The Liberal Bias of Reality

The attack on the media and higher education loosely center around the fact that the vast majority of reporters and professors describe themselves as liberal or moderate.  Nevertheless, the accusations of bias in media are questionable because of evidence that media outlets simply pick the slant that best matches the political views of their readership.  In other words, media biases itself politically to maximize profits.  This refreshingly sensible conclusion casts doubt the allegations of a systematic liberal bias in the media.

Perhaps most interesting of all is the accusation of liberal bias in higher education.  Becker and Posner wrote and interesting entry and response on this instance of liberal bias.  The evidence they cite supports the notion that academics are virtually unanimously nonconservative.  Only 9% of respondents to the study's survey considered themselves "conservative" compared with 44% as liberal and 46% as moderate.  At "elite" universities, the distribution is even more skewed, with only 4% of professors identifying themselves as conservative, compared with 44% as liberal and 52% as moderate.  One interesting observation is how this distribution has changed over time.  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the proportion of academics identifying themselves as liberal has dropped.  This is particularly true among young academics: conservatives are just as rare, but moderates are becoming more common than liberals.  While there are several possible explanations for this, it is probably influenced by the rise of neo-classical economic theory among educated people.  This has increased the popularity of socially liberal and economically moderate political views.

This evidence is very interesting, but it does not vindicate the frequent view of some conservatives that the "liberal" education establishment is "brainwashing" students.  While this undoubtedly occurs on some level, it seems to be a generally moot point.  I have three reasons for this.  First, the vast majority of classes have absolutely nothing to do with political matters, and there is practically no latitude for such material to enter the discussion.  Political commentary is fundamentally inconsistent with education in all "technical" disciplines like science, math, or engineering.  Most humanities are in the same situation.  While philosophy may have implications for modern politics, the real topics at issue are abstract not political.  Likewise in English: authors may write commentary on political events, but the focus of the discipline is on the implication and meaning of language, not vindicating or refuting political views.  The social sciences admittedly have more room for political bias.  But at the very least, they strive to be scientific and objective, so strong empirical evidence will usually triumph (when it exists).

Secondly, in my personal experience, political matters simply do not come up in class.  In all of my classes (about half of which have been social science and humanities), I have never had a discussion in class about current political affairs.  Never.  The name of George W. Bush has only been mentioned twice, used as examples for hypothetical opinion polls.

And finally, modern university students are significantly more politically apathetic than they have been in the past (e.g. 1960s), when these stereotypes were formed.  Political activism is generally nonexistent or focused on utterly inane and insubstantive issues, like removing Coca-Cola products from university campuses.  You may not agree with this view, but it is not an uncommon one: Harvard Alumni Protest Student Apathy.  Moreover, even if students are not apathetic, their methods of expressing their views have become much less antagonistic: blogging has replaced student sit-ins, and the most notorious example of protest in recent years is probably the laughable "Don't tase me, bro" episode.  It is consequently easier for students to hold contrarian political views without feeling ostracized.

If nothing else, one of Becker's observations should settle most concerns of liberal bias in education.  Even if higher education is rampantly liberal and propagandist, they are clearly doing a terrible job at it.  "Elite" universities have produced plenty of conservatives.  In many elections, college-educated voters are more likely to vote Republican than Democratic.  It is pretty clear that parents and friends probably a significantly greater sway on political views than education.  So, conservatives would be more correct in directing their ire of political "bias" toward the institution of parenthood: how dare parents indoctrinate their children with liberal views.