Bias in American universities

January 27, 2005

Free Market Foundation

American universities are so dominantly left-wing that it amounts to a one-party system, according to economist Daniel Klein and his team of researchers.

Klein produced two studies of party registration and ideology among academics at a range of institutions and major professional associations. Among the findings:

There are 10 registered Democratic faculty members for every Republican at the University of California-Berkeley, while Stanford University has a ratio of 8 to 1; Democratic female professors at both institutions outnumber Republicans by a 25 to 1 margin.

Overall, about 80 percent of academics are Democratic, 8 percent are Republican, 2 percent consider themselves Green, while 1 percent are Libertarian.

The field with the most balance was economics, with three Democratic professors for every Republican.

By contrast, political science had 7 Democrats for every one Republican, while history had a 10 to 1 ratio and sociology 28 to 1.

Klein says that even ratios of 2:1 are “deadly” for the minority since university departments make decisions based on a majority, adding that a ratio of 5:1 means marginalisation.

With the problem of academic bias becoming worse over the past decades, Klein suggests the selection mechanisms have been working in ways that eliminate Republicans.

Source: Karl Zinsmeister Diversity on Campus? There Is None American Enterprise, January 2005.

For text http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleid.18346/article_detail.asp

For more on Government and Politics: Elections http://www.ncpa.org/pd/govern/govdex.html

FMF Policy Bulletin/ 18 January 2005