Faculty Politics

The Outlook section of the December 9, 2007, Washington Post included a column by Robert Maranto, an associate professor of political science at Villanova University. The column discusses the political correctness of American universities and the evidence that university faculty are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. The article cites work by Daniel B. Klein, Carlotta Stern, and Andrew Western, among others. You can find two of their relevant articles in the journal Academic Questions, Volume 18, Number 1, Winter 2004/2005. The first surveyed voting behavior among faculty in six disciplines: anthropology, economics, history, philosophy, political science, and sociology. They found 909 faculty who said that they voted either mostly for Democrats or mostly for Republicans. In economics, the ratio was 3 Democrats to 1 Republican; in sociology and anthropology, it was around 30 D to 1 R. They conclude:

In discussing the one-big-pool D to R ratio for the social sciences and humanities, 7 to 1 is safe lower bound estimate, and 8 to 1 or 9 to 1 are reasonable point estimates.

The second paper looks at the voter registration of tenure-track faculty at Cal-Berkeley and Stanford in four areas:

• Social Sciences: Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology.
• Humanities: English, French and Italian, History, Linguistics, Music, Philosophy, and Religious Studies.
• Hard Sciences and Math: Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Neurobiology/Neurology, and Physics.
• Professional schools and departments: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Law, Journalism, Accounting, and Marketing.

They found no information for about 30% of the faculty. Almost 50% of the faculty were registered Democrats, and over 5% were registered Republicans. The other 15% were split among the Green party, non-partisan, declined to name a party, and others. The overall D to R ratio was 8.9 D to 1 R. The social sciences total ratio was 13.6 D to 1 R, the humanities were 21.9 D to 1 R, the hard sciences and math were 7.6 D to 1 R, and the professional schools were 4.5 D to 1 R. The two engineering departments had the lowest ratios of any group and were just over 3 D to 1 R. The authors conclude that universities demonstrate "extreme lopsidedness."

When I first read Maranto's article, I was sure that the D to R ratio was smaller in engineering, and the above data confirm that suspicion. But Republicans are still out-numbered, surprisingly, and the business school is no different.

Maranto, citing these and other similar results, argues that universities need to encourage intellectual diversity (not just ethnic and racial diversity) in order to reestablish meaningful debate on campus and to recliam their importance in society.