Centerfield

Don't assume that conservatives are in the faculties at religious studies departments. Just look through a roster of, say, Southern Baptist Ministers and try to find one who graduated from Harvard, Princeton, or Yale. Many religious conservatives have their own schools that they send their ministers to.

As far as overall, yes, academia tends to be liberal. As long as they don't let their personal viewpoints affect their treatment of students, I don't see where it's an issue. If anything, it would force a conservative student to come to a complete understanding of their own beliefs.

I'd say it depends on the person. If some-one is easly influenced by thier proffesors/teachers and not prone to challanging the viewpoints they are being presented then it can be.

It also depends on the prof's as well. I've seen prof's who did a very good job trying to present viewpoints that differed from thier own and supporting students in reaching alternate conclusions as long as they were academicaly valid. I've also seen prof's who were directly engaged in thinly vieled brainwashing attempts....and who even downgraded students based upon the fact they held different perspectives, regardless of the merits of such students arguement/work.

Short answer - somewhat but definately not a linear relationship.

Well, there is something of a preponderence of liberal professors in academia, but I'm not convinced it's either a conspiracy or an unnatural unholy situation.

Here's the thing. When kids go to college it's a sort of training-wheel way of getting kids to try out autonomy in a semi-supervised environment. At such a stage in one's development, it's really no surprise that humans find themselves thinking idealistically and in egalitarian ways. It's very natural that during nascent adulthood, doubt about one's ability to survive and thrive in the adult world is at a peak. The more doubt you have, the more concerned you are that every get treated fairly, be helped up if you fall, have a level playing field for the competition, and so on.

I think it was Churchill that said that "if you are a conservative at 20, you have no heart. And if you are a liberal at 40, you have no head. This explains a lot, IMO.

That colleges have a professorship geared towards exploration of such ideas makes a fair amount of sense to me. Were it the case that the faculty were very conservative, geared towards preaching uncritical acceptance or justification of the status quo, how would nascent adults respond? Seriously. You'd be bound to see even more rebellious unrest.

So I guess my argument is that, at least to some extent, the make-up of the professorship is developmentally appropriate. Maybe it's the case that there aren't that many conservative professors within certain disciplines because there isn't nearly as much of a market for conservatism among nascent adults as there is at, say, age 40.

U was a Teaching Assistant in graduate school at the University of Georgia in 1980-81. I taught a freshman class in American Government. I found that it was potentially very easy to influence freshman in the sense that I knew more than they did so they had no way to contradict what I was teaching. But I don't think what I taught in the class had much, if any, long-term impact on their views. Maybe it would have if I had tried to proselytize more for one position or the other, but I think most students don't take their professors that seriously anyway. Obviously, there are some that take them very seriously and they may become radicals and so forth if they have left-wing professors. But there is certainly nothing to indicate that the predominance of left-wing professors has had any impact on politics. If anything, the reverse seems to be true; the more liberal the faculties have gotten, the stronger the conservatives have become in politics.

I think the main reason most professors are liberal is that college teaching attracts, for the most part, certain temperaments that tend to be liberal. A lot of conservatives find academia stultifying (and not very remunerative). Liberals, on the other hand, seem to find academia more congenial.

It's my understanding that the political ideologies of the professors can also vary depending upon the departments.

For example, while English and Lit and Education departments tend to run to the liberal, economics and business departments tend to run to the conservative.

I had to laugh at one of MWS's comments. "Students don't take their professors that seriously." At that age, a large percentage of them don't take life all that seriously either.

Our guesses as to whether it makes a difference are just that-guesses. We'd need solid research and that would be hard to do. Its been said before that folks in liberal arts-based professions (i.e. teachers, lawyers, social workers) tend to be liberal and those in the number oriented professions (i.e. business, economics) tend to be conservative. Maybe that the effect of the professorial role models they were exposed to.

I do wonder if this perpetuates the myth that conservatives are "stupid".

Even econ and business departments don't run as close as 50/50, and certainly don't run to conservative majorities. As the article notes, there's still a liberal majority. In the liberal arts, "majority" is too mild a term. The numbers are downright overwhelming.

The students of the '60's and '70's rebelled against their conservative professors by becoming more liberal. It is the nature of youth to rebel against authority, and the professors are authority. Wonder what the students of today are doing? :-)

I've tweaked an aphorism to explain why religious studies professors are lefties:

"Those who believe, preach; those who don't, teach"

Of course, professors have duties other than teaching callow undergrads. They are responsible for advancing their selected fields through research, thought, and writing.

If all of this is informed first by political ideology without diversity, then research suffers, then knowledge itself suffers, then the students suffer.

AH,

You are right; most of my students were far more interested in partying than in my class--of course, maybe that's a reflection on my teaching!

I think it's also fair to point out that "liberal" does not equate to "propagandist." I think most of the liberal professors are largely mainstream and not trying to proselytize for their point of view. There is a radical minority that sees it as their role to inculcate the "proper" progressive principles in their students. To a certain extent, I think these kinds of professors tend to draw students who are already leaning in that directions, so that you have a very noisy, active group of professors and students that stir up a lot of trouble and intimidate the administration.

When I was in college, I had some professors who were Straussian conservatives and they created almost a cult of Strauss. These kids would spout Straussian language, etc. So, it can happen on both sides, but I suspect a lot of them were looking for something anyway.

as a liberal college professor i wonder if this study is a bit of a boondoggle - the tendency to self-identify as a liberal is strongly correlated with the years of formal education one has. since profs probably have the most years of formal education of any profession (certain medical specialties excepted) its not surprising that more profs self-identify as liberal.

as for "influencing" the post-pubescent mind - it has been my observation that parents' political attitudes predict students overwhelmingly. then the profs have to compete with hormones and booze and drugs, not to mention sports, tv and poker to get the students to focus on the syllabus. the amount of time left over to shape students' ideological beliefs is actually quite small.

coesnkioo poiuyt http://ghjklfnvietfpi.com/