The Narrative of Discrimination against Conservatives in Higher Ed is Overblown
In January, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) released a comprehensive study on the political leanings of professors in American universities. The results, perhaps unsurprisingly, showed a massive disparity in favor of those who identify as Democrat or left-leaning. The study included more than 12,000 universities and found that only about 6 percent of professors in this survey were registered as Republicans. Moreover, although some disciplines are less homogeneous than others, the ratio was always skewed in favor of registered Democrats.
However, none of this necessarily indicates discrimination.
In a world where conservative political punditry is riddled with both general indifference to and outright loathing for higher education, we shouldn’t let passions grip us into claims of “indoctrination.”
Much like the argument we often hear about how there aren’t enough women in STEM, the argument that American universities discriminate against conservative professors is flawed if disparity statistics are your only metric. In other words, universities cannot be said to be discriminating against conservative professors based on these stats, because disparity alone does not indicate discrimination. And in fact, as we’ll see, personal choices play a significant role in the professorial landscape, and thus its ideological disparity.
Plenty of research beyond the NAS study confirms that conservative professors are certainly underrepresented. And although there’s some variation (the natural sciences are more politically heterogeneous), all nine disciplines in the NAS study favored those registered as Democrats. Anthropology, Sociology and English departments in particular showed the highest rates of disparity, with sociology reaching a massive 42:1 Democrat to Republican ratio. And, taking schools by region, disparity is highest in the Northeast, with a staggering 15.4:1 D:R, and is lowest in the Midwest, at 4.7:1.
It’s worth noting that while the majority of professors sampled in these kinds of studies are registered either Democrat or Republican, there is a substantial percentage that are independent or belong to a third party.
The Democrat to Republican disparity can be accounted for without the resorting to conspiracies. In a 2010 paper published by John Hopkins University, graduate students Ethan Fosse, Neil Gross and Catherine Cheng (who are all now professors in the social sciences) conducted a field experiment that included so-called “secret shopper” methods that sought to find political bias against conservatives within the American professoriate. Not only did they discover no bias that impacts professorial hires, they also found that much of the disparity can indeed be explained by lifestyle choices and disposition.
In step with their findings, a 2007 study conducted by social scientists Matthew and April Woessner discovered that conservative and right-leaning students are significantly more likely to major in professional fields (such as business and M.B.A. tracks) and away from the academic path. Indeed, the Woessners found that “only 9 percent of the far left and 18 percent of liberals major in professional fields, as compared to 33 percent of conservatives and 37 percent of the far right.”
Additionally, their study reports that students who major in the humanities or other related non-professional fields are typically more liberal and are more likely to consider a PhD program than their conservative peers.
The disparity in higher education between left-leaning and right-leaning professors is not a simple result of discriminatory actions by universities. Personal lifestyle choices and psychological dispositions can account for a significant part of the disparity. Amid all the outrage and hyperbolic narratives of discrimination against conservatives in higher ed, we would do well to keep that in mind.
