Liberal Professor discussion

Was thinking about Peter's comment  about professors as I was falling asleep last night (blogging is taking over!)  Peter says:

"My brother has tons of stories dealing with profs in class and I've got a few more from UCSB to prove this point..."

Here is an observation that professors tend to be on one side of the "political fence". Is this a liberal conspiracy? Or is there a more clear reason?  Is this a sign that many professors are just incompetent (don't research or study all sides of their academic interests?)

My own experiences taking engineering classes have been that professors tend to be behind in terms of technology and lots of times teach technologies that are out of date. This doesn't pose a terrible problem since engineering is more about fixing problems and new technologies can easily be learned when they are needed.

One insight could be a literal definition of liberal is to embrace new ideas and discoveries.  This is the role a professor should play and a good one will pass this on to students.  So therefore by this particular definition a professor should be liberal.

Let’s also look at the current political environment. The people in power don’t seem academic or intellectual (this is a post unto itself.)  So, politically speaking professors are most likely “liberal”.

To wrap up, good professors should have experience and knowledge of all angles of their study.  They should also be open minded to academic and thoughtful discussions of ideas that they don’t agree with.  I don’t think that there is a problem of “liberal professors” but more of a problem of incompetence (all professions have incompetence) and problems with the overuse of the word “liberal”. 

Even if one disagrees with the previous paragraph and believes that there is a problem because most professors are too liberal, how does this harm capitalism?  As Peter pointed out, free market economist used to be “liberal”.  Both Edwards and Kerry unsuccessfully tried to appeal to the conservative south by appealing to issues like immigration and jobs with non-capitilist (word?) ideas.

Comments

[Evilwhiteguy]

Here's my thought on why professors are overwhelmingly liberal.

The majority of them are baby boomers. And they were coming of age to be drafted during the Vietnam war. Being liberal, they wanted nothing to do with it, and chose the easiest way out, by attending a university. But as the war dragged on, graduating became a problem. Not in school? Off you go. So the only thing to do was to stay in school. Get a master's degree. Or a PhD if you came out of the master's program and the war was still going.

With a PhD in such fields as liberal arts, there aren't really that many options for jobs. Teaching at universities just happens to be one of them, so many of these liberals who stayed in school to avoid Vietnam ended up as professors.

I could be wrong, it's just a theory.

[Erik]

Interesting theory Evil. I am sure that there are some proffessors whose path to their career was influenced by the Vietnam war. But, I don't think this explains "liberal" professors for three reasons. First of all, only men where getting drafted so what about women?

Second, I think there is a flaw in the argument because of the abused word "liberal". It seems the "liberal" that you use means pacifists which is different to a "liberal" thinking person. We have all met pacifists who are not open to new ideas or new ways of looking at things. Also, being against a war in a foreign country is not always "liberal". It is actually quite conservative not to want to fight wars except when it is a direct threat to our security at home. Check out the libertarian party's stance on the Iraq war. This convoluted logic is why I hate the words liberal and conservative.

Lastly, your argument assumes that only liberals dodged the war. History tells us this is false. Just look at the current neo-conservative administration. None of them served in the war (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) Cheney specifically used education to avoid the war many times. So, I think that there is the same chance for liberals as conservatives to become professors because of the war.

Thanks for you theory Evil. I look forward to future incite full comments from you.

[Mike B]

I found your site through BE and I'll be visiting often to find more insightful posts such as this.

I particularly like your observation about the use of "liberal". People try to make the word "liberal" evil, but I think your post shows the wide definition that "liberal" encompasses.