The DIE Revolution and Tenure

Plus a comment on the ideological skew of college professors

An elaboration of my earlier argument in Quillette about the future of tenure is up today at The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.

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Also, a brief note on the ideological context within which the DIE Revolution is proceeding.

The depth of the problem of ideological bias among college professors can perhaps best be noted by the degree of deliberate intellectual dishonesty about the matter on the part of those in the dominant ideological group in the professoriate. The efforts this group—left-leaning professors—make to claim, despite all the evidence, that there is no real ideological skew on faculties are often breathtakingly unconcerned with objective reality.

Here’s one example I sometimes use in class, from an article from a two years ago by a group calling itself “The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective.”

Their central assertion is this: “By and large, most professors self-identify as moderates of one kind or another.” 

Oh, would that it were so. Unfortunately, it is not. They are already spinning madly to try to back this up by the very first paragraph of their discussion of empirical evidence.

They claim that the major extant study of faculty political attitudes by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons backs them up: “Gross and Simmons found a much more centrist professoriate than is alleged in conservative discourse. Some 44 percent of professors described themselves as “extremely liberal” or “liberal” (9 percent and 35 percent, respectively); 46 percent described themselves in centrist terms (18 percent as “slightly liberal,” 17 percent as “middle of the road,” and 11 percent as “slightly conservative”); and 9 percent described themselves as “conservative” or “extremely conservative” (8 percent and 1 percent respectively).[20] In other words, liberals do outnumber conservatives, but the largest cohort of faculty—46 percent—are moderates, spanning the terrain between center-left and center-right.”

Look at the numbers again.

It's simply not true that “the largest cohort…are moderates.” By far, the largest group are self-identified liberals, who make up nearly 2/3, or 62% of the total.

Even if you exclude the “slightly liberals,” liberals are still 44% of the total, or nearly the same amount they want to claim as “moderates.”  And their moderate category skews heavily leftward too. Only 20% of faculty are conservative by this study, and more than half of those are only “slightly conservative.”  And of the 46% they call “moderates,” only 17% actually identify in the middle, and the “slightly liberals” in their moderate category are 63% more numerous than the “slightly conservatives.” 

To read these data they way they do requires a firm commitment to a faith.