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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (102174)	2/25/2005 10:33:18 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793914

Vlokh - Intellectual Orthodoxy at Berkeley and Stanford: volokh.com Dan Klein has a newspaper column summarizing his research findings on the intellectual orthodoxy at Berkeley and Stanford in the Palo Alto Weekly newspaper. From the article: The popular vote for President went 48 percent Democrat and 51 percent Republican. This nearly one-to-one national diversity is unlike colleges and universities, where a one-party system prevails. We have conducted a scholarly study of voter registration and find that among Berkeley faculty the Republicans are outnumbered 10 to 1. At Stanford the ratio is 7.6 to 1. Lumping both together gives 9 to 1. Talk about a lack of diversity! If this were a gender, race or ethnic-background study it would be considered almost evidence of discrimination. Most striking, is that the faculties are becoming less intellectually diverse over time. At Berkeley, tenure-track hires at the Assistant Professor level are 30 to 1 Democratic to Republican and at Stanford it is 12 to 1. For Associate Professors, at Berkeley it is 64 to 1 and at Stanford the ratio is infinite--Stanford does not have a single Republican among its Associate Professors (and 40 Democrats). Dan says that if this was a gender, race or ethnic-background study, it would considered "almost" evidence of discrimination. I think this understates the case--if the ratio of men to women hires at Berkeley was 30 to 1, that would almost certainly constitute a prima facie case of discrimination. Or to put it more practically, if this was the ratio of male to female hires at Berkeley, I don't think a hypothetical plaintiff would have too much trouble finding a lawyer who would take the case on contingency. And to think that one reason that Larry Summers is in hot water because only 4 of the last 32 tenure-track hires at Harvard were women. I'm sure Stanford's students and faculty would be overwhelmed with joy at an 8 to 1 ratio of Democratic to Republican hires. You can find the longer version of Dan's research on his homepage here. lsb.scu.edu