Salon.com offers an against-the-grain article purporting to show that the accepted wisdom about college professors-that they're overwhelmingly liberal and generally vote Democrat-is overstated. This would be fascinating if true, but the piece contradicts itself. Author Scott Jaschik quotes polling data showing that 47 percent of professors call themselves "liberal" or "far left," while 19 percent call themselves "conservative" or "far right." Where we come from, that sounds dispositive. (And we'd wager that the definition of "middle of the road" that 34 percent of professors use to describe themselves diverges from ordinary folks' concept of centrist.) Further, the article quotes prominent sociologist Todd Gitlin, who not-so-subtly undercuts its entire premise by remarking that "[P]eople who are intellectually serious are acutely revolted by the pattern of deception and stupidity that is manifest in the Bush presidency." Why does this matter? It's not that college professors are more liberal than the average bear; normal people accepted that fact long ago. It's that Jaschik uses his specious argument to take shots at legislative efforts that seek to provide a little ideological balance in federally funded higher ed programs, such as the International Studies in Higher Education Act, which would regulate the flow of federal dollars to university-based "area studies" programs that support anti-American scholarship (click here to learn more).
"The liberal college conspiracy," by Scott Jaschik, Salon.com, September 20, 2004 Daypass required)