Is the Academy a Liberal Hegemony?
The Political Orientations and Educational Values of Professors
JOHN F. ZIPP is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Akron. RUDY FENWICK is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Akron.
Address correspondence to John F. Zipp; e-mail: jzipp{at}uakron.edu.
In the last several years, conservatives have argued that an overwhelmingly Left and liberal faculty has taken over American colleges and universities. In particular, two main claims have been advanced: (1) a disproportionate percentage of the faculty is liberal; and (2) these liberal faculty are pushing their values on students and colleagues, skewing the educational process. However, data to support these contentions come from unrepresentative institutions and/or disciplines and mistakenly equate party identification with political ideology. In contrast, we use two nationally representative surveys done by the Carnegie Foundation (in 1989 and 1997) to address these concerns. We have several key findings: (1) although left-of-center faculty increased slightly, the best overall description of these trends suggests increased movement to the center, toward a more moderate faculty, between 1989 and 1997; (2) there are sizable differences across disciplines and institutional types, with conservatives being the plurality in some fields and in two-year colleges; (3) changes in age and gender have offsetting effects on changes in liberalism; and (4) there are significant differences in educational values between liberal and conservative professors.
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  D. B. Klein and C. Stern Letter to the Editor: A reply to Zipp and Fenwick Public Opin Q, September 1, 2007; 71(3): 479 - 481. [Full Text] [PDF]
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