Breaking: Professors Might Have Liberal Bias

Leslie Ford / February 14, 2011

Of course it’s not surprising news at all: there are many more liberals than conservatives in the universities. But this reality has become an inconvenient truth refusing to stay under the rug.  The New York Times reports a finding by University of Virginia social psychology professor Jonathan Haidt: 80% of social psychologists openly admit a liberal preference. Haidt confronted his peers with this disproportion between liberals and conservatives at the Social Psychology conference in San Antonio last month. While any other major disproportions (age, sex, race) in the discipline would raise unanimous outrage, Haidt pointed out to his colleagues that this statistic has hardly engendered a shrug.

But this liberal domination is not limited to social psychology. Though a 2009 Gallup Poll shows that 40% of Americans identify themselves as Conservatives and only 20% as Liberals, the story in the universities is much different. Across all campuses in America Democrats outnumber Republicans 5:1. In the “soft liberal-arts,” the ratio jumps up to 8:1. (more…)