Actually, Michael, I really don't know how or when the term "political correctness" originated. If you know, I would appreciate your sharing that information with me.
If by "liberal" you mean "more likely to vote Democratic," voting behavior studies do show that there are more liberals (in that sense) than conservatives in academe, at least in the liberal arts faculties.
(The reverse tends to be true in engineering & business schools.)
I have not been involved in academic life for almost twenty years now, so perhaps my take on this subject is a bit out of date. Nevertheless, I will still risk saying that academic freedom seems to me to be more secure today than it has been at other times in our history. I recommend your taking a look at The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States, by Richard Hofstadter and Walter P. Metzger. Unfortunately, it goes up only until the 1920's. In our recent history, the 1950's were probably the worst period for academic freedom, and that was by no means a "liberal" decade.
In a broader sense, there is probably nothing new about "political correctness"; it is just that at different times, different people/groups get to define what is correct, and what is not. And let's not forget that most subjects taught in college are quite apolitical, so that the professor's private views on political matters are quite irrelevant. As a graduate student of History (a "political" subject), I studied under professors with sharply different political orientations, even though this was at the height of radical campus activism (late 60's, early 70's). I find it hard to believe that things are any "worse" nowadays.
Joan |
