Political Attitudes in the Classroom: Is Academia the Last Bastion of Liberalism?

Abstract

Academia is under attack from those who believe that college professors are uniformly leftist politically, which creates an environment of bias against conservative students and professors. Advocates have proposed an “Academic Bill of Rights” that may lead to policies to achieve intellectual diversity in faculty hiring and tenure decisions. However, little rigorous scientific research has been conducted on the political attitudes of students and faculty. Based on a survey of students and professors at the State University College at Buffalo, we find evidence that the “intellectual diversity” movement is unfounded. In particular, we find that the political views of students and professors are quite diverse, and that professors do not impose their political views upon the classroom. Our research points to the need to extend our model to other universities to place our results in a larger context, and provide valid data for use in the burgeoning intellectual diversity debate.

Keywords:

• faculty attitudes
• intellectual diversity
• political socialization
• student attitudes

Notes

^a Liberal is total of students who chose strongly liberal, liberal, or somewhat liberal.

^b Conservative is total of students who chose strongly conservative, conservative, or somewhat conservative.

Notes: Due to rounding percentages may not add up to 100% in some cases. Question wording is listed in Appendix A.

^a Liberal is total of students who chose strongly liberal, liberal, or somewhat liberal.

^b Conservative is total of students who chose strongly conservative, conservative, or somewhat conservative.

Notes: Due to rounding percentages may not add up to 100% in some cases. Question wording is listed in Appendix A.

^a Question: “Based on your experiences what do you perceive the political attitudes of the faculty to be? (strongly liberal, liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative, conservative, strongly conservative, don't know)

^b Question: “Where would you place yourself on the following scale? (liberal, moderate, conservative)

^c Liberal is total of students who chose strongly liberal, liberal or moderately liberal.

^d Conservative is total who chose strongly conservative, conservative, or moderately conservative.

^a Question wording is in Appendix A.

^b p = 0.05 or less.

The eighteen are Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Washington.

We used sampling without replacement so that no student received more than one survey.

The Campus Bulk Mail Service could only accommodate 750 mailings at a time.

The Campus Bulk Mail Service terminated our mailbox at the end of the fall 2001 semester, so no more responses were received past that date.

According to the American Association for Public Opinion Research Standard Definitions: Final Disposition of Case Codes and Outcome Rates for Surveys (3rd edition) the following formula was used: (I + P)/(I + P) + (R) + (UO).

Sampling without replacement was used in the faculty sample as well.

The faculty response rate was calculated using the same formula as for the students, where I = 197, P = 1, R = 0, and UO = 472.

The three questions were “The U.S. should intervene in other countries where human rights violations occur” (agree, disagree, don't know/no opinion); This country would be better off if we just stayed home and did not concern ourselves with problems in other parts of the world” (agree, disagree, don't know/no opinion); “Do you believe that the government should spend more time and resources in finding alternative energy resources, for example solar, wind or hydroelectric power and the like?” (yes, no don't know/no opinion).

Treating the variables in this way does not change the significance or the strength of the relationships.