Townhall.com ^ | June 10, 2013 | Rachel Alexander
Conservatives have long suspected there is discrimination against
conservative professors in academia, and now there is evidence to prove it.
Sociology professor Neil Gross, a self-described liberal, reveals the results of
surveys showing this bias in his new book, Why Professors are Liberal and Why
do Conservatives Care?
Sociologist George Yancy asked professors if they would be more or less
likely to hire someone if they were a Republican, evangelical or fundamentalist.
Three-quarters said political affiliation would not affect their hiring
decision. But the one-quarter that did say it would influence their decision
virtually all said they would favor a Democrat over a Republican. Almost half of
the sociology professors surveyed said they would look unfavorably upon
evangelicals and fundamentalists trying to get a job in their department!
In a 2005 survey, researcher Gary Tobin asked professors how favorably or
unfavorably they felt about various religious groups. Fifty-three percent of
academics responded that they regard evangelicals unfavorably. The next highest
unfavorable rating was 33 percent regarding Mormons.
Professor Gross performed his own “audit study,” sending in fake applications
to upper academia at universities around the country. One set of applicants, the
control group, had nothing political listed on their resumes. The other two sets
of applicants indicated they had either worked on the McCain or Obama 2008
presidential campaigns. He found, “On average, the DGSs (directors of graduate
studies) responded less frequently, more slowly, and less enthusiastically to
the conservative applicant.”
The average professor is three times as liberal as the average American, and
academia is even more liberal now than it was in the 1960s. Gross provides
evidence indicating that feminism greatly increased the drift of college faculty
to the left, in every field except engineering. Today, 63 percent of female
academics describe themselves as feminists. Seventy-three percent of academics
describe themselves as moderates, liberals or radical leftists. Gross admits,
“…it would be foolish for anyone with truly antifeminist sensibilities to become
a sociologist,” due to how liberal that field has become. The Sex and Gender
Section is the second largest section in the American Sociological Association.
New departments have emerged like Women’s Studies where conservatives would not
even bother applying.
Gross’s thesis is that conservatives self-select other professions,
independently choosing not to become professors because academia is so liberal.
But this sidesteps the clear evidence Gross provides revealing faculty bias in
hiring. Gross cites, yet ignores, a study which found that seven percent of
conservative academics report having been the victim of political
discrimination. Conservative professor Mary Grabar debunks
Gross’s thesis, publishing essays from six white male professors who have been
blocked out of higher academia, in her new book, Exiled: Stories From
Conservative and Moderate Professors Who Have Been Ridiculed, Ostracized,
Marginalized, Demonized and Frozen Out. Most of them cannot obtain
well-paying full-time work at four-year institutions, and instead are relegated
to “perpetual adjunct status, teaching twice as many classes as the average
course load, for wages that work out to be less than minimum wage.”
In the second half of Gross’s book, he tries to understand why conservatives
care about this bias. Besides the fact that it is unfair to conservatives who
want to become professors, the obvious answer is because many professors insert
their political biases into their grading and teaching. Gross correctly answers
this question on page three in his book’s Introduction and should have stopped
there, “Stick an impressionable twenty-year old in a classroom for fifteen weeks
with a charismatic instructor who makes the case that conservatives are
heartless or deluded and that the United States has evil designs, and the
student is likely to veer left.” Gross interviewed professors on whether they
engage in political indoctrination, or “critical pedagogy.” Two of fifty-seven
professors he interviewed fully admitted they were guilty of it.
Yet Gross cannot understand the conservative mind, and wastes the second half
of the book analyzing stereotypes and red herrings. Professor Grabar reviewed
Gross’s book and concluded, “Even as he attempts to look fair-minded, Gross
presents caricatured pictures of conservatism.”
Gross attempts to make conservatives look bad throughout the book, but
much of it backfires. He asserts, “social conservatives tend to come from lower
social class origins in the contemporary American context,” and, “Professors
tend to come from better educated, higher income families than other Americans.”
However, this just goes to validate the complaint by conservatives that academia
is composed of elitist liberals who come from wealthy, connected
families.
The good news is not all areas of study are heavily dominated
by professors on the left. Economics, criminology, and engineering still have a
significant portion of conservative professors, although not quite 50 percent.
To his credit, Gross has attempted to put some semblance of fairness into his
book, by daring to expose real biases against conservative professors. And for
that he was threatened by the very liberal establishment he is a part of. As a
result of his audit study, “Two complained to my institutional review board, and
one threatened legal action if his case was not removed from our data set (it
was).” It is a sad day for academia when the left is not only shutting down
conservatives, but also their own who are speaking up about the suppression of
free speech and the free flow of ideas at the universities.
DIOGENES invites you to pull up a chair on this fine day and read posts from around the world. The writing may lean to the right...but that's the way Diogenes wants it! You may leave your opinion, but Diogenes rarely changes his! WELCOME!
-
Free Government ^ | 1997 | Sraff Free government assisted cell phone programs have become more popular, in part, due to the poor economy ...
-
The Dems went down to Georgia They was looking for a seat to steal They were in a bind, 'cause they were way behind They were willing t...