Turns out most universities are Left-of-center. Stunning, eh?

The New York Times writes a fascinating article reviewing two recently published books about the landscape of the American university… one from each end of the political spectrum. And yes, before we get much further, both the Left and Right agree that the majority of professors in American universities self-identify as left-of-center.

What these two books comment on, then, is not whether this is a fact, but rather on why this is the case, and what, if anything, should be done about it.

The Leftist author comments on a case in his university where a professor, attempting to gain a new position within his faculty, is undermined by an e-mail where he claims people should not walk around barefoot in New Zealand. Despite being very open about his disapproval of “white, rich hippies” that choose to walk around the cities barefoot, somebody believed he was commenting on the Maori people and was therefore racist… and everyone else in the faculty, in an attempt to prove they were “colleagues of colour”, voted against the guy and he didn’t get the position.

Ah, the Left and our occasional bouts of insanity.

As for the authors on the Right, they tend to focus more on why the Left has such firmly entrenched positions in Humanities and Social Sciences. They (a panel of Right-wing editors who oversaw the book, which is a series of essays) comment on the values of the Right versus those on the Left… for example, the Right generally feels a bigger draw towards family and finances, which may lead them away from a life in academia, while the Left tends to value social involvement and community more. They also point out that while this is the case, it may not be wise (or fruitful) to attempt social engineering to fix the problem… and that this may be only a cycle (as the older professors retire, they are likely to be replaced by more younger Right-identified people as the wave of the 60’s rebellions pass through the system).

It’s nice to see these kinds of discourses still occurring on an intelligent level (rather than both sides slinging mud and trying to raise panic). The author of the article itself sums up the perspective of the books rather well: “Rather then merely cheering for your side and booing at the other, you actually learn something.”