Echo Chamber on Liberal Campuses

[VABills]

Good editorial in the Washington Post today by a liberal professor. He goes on to point out that there are too many liberal teachers, and therefore the people granduating are only having oneside of every political arguement drummed into them. He calls for more moderation and bringing the school back to the center, so the kids get a well rounded education, and the actually ability to learn and think about choices again.

 

Before anyone complains, there were several studies including one by GMU to support the evidence.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6040500970.html

 

What is important is that many perspectives on every issue should be presented and examined. Right now, liberal bias is so extreme as to threaten the only campus diversity that matters, the diversity of ideas.

 

or

Syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell worries that students may be exposed to just one side of issues and that they may graduate with neither skill nor competence in intellectual argumentation. "These 'educated' people will have developed no ability to analyze opposing sides of issues . . . learning only how to label, dismiss and demonize ideas that differ from what they have been led to believe," he wrote.

[TPS]

Good editorial in the Washington Post today by a liberal professor.  He goes on to point out that there are too many liberal teachers, and therefore the people granduating are only having oneside of every political arguement drummed into them.  He calls for more moderation and bringing the school back to the center, so the kids get a well rounded education, and the actually ability to learn and think about choices again.

 

Before anyone complains, there were several studies including one by GMU to support the evidence. 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6040500970.html

or

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That must be why the democrats control every branch of government....

 

Get over it Rich...

[Johnny Coli]

I don't know why this guy is bringing this up now, as the study was released last year (WaPo 29-Mar-2005). Here is the abstract.

This article first examines the ideological composition of American university faculty and then tests whether ideological homogeneity has become self-reinforcing. A randomly based national survey of 1643 faculty members from 183 four-year colleges and universities finds that liberals and Democrats outnumber conservatives and Republicans by large margins, and the differences are not limited to elite universities or to the social sciences and humanities. A multivariate analysis finds that, even after taking into account the effects of professional accomplishment, along with many other individual characteristics, conservatives and Republicans teach at lower quality schools than do liberals and Democrats. This suggests that complaints of ideologically-based discrimination in academic advancement deserve serious consideration and further study. The analysis finds similar effects based on gender and religiosity, i.e., women and practicing Christians teach at lower quality schools than their professional accomplishments would predict.

 

From this data, culled from a 1999 survey, I believe the authors are making a huge leap from how a professor may lean politically to how that translates into bias in a University lecture. They are making an assumption that liberal-leaning professors will teach with a bias, but that isn't asked or quantified in the study.

 

From the 2005 WaPo article:

The study appears in the March issue of the Forum, an online political science journal. It was funded by the Randolph Foundation, a right-leaning group that has given grants to such conservative organizations as the Independent Women's Forum and Americans for Tax Reform.

Uh-huh......starting to make sense now....

 

Rothman [co-author] sees the findings as evidence of "possible discrimination" against conservatives in hiring and promotion. Even after factoring in levels of achievement, as measured by published work and organization memberships, "the most likely conclusion" is that "being conservative counts against you," he said. "It doesn't surprise me, because I've observed it happening." The study, however, describes this finding as "preliminary."

Based on what data? How are they measuring "possible discrimination" and drawing "the most likely conclusion" from this data set?

[2005 WaPo article linked above] The study did not attempt to examine whether the political views of faculty members affect the content of their courses.

Here's a quote from Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors, also from that article.

"The question is how this translates into what happens within the academic community on such issues as curriculum, admission of students, evaluation of students, evaluation of faculty for salary and promotion." Knight said he isn't aware of "any good evidence" that personal views are having an impact on campus policies.

 

"It's hard to see that these liberal views cut very deeply into the education of students. In fact, a number of studies show the core values that students bring into the university are not very much altered by being in college."

 

So a six year old survey of the personal politics of 1600+ University professors was used to ascertain that there is bias in the content of the classes at those Universities? In which classes? How do Biology and Chemistry faculty teach with a liberal bias? Those conclusions are absurd.

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

Good editorial in the Washington Post today by a liberal professor.  He goes on to point out that there are too many liberal teachers, and therefore the people granduating are only having oneside of every political arguement drummed into them.  He calls for more moderation and bringing the school back to the center, so the kids get a well rounded education, and the actually ability to learn and think about choices again.

 

Before anyone complains, there were several studies including one by GMU to support the evidence. 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6040500970.html

or

654762[/snapback]

After reading Johnny Coli's post I knew the fishiness of this post would come to the surface. GMU, one of the most conservative public Universities in the country was the tip off. Now that I know a Heritage foundation like group funded I know there was beaver in the wood shed.

 

Now I don't doubt that certain Unversities have left leanings, but there are plenty of right wing leaning schools and plenty of schools that are neither, nor focused on politics. Another broad paint brush assault by the righties on public institutions they hate. Then the can justify more cuts in education and b.s. programs like no child left behind.

 

VABills thought you had more dignity that this stuff. Polls, yeh there is an unbiased way to prove a point (sarcasm). They only work when you sponsor them and they provide you with news you don't want to hear. I am suspect when they are outcome based on any side.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

After reading Johnny Coli's post I knew the fishiness of this post would come to the surface.  GMU, one of the most conservative public Universities in the country was the tip off.  Now that I know a Heritage foundation like group funded I know there was beaver in the wood shed. 

 

Now I don't doubt that certain Unversities have left leanings, but there are plenty of right wing leaning schools and plenty of schools that are neither, nor focused on politics.  Another broad paint brush assault by the righties on public institutions they hate.  Then the can justify more cuts in education and b.s. programs like no child left behind.

 

VABills thought you had more dignity that this stuff.  Polls, yeh there is an unbiased way to prove a point (sarcasm).  They only work when you sponsor them and they provide you with news you don't want to hear.  I am suspect when they are outcome based on any side.

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More left- than right-leaning schools, in my experience.

 

However, also in my experience, I've never known anyone to be politically swayed by the culture of their school. All the conservatives I knew in college remained staunchly conservative despite the overwhelmingly liberal nature of the school and faculty. Methinks the writer of the op-ed piece is over-estimating the influence of professors and malleability of students.

[Gavin in Va Beach]

More left- than right-leaning schools, in my experience.

 

However, also in my experience, I've never known anyone to be politically swayed by the culture of their school.  All the conservatives I knew in college remained staunchly conservative despite the overwhelmingly liberal nature of the school and faculty.  Methinks the writer of the op-ed piece is over-estimating the influence of professors and malleability of students.

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I gotta agree with you on this one. In a class I'm taking now the professor ties everything he teaches with theories on Marxism, claiming that capitalism is the most evil econcomic system out there, but most of the students just roll their eyes...

[Taro T]

I don't know why this guy is bringing this up now, as the study was released last year (WaPo 29-Mar-2005).  Here is the abstract.

From this data, culled from a 1999 survey, I believe the authors are making a huge leap from how a professor may lean politically to how that translates into bias in a University lecture.  They are making an assumption that liberal-leaning professors will teach with a bias, but that isn't asked or quantified in the study.

 

From the 2005 WaPo article:

 

Uh-huh......starting to make sense now....

Based on what data?  How are they measuring "possible discrimination" and drawing "the most likely conclusion" from this data set? 

 

Here's a quote from Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors, also from that article.

So a six year old survey of the personal politics of 1600+ University professors was used to ascertain that there is bias in the content of the classes at those Universities?  In which classes?  How do Biology and Chemistry faculty teach with a liberal bias?  Those conclusions are absurd.

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You make a very good point. Two others that should be considered but appear to be dismissed (could only access the abstract, not the paper, so this is based on the abstract) are:

 

1. is there a reason for the "liberal bias", and

 

2. is there any alteration in the views of the students due to the quantified bias?

 

They don't appear to be looking for the reason for the "liberal bias". Is there a self selection for liberal leaning individuals to gravitate toward professorships? Anecdotally, I would say that there is, but have no way off hand to prove it. They state that the liberal bias becomes "self-reinforcing", but is that due to the characteristics the applicant pools bring to the job openings or is it due to the Deans and faculty responsible for hiring to actively look for candidates with a liberal bias? That would be a more interesting question IMO, and I would expect the applicant pool would be at least as responsible for the bias as is the expectations of those doing the hiring.

 

As CTM and Gavin touched upon, if the "liberal bias" of the university professors did influence their students to become indoctrinated to liberal causes, wouldn't you expect to see college age "kids" and 20 somethings becoming increasingly liberal as a greater percentage of professors supposedly become more liberal. Again, it's anecdotal, but there seemed to be a larger percentage of 20-something liberals in the 70's than today. Maybe, if the authors of the study want me to be overly concerned about the current "bias", they can show me tangible effects resulting from their quantified bias. They also might want to show me how a liberal teaches light transmittance or how to solve differential equations differently than a conservative does.

[TPS]

More left- than right-leaning schools, in my experience.

 

However, also in my experience, I've never known anyone to be politically swayed by the culture of their school.  All the conservatives I knew in college remained staunchly conservative despite the overwhelmingly liberal nature of the school and faculty.  Methinks the writer of the op-ed piece is over-estimating the influence of professors and malleability of students.

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Colleges and universities should be "overwhelming(ly) liberal in nature." Students should be exposed to all ideas. And I mean liberal in the traditional sense, not the political. Given that, you are absolutely right on with your last statement.

 

From my experience, yes, colleges tend to have more liberals (in the political sense) than conservatives. I'd say it's due to the generalization that conservatives who do post-grad degrees are more inclined to go into the private sector because it offers greater financial rewards, and (we) liberals tend to go into higher ed because we're less concerned about the financial reward and prefer the life-style.

 

Even though there are more liberals on campus than conseravtives, I have had students tell me stories about being forced to accept ideas from both liberal AND conservatives profs (by "forced" I mean they better write papers or answer questions that support the prof's leanings). However, these have been rare instances. Like so many issues today, people like Horowitz take these rare instances and make it sound like a pandemic.

 

One of my best friends on campus is a conservative historian (our history department actually is overwhelmingly conservative), and we argue all the time about issues (it helps that we mainly do this at the campus watering hole). This is what education is about.

 

I wonder how diverse the convesation is at Liberty College?

[GG]

I gotta agree with you on this one. In a class I'm taking now the professor ties everything he teaches with theories on Marxism, claiming that capitalism is the most evil econcomic system out there, but most of the students just roll their eyes...

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Does he happen to be a finance professor?

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

Does he happen to be a finance professor?

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Somehow I doubt it. I'm thinking Humanities or Liberal Arts.

[Gavin in Va Beach]

Somehow I doubt it. I'm thinking Humanities or Liberal Arts.

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English prof. The class is a study of Crime and the Prison Industrial Complex and the literature/theories it inspires. It was a required course else I'd never take it...

[TPS]

Does he happen to be a finance professor?

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I guess they didn't get it...

[Chilly]

More left- than right-leaning schools, in my experience.

 

However, also in my experience, I've never known anyone to be politically swayed by the culture of their school.  All the conservatives I knew in college remained staunchly conservative despite the overwhelmingly liberal nature of the school and faculty.  Methinks the writer of the op-ed piece is over-estimating the influence of professors and malleability of students.

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You are 100% correct good sir. The writer of the op-ed piece is overstating the effect.

 

This is a hot button issue right now, especially here in Texas, where the while Pianka thing is going on. If you haven't heard about it, one of our professors was talking about how the human overpopulation on the earth is destroying the ecosystem, and that due to the nature of human sociability and mobility, that a disease could wipe our numbers out quickly, and that wouldn't exactly be bad for the environment.

 

The last 10 minutes of his speech were extremely satirical, and a newspaper took it way out of context, basically making it look like he is advocating using a virus to wipe out the human race for the purposes of the environment, which is not even close to what he was saying.

 

He has received death threats and was reported to the FBI. He was interviewed on Wednesday by the FBI for possible terrorist charges.

 

In my experience, the liberalism on University Campuses is overstated by people who are trying to say that its a problem. It also doesn't change many people's views on politics.

 

This has lately been highlighted by a book by David Horowitz, the 101 most dangerous professors or some crap like that. This great, upstading political mind appeared on none other but the 700 club, which is the great Pat Robertson's show.

He has identified a couple UT professors in this book, and I was reading an article my girlfriend showed me last night from another UT professor in the Austin American-Statesman basically calling him and Pat Robertson crazy. It was rather humerous.

 

The transcript of the interview is at http://www.700club.com/cbnnews/commentary/060322a.asp

 

Some of the highlights in my opinion include

 

David Horowitz: "I estimate that there are 50,000 to 60,000 radical professors who want the terrorists to win and us to lose the war on terror. They regard the terrorists as freedom fighters and America is an imperialist power that oppresses third-world people, and we are the root cause of the attacks on us."

 

.......

 

Robertson: Larry Summers, he was Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, a Democrat, Jewish, distinguished academic, and yet he gets run out of Harvard. What happened?

 

Horowitz: That shows you. That is how I arrived at my figure of 50,000 or 60,000.

 

Horowitz: Cornell West makes a salary of $300,000 a year. He works six hours a week. The average full professor at a state school makes $100,000 and at a private school $150,000. They work six hours a week. They have four months paid vacation and lifetime jobs.

 

I know my professors would love to work only 6 hours a week, have that much vacation, and get paid that much money.

 

Horowitz: I do, because conservatives and Republicans have been asleep on this. We haven't even been in the battle. Once our students and our parties and our organizations get in the battle, we can affect it in a big way. The American public would not approve of indoctrinating young people and won’t approve of having one side to an issue.

 

Sure is hurting those Republicans, aint it?

 

This whole thing is blown out of proportion to make it an issue.

[GG]

I guess they didn't get it...

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Nope...

[SilverNRed]

You are 100% correct good sir.  The writer of the op-ed piece is overstating the effect.

 

This is a hot button issue right now, especially here in Texas, where the while Pianka thing is going on.  If you haven't heard about it, one of our professors was talking about how the human overpopulation on the earth is destroying the ecosystem, and that due to the nature of human sociability and mobility, that a disease could wipe our numbers out quickly, and that wouldn't exactly be bad for the environment.

 

The last 10 minutes of his speech were extremely satirical, and a newspaper took it way out of context, basically making it look like he is advocating using a virus to wipe out the human race for the purposes of the environment, which is not even close to what he was saying.

 

He has received death threats and was reported to the FBI.  He was interviewed on Wednesday by the FBI for possible terrorist charges. 

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Is the Pianka issue even a hot button? It was on Drudge Report on Sunday, then in the Daily Texan on Tuesday or Wednesday (don't remember). Other than that, I haven't heard anyone talking about it.

[Chilly]

Is the Pianka issue even a hot button?  It was on Drudge Report on Sunday, then in the Daily Texan on Tuesday or Wednesday (don't remember).  Other than that, I haven't heard anyone talking about it.

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The reason why I said that, is we've received a bunch of emails the past few days meant for the Public Affairs Office at UT that were sent to the ITS Help Desk where I work complaining about it.

 

Just a quick glance at google news, there 108 articles on it. One of the top guys in the education department in Texas gave a couple speeches denouncing him, and I believe that crazy bastard Pat Robertson was talking about him as well.

 

People seem pretty pissed off by it, stupidly. My point was that its being way overblown and is a nonissue.

[ExiledInIllinois]

Hitler's fear was where?

 

Let me guess... On his left.

 

Of course I am not making any internet Nazi/Hitler connections... I guess a lot of fascists fear the left, even if it isn't Stalin.

 

Of course the answer is always in the happy middle.

 

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

Is the Pianka issue even a hot button?  It was on Drudge Report on Sunday, then in the Daily Texan on Tuesday or Wednesday (don't remember).  Other than that, I haven't heard anyone talking about it.

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Hmm, sounds like the old Republican planted newstory cycle, it hasn't made Michael Medved or Rush yet? Then Fox or MSNBC needs to pick it up and then a front page story in the Washington Times.

 

The usual tracking for a made up or partially true whoa is me Right Wing lament, you can usually track it.

[VABills]

Hmm, sounds like the old Republican planted newstory cycle, it hasn't made Michael Medved or Rush yet?  Then Fox or MSNBC needs to pick it up and then a front page story in the Washington Times. 

 

The usual tracking for a made up or partially true whoa is me Right Wing lament, you can usually track it.

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You had me until MSNBC. Sorry they make CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC look conservative.

[YellowLinesandArmadillos]

You had me until MSNBC.  Sorry they make CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC look conservative.

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With Scarborough and Matthews as commentaries please, Roger Ailes still has relationship, they may towards the end of the food chain, but they are still in it.