Letters from the National Campus Director

Letter from the National New Study Reveals Vast Disparity: Democrats Outnumber Republicans 7-1 · 30 November 2004

The two studies, co-authored by Santa Clara University economist Daniel Klein, confirmed the results of earlier research by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in showing a great disparity between the numbers of Democrat and Republican faculty members on campus.

In the first study, a national survey of over 1,000 college and university faculty members, Klein found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by a ratio of seven-to-one in the humanities and social sciences. Even more shocking, Klein found that this ratio is growing and is in fact much larger among younger faculty members (about 30-1) and can be expected to increase further as the few conservatives left on university campuses reach retirement age.

The second study focused more narrowly on the campuses of Berkeley and Stanford, where Klein found that the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was even higher at nine-to-one, even though it included faculty from the hard sciences and professional schools (which are though to be more intellectually diverse than those in the humanities).

The New York Times printed a lengthy article reflecting on this lack of political diversity and its causes and solutions. Among the authorities quoted was SAF Chairman David Horowitz, who attributes the disparity to discrimination against conservatives in the hiring and tenure processes. "Right now, conservative students are discouraged from pursuing scholarly careers, because they see very clearly that their professors consider Republicans to be the enemy," he commented.

Several other media outlets quickly picked up the story and David Horowitz appeared on Fox News discussing the suveys as well as on the Paula Zahn show on CNN with Sara Dogan. A transcript of the CNN segment can be read here .

The Paula Zahn segment also featured a brief interview with a two of the College Republicans from San Francisco State University who were attacked by an angry mob of members of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) while distributing Bush/Cheney materials on campus on the Monday before election day.

According to official campus police reports, about eight of the college republicans were stationed at their table when they were approached by four female students [later identified as members of GUPS] who started a loud verbal argument with them, yelling obscenities. A crowd of about 50 additional students soon surrounded the table, chanting "F-k Bush." Someone spilled a soft-drink over the College Republicans' signs and the College Republicans report that one of the women even started physically attacking him, claiming that he was hitting her when he tried to deflect her blows. Eyewitnesses report that the women even threatened to blow up the college republicans in suicide attacks because of their support for President Bush. SFSU Police Captain Borja stated in his police report, "I knew at this point the crowd was so enraged that I had to act quickly to get the people who were staffing the table out of the area for their safety."

Despite this testimony from the Police Captain, SFSU President Robert Corrigan stated in a public letter that the confrontation "left me deeply disappointed with the behavior of some on both sides" and denied that there was ever a "mob" threatening the college republicans. One of the college republicans is even facing a disciplinary hearing for attempting to defend himself and his property. You can read Corrigan's letter here and an article by Lee Kaplan explaining the discrepancies between Corrigan's claims and the police and eyewitness testimony here .

San Francisco State is a university clearly in need of greater tolerance for intellectual and political diversity, and we will continue to follow this case and the actions of President Corrigan closely.

For more information on bringing the academic freedom movement to your campus, please contact me at Sara@studentsforacademicfreedom.org or at 202-393-0123. More information can also be found on our website at www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org.

Yours in Freedom,

Sara Dogan
National Campus Director
Students for Academic Freedom

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