Why are so many professors tagged as liberals?

[geetrue]

Why Are Professors Liberal

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/arts/18liberal.html

The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals — and so few conservatives — want to be professors.

The academic profession “has acquired such a strong reputation for liberalism and secularism that over the last 35 years few politically or religiously conservative students, but many liberal and secular ones, have formed the aspiration to become professors,”

“Why Are Professors Liberal?” That is especially true of their own field, sociology, which has become associated with “the study of race, class and gender inequality — a set of concerns especially important to liberals.”

[Buddahaid]

Did somebody yell FIRE! I'm making popcorn right now.

[August]

That's a very interesting article geetrue. Thanks for posting it!

[GoldenRivet]

let me tell you this...

when i was just starting my business in 2008 i decided to take a few classes at the local community college to not only exercise my mind but develop some needed skills.

this was the fall session, right when the whole McCaine / Obama stuff was heated up.

Every class opened with a 15 - 20 minute BS session about why us kids need to vote for Obama, or why us kids need to vote for McCain.

now... i walked into that class at nearly 30 years old, so i didnt care for the down speak.

secondly, most of those kids i shared the classroom with were not 18 or 19 years old and have not learned about the world around them yet.

i would wager that the drive across town to get to the campus was probably the furthest they had ventured out into the world.

i didnt appreciate the attempt to sway these kids in either direction by professors and found it to be disturbing and unprofessional, i got the feeling that "most of you are too young to make the right choice so im going to help you make it."

aside from that, most of those voting age kids were so wrapped up in their naivety that they actually believed the whole Hope and Change crap!!!

personally, sometimes i think you should have to be over 25 to vote.

some of those kids, fresh out of high school, some of them i swear to God could barely read... let alone help decide the direction our entire nation should take for the next 4 years.

One of them was reading the preamble to the constitution aloud and couldn't figure out either how to pronounce Tranquility... nor articulate a response as to what the word actually meant!!!

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

personally, sometimes i think you should have to be over 25 to vote.

some of those kids, fresh out of high school, some of them i swear to God could barely read... let alone help decide the direction our entire nation should take for the next 4 years.

Two things:

Raise the voting age to 25? Fine, as long as no one can enlist or be drafted/recruited into the military until they're 25 either. If you're not old enough to take part in electing a govt, then you shouldn't be asked to risk your life going wherever they want to send you.

Raise the voting age to 25 because the "kids" below it are too dumb, naive, uneducated, ignorant, etc. to know how or what to vote for or to understand the finer points of their civic responsibilities? NONSENSE. If we're going to use those criteria to determine who gets to vote and who doesn't, it shouldn't have anything to do with age. It should involve an IQ test for starters, then perhaps a basic vocabulary/reading comprehension test, then maybe some test to determine if the person knows enough about the country's history/laws/etc. to qualify.

I'm guessing most regular voters OVER the age of 25 couldn't pass that last test, so let's not rag on the younger set as though ignorance and stupidity are a function of age.

[AVGWarhawk]

The Frau has a good point. It was the same argument for the drinking age as compared to the voting/draft age.

At any rate, by and large, my professors at college were liberal.

[frau kaleun]

Just to clarify, in the second part of my post I'm not advocating some kind of "test" beyond meeting the current criteria for voting, i.e., being of age, registered, a citizen, etc. Just pointing out the absurdity of using age to determine whether someone is "smart" or "informed" enough to meet some arbitrary standard for either.

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

Raise the voting age to 25? Fine, as long as no one can enlist or be drafted/recruited into the military until they're 25 either. If you're not old enough to take part in electing a govt, then you shouldn't be asked to risk your life going wherever they want to send you.

Ok... thats fair.

Lower the drinking age to 18

if your old enough to be sent to some far off crap hole to die face down in your own intestines... by God you're old enough to pop the top on a Miller Lite for Christ's sake.

I pretty much agree with you Frau.

but... my age crack was more or less a half serious joke.

in all seriousness

there is NOTHING wrong with the voting age... its the educational system.

if you cant read or write or perform mathematics on an acceptable level, you dont graduate high school and you are not a candidate to receive any sort of financial aid for college/ tech schools or career schools etc.

I think the root of the problem doesnt lie so much with age.. the root of the problem is that our educational system is in the toilet, the students dont care, and the politicians dont either.

[FIREWALL]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

let me tell you this...

when i was just starting my business in 2008 i decided to take a few classes at the local community college to not only exercise my mind but develop some needed skills.

this was the fall session, right when the whole McCaine / Obama stuff was heated up.

Every class opened with a 15 - 20 minute BS session about why us kids need to vote for Obama, or why us kids need to vote for McCain.

now... i walked into that class at nearly 30 years old, so i didnt care for the down speak.

secondly, most of those kids i shared the classroom with were not 18 or 19 years old and have not learned about the world around them yet.

i would wager that the drive across town to get to the campus was probably the furthest they had ventured out into the world.

i didnt appreciate the attempt to sway these kids in either direction by professors and found it to be disturbing and unprofessional, i got the feeling that "most of you are too young to make the right choice so im going to help you make it."

aside from that, most of those voting age kids were so wrapped up in their naivety that they actually believed the whole Hope and Change crap!!!

personally, sometimes i think you should have to be over 25 to vote.

some of those kids, fresh out of high school, some of them i swear to God could barely read... let alone help decide the direction our entire nation should take for the next 4 years.

One of them was reading the preamble to the constitution aloud and couldn't figure out either how to pronounce Tranquility... nor articulate a response as to what the word actually meant!!!

If I paid for a class and the instructor did a 15-20 minute campain speech for either canidate I would want my money back.

[August]

Originally Posted by FIREWALL

If I paid for a class and the instructor did a 15-20 minute campain speech for either canidate I would want my money back.

Yeah talking politics especially is a big no no for Teachers. That would get me fired darn quick.

[Platapus]

It may also be a case of perception.

If I had to categorize my college instructors into one group, I would say most of them were moderate.

So if you were conservative, you might perceive them as being liberal.
If you were liberal, you might perceive them as conservative.

I find the more time I spend in academia the more moderate I become and I notice it also in my fellow students as well as the faculty.

[TheBrauerHour]

I am a Social Studies teacher and I talk politics all the time. It would be a shame not to and I would miss many teaching opportunities.

The trick is to present both sides, and not try to steer the conversation to one side or another. For example, if a student mentions something they saw or read from an obviously liberal source, I ask them to visit a conservative source and tell me how the viewpoints differ on that specific issue.

The very last thing I do is then ask them what they feel about it...and if anyone in the class would like to respectfully disagree. Inevitably the class will ask what I think, and I take the opportunity to tell them that the issues being discussed are of the highest importance and I have the views I do because oh look pop quiz on chapter 12!

Many, and I mean MANY, of my colleagues are extreme liberals. I also have a couple of colleagues who are VERY conservative. Being in the breakroom can get very interesting, lol. There have been times where students peek in because the heated debates can be heard in the hallway. My experience is that the profession of education is indeed controlled by liberals, and to truly get ahead you have to "play the game" and avoid discussing issues that get uncomfortable because even middle of the road people like me are labeled as horrible people if we disagree with the liberal view of things.

In college, I learned to agree with the professors and I would get an A...any student who didn't subscribe to the doctrine was given horrible assignments for their field work and student teaching. I have kept my head clean, and in the 3 years I have been teaching I have been given one of the most sought after teaching assignments, and have been appointed to mentor new teachers because "I treat people fair." One of the teachers I am assigned to mentor curses like a sailor and stated that all men and the Catholic church are the worst things in the world. God help me...

[Schroeder]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

some of those kids, fresh out of high school, some of them i swear to God could barely read... let alone help decide the direction our entire nation should take for the next 4 years.

One of them was reading the preamble to the constitution aloud and couldn't figure out either how to pronounce Tranquility... nor articulate a response as to what the word actually meant!!!

How comes that such people are even allowed to go to college? I mean a college is something like a university, right? Here you have to have a high school graduation or a lower one and a completed vocational training.
One won't get any of that if one can't read properly!
Are there no such requirements for US colleges?

[Buddahaid]

Originally Posted by Schroeder

How comes that such people are even allowed to go to college? I mean a college is something like a university, right? Here you have to have a high school graduation or a lower one and a completed vocational training.
One won't get any of that if one can't read properly!
Are there no such requirements for US colleges?

Of course. You must apply and be accepted to most. The problem is a high school diploma can be "earned" with barely the skills to get through college now. Some colleges even insist on remedial study for courses a student is too weak in. They want you to graduate and not waste their time, or keep other students who would graduate from finding a slot.

But hey, if you can kick a ball real good, they'll bend over backwards to get you graduated. Special tutoring and such.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Schroeder

How comes that such people are even allowed to go to college? I mean a college is something like a university, right? Here you have to have a high school graduation or a lower one and a completed vocational training.
One won't get any of that if one can't read properly!
Are there no such requirements for US colleges?

Lol. Supposedly, yes.

I worked as a teacher's assistant for my English teacher my last year of high school. She also taught English at one campus of the local university, which although small is considered a pretty fine institution. One of my jobs was to do preliminary proofreading and marking of errors on the papers turned in by her students, not just what the other high school kids were writing but her college level students as well.

It was an eye-opener, lemme tell you! Of course how much of what I saw had to do with a student's intelligence, comprehension, and ability rather than an unwillingness to put any real effort into doing the the work, I can't say. Nevertheless, I was frequently appalled.

In my current job I often get official publications from companies with whom we do business that are, presumably, written by people whose JOB it is to create such things. I am still frequently appalled.