A SHORT HISTORY OF THE LIBERAL-BIAS NARRATIVE

The roots of the liberal academe narrative in American political discourse arguably begin with William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom” (Reference Buckley1951). Its blueprint has been followed by many conservative authors ever since, updating only the anecdotal data for the contemporary audience.Footnote ¹ The American far right had long characterized certain institutions as liberal (and, therefore, hostile), particularly the media and the Ivory Tower. This belief penetrated mainstream conservatism during the political rise of Spiro Agnew (Lehmann Reference Lehmann2001) and Richard Nixon (Perlstein Reference Perlstein2010). Today, the hostile liberal academe is a core belief of the right: in 2017, a nationwide survey found that 58% of Republican identifiers think higher education has a negative effect on the country, an increase from 32% in 2010 (Turnage Reference Turnage2017).

The growth of this belief is concurrent to the rise of a cottage industry of speakers, authors, and media personalities making a career of accusing academia and the media of liberal bias. Generally, their output is heavy on anecdotes and unsupported claims, light on evidence, and hugely popular within conservative circles. Because of the visibility and volume of these accusations, some academic research attempted to consider the question with more rigor. It also has sparked considerable debate within the profession: a search of the phrase “liberal bias” in The Chronicle of Higher Education archives returned 835 results.Footnote ²

ARE FACULTY DISPROPORTIONATELY LIBERAL?

The easiest but unfortunately often the only component of this issue to resolve is the basic question of faculty self-identification. There is ample evidence in peer-reviewed research and in polling data to show that faculty in political science identify as Democrats more often than as Republicans or libertarians. Given the comparatively moderate ideology of the modern American Democratic Party, this is similar but not identical to demonstrating that faculty are liberal. At the least, Democratic identification does not support assertions that faculty are wild-eyed Marxist hardliners.Footnote ³

Whereas social science and humanities faculty are Democrats by a lopsided margin, other fields including economics, agriculture, and the STEM hard sciences do not show the same disparity (Hamilton and Hargens Reference Hamilton and Hargens1993; Jacoby Reference Jacoby2016). Individuals self-select not only into academia but also into disciplines of varying appeal, depending on personal preferences (Gross and Cheng Reference Gross, Cheng, Stulberg and Weinberg2011; Gross and Fosse Reference Gross and Fosse2012).

In political science, studies show high levels of Democratic identification among faculty without conflating partisanship and ideology (Mariani and Hewitt Reference Mariani and Hewitt2008; Woessner and Kelly-Woessner Reference Woessner and Kelly-Woessner2009; Zipp and Fenwick Reference Zipp and Fenwick2006).Footnote ⁴ Research by nonpolitical scientists tends to treat the two as interchangeable. Klein, Stern, and Western (Reference Klein, Stern and Western2005) compared six academic fields using voter registration; Langbert (Reference Langbert2018) and Langbert, Quain, and Klein (Reference Langbert, Quain and Klein2016) did the same across a broad range of disciplines. All three studies found that Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans based on publicly available voter-registration data. Even as a measure of partisanship, voter-registration data are a lagging indicator of seriously limited use; it is a most imperfect measure of ideology. Thus, these findings are qualified at best.

The underlying point, however, is supported in more robust data: Higher Education Research Institute data show that 60% of California university faculty across all institutions self-identified as liberal or left in 2014 (Eagan et al. Reference Eagan, Stolzenberg, Lozano, Aragon, Suchard and Hurtado2014; see also Hamilton and Hargens Reference Hamilton and Hargens1993). Carnegie Foundation survey data reached an identical figure (60%)in similar nationwide studies (Rothman, Lichter, and Nevitte Reference Rothman, Lichter and Nevitte2005).

DOES FACULTY LIBERALISM MATTER IN THE CLASSROOM?

As professional teachers, faculty have a responsibility to present course material, assign textbooks, write exams, issue assignments, and evaluate students based on scholarly criteria rather than their own beliefs. Therefore, evidence that a majority of faculty are Democrats and liberals is not evidence that this leads to a bias affecting teaching (Yancey Reference Yancey2012).

Some studies suggest that students can discern the political preferences of faculty who teach their courses (Woessner and Kelly-Woessner Reference Woessner and Kelly-Woessner2009). It is unclear from those results, however, if students correctly identify their professors’ preferences from experience in the classroom or if they simply have a high likelihood of being correct when responding according to the conventional wisdom that “professors are liberals.” Student identification of faculty partisanship decreased as the strength of actual faculty partisanship increased (Woessner and Kelly-Woessner Reference Woessner and Kelly-Woessner2009, 350). Further research on this point could clarify whether faculty make their views obvious to students or if students merely are guessing on a question for which their odds of guessing correctly are very high.

Direct perceptions of bias by students often are used by proponents of the liberal-bias narrative. Yet, this offers little useful evidence because such perceptions are impossible to disentangle from students’ own biases and preferences. In political science, surveys provide evidence that students project their own ideological beliefs onto a professor based on how much they like that professor (Braidwood and Ausderan Reference Braidwood and Ausderan2017). Across academic fields, Linvill and Grant (Reference Linvill and Grant2017) found that student-rated faculty bias is predicted by measures of student entitlement and grade orientation. Student communication characteristics—namely, verbal aggressiveness and argumentativeness—also are predictive of perceptions of instructor bias (Linvill and Mazer Reference Linvill and Mazer2013). Innovative research that studies student use of Twitter further demonstrates that student “venting” about instructor ideology is driven by shared anecdotes and predicted by students’ own identification (Linvill, Boatwright, and Grant Reference Linvill, Boatwright and Grant2018). Collectively, then, this limited body of research suggests that faculty bias most likely is to be perceived by students who believe they deserve but are not getting high grades and among students with a higher level of disagreeableness.

Perhaps most important, no evidence for liberal bias in grading has been found (Musgrave and Rom Reference Musgrave and Rom2015; Rom and Musgrave Reference Rom and Musgrave2014). In contrast, evidence for grading bias based on other characteristics, including prior student performance and student attractiveness, is readily available (Archer and McCarthy Reference Archer and McCarthy1988; Malouff Reference Malouff2008). Instructor biases can be easily mitigated using basic techniques such as anonymized grading, formal rubrics, and detailed grading criteria included with assigned work (Malouff, Emmerton, and Schutte Reference Malouff, Emmerton and Schutte2013; Malouff et al. Reference Malouff, Stein, Bothma, Coulter, Emmerton and Walla2014). These are good practices irrespective of the issue of political bias.

CAN FACULTY CHANGE STUDENT BELIEFS?

A common claim of the liberal-bias narrative is that faculty indoctrinate students with their own beliefs. Faculty, who often find it difficult to convince students to read the syllabus, know intuitively that this is a false charge. Research in this area shows that even if faculty were trying to change students’ beliefs, attitudes, and preferences, they are failing. The conservative National Review concurs that, “Liberal indoctrination on campus isn’t working” and that perceived campus liberalism “makes a compelling case for conservatism” (Polumbo Reference Polumbo2018).

Short-term changes in student party identification (sPID) pre- and post-semester in one study were unrelated to either faculty partisanship or student perceptions thereof (Woessner and Kelly-Woessner Reference Woessner and Kelly-Woessner2009). Moreover, sPID changes are not statistically different from changes in party identification among members of the 18-to-25 age cohort who do not attend college; neither were changes in sPID greater at institutions in which faculty were more liberal (Mariani and Hewitt Reference Mariani and Hewitt2008).Footnote ⁵ Four-year changes in sPID also are shown (across academic majors) to correlate most strongly with student family background, including parental ideology (Campbell and Horowitz Reference Campbell and Horowitz2016). Evidence for the role of liberal arts education on student liberalism is weak (Hanson et al. Reference Hanson, Weeden, Pascarella and Blaich2012). This does not mean that scholarly theories are irrelevant; the study of economics is shown to correlate strongly with stronger student economic conservatism (i.e., pro–free-market beliefs) among undergraduates (Fischer et al. Reference Fischer, Kauder, Potrafke and Ursprung2017).

The Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey project is a recent national survey conducted by an interfaith religious nonprofit organization, with more than 7,000 respondents from 120 colleges and universities in the United States.Footnote ⁶ Several questions assessed student favorability toward political groups and ideologies after one year in college. Results showed that 48% of students indicated a “better attitude toward” liberals; however, 49% indicated the same toward conservatives. Negative responses also were nearly identical (i.e., 30% worse view of liberals, 31% worse view of conservatives).

A core purpose of college education is to expose a generally sheltered, young, inexperienced group of young adults to a broader world of ideas and perspectives. Efforts to find evidence of liberal bias instead show that, overall, higher education has the desired effect of widening students’ views of people whose views differ from their own. To the extent that students become more liberal in college, the changes mirror increased liberalism among non-college people in the same age group.

DISCUSSION: DOES IT MATTER WHAT WE THINK?

It is interesting that the clearest evidence for liberal bias is found in research on a question rarely mentioned in the broader narrative: Is academia hostile to conservative faculty? This research is scattered across disciplines but collectively suggests that Republican, libertarian, and conservative professors face more difficulties than liberal faculty in publishing work, attaining promotion, finding jobs, and professional networking (Honeycutt and Freberg Reference Honeycutt and Freberg2017; Phillips Reference Phillips2018; Rothman, Lichter, and Nevitte Reference Rothman, Lichter and Nevitte2005; Shields and Dunn, Sr., Reference Shields, Dunn and Sr.2016; Vitiello Reference Vitiello2007). Abrams (Reference Abrams2016; Reference Abrams2018) found, conversely, that conservative faculty rate their experience and career satisfaction as highly as other faculty.

The research on liberal bias in the classroom and in other aspects of teaching does little to support the narrative among some groups that can border on hysterical in mischaracterizing universities and faculty (see, e.g., Turning Point USA 2020). Anecdotal evidence is not difficult to find, especially when proponents focus on extreme outliers in higher education (e.g., Oberlin College and Evergreen State College are popular choices) that are unrepresentative of students, professors, classrooms, and campus experiences across the 2,500 bachelors-granting institutions in the United States. Those who believe that universities are hotbeds of liberal indoctrination could easily find sufficient resources to fund serious research to learn whether this indeed is the case. That such studies have not been attempted—as far as we know—suggests that talking points, not systematic evidence, is the goal.

The question is, with the “liberal professors” belief widely shared, what should we do about it as individuals and as a discipline? I propose the following three answers, which are not exhaustive:

1. 1. Encourage more rigorous, peer-reviewed research on the effects of faculty ideology on the student experience. A key takeaway from this article is that what little research has been done does not support the liberal-bias narrative. This does not preclude more research being done and providing new, potentially conflicting evidence. Does faculty ideology affect how likely students are to learn well in the classroom? To receive high grades? To interact one-on-one with their professors? To be satisfied with their experience in courses? More work must be done, ideally by research teams that include diverse ideological representation.

2. 2. Do nothing. Continue to teach with the same high level of professionalism that (hopefully!) we already bring to the job. Faculty are susceptible to the natural tendency of people accused of something unpleasant—that is, bias—to overreact in response. Remember that we teach political science, not politics. Remember that it is not the end of the world if our students figure out our partisan affiliation. Charlie Kirk (Reference Kirk2018) is not going to come crashing through the window to arrest us if we make a joke about Donald Trump; neither will our students be too overcome with grief to learn. It is useful to self-evaluate and reflect on our own biases, but overreacting and removing everything from a course that might upset David Horowitz (Reference Horowitz2007) will not improve anything. Ending up on the “Professor Watchlist,” ultimately, is both beyond our control and irrelevant. Some students will accuse us of being leftist hacks no matter what we do.

   Remember that in addition to respecting students’ personal beliefs, we have a concurrent responsibility to ensure that the classroom is not hostile to women, to people of color, to LGBTQ+ students, and to other groups subject to discrimination.

3. 3. Any potential bias, including ideological, can be mitigated with strategies including formal rubrics, anonymized grading of student work, and the basics of good pedagogy—treating all students with respect and professionalism. When students express their personal beliefs, we should challenge them to support and defend their position with evidence regardless of the content.