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Wednesday, February 9, 2011

The Sarcity of Conservative Academics

The term "conservative academic" is a bit of an oxymoron, but it's also an accurate description of myself.  I'm a 4th year Ph.D. student who regularly (although not exclusively) votes for Republicans.  Universities - especially secular ones like mine - are overwhelmingly dominated by those on the political left.  The chart on the right shows a break-down of various professions by political self-identification based on data from Dr. Neil Gross, a sociologist at the University of British Columbia.  Interestingly, professors are over three times more likely than the general public to self-identify as liberal but only half as likely to self-identify as conservative.  My guess is that on my campus the breakdown of liberal/moderate/conservative is more like 55/35/10.

Those on the left see this as evidence smart people are liberal and stupid people are conservative, while those on the right see this as an insidious liberal plot to subvert America's youth.  Even though I'm conservative I generally don't like the liberal bias argument, which equates to saying that somehow the lack of conservatives is analogous to the lack of female physics professors or the relative high school drop-out rates of ethnic minorities compared to whites.  Basically, I have never seen an case where an individual's political views were ever considered in admissions to either undergrad or grad school, course grades, or hiring in academia

Take the case of women in physics - it's clearly not that physicists are sexist pigs trying to bar the doors against women, but somehow 50% of the general population only produces 6% of the tenured physics faculty at American universities.  An article in yesterday's New York Times has me thinking that maybe there is something a little more subtle at work in both cases.  As Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist stated in the article
“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation. But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”
In physics conservatives aren't underrepresented by a factor of 100, but one study did find that there are 4.2 registered democrats for every registered republican among the University of California system’s physics faculty.  For comparison, sociology, ethnic studies, and performing arts all have ratios over 16:1.  The only departments with more republicans than democrats were general business, finance, and military science.  Physics is about on par with communications, medicine, and law.

So the big question is why.  Here are four possible explanations:
  1. There exists overt bias against those with conservative views in academia - something like "liberals are smarter than conservatives".
  2. Academics are subtly “politicalist”, meaning while they don't consciously use political affiliation to make hiring or admissions decisions, they do associate the viewpoints held by conservatives with a lack of intelligence or creativity.  
  3. Conservatives are steered away from even trying to become academics because they think that “politicism” exists in academia.  
  4. Conservatives are steered away from academia by other correlated factors like marriage and children that make it difficult to spend 9+ years in post-secondary schooling. 
In my experience I have seen all four of these things impact the careers of graduate students, although I would say that #1 is fairly rare.  I'm interested in what you think.  Have you ever run into overt "politicism"?  Is this even really an issue?

16 comments:

  1. Conservatives are also "doers" and so they don't have to resort to teaching like liberals do. ;) A big part of it is selection bias. Conservatives tend to stick in the private sector more than liberals do but academics do more of the research. Conservatives are also more likely to believe in such "backwards" things as religion. So it can be easy for academics and other people to associate liberals with universities and conservatives with non-universities, which leads to the conclusion that conservatives are not as smart (although, conservatives as a whole have higher SES {socioeconomic status} than liberals do, which means that on the whole, conservatives make more money and have more education than liberals do). Or maybe conservatives are just too smart to stay in school forever like some of us do. :)

    There are barriers. I don't express my political views too much because so many other people around me have very different views (although I do find ways of expressing my views in rather subtle ways). As far as overt politicism? It certainly exists and I've had classmates experience it (if I wanted to be cynical I could say that I've experienced it but who knows?) but I think that most politicism is mild. After all, aren't liberals all nice and open-minded, especially to people with differing views from their own? ;)

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  2. In my department there is one professor that is well known as a "conservative". This means he is one of the few professors that will sponsor the conservative clubs on campus (each student club needs to have a faculty sponsor or they can't be an "official" club). The end result is that he sponsors something like four or five clubs (and each one of the other 3 conservative faculty on campus sponsors three or four of their own, yes that's 4 "conservative" faculty members for the entire campus, all departments).

    There was one club that he used to sponsor, but he had to stop because he was getting threats from students, and undergrads were stalking his office, constantly taping "their statements" (hate mail) to his door. The reason why they were doing this was because the club decided to bring a former congressman to campus to speak about immigration (as in there should be none). The congressman was prevented from speaking after five audience members were arrested, people started breaking windows and the campus police had to use pepper spray on the protesters to get them to leave. All this (and the endless stream of bad publicity in the campus news paper) made him decide to withdraw his sponsorship of the club. It was too much to deal with and was getting in the way of his research and teaching (don't worry another professor in the department stepped up and offered to sponsor the club, not because he agreed with them, but because the club gave him an excuse to fight with people, and he REALLY likes to fight with people. It's a hobby of his.).

    I find it odd that the most open minded and tolerant people on campus are the most conservative, and the most intolerant and hate filled people self identify as "liberal". Coming from BYU which was very conservative, it was quite a shock (shock, as in abrupt change, not unexpected) to come to a very liberal campus like UNC. I have seen much more racism, abuse of women and overt hatred towards homosexuals here at UNC than I ever saw at BYU.

    Still I am not aware of anyone not getting a job or being fired because of their political views, but that is just the physics department, which tends to be very apolitical. I really can't speak for other departments. I have heard stories about other departments and professors, but nothing first hand.

    I could go on but I might get the discussion off topic.

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  3. Most thinking types do not subscribe to cookbook definition such as “conservative”, “liberal” and all in-between and outliers. We decide on issue by issue. In that context, I could care less about anyone’s sexual orientation as long as it is not criminal – that is rape, exploitation, etc; however, in fiscal issues, I could be classified as “conservative” simply because I worked for my accumulation. Yet, socially, I can see disadvantaged who had no opportunity to really know how the modern finances work, so they are taken for a ride. Unfortunately, nearly 80% of the US population is “disadvantaged” even with PhDs at the end of their names. Unfortunately most republicans are disadvantaged as they are easy to be led to slaughter houses whether in wars, or zero down mortgages, or flag, or my country right or wrong. Think and you will be free of labels… Let us face it, without those so called “liberal professors” most of you would never have a chance to learn by mistakes.

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  4. I wonder what the time evolution looks like. Have academics always been overwhelmingly on the political left or is this a rather recent development or does it go in cycles or does it have some other behavior?

    Incidentally, there is at least one big reason to think that political affiliation and sex (or gender -- which is it here?) are very different with respect to the prior probability of discrimination, namely we know that women were very strongly discriminated against both inside and outside the academy (and probably still are if the AAUW is to be believed) not so very long ago, but we have no evidence (that I know of) that having a political affiliation has led to discrimination in the recent past. Put this another way: Republicans are not a previously disenfranchised group rising from years of persecution and oppression.

    In any event, it is an interesting causal question. I wonder if any serious work has been done to get an answer?

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  5. Jonathan,
    I don't know of any hard data to support this, but several times in reading various things for this post I ran into statements to the effect of "academia became much more liberal during the 60's". That was variously attributed to the Vietnam war, the rise of feminism, the counter-culture movement, the sexual revolution, and so on (I'm sure I've missed some possible causes). But you bring up a fascinating point that this situation is a previously enfranchised group losing ground, whereas in almost all other cases there are historically disenfranchised groups gaining ground.

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  6. One other thing to consider is that this survey is done through self reporting (i.e. what the people describe themselves as). I remember listening to talk online by a sociologist about this very topic, but when he went further and included questions about standard liberal/conservative topics he found that many of the professors who self described themselves as "liberal" actually had very conservative views. That is, they would call themselves liberal, but when asked about specific questions, they would align themselves with the conservative view point. Ultimately what he found was that there was an inverse correlation between someone's education and whether or not they could accurately report their personal political leaning.

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  7. There is also some graffiti scrawled on the wall of a bathroom in my building that says, "You can't be a scientist and a Republican." Not that bathroom graffiti is always accurate, but sometimes is does reflect the common perceptions of people. I wonder if anyone has ever written a book on bathroom graffiti.

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  8. Q,

    Interesting point about self-report. Could you track down a link? I wonder if the same thing happens in the general population and which direction the effect goes.

    Also there are both books and scholarly articles about bathroom graffiti!

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  9. Nick,

    That would have been my guess, but like you, I don't have any actual data. Maybe I'll look around a bit and report back.

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  10. I have a lot of thoughts on this. I neither identify as conservative or liberal completely. I definitely do not consider myself either democrat or republican (I think they both suck!!).

    Having said that, I think there are some possibilities you haven't considered, and I think some assumptions are being made by commenters. Here goes:
    QuantumLeap42 said:
    "I find it odd that the most open minded and tolerant people on campus are the most conservative, and the most intolerant and hate filled people self identify as 'liberal'."
    This is the opposite of my experience. I also went to BYU and I found Michigan to be FAR more open-minded and tolerant (don't get me wrong though, I loved BYU). In fact, this might be the first time I've ever heard anyone say that BYU was "open-minded." A casual glance through the editorials in the Daily Universe (not to mention the recent redaction of unwelcome opinions) assures me it's not getting a lot better.

    I think this is something we've overlooked a bit as well. I'd like to see the same survey done for private religious schools. My guess is that the overwhelming majority of professors will be conservative. Let's face it, religious people tend to be more conservative.

    Re Nick
    I think there is an important possibility to consider. If you look at the MBTI personality types of academics, they tend to be of the NT or NF variety. MOST of the people on earth (around 50%) are of the SJ variety. SJ individuals tend to be followers, trust authority, tow whatever line convention says, etc. This isn't a put-down, we need these people. But they generally DON'T become academics. Academics are often the ones who question, analyze, and are otherwise heretical in some way. A casual glance back through science reveals that MANY of our greatest scientists were simultaneously the biggest heretics of the day. Is it really that surprising that the heretics, the analysts, the questioners would push against the status quo? And I think the status quo in this country has, historically, been fairly conservative, at least before the 60's (particularly in a religious sense).

    I think a lot of what we see in academics is a direct result of the type of people who go into academia. This is both good and bad obviously. We need conservatives in academia and I sympathize with your feeling a bit underrepresented. But then again, maybe it appeals to you to push against the status quo (even if only within academia itself).

    BTW, I love Haidt. He has done awesome work and I applaud his efforts to describe the problems we have in this area.

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  11. I have to agree with quantumleap42. I saw far more diversity of opinions at BYU and open-mindedness in general than I do here in my PhD program. I'm not saying that most of the liberal people around me are not open-minded, I just saw more of it at BYU. A friend and I were just talking about this today. We saw more intellectual diversity at BYU than at our current university (but he said his undergrad institution was even more diverse).

    Anyway, I'd also love QL42's source for the sociologist talk; it would be very interesting.

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  12. I do want to add though that I'm not a fan of the big conservative vs. liberal split. It's not that easy.

    I have plenty of anecdotal experience to add to the fact that a number of people who call themselves liberal actually have a lot of conservative views on issues. It's kind-of funny to have discussions with people and hear them say a number of things that go against their supposed liberal-ness. If you're going to be liberal then be liberal but don't masquerade as a liberal when in fact your views are moderate.

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  13. This has some more interesting statistics: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2007/07/is-the-academy-liberal/

    Anyways Nick - I'm quite curious - what is your perception of the liberal:conservative ratio in astronomy, as compared to physics?

    ==

    Hm, another thought is this: The last 15 years might have also changed perceptions a bit. I could see myself voting Republican before 1980, but I definitely could not see myself voting for any Republicans post-1980 (although I'm still open to it, if it wasn't for certain currents that exist in the current Republican party).

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  14. """I find it odd that the most open minded and tolerant people on campus are the most conservative, and the most intolerant and hate filled people self identify as 'liberal'."
    This is the opposite of my experience. I also went to BYU and I found Michigan to be FAR more open-minded and tolerant (don't get me wrong though, I loved BYU). In fact, this might be the first time I've ever heard anyone say that BYU was "open-minded." A casual glance through the editorials in the Daily Universe (not to mention the recent redaction of unwelcome opinions) assures me it's not getting a lot better.""

    => I think the explanation is actually simple. People with minority opinions tend to be the most tolerant because they *have* to be tolerant. They *have* to respect the views of others in order for their reputation to survive. I've seen my share of conservatives who grew up around liberals, and they can be surprisingly tolerant.

    Conservatives who grew up around other conservatives, on the other hand...

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  15. " I think the explanation is actually simple. People with minority opinions tend to be the most tolerant because they *have* to be tolerant. They *have* to respect the views of others in order for their reputation to survive. I've seen my share of conservatives who grew up around liberals, and they can be surprisingly tolerant. "

    That's a great point. I think you're right.

    Re Jared
    I certainly don't want to bash BYU because I loved it there. And perhaps intellectual open-mindedness is different than social open-mindedness. BYU is certainly not open-minded in the social sphere. But then, that begs the question what on earth does "conservative" vs. "liberal" even mean in the intellectual sphere? Perhaps we need to more clearly define conservative and liberal. Again, I claim if we're talking about the colloquial definitions of liberal and conservative then I find it hard to class BYU as "open-minded." I knew/know plenty of people at/from BYU who are closed to the idea that evolution is a sound scientific theory or that the earth is 4 billion years old. Certainly this is tied to the religious aspect. I dunno, I guess I just don't see it.

    Perhaps, a more accurate way of describing this (rather than the blanket "open-minded") is "open-minded" to what? I find BYU students absolutely closed-minded to anything that suggests their (some possibly cultural) doctrines might not be correct. Perhaps this is no different than some secular students elsewhere who are closed-minded to more "liberal" ideas. But what we're really saying here is that people hold strongly to what they believe no matter what. That's a no-brainer! Frankly, I find there are few people in this world who really are open-minded enough to acknowledge they might not be right and act accordingly. This exists in academia, religion, politics, everywhere!

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  16. Just one note on the data: while the chart at the top is self-reported, the 4.2 democrats per republican was actually based on party registration rather than self-identification. Perhaps conservatives in academia are hesitant to register for the republican party, but I would think that method would be less prone to "measurement error".

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