Diversity on Campus
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
For those who need some kind of backup for what they know in their gut about colleges, feature a major new academic study showing that 72% of those teaching at American universities and colleges identify themselves as liberal and only 15% identify themselves as conservative. A dispatch by Howard Kurtz, on Page One of today’s New York Sun, has the particulars. At the most elite schools, according to the study, the breakdown on the faculty is 87% liberal and 15% conservative. Mr. Kurtz points out that that is far out of step with the general population, which identifies as roughly 33% conservative and 18% liberal.
We’ve never been of the view that college faculties should be required to mirror the composition of the general population, whether the factor being analyzed is religion, race, gender, I.Q., or political views. Those on the left who see these dramatic disparities might be tempted to call for a conservative quota, or affirmative action, or the creation of special “conservative studies” departments to attract more conservative scholars. Surely it’s possible, even frequent in many fields of study, for a professor’s politics to filter, subtly or not so subtly, into the content delivered in the classroom. Some students are wise enough to discount for that, but certainly not all of them are.
The cynical view of all this is that the campus is a safe place to put these liberals – better they plod away on academic papers than work on something really important, like legislation, in a place where they could do some real damage, like Washington or a state capital. But one reason we at the Sun have devoted so much space to the follies of academia is that we actually think that what happens on campus does affect the country as a whole.
The way to reform universities, and get them in better touch with the country, isn’t by imposing quotas or government requirements on privately funded universities, although we wouldn’t deny proprietors of state universities the right to take corrective action when faculties grow lopsided. It will take donors, trustees, and potential tuition-paying parents to make some intelligent choices. Our sense is that the market for college educations and for donations in America is competitive enough that, with the assistance of those key stakeholders, this problem will find a way of correcting itself.
