Hi Neil Gross, a sociologist at U of British Columbia, has some nice empirical papers on this topic, documenting both the extent of the liberal leanings of academics and some (possibly explanatory) correlates. One working paper can be found at:
http://www.soci.ubc.ca/fileadmin/template/main/images/departments/soci/faculty/gross/why_are_professors_liberal.pdf Here is the abstract: Abstract: The political liberalism of professors*an important occupational group and anomaly according to traditional theories of class politics*has long puzzled sociologists. To shed new light on the subject, we review research on professorial politics over the past half-century, identifying the main hypotheses that have been proposed to account for professorial liberalism. Using regression decomposition, we examine hypothesized predictors of the political gap between professors and other Americans using General Social Survey data pooled from 1974-2008. Results indicate that professors are more liberal than other Americans because a higher proportion possess advanced educational credentials, exhibit a disparity between their levels of education and income, identify as Jewish, non-religious, or non-theologically conservative Protestant, and express greater tolerance for controversial ideas. Together, the variables linked to our hypotheses account for about 43 percent of the political gap between professors and other Americans. We conclude by outlining a new theory of professorial politics that integrates these findings, moves beyond existing approaches, and sets an agenda for future research. Like others, I have never had any experience with people being denied tenure in psychology because of their political beliefs. But on the basis of just that experience I would not be that confident that politics would not enter into the picture in other departments/programs, most likely at the selection stage rather than later during tenure proceedings. For example, we have a pretty hands-on President, Lloyd Axworthy, who was once a federal Minister for the Liberal party here in Canada. By hands-on, I mean that he is promoting our institution as a global / community oriented institution. I would be very surprised to find people entering some of his initiatives who did not toe liberal views. As someone else previously mentioned, certain disciplines might be more prone to "relevance" of political views to people's academic studies. Is it U of Chicago right now that is going through some objections to naming of the Milton Friedman School of Economics (or something ilke that) because it might (appear to) promote a certain economic (i.e., political) worldview? I would also not be surprised if academics active in their faculty associations (to many the public face of university professors??) were not more strongly left-leaning even than the faculty as a whole. Mainstream faculty organizations, for example, appear to get more exercised by conservative threats (e.g., to academic freedom) than to "liberal" threats, which has perhaps contributed to the creation of NAS and FIRE in the USA and SAFS in Canada. See http://www.nas.org/ http://www.thefire.org/index.php http://www.safs.ca/links.html Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca >>> Deborah S Briihl <dbri...@valdosta.edu> 23-May-10 2:27:44 PM >>> Our department actually has a somewhat conservative leaning. I know the political beliefs of a number of people here and I had a conversation with someone a few years ago who used to work in our department who was surprised at the number of people who voted Republican. What I would like to believe is that we hold these ideas away from our courses and teach what the research has shown us in our classrooms. ---------------------------------- Deb Dr. Deborah S. Briihl Dept. of Psychology and Counseling Valdosta State University 229-333-5994 dbri...@valdosta.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a891720c9&n=T&l=tips&o=2771 or send a blank email to leave-2771-13251.645f86b5cec4da0a56ffea7a89172...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=2772 or send a blank email to leave-2772-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
