The notion that academics are more liberal than the rest of the population may be true, but the idea that this ideologically committed “liberal professoriate” is able to inflict its views on naive and unwitting students is certainly not. That’s just one of the key conclusions of a brand new book by my former George Mason colleagues, Jerry Mayer and Lee Fritschler (pointer via Tyler Cowen). From a very nice feature in the New York Times:
If there has been a conspiracy among liberal faculty members to influence students, “they’ve done a pretty bad job,” said A. Lee Fritschler, a professor of public policy at George Mason University and an author of the new book “Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities” (Brookings Institution Press).
The notion that students are induced to move leftward “is a fantasy,” said Jeremy D. Mayer, another of the book’s authors. (Bruce L. R. Smith is the third co-author of the book.) When it comes to shaping a young person’s political views, “it is really hard to change the mind of anyone over 15,” said Mr. Mayer, who did extensive research on faculty and students.
“Parents and family are the most important influence,” followed by the news media and peers, he said. “Professors are among the least influential.”
A study of nearly 7,000 students at 38 institutions published in the current PS: Political Science and Politics, the journal of the American Political Science Association, as well as a second study that has been accepted by the journal to run in April 2009, both reach similar conclusions.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:00 am
In what I recall from my own college years, professors had plenty to say but they pretty much stuck to their subject area – I don’t really remember any of my instructors expressing political views in the classroom.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Elizabeth –
Me too. I worked closely and on urban issues with scholars who were marxist, neo-marxist, centrist, liberal, conservative, and neo-conservative scholars and this was near universally true. Save for one very well known liberal professor while in graduate school for political science. But instead of trying to push me to the left, he did just the opposite. In my research paper on the housing finance crisis of the time, he thought some of my ideas were too left-leaning (I was trying to employ some neo-marxist theory of the day) and made me rewrite it, as a comparative analysis of neo-conservative and liberal as well as neo-marxist approachers. Hmmm..
November 9th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Hi Richard–thanks for the kind plug on your site. We just had our book party tonight, and Lee and I would have loved to have you there. I remember yours at Politics and Prose for the Flight book (You had better turnout, but we had better food–Lebanese Taverna). I think we can revise our essay on the election to include some interesting stuff on Palin as a signal, to those afraid of the cultural shifts you write about, and (unintended) to those who are relishing them. Incidentally, check out Mark Lilleks in the WSJ–brilliant piece on the passing of a tradition of conservative intellectualism. Best part is where he says the liberal sin of the 60s and 70s of “radical chic” is now paralleled by the equally stupid and dangerous sin of “populism chic” in which the economic views of plumbers are put ahead of those of Nobel prize winning economists–with a sneer.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
In terms of economics many people are doubting the advice of Economists that win the Nobel Prize like Myron Scholes who founded the hedge fund Long Term Captial Management that was bailed out by the Fed ten years ago and almost took down the world economy back then. He is now managing a hedge fund that lost 29% of its value in the first half of October and has stopped withdrawals. Hedge funds are supposed to in theory make money all the time regardless of economic conditions. Obviously, Scholes theories are massively flawed.
So flawed in fact people might be better off taking investment advice from hmm… A plumber????
November 9th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Please tell me you are not referring to Joe the Plumber.
November 10th, 2008 at 9:25 am
I’v always thought that academia (of which I’m a part-time member) drifts to the left because it’s insulated from the colder and harder realities of day-to-day business. Professors can focus solely on their ideas, case studies and areas of interest without having to worry about making payroll or facing their peers after having suffered a business setback. This is not to say that academia is not without its own internal challenges and competitions; but it’s more or less a socialistic institution that rewards seniority or the indicia of seniority (lots of published materials) and philosophy as opposed to measurable achievement–quite the opposite of the business world. Necessarily, academia focuses upon the evolution of ideas. So I’ve always viewed the liberalism of academia as a beneficial check on the steely interests of business in a capitalistic society. Academia makes large contributions to society, unquestionably, and its idealism is, frankly, refreshing, even if it’s too far afield to be substituted for day-to-day policy. Academia ensures that the envelopment of those day-to-day polices is always pushed and tested.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:37 am
What’s the old saying –
“If you’re not a democrat at 18 you don’t have a heart, and if you’re not a republican at 28 you don’t have a brain”.
Pretty well sums it up