Glenn Reynolds has been drawing attention to the recent accusation of intellectual homogeneity by the Duke Conservative Union against the faculty of Duke University, so I thought I'd post some numbers the American Enterprise Magazine published in September, 2002.
"L" stands for faculty members who are registered in leftist parties (Democrats, Greens, &c.), and "R" stands for those registered in rightist parties (Republicans, Libertarians, &c.). Here's the numbers for my university, UCLA.
Of the registered voters in these departments, 6% are righties. Just imagine the howls of oppression we'd hear if the ratio were reversed.University of
California at
Los Angeles
L R
English 29 2
History 53 3
Journalism 12 1
Political Science 16 1
Women's Studies 31 2
TOTAL 141 9
My own department, Computer Science, isn't mentioned here. I could speculate on the affiliation of my professors, but I won't because I can't recall a single instance of politics intruding into my CS classes, from any direction. Which is as it should be!
But from the libertarian perspective the Republicans are also a "leftist party"-- they endorse taxing spending, war on poverty that creats poverty, war on non-whites, etc. Everything the democrats support.
The only difference between the two parties is rhetoric.
DG: Yes yes, and the Greens say the same about the Democrats. But let's face reality.
My Dad's been a prof of CompSci since the late 1960's at a well known Ivy school. He agrees that the sciences, being a meritocracy, are much less politically biased.
The table seems rather selective of which departments that they published data for. Why only these few departments and not all of them? It leads one to suspect that other departments probably don't have numbers consistant with the author's conclusion.
I'm not too surprised that a department like Women's Studies would tilt leftward, but wonder what the tilt of the law school, business school or the like are.
Manish: I suggest you take a look at the linked-to data rather than just what I excerpted. Even from these numbers, you don't think it's relevant that Political Science is heavily biased, politically? Other than Women's Studies, these other departments listed for UCLA are rather important, don't you think? And shouldn't obviously trend leftwards.
That Women's Studies should, in your mind, is strong evidence that it's a ridiculous department.