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by RatPackKing on 04 August 2009 - 00:08
At the University of Oregon (Tax Payer Funded) Out 186 Professors 115 are Democrats and 8 republican and 63 Independent. This information is based on the Oregon Voter Registration Records....Thats right folks........ 8 OUT OF 186.
WHERE IS THE JUSTICE!!!!!!!..... ...........DISRIMINATION DOES NOT ALWAY RUN SKIN DEEP!!!
RPK
WHERE IS THE JUSTICE!!!!!!!..... ...........DISRIMINATION DOES NOT ALWAY RUN SKIN DEEP!!!
RPK
by Nancy on 04 August 2009 - 01:08
So you really think they ask someone their political affiliation before they let them become educators?
Could it be remotely possible that people with vision about learning and educating our youth and who wind up in low paying "service" fields [and that really does include college acadamia if you look at what PhD can earn elswehere] may tend to be more polictically liberal?
Could it be remotely possible that people with vision about learning and educating our youth and who wind up in low paying "service" fields [and that really does include college acadamia if you look at what PhD can earn elswehere] may tend to be more polictically liberal?
by RatPackKing on 04 August 2009 - 01:08
Nancy,
To answer your questions.........YES AND NO
Next,
RPK
by Loyalville on 04 August 2009 - 01:08
I rarely visit this site anymore and when I do it doesn't take me long to get disgusted.
by alaman on 04 August 2009 - 01:08
Simple. Conservatives go into business and help build the country, paying taxes, and live in the real world.
Liberals can't do anything in the real world so they go into education and brainwash the young while living off productive people
Liberals can't do anything in the real world so they go into education and brainwash the young while living off productive people
by MaggieMae on 04 August 2009 - 01:08
Yep, alaman, that's the way I see it also.
by MaggieMae on 04 August 2009 - 02:08
by MVF on 04 August 2009 - 02:08
It's not at all what you think. If you just want to blather or bray, just do me a favor and avoid my effort to explain this. If you want to hear why one university professor thinks his colleagues tend to be liberal, read on.
First, there are no political litmus tests at most colleges (with the exception of many rightwing religious colleges and a few leftwing colleges -- no major universities). There is something of a litmus test in SOME departments -- if they think their mission is activism and not scholarship, they naturally want people actively engaged in their mission. (I object to this, by the way. I think my job is about finding the truth, no matter how painful. I object to departments who want to end sexism/racism, etc. whatever it takes -- even if that means not hiring those who disagree.)
Further, I don't think that it is true that Ph.D.s are more liberal than others because they are smarter. I know many scientists and engineers with high IQs who are conservative. I myself have a brother with a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT who is conservative. But none of them are academics.
So I think it's about the academic environment.
College professors are a lot like everybody else: they fear what they don't understand. In our case, however, our colleagues and friends are from a dozen or two dozen other countries, and our students are from around the world. We KNOW people from Africa, Asia, South America, Europe. Like everybody else, we talk to our friends at lunch and dinner and like some people we sit in seminars and listen to the product of their research -- often after years of study. We read and write for a living, so we read more broadly than most. (This means we do less of other things, and we are lacking in those areas.) The bottom line is that we do not fear foreigners, foreign models of poltics and economics, foreign cultures. (If you spent this much time making friends from around the world, you would feel the same way.) Academics know from day to day living and some reading and study that the US model is a very rough and ready, individualistic, business oriented, VERY unequal economic model with fewer social safety nets for the poor and more unequal than ANY other rich country in the world. Further, with the exception of a few Islamic fundamentalist states, we are the most fundamentalist-religious nation in the world. Finally, academics wince at people (and it seems to us that business people are like this) who just say what advances their self-interest instead of what they are willing to try to prove is actually true. (Stories of CEOs -- which I teach, by the way -- are often found repugnant by academics, as these men seem to be egomaniacal liars and narcissists by the careful standards of scholarship. I am not saying this is fair.)
We know that the center of the American political spectrum is very right wing by international standards. So when academics position themselves on the political spectrum around them, they are naturally positioned in the middle of that spectrum (on average) but this is left of center on the US spectrum.
Given that environment and experience MOST PEOPLE become much more global and much less local than their non-academic neighbors. Even if their favorite presidents historically were Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt (they're mine) this is not sufficient to lure them into the current, very rightwing Republican party. Academics know that even Clinton and Gore were RIGHT OF CENTER by international standards. So the left leaning academics voted for Nader in 2000 (I voted for Gore, however, as I am conservative by academic standards). Few academics would vote for Bush, who was much too
First, there are no political litmus tests at most colleges (with the exception of many rightwing religious colleges and a few leftwing colleges -- no major universities). There is something of a litmus test in SOME departments -- if they think their mission is activism and not scholarship, they naturally want people actively engaged in their mission. (I object to this, by the way. I think my job is about finding the truth, no matter how painful. I object to departments who want to end sexism/racism, etc. whatever it takes -- even if that means not hiring those who disagree.)
Further, I don't think that it is true that Ph.D.s are more liberal than others because they are smarter. I know many scientists and engineers with high IQs who are conservative. I myself have a brother with a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT who is conservative. But none of them are academics.
So I think it's about the academic environment.
College professors are a lot like everybody else: they fear what they don't understand. In our case, however, our colleagues and friends are from a dozen or two dozen other countries, and our students are from around the world. We KNOW people from Africa, Asia, South America, Europe. Like everybody else, we talk to our friends at lunch and dinner and like some people we sit in seminars and listen to the product of their research -- often after years of study. We read and write for a living, so we read more broadly than most. (This means we do less of other things, and we are lacking in those areas.) The bottom line is that we do not fear foreigners, foreign models of poltics and economics, foreign cultures. (If you spent this much time making friends from around the world, you would feel the same way.) Academics know from day to day living and some reading and study that the US model is a very rough and ready, individualistic, business oriented, VERY unequal economic model with fewer social safety nets for the poor and more unequal than ANY other rich country in the world. Further, with the exception of a few Islamic fundamentalist states, we are the most fundamentalist-religious nation in the world. Finally, academics wince at people (and it seems to us that business people are like this) who just say what advances their self-interest instead of what they are willing to try to prove is actually true. (Stories of CEOs -- which I teach, by the way -- are often found repugnant by academics, as these men seem to be egomaniacal liars and narcissists by the careful standards of scholarship. I am not saying this is fair.)
We know that the center of the American political spectrum is very right wing by international standards. So when academics position themselves on the political spectrum around them, they are naturally positioned in the middle of that spectrum (on average) but this is left of center on the US spectrum.
Given that environment and experience MOST PEOPLE become much more global and much less local than their non-academic neighbors. Even if their favorite presidents historically were Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt (they're mine) this is not sufficient to lure them into the current, very rightwing Republican party. Academics know that even Clinton and Gore were RIGHT OF CENTER by international standards. So the left leaning academics voted for Nader in 2000 (I voted for Gore, however, as I am conservative by academic standards). Few academics would vote for Bush, who was much too
by MVF on 04 August 2009 - 02:08
anti-education and anti-intellectual, and far too ignorant of basic world events.
Finally, most academics (not all) understand that markets are the BEST FIRST STEP, but not the last step. Markets are imperfect -- often very imperfect. Externalities (eg pollution) are not captured. Investments (eg individual education) are not fairly rewarded. Actually contributions (labor, business, technological advances) are not remotely in proportion to rewards (the actual contribution of technological advances to economic income is so large that neither labor nor business would take much of the pie if the distribution was correlated with contribution). So we know that the best economic theory and practice REQUIRES government policies aimed at improving market performance -- this is not a political position to us, as we know the science supports it. Naturally, this means we would choose the very imperfect Dems over the even more imperfect GOP. Or most of us.
Finally, most academics (not all) understand that markets are the BEST FIRST STEP, but not the last step. Markets are imperfect -- often very imperfect. Externalities (eg pollution) are not captured. Investments (eg individual education) are not fairly rewarded. Actually contributions (labor, business, technological advances) are not remotely in proportion to rewards (the actual contribution of technological advances to economic income is so large that neither labor nor business would take much of the pie if the distribution was correlated with contribution). So we know that the best economic theory and practice REQUIRES government policies aimed at improving market performance -- this is not a political position to us, as we know the science supports it. Naturally, this means we would choose the very imperfect Dems over the even more imperfect GOP. Or most of us.
by MaggieMae on 04 August 2009 - 03:08
We KNOW people from Africa, Asia, South America, Europe. Like everybody else, we talk to our friends at lunch and dinner and like some people we sit in seminars and listen to the product of their research
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Maybe you should expend some time/effort getting to know "regular Americans." You are caught up in "group think" of the people you associate with. I've heard this said of the Media also -- they talk exclusively to each other/dine with each other/attend the same parties with each other/think like each other, etc., and are completely Out of Touch with "real" people.
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