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The Spectacle Blog
Veronique de Rugy points to Daniel Klein’s study summary in which he investigates why there are so few conservative and libertarian professors. His answer? Path dependence — few conservatives would want to enter a field already dominated by liberals — plus a reinforcing mechanism:
The majoritarian procedure of each department means that once a majority leans left, the department will tend toward leftist uniformity. The pyramidal structure of each discipline means that publication, awards, grants, recommendations will follow the pyramid’s apex, and if the apex goes left it tends to sweep leftists/neuters into job posts throughout the pyramid.
If leftists have a lock on many fields, it means that non-left applicants will tend to be screened out. Awareness of that feeds back to the non-left student’s thoughts about the future. Self-selection is a function of the screening.
We found that Republican-voting members of the scholarly associations were significantly more likely to have landed outside of academia. For example, in Anthropology/Sociology, 43% of the Republican scholars were working outside academia, compared with only 24% of Democrat scholars. In History, it was 47% versus 27%. In all six disciplines overall, it was 41% versus 25.
I think this is a partial explanation of a much larger phenomenon. Klein is himself a professor, at George Mason (incidentally, he’s also the same guy who did a study purported to show that the Spectator isn’t pro-liberty) and so it’s not surprising that he thinks mostly of universities. The reality is, however, that liberals dominate a lot of fields in a way that conservatives do not. The vast majority of the mainstream media, except for some glaring exceptions that prove the rule, is composed of liberals. Hollywood, musicians, career government officials, artists, etc. are all liberal areas. I can’t think of a single walk of life that is similarly conservative, except for perhaps oil companies — which is a little more specific than just academia.
Self-selection has something to do with it, but there’s more going on there.
UPDATE:
The military leans conservative, as commentator BillD points out.
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billd| 1.28.10 @ 4:30PM
The military leans conservative, for obvious reasons, not the same ones as academia, though.
I've been wondering about the effect that Vietnam-era student draft deferments had on pushing adademia to the left.
Franklin| 1.28.10 @ 4:34PM
Academia's slide into progressivism was helped when the government greased the slide with entitlements and kowtowed to their unions.
JanevonMises| 1.28.10 @ 4:37PM
While majoritarian bias may have something to do with why we see such a small minority of conservatives in the rank of academicians, let me posit another theory, namely that of seeking environments that reward idea generation versus environments that reward successful outcomes of ideas.
In academia, no one is judged on the outcome of theory, mainly because the economic resources at risk are not those of an identified individual entity (investors, corporation, etc). In fact, the more wrong you are in your outcomes, the more reason it is to seek additional grants to continue the experiment. There is no group or person demanding that the investment either yield a positive result, or be put to a rigorous cost/benefit test. In fact, I have often thought that it would be a really great idea if Nobel Prize winners had to refund a portion of their winnings if their theories were found to be wrong. But that is private sector thinking.
However, in the private sector, you are judged by how successfully your theories can be applied. The project always has an internal rate of return that must be hurdled before the resources are invested.
Those who have a more progressive political philosophy tend not to examine outcomes, only intent; and it makes sense that they would thrive and gravitate toward an environment that further encourages that.
Those who have a more conservative philosophy tend to place greater store on outcome, not just intent; and they just don't have the time to waste on repeating the unsuccessful efforts.
The area where this hypothesis doesn't really hold up is the performing arts. That is an arena that is entirely driven by successful outcomes. If you aren't talented enough, you will not sell records or movie tickets, etc. Yet the entertainment industry is filled with progressive types. I wonder if it is because they feel somehow "guilty" or "lucky" that they worked hard and are successful, when so many of their compatriots aren't.
For full disclosure, I do work in the oil and gas business.
Becky| 1.28.10 @ 5:52PM
I have noticed that a lot of athletes also seem conservative. You can be a bad singer and make money, but you cannot be a bad athlete and succeed.
I think it is a somewhat narcissist culture that attracts liberals to academia and the arts; a reliance on intelligence alone (thinking you are really, really smart and can figure out anything), neglect for historical significance and experience, and as you stated not having to have your ideas actually work as you imagine.
Liberal academics go from school as a child to school as an adult. It is a safe world to live in.
I thought in an earlier time, teaching was a profession of a young man on his way to doing other things. Today it is the other thing. I have sat in classes recently in college where the education majors will readily admit the hours are good. Most envision moving from public school to the university also.
Oddly, I have read where people don't begrudge an Oprah for being a billionaire, but do a Bill Gates.
Franklin| 1.29.10 @ 1:03PM
Oh right you are! Perfectly put, JanevonMises.
Eric| 1.28.10 @ 5:29PM
I'm a 20 year practitioner of local market TV news. I've come to believe that there are several factors contributing to the liberal domination of journalism. It all starts in Academia. J-schools tend to disseminate a lot of liberal talking points and news coverage strategies as unassailable fact. I was a late-matriculating student, approaching 30 after spending time in the Army, and so I probably approached all the diversity worshiping hoopla with a more skeptical mind than many of my younger classmates.
Then, after you clear the educational gauntlet, once you arrive in a professional newsroom, you encounter a couple types of personalities: 1) The true believers still reveling vicariously in Woodward and Bernstein's having taken down The Man. These people are loud bullies like the academics, and they're convinced there's a snake under every conservative rock. They're positive all political questions has been conclusively decided in their favor, and they belittle anyone who dares challenge them, so most don't. And 2) There are plenty of more or less apolitical types who go along to get along, nodding assent to whatever the prevailing wisdom seems to be.
You've got to be incredibly strong-willed and sure of what you stand for, or by default you end up a member of the second group, reinforcing the stereotypes of the first. And even then you have to pick your battles carefully. The trap is that everyone in the second group is ready to buy into the first group's pronouncement that you're the just the newsroom's token reactionary NRA-luvin', woman's right to choose-hatin', pollution spewin', Rush Limbaugh listenin', bigoted, hayseed neanderthal if you chirp up with a conservative counterpoint to the hogwash du jour.
If you want to argue that cutting marginal tax rates has repeated produced more tax revenue, or that there's no correlation between Head Start programs and future success, or that a lot of the "science" behind global warming isn't as settled as the activists would have you think, you don't even open your mouth unless have the slam dunk facts right at your fingertips.
It's a self-perpetuating system that leaves any good conservative constantly bucking a big headwind just to keep things fair.
The kicker, of course, is that the conservatives tend to practice journalistic restraint. The ones I've worked with don't go out of their way to be the antidote to the liberals, producing stories that advance a conservative point of view while shortchanging the liberal one. They just try to give all sides a fair shake, which many of the liberals don't feel obligated to do.
Bill Kurtz| 1.29.10 @ 3:38PM
I'll never forget something Rush Limbaugh said on the air in the early '90s. A caller asked him why media workers tended to be liberals. Limbaugh started by saying that more conservative-minded students tended to go into business or professions, while students who wanted to "change the world" went into media.
"Let me tell you," Limbaugh added, "that there's nothing that conservatives who own media companies like better than liberals who are willing to work for next to nothing."
I will also add that the late Robert Novak wrote that when he spoke at colleges, he tried to meet with conservative students. Virtually none of them, he said, had any interest in working in media.
Dan| 1.28.10 @ 6:08PM
I've got a simpler answer:
Those who cannot do, teach.
If you're already embittered toward your chosen profession, having failed to succeed in its business, a liberal mentality may result or also may be the cause of said failure.
In the classroom, seldom are theories tested with real world results so those who cling to loosing theories are safe in their spouting of such instead of testing.
Jeanne Large| 1.31.10 @ 3:27PM
As a former 6th grade teacher who worked hard to be sure every student in my classroom became a more thoughtful and well informed learner, I must disagree with your comments about teaching. Many of us went into education because we believe it is an honorable profession. It has nothing to do with our political points of view. If we had been interested in money or politics we would have chosen a different profession.
Ken (Old Texican)| 1.28.10 @ 6:59PM
Mr. lawler, you are having a bad hair day. heh.
Don't feel too bad. I have had bad days too.
My worst bad day, I lost my company somewhere around $11,000,000 (eleven million US dollars).
...So let me 'splain something to you. Most of us capitalistic ...earners...don't choose to spend our life in academia/starvation.....picking our noses and flicking bugers at our students.
No regrets| 1.28.10 @ 6:59PM
One of the most important reasons that I decided not to pursue a Ph.D. because I did not want to spend the rest of my life among politically correct "thinkers." I didn't realize that pc would follow me into the world and make everything as crazy and hateful as what I saw on one Ivy League University campus.
Martin Owens| 1.29.10 @ 12:58AM
Little late to the fair, aren't we?
The leftoids suborned the professions years ago.
AMA, ABA, the faculties, the newsrooms... It's called seizing the high ground.
Remember Ayn Rand's quote from Ellsworth Toohey: " we're after power and we mean it..."
We shoulda listened, God knows how we'll disinfect the society now.
Tenn Slim| 1.29.10 @ 8:10AM
Opine
Bt
Having traversed the career fields from Retail sales to Professional Logistician, with years of Aerospace, military, farming tossed in, I can safely say, Liberals tend to gravitate toward the employment known as Clean Hands. I never, ever, ran across a Mechanic, a Ditch Digger, a Heavy equipment operator or even an Aerospace engineer, that was a Liberal.
bt
Conservatives tend to like to work. Seems to me the opposite is true of Liberals and thier adherents.
end
Semper FI
hoads| 1.29.10 @ 9:04AM
Eric does a good job of explaining the dynamics that perpetuate liberalism within journalism. The same is true within most all of our pillars of society. The Left learned long ago that in order to progress their agenda, they must first infiltrate the foundational institutions within society so they have methodically captured our legal system, academia, media, entertainment and now even our professional organizations, charitable foundations and even our churches.
The goal is to stigmatize and ostracize dissent and opposition to the point that those who seek to combat the leftist deluge find themselves a target and subject to ridicule, animosity and revenge such that they assuage , as Eric describes, to "go along to get along".
This is why it is so important for those of us who seek to push back against this onslaught to make our voices heard so that those who find themselves intimidated find new found courage and confidence that their point of view is supported and encouraged.
Doug| 1.29.10 @ 4:06PM
I'm an academic and a liberal. Whoever commented that academia is dominated by theory and not results is deluded and wrong. I work in a branch of science where, if I screw up, real people can die. I think the reason that academia is dominated by liberals is that what is required more than anything is originality and creative thinking, and these things are just more likely to be found among progressives versus conservatives. Conservatives are all about the status quo -- that will not cut it in the reality based world of the academy. I also think that liberals are more likely than conservatives to favor freedom over conformity and liberty over authority. Those 60s radicals you like to bash were people who refused to march in lock-step down the authoritarian road to Vietnam, just as Soviet liberals dissenting from that country's military adventures in Afghanistan rolled the rock that started the landslide that brought down the USSR. Throughout history, great ideas have mostly come from liberals. Evolution, earth centrism, human rights, equal rights, almost every true innovation in science or the arts have come from a non-conforming liberal.
tom| 1.29.10 @ 8:14PM
I beg to disagree.
Your argument falls apart under logical examination.
I've spent some time in academia and more time in the real world and ,although you may consider yourself the exception to the rule, academics rarely have to deal with the consequences of their failed ideas.
In the REAL world however, such as in my profession as a physician, I deal with science and if I screw up, people can REALLY die.
In MY profession, the clinicians who routinely deal with LARGE numbers of patients are usually too busy to engage in medical politics and tend to be conservatives.
The academics in teaching hospitals, who have large number of interns, residents, and fellows to do their work for them, have the time to write research papers, run medical journals and engage in medical politics.. have more of a tendency to be liberals than the clinicians who actually provide most of the care. They live for the prestige of publishing and position in medical organizations and have seized control of organizations like the AMA..which is one of the reasons that the AMA now only speaks for a very small minority (about 19%) of doctors in the US... as doctors desert it in droves.
To claim that liberals have a lock on creativity and original thinking is just arrogant, based more on liberal delusions of grandeur than any evidence based fact.
As for conservatives being all about the "status quo"? That is simply ridiculous!
Conservatives believe in certain eternal principles..freedom, free markets, limited government, inalienable rights of ALL individuals granted by a Creator rather than being derived from the whims of government.. and if the status quo is destructive to those principles.. they certainly do NOT support it!
Need proof? A Democrat controlled White house and Congress are currently the "status quo"..and conservatives are actively working to change that!
As a response to our efforts to CHANGE the current "status quo", liberals derisively call us "teabaggers".
As if we are supposed to be insulted by a name that compares us to those who resisted a tyrannical 'status quo" over 200 years ago by throwing tea into Boston Harbor!!
Who is marching in lock-step with Obama?
It's certainly NOT conservatives!
As for great ideas having come from liberals?
There have been a few... if you mean CLASSICAL liberalism.
But the contemporary collectivist?
To be intellectually honest, the modern leftist has much more in common with the collectivist ideas of Marxism, Fascism, Nazism and Communism and their proponents, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, castro..et.c.etc...than with any classical liberal.
You remind me of a liberal high school classmate who went into philosophy in academia. He advanced further and further in academia until he finally quit while working on his Phd and got a job in a welding shop. He told me that the humblest blue collar worker in that shop had more integrity, honesty and common decency in his finger than the entire petty, back stabbing, power mad faculty of the liberal philosophy dept in academia that he left in disgust.
It looks like you have yet to learn his lesson.
David Baum| 1.29.10 @ 4:46PM
Let me take a stab at this from the perspective of someone who is both an academic and a "non-leftist." There are a number of different strains of leftism that run through the academy that collectively tilt the institution to the left. Put differently, not everyone is a liberal for the same reason. Scientists, who generally speaking have a rather naive take on politics, trend left because their own fields tend to stress the benefits of collective effort. Although individual breakthroughs are not unheard of, most scientific progress seems to come from broad cooperation. Libertarians, off following their own individual courses, may make wonderful paths, but to make roads requires the kind of collaboration that the state and the scientific community seem to specialize in. Conservatism just doesn't match the professional experience of scientists. Humanists and social scientists trend left for different reasons: literary and artsy types because they identify conservatives with authority which they believe they instinctively reject (and by the way, they are not wrong about the relationship between conservatism and authority, unless Burke, de Maistre, Acton, etc. have been lying to me all these years); and social scientists because the very nature of their fields is found in the "social" which Maggie Thatcher says doesn't exist. I could go on, but the point is that the academy tends to be an environment in which conservatism really is out of place, at least today's conservatism which is a bit off its game. Conservatism had a brief renaissance when it identified itself with the world of ideas, and even claimed a leadership role in this regard. But today's conservative movement has been unable to disentangle itself from both the widespread anti-intellectualism that Buckley and Lasch tried to free us from, as well as a more perniscious anti-rationalism that finds us throwing in our lot with evolution deniers and global warming skeptics. On the otherhand, talented young people of a leftist perspective are unlikely to pursue careers in either the corporate world or the military, both of which are overwhelmingly conservative, and therefore seemingly hostile to their personal and philosophical outlooks. They thus crowd their way into the academy which they pursue with greater vigor and tenacity than other candidates. I would love to hire some talented PhD's from the right side of the political ledger, but as long as they are all rushing off to get MBA's and law degrees in pursuit of money (no one mentioned that professors make squat) I don't have many good candidates to choose from and I must concede to my more liberal colleagues that the better candidates are the young lefties-in-training. The fault is our own and we should admit it. We are self-congratulatory (the oil guy who thinks his is the "real" world and the academy is a walled garden is so off the mark it should infuriate every thinking person, left or right), and basically whiney. Back in the 1980's there was a genuine movement to bring a right leaning dialogue into the academy. Since that time the country has moved more and more to the right and yet conservatives can't make headway; we've actually lost ground. And like the unions, we blame unfair competition. This is why we're not better represented in the academy: we're not smart enough anymore even to see the silliness of our own arguments. Conservsatives will find a place in the academy when they stop hating it. Conversely, conservatives will have the ideas again when they shed their unquestioning admiration of business and the military. Business usually gets it wrong (that's why most businesses fail) and conservative admiration for the military sounds a bit too "strong state" for this old time conservative. Someone tell me a compelling reason for conservatives to be in the academy other than to balance the supposed propaganda sheet and I'll start believing that we deserve a greater role there.
Pingback| 1.29.10 @ 7:33PM
The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Left-Leaning Professions | Nice Article for Stu links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
tom| 1.29.10 @ 8:18PM
DOUG:
Since you obviously have so much to learn..I'll think I'll share my friend's experiences with you..in his own words from the sad e-mail he sent me.
"While Graduate Representative to the Faculty, I was able to hear the deep-rooted hypocrisy gurgle forth from the most respected of the senior faculty, and watch the brave junior faculty ask the embarrassing questions, like John Stevens, nephew of the Justice: 'why are we expanding the philosophy program when we cannot get jobs for the graduates we've had over the last two years?' 'Why should we raise tuition again when most Freshman and sophomore classes are taught by Grad students?' So whether one prefers "deep-rooted hypocrisy" or "contending with the business dimension of the university," the bottom line was the same: "rake 'em in and say what you have to say to get them here."
By Fall 1976, my dissertation topic was set and approved: "Philosophical Foundations of Linguistic Theory." My classmates and some faculty were drinking themselves silly, some attempting suicide, some just off on their own little depressed world. It said something to me when Jim Smith would come to Advanced Heidegger Seminar and the first thing he'd set down by the text was his bottle of Maalox. One of the star grad students who completed his dissertation when I was a 1st year student at Purdue accidentally came across his recommendations -- effectively lying on the floor, you might say -- and was in shock regarding the completely negative things his Thesis advisor said about him, and the generally weak letters from others he had counted on.
As regards me personally, in 1977 the Interdisciplinary program was effectively eliminated when my Dissertation Advisor in Linguistics was denied Tenure -- his was the last of the old Sub-department under English which eventually became a Sub-department under Phonology -- not to be Tenured at that point -- and the handwriting was on the wall. Divorce on the immediate horizon, Purdue having a wishy-washy commitment to Linguistics, it seemed to me that I better get out, and, as John Koostra said in the Hancock Tower at one of the APA meetings, overlooking Chicago: 'kinda makes you want to quit this racket and do something honest for a living, doesn't it?' So I did.
I worked as a welder in Indiana for about a year or so (you may recall my father had a custom fab shop), and was about to become shop Foreman, when it appeared to me that it was easy for the temporary to become permanent, and while I could accept the promotion, it was not in the best interests of the business (since I knew I would not stay long term) and not in the best interests of the other guys who'd been there for years and years. I worked closely with Rossie, the guy who had polio as a kid, and a few dozen other colorful, uneducated, but quite good and honest people -- any one of whom would put most of Purdue's philosophy faculty to shame. It eventually dawned on me -- as it does again now -- that I was essentially ashamed to be associated with the Philosophy faculty at Purdue, who could espouse one thing and live its opposite (that not said, btw, as though I am _so_ much better at it than they...). I never went back."
David Baum| 1.30.10 @ 12:08PM
Tom: Got anything from this century? I remember the '70's as a time when everyone seemed to be living this life. Conservative politicians were busy wrecking the constitution; right wing religious leaders were sexually abusing their staff; and Republicans cynically built majorites out of the wreckage of southern racial politics. This hardly seems better to me as a model for private and public life than the "liberal" professorial debauchery your friend recalls. Two things are evident from your emails: one, you believe that somehow we conservatives are the only ones who believe in freedom, or "real" freedom, and that we are the only ones who somehow are serious or should be taken seriously. Both are dangerous beliefs and serve to discredit us when we vie for public support for our positions. Liberals are, like us, children of the Enlightenment, and believe in certain ideals of freedom and human dignity. The devil is certainly in the details, but liberals are our allies in a world that mostly rejects the Enlightenment, and they serve as a reminder that conservatism initially had the good sense which it has since abandoned not to hitch its wagon to the star of unfettered free enterprise (and we American conservatives have mortgaged ourselves to half-a-dozen Austrians of all people in doing so!). And finally, if being a physician is so non plus ultra, why did you guys steal the title "doctor" which means teacher to describe yourselves? Just asking.