The ratio of registered Democrats to Republicans among university professors is approximately 11.5 to one, a recent study found.

The study, published in the Econ Journal Watch, was based off of data provided by Aristotle, a campaign software that collects voter data. The study reviewed voter registration statistics of professors in economics, law, psychology, communications and history at 40 leading universities in the United States.

The data collected only shows voting registration and it does not, and cannot, convey specific political ideologies or an individual’s voting history. The descriptors “Democrat” and “Republican” are umbrella terms under which an array of political convictions and standings exist, said Edwin Ackerman, assistant professor of sociology at SU.

The study was conducted by Daniel Klein, editor of Econ Journal Watch and a professor of economics at George Mason University; Mitchell Langbert, an associate professor of business at Brooklyn College; and Anthony Quain, a developer of health economic solutions.

“People interested in ideological diversity or concerned about the errors of leftist outlooks— including students, parents, donors and taxpayers — might find our results deeply troubling,” according to the researchers in an Inside Higher Ed article.

Of the 7,243 professors reviewed in the study, 3,623 were registered Democrats and 314 were registered Republicans. The 3,306 professors not included in the ratio were either not registered to either party, ineligible to be registered to an American political party or were otherwise unable to be confirmed in a manner definitive enough to be included in the data, according to the study.

Langbert expressed concern for conservative faculty members in addition to the quality of education universities are providing students. Universities, in general, are unfriendly to those that do not buy into a left-wing ideology. He said this harms students and political discourse on campus.

“(There) can be no debate if everyone has the same view. Students are taught … that socialism works the best, no academics arguing the other way,” Langbert said.

In Langbert’s personal experience, this can be harmful to conservative professors. He said he was falsely accused of sexually harassing a fellow professor at Clarkson University. Langbert said this was fabricated against him due to disagreeing with her about preferential hiring processes. The charge was eventually dropped.

Klein and Langbert said the imbalance of political leanings stems from the hiring process at universities. They asserted that a great deal of bias is involved in the ways in which professors are hired by universities, giving preference to left-leaning academics.

“I think that non-leftists are at a severe disadvantage. I would call the disadvantage a result of ‘bias,’ but leftists of course would not,” Klein said.

According to a separate study conducted by Klein, along with Charlotta Stern, in 2005, Republican scholars are far more likely than their Democratic counterparts to end up in careers outside the realm of academia.

This can be attributed to conformity pressures in a system that left-wing views are more appealing to hiring committees, Langbert said. He said a quota per se must be filled for left-wing professors in order to have liberal-oriented classes, such as gender studies or racial diversity lectures.

There is a very strong positive relationship between the level of education and liberal political ideology in terms of the hiring of professors and the charge of bias involved in the process, said Steven Brechin, a sociology professor at Rutgers University, in an email. The pool of candidates available to universities contains a majority of liberal-leaning future professors.

Job opportunities outside academia are generally more attractive for Republican scholars, Ackerman said. Republicans invest a large amount of money in think tanks, which offer Republican scholars an opportunity to thrive outside of universities.

Even if university professors are dominantly registered as Democrats, this is not necessarily harmful for education or learning, Ackerman said. Political convictions do not permeate into teachings, he added.

“Most of the discussions that you’re having in classrooms really go way beyond partisan dilemmas, and that the university still is the place where you encounter radical ideas of both the left and the right,” Ackerman said.

Published on October 18, 2016 at 11:02 pm

Contact James: cjwight@syr.edu