The liberal college conspiracy

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: September 20, 2004 12:06:18 AM EDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, Dave Farber 
<dave () farber net>
Subject: The liberal college conspiracy

The liberal college conspiracy

Conservatives like David Brooks love to blame academics for making 
lopsided
donations to Democrats. A closer look reveals otherwise.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Scott Jaschik
Scott Jaschik is editor of Higher Ed Today, which will appear online 
early
next year.
- - - - - - - - - - - -

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/20/college/index.html

Sept. 20, 2004  |   George Wallace used to score points attacking
"pointy-headed intellectuals." The first President Bush mocked Michael
Dukakis for getting too many ideas in Cambridge, Mass. As Richard 
Hofstadter
explained in "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," American 
politicians
have long trumpeted their "common man" ideals to contrast themselves to 
the
educated elite.


 The 2004 election is no different. This year's canard is that all
professors are liberals, making colleges and universities distorted,
irrelevant and closed to conservative ideas. The straw professor makes 
an
easy election-year target. After all, many professors are liberal. Many
academic ideas are hard to understand.

 Recent attacks on academe, however, are more than election-year 
tactics.
The image of higher education as having a single party line helps
conservative academic groups raise money. Which in turn leads lawmakers 
to
propose legislation to require colleges to achieve "balance" in their
faculties -- a requirement many academics view as forcing faculty 
members to
justify and perhaps soften their opinions. Congress is currently 
reviewing
the Higher Education Act, a mammoth federal law that governs most
student-aid programs, and a perfect vehicle for lawmakers to tack on
amendments to make points about the academy. So this debate comes at a 
very
sensitive time.

 Much of the conservative commentary about academics this year springs 
from
news reports that Sen. John Kerry is trouncing the president in places 
like
Cambridge, Berkeley and Madison. When the Boston Globe conducted an 
analysis
of professors' campaign contributions in May and found that Kerry had
received more than twice as much as the president, a Bush campaign 
spokesman
derided professors as "those who are more inclined to view this time in
history as just another gray area in need of a group discussion."

 In the New York Times, David Brooks had this to say: "Academics have 
had
such an impact on the Democratic donor base because there is less
intellectual diversity in academia than in any other profession. All 
but 1
percent of the campaign donations made by employees of William & Mary
College went to Democrats. In the Harvard crowd, Democrats got 96 
percent of
the dollars. At M.I.T., it was 94 percent. Yale is a beacon of 
freethinking
by comparison; 8 percent of its employee donations went to Republicans."

 Those numbers sound pretty dramatic. But the same Federal Elections
Commission database that was used to produce them contains numbers that
suggest that there are plenty of colleges that don't fit the mold of an
all-liberal campus.

 To begin with, most of the institutions cited by conservatives are in 
blue
states that already support Kerry, and not just on campuses. But venture
into Red State U. and it's a different picture. Since Jan. 1, 2003, nine
employees at Texas Tech made contributions to either a Democratic
presidential candidate or the Democratic Party. But Bush or the 
Republican
Party received help from seven employees, including one of the most
influential men in Lubbock these days, Bob Knight, the university's
basketball coach. Over at Baylor, six employees backed Bush and the
Republican Party, while just two supported Kerry and the Democratic 
Party.

 At Mercer University in Georgia, seven employees made contributions to 
Bush
or the Republican Party, while five backed Democrats. Notably, 
Republicans
on campus include the university president and two senior 
administrators.

 Some of the institutions where Bush and conservative politicians like 
to
appear don't donate much to any presidential candidate. No employees of 
Bob
Jones University, site of a controversial appearance by Bush in the 2000
campaign, donated to anyone -- perhaps faculty members were too busy
discouraging interracial dating. Hillsdale College, a Michigan 
institution
beloved by the right, had three donors: all to Republican congressional
candidates. Five employees of Regent University, founded by the Rev. 
Jerry
Falwell, have contributions in the database -- all to Republicans.

 Even places where people make more donations to Kerry than Bush don't
always fit the liberal stereotype. Three employees of Morehouse 
College, a
historically black institution in Atlanta, have made federal campaign
contributions since the start of last year. A $300 donation went to 
Kerry,
$400 to Joe Lieberman's doomed (and not terribly liberal) presidential 
bid,
and $500 went to Republican Senate candidate Johnny Isakson.

 The data also show a willingness of academics to support Republicans. 
In
the presidential race, the University of Pittsburgh looks solid for 
Kerry.
But more employees made contributions to Sen. Arlen Specter, a 
Republican,
in his reelection bid than to his challenger, Rep. Joe Hoeffel. Specter 
was
once a prime liberal target for his role in pushing the confirmation of
Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. But he's attracted the 
respect of
many academics for his support for education spending and for easing
President Bush's limits on stem-cell research.

 Those who think there are only a handful of W. supporters in academe 
may
want to consult a national survey of faculty attitudes by a research 
center
at UCLA. The survey, last conducted in 2001, found that 18 percent of
faculty members identify themselves as conservative and less than 1 
percent
as far right. The percentages for liberal and far left were 42 and 5, 
and
the percentage for middle of the road is 34. Jennifer Lindholm, who 
directs
the study, which is done every three years, says that the conservative
figures have been fairly steady. "You always find a smaller, but 
significant
segment of the faculty that is conservative."

 What do all the numbers mean? While the total donations show plenty of
conservatives on campuses, the figures show that most academics do 
indeed
back Kerry and the Democrats. In fact, it's not hard to find academics 
who
think the choice on Election Day is between Kerry and Nader, or people 
whose
anger over the war in Iraq leads them to say things that sound like
apologies for Saddam Hussein, or people who just 100 percent hate 
President
Bush.

 Either way, Bush critics in academe make no apologies for wanting a 
change
in the White House. "Unsurprisingly, people who are intellectually 
serious
are acutely revolted by the pattern of deception and stupidity that is
manifest in the Bush presidency," says Todd Gitlin, a professor of
journalism and sociology at Columbia University.

 A good part of the anti-Bush seething on campuses is related to the
president's policies. Many academics disagree with the president on 
Iraq,
the economy, social policy and other issues that directly relate to 
higher
education, notably expanded stem-cell research and affirmative action in
college admissions. He opposed both, ignoring the advice of most 
research
and academic leaders. The president's stance against using ethnic
preferences in college admissions was particularly galling; after all,
Bush's own academic record in high school does not seem to have been 
how he
was admitted to Yale.

 Beyond policy, the president's history and personality offend many. 
It's
not just that he was never much of a student; he seems to take pride in 
it.
When he spoke at his alma mater, he said, "To the C students, I say, 
'You
too can be president of the United States.'" So much for standards.

 The president may be a lot smarter today than he was as a student but 
he
still promotes the idea that this is a black-and-white world, when 
academics
love gray. When President Bush says he doesn't "do nuance," he portrays
himself as strong and decisive -- in perfect contrast to academics, who
thrive on nuance. After all, many a Ph.D. dissertation has been written
about a nuance in someone else's book.

 For all the vitriol that the president inspires among faculty members, 
it's
still the case that campuses aren't all liberal. Gitlin says he walks by
Bush-Cheney posters on his way to his New York office everyday. Indeed, 
if
you track campus posters and what students put up in their dorm rooms 
since
9/11, there has been a notable addition of American flags, even in 
places
like Ann Arbor and Cambridge. Many campuses oppose the war in Iraq but 
the
war in Afghanistan won broad backing in academe. Still, conservatives 
insist
on portraying academics as '60s-era radicals who believe U.S. force can
never be justified -- an image that doesn't ring true.

 Even at institutions that lean left, you will find active, vocal, 
respected
conservative faculty members. And while the institutions that lean left 
are
among the most prestigious in the country, they also educate a tiny 
fraction
of American students.

 In the end, Republican claims that universities are dangerous to
conservative values may be little more than a political ploy. When it 
comes
to Republicans' own children, few enroll at institutions where faculty
members are reliably conservative. The president's daughters just 
graduated
(with no apparent damage to their GOP loyalties or social lives) from 
Yale
and the University of Texas at Austin, two institutions where Kerry
overwhelms the president in faculty financial support.

 - - - - - - - - - - - -


--
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com


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