will look at the arguments on both sides. At that point, one ought to conclude that most of the conservatives' positions rest on contradictions.

Academia is all about arguing for one's position. And if your argument, such as the sanctity of life, for example, is contradictory (e.g. abortion is morally wrong, yet the death penalty is morally right), then you realize you need to understand some logic. Once you learn how logic works, which is usually after some grad school these days, you realize that you accept the logical arguments. Hence, the left wins, since their arguments are solid and not contradictory.