Recently my colleague Mark Bauerlein commented on the interesting debate regarding the continued merits—or lack thereof—for tenure. The basic critique of tenure is a powerful one: as Freakonomics put it, “What does tenure do? It distorts people’s effort so that they face strong incentives early in their career (and presumably work very hard early on […]
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This is the slightly edited introduction to the author’s new collection of essays, Decline and Revival in Higher Education ( Transaction Publishers ). Dr. London is president of the Hudson Institute, one of the founders of the National Association of Scholars, and the former John M. Olin Professor of the Humanities at New York University. […]
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Two researchers offer a new twist on an old question—why do college professors overwhelmingly lean to the left? Bias against conservatives is not the main reason, nor are the allegedly higher IQs of liberals, say Neil Gross of the University of British Columbia and Ethan Fosse of Harvard. Instead they suggest a theory of “path […]
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Last Sunday, the New York Times’ “Ethicist” column featured a letter from a lawyer loath to hire internship applicants that belonged to the Federalist society. Randy Cohen, the “Ethicist” suggested that disqualification on the grounds of their membership was unfair. The lawyer went ahead and rejected all applicants who were members anyway. Ilya Somin, at […]
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Last Friday, a 6-hour conference at the City University of New York (CUNY) graduate center examined “rightist efforts, from fiscally or socially conservative movements to hate groups.” It apparently raised no eyebrows, though if the meeting had set out to examine “leftist efforts, from fiscally and socially liberal movements to the Unabomber and animal rights […]
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Fellow co-believers frequently ask me how I, a “notorious” conservative professor, have survived decades surrounded by loony lefties. My answer—it is not nearly as bad as it appears—usually causes surprise. Appearances are deceiving, I say, and even in the social sciences and the humanities, the left’s stronghold, the batty left’s domination is incomplete—the tip of […]
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Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities, published in September to little fanfare, has caught on amid its intended audience: those who believe indoctrination of students is a figment of the conservative imagination and not really a factor on our campuses. The New York Times, calling indoctrination “an article of faith” among conservative critics […]
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I just learned about your organization today, following a link from, of all places, the Chronicle of Higher Education. Thank you for what you are doing. As a voice crying in the wilderness, I find that many of the points being made on your site resonate with my own critiques that fall, inevitably, upon deaf […]
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Chancellor G. P. Peterson of the University of Colorado, Boulder, plans to raise $9 million to endow a visiting chair in conservative thought and policy, on grounds that intellectual diversity is a good thing. Like all radical ideas, having an unorthodox professor on campus sounds a bit risky, maybe even startling, but after some reflection, […]
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In recent years, conservative critics of academia have had few better friends than Ward Churchill, the Group of 88, MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins (who fled Larry Summers talk about variations in intelligence between genders), and a few other hot-headed leftists on campus who made headlines. They proved the point about ideological bias every time […]
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Rob Weir, at Inside Higher Ed, offers a list of academic squabbles worth giving up. Any worthy dead horses to clamber out of? Well, no, it’s mainly a list of disputes in which he feels the other side ought to give up. Consider “Are Campus Conservatives Victims of Discrimination” Does anyone have any spare crocodile […]
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It is slowly dawning on the public that fake hate crimes, like the one just perpetrated by Princeton student Francisco Nava, are quite common on college campuses. Perhaps some aspiring academic, casting about for a PhD. thesis, will try to explain why these hoaxes – mostly imaginary rapes or fake attacks on black students – […]
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At a conference on November 14, the American Enterprise Institute released two important new studies by Daniel Klein of George Mason University and Charlotta Stern of Stockholm University. Their research, part of a forthcoming book titled Reforming the Politically Correct University, verifies even further that liberals and progressives outnumber conservatives and libertarians on campuses, overwhelmingly […]
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The Naples News reports that Stephen Safranek, Edward Lyons and Phil Pucillo, all Ave Maria professors, have filled suit against Ave Maria University, contending that they were discharged in violation of their contracts. The lawsuit was not an unexpected development given the recent controversy at the school. The move to Florida and its handling by […]
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The study of professors’ views by Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons confirms much of what we already knew: there are more liberals than conservatives working in academia, and the ratio increases in the humanities and social sciences, as well as at more elite universities. However, the survey does show an important fact, that […]
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Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed has a long and excellent article on the Gross-Simmons study on the political and social views of professors, as well as on the Harvard symposium last Saturday that discussed the findings. The study concluded that the professoriate is more moderate than many believe, with younger instructors less activist and […]
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At the Saturday conference on the Gross-Simmons study, Lawrence Summers compared the meager number of conservative professors to the startling decline in the number of black players in major league baseball (now down to 8.4 percent). Blacks are well-represented among the best players, “but it appeared that there were not any African-American .250 hitters.” Alas, […]
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The Chronicle of Higher Education, the voice of liberal academia, says that an important new study shows that liberal dominance among professors is much less than commonly believed. Not really. The study, by sociologists Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons of George Mason University, found that in 2004, 78 percent of faculty voted for […]
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Peter Wood provides a much-needed rejoinder to critcisms of the Zogby poll on perceptions of professor bias. The poll, predictably, revealed that respondents were widely concerned about left-wing bias in the classroom. Nothing much new there – the true worth of the poll might have been in the sneering comments it provoked from those inclined […]
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A colleague forwarded the following to me, found in The New York Times Re “Young Americans Are Leaning Left, New Poll Finds” (front page, June 27): As a professor who for years has spoken on the virtues of liberalism, I find it extremely pleasing to know that young Americans are once again beginning to lean […]
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I’d advise all to speed to John Ellis’ essay, available above, (or here) from the marvelous Academic Questions. These items are generally unavailable without a subscription, but we’ve arranged to provide you some occasional glimpses. The piece is a bit long, but worth every page. Defenders of the modern academy often assert that reform-minded critiques […]
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It is hard to exaggerate the extent to which a left-wing ideology has captivated university life. I sometimes get the impression that the ghost of Antonio Gramsci is parading among academic faculties spreading his soteriology to “useful dupes.” I recently participated in a discussion on Iran at Columbia University sponsored by the college Democrats, Republicans, […]
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