Those dirty liberal profs

Todd Zywicki is a professor of law at George Mason University in Virginia and a regular blogger on the excellent Volokh Conspiracy. Like most of the Conspirators, he's pretty conservative in his politics (though not exclusively so), which puts him in the minority in academic circles. In the post I've linked to, he cites some studies to prove this.

What strikes me about the post is that, although he points to statistics suggesting that professors' liberalism doesn't seem to have much effect on their students, he actually thinks that's a bad thing.

So I wrote him this letter:

Dear Professor Zywicki:

I note your Volokh Conspiracy post regarding the - I guess you'd call it political - imbalance on campus, and I'm not the least bit surprised. For whatever reason, it seems evident that most university faculty consider themselves liberal and/or Democratic. As a liberal myself, I might suppose that this is due to the university environment of valuing exploration, new ideas, and so forth, but that's probably wishful thinking, at least in part.

While I was reading your post, I wondered why this imbalance seems to be so horrifying to most conservatives who comment on it. I theorized that the imbalance would only be damaging if it had an impact on the education provided by the universities in question; otherwise it would seem to be a simple statistical fact, of no more or less interest than any other. Lo and behold, a few paragraphs down, you addressed that very issue, citing polls suggesting that professorial liberalism does not have an impact on student beliefs.

I would have thought this would be a relief to conservatives, but then I read your comment that this lack of influence seems depressing to you. You lament the fact that professorial liberalism has led to a circumstance where, perhaps, students tune out their professors altogether, except presumably to absorb whatever factual information the class requires them to know. (This seems to imply a belief on your part that professors have an obligation to do more than simply transmit information to their students, an opinion that most conservatives of my acquaintance do not share in the least, but never mind that for now.) In other words, if other conservatives react as you do, they are neither more nor less disturbed if professorial liberalism influences students or does not influence students.

I therefore have a few questions:

If the influence of professorial liberalism on students has, as it seems to, no influence on your deploring of same, what exactly is your objection to the majority status of professorial liberalism?

Given that the liberal political opinions of university professors do not seem to increase the liberalism of future generations, I might suppose that you object to the majority status of liberalism among professors as a possible indication of some sort of unfair hiring practice. That is, you may assume, because most university professors are liberal, that qualified conservatives don't have a fair chance at employment. If this is so, would you have the same objections if the majority of university professors agreed with you politically, rather than disagreeing?

And finally, assuming that the majority status of professorial liberalism is a bad thing for whatever reason, what are your suggestions as to how it might be remedied?

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.

Benshlomo says, If there's anyone out there who can point out the illogic in his own emotional appeals, he's probably the Messiah.