Still More on Campus Intellectual Diversity
The Volokh Conspiracy
The Dartmouth Review has done a study of party affiliation of Dartmouth's professors and the results are unsurprising:
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With these statistics in mind, The Dartmouth Review decided to revisit its investigation of the political affiliations of professors on our own campus. The results were not all that surprising: of the 341 professors registered to vote in Hanover, NH, Lebanon, NH, and Norwich, VT, 225 (66 percent) are Democrats and eighteen (5 percent) are Republicans. Ninety-eight (29 percent) did not register a party. Put another way, there are 12.5 registered Democrats for every registered Republican.
Moreover, since we last collected this same information, several professors have changed their affiliation to Democratic, presumably to vote in last year’s presidential primary. None became Republicans.
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When the Center for the Study of Popular Culture conducted a narrower study in 2002, it found that there were 38 Democrats and four Republicans in the eight Dartmouth academic departments it examined. Now, according to The Review’s study of Hanover, Lebanon and Norwich voters, these departments contain 70 Democrats and still only four Republicans.
An peculiar anecdote from the article:
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No Republican professor teaches in interdisciplinary departments, and many teach in very narrow fields, such as engineering or mathematics, which are not likely to attract non-majors, thus limiting their influence and profile on campus. Conservatives might anticipate safety within fields in which politics should have no bearing, but even the computer science department includes a professor who uses text in programming classes to praise Democrats and condemn President George W. Bush.
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Prior research by Dan Klein and the most recent article by Rothman, Lichter, and Nevitte has identified a very high correlation between party affiliation and views on ideological and political issues, so although imperfect, party affiliation in fact turns out to be a pretty useful proxy for intellectual viewpoints.
volokh.com |
