Liberalism on Campus

College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 29, 2005

College faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined, a new study says.

By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week. The imbalance is almost as striking in partisan terms, with 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identifying themselves as Democrats and 11 percent as Republicans.

The disparity is even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty are liberal and 13 percent are conservative.

"What's most striking is how few conservatives there are in any field," said Robert Lichter, a professor at George Mason University and a co-author of the study. "There was no field we studied in which there were more conservatives than liberals or more Republicans than Democrats. It's a very homogenous environment, not just in the places you'd expect to be dominated by liberals."

The findings, by Lichter and fellow political science professors Stanley Rothman of Smith College and Neil Nevitte of the University of Toronto, are based on a survey of 1,643 full-time faculty at 183 four-year schools. The researchers relied on 1999 data from the North American Academic Study Survey, the most recent comprehensive data available.

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.
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This study makes no claims regarding how the political views of faculty members actually impact students.

However, the fact that universities and colleges are stacked with liberals raises legitimate concerns in terms of diversity. Usually, discussions of diversity revolve around gender, racial, ethnic, and religious differences. In this case, it is the diversity of thought, ideas, and perspectives that is inadequately represented.

Kurtz writes, "When asked about the findings, Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors, said, '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."

There may be no "good evidence" to indicate problems, but common sense would suggest that the political homogeneity of faculty can't be a good thing in terms of exposing students to a variety of visions. An educational environment so heavily weighted to a single mindset, in this case liberalism, conjures up images of rigid schools of indoctrination rather than places of free-flowing exploration of multiple viewpoints.

In short, it is highly likely your Alma Mater, nourishing mother, is a cradle of liberal conviction.

It's interesting that in spite of the enormous ideological imbalance on campuses, more students identify themselves as members of the conservative camp.

"Let the stats speak for themselves. In a recent poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard, 31 percent of college students across the country now identify themselves as Republicans (27 percent of the students say they are Democrats, and 38 percent consider themselves independent or unaffiliated)... Two other studies, one done by the Gallup Organization and another by the University of California at Berkeley, found that teens now hold more conservative viewpoints than older generations on issues like abortion and prayer in school. Not since the 1980s, when Reagan triggered a youthquake of conservative campus activism, have so many kids rocked the GOP vote."

Liberalism is waning.