Letters from the National Campus Director

CSPC Releases Studies on University Bias · 03 September 2003

I'm sure that many of you have long been seeking conclusive proof that conservative views are all-but-absent at your colleges and universities. Two new studies released Thursday by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture provide just that.

The first study examined the political registrations of faculty members and administration officials in various departments at 32 top colleges including Amherst, UC-Berkeley, all eight Ivy League schools, and MIT. The results are staggering-even more so than you might expect.

In its examinations of over 150 departments, the Center found that not a single department in 32 schools came close to achieving parity between registered Democrats and Republicans. On average, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by a factor of 10-to-1. The fairest distribution at any school was at Northwestern University where 80% of the faculty members identified were registered Democrats, making the ratio 4-to-1. On average, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by a factor of 10-to-1.

At select schools, the ratios were far worse. At Brown University the ratio was 30-to-1, while at Swarthmore it was 21-to-1; at Columbia it was 14-to-1. At no less than four elite schools, Williams, Oberlin, MIT, and Haverford, the Center was unable to identify a single Republican on their faculties.

The second study focused on the political views of college commencement speakers. Commencement speakers at 32 top colleges and universities including all eight Ivy League schools were tracked over a ten-year period and were identified as belonging to one of five categories: Liberal, Democrat, Conservative, Republican, and Non-Partisan.

Overall, the ratio of commencement speakers on the left to those on the right is more than 15-to-1. Twenty-two of the thirty-two schools surveyed did not invite a single Republican or conservative to be a commencement speaker over the course of a decade, yet invited a cumulative total of 173 liberals and Democrats during the same period. Six of the remaining schools surveyed invited only one Republican or conservative each compared to 38 liberals or Democrats between them.

The full results and executive summary of the political bias study can be viewed here.

These studies both confirm the stunning lack of conservative voices on college campuses. At many schools, the percentage of Republican faculty members was so low as to make it probable that the average student completes four years of college without ever taking a class taught by a professor with a conservative outlook. This situation is wholly unacceptable, and as members and supporters of Students for Academic Freedom, I encourage you to take active steps to bring about change.

For starters, if your school was one of those profiled in these studies, use this material as ammunition for demanding a meeting with your school president to discuss the lack of conservative perspectives available to students. Issue a press release of your own citing the CSPC study with the particular statistics about your university. Begin to record classroom anecdotes to illustrate improper and unprofessional political diatribes in the classroom.

If your school was not profiled in this study, use what we've already done as a jumping off point for your own research. Compiling a list of the past ten or even twenty commencement speakers at your school will take you at most a few hours of research. You might also take on other projects such as interviewing fellow students to record instances of harassment relating to political beliefs in the classroom. If you document your findings, we will be happy to post these on our website. Also consider creating a survey of assigned textbooks for your courses similar to the commencement speakers study in which you rank the books as being by conservative or left-leaning authors. Once you have this kind of data, write up reports and press releases, demand meetings with top-level administrators to discuss your concerns. We'll be happy to include your findings on the SAF and FrontPageMag websites.

Researching the political registrations of professors is a much bigger project, but if you're eager to take on this task, please give me a call for advice and also take a look at the guidelines listed in the "how to research faculty bias" link in the right-hand frame of our website.

Thank you for taking the time to become involved with Students for Academic Freedom. For more information on starting a chapter or conducting campus research, please don't hesitate to contact me at sara@studentsforacademicfreedom.org or at 202-969-2467.

Best Regards,
Sara Russo

 

 

 

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