Perception of political bias on campus

No surprise that the American public is more concerned about how to pay for higher education than they are about the ideology of its purveyors. If I had to pay for it today (and were still paying my kids' freight), that would be my number one concern, too. I'd still worry about what they were learning, too, and from whom. My highschool education in the 1950s was a daily diet of rightwing ideology we all thought was "normal." College at the turn of the sixties wasn't much better, and I went to a university with a notorious lefty reputation (I'm proud to say). It's no surprise that the public today has also heard the "radical professor" meme, but refreshing that only 8% identified "political bias" as the top issue compared to 43% who identified the high cost of tuition. "Bias" came in behind binge drinking and low educational standards. More after the jump . . .

All this comes from a new telephone survey (n = 1000) done by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). There is the expected political gap in attitudes between conservatives and liberals. Both thought tuition costs were a very serious problem (with liberals slightly more concerned), but 34% of liberals versus 45% of conservatives thought political bias was very serious (as opposed to number one). Conservatives thought it more serious than crime on campus, liberals less serious. There was equal judgement that incompetent professors were a serious problem (36%). The biggest gap was over how serious each thought lack of support for a diverse student population was: liberals, 40%, conservatives, 23%. If you classify by partisan politics, the results are intriguingly different. The gap on whether political bias is a serious problem is wider: Republicans 49%, Democrats 27%.

Views on academic freedom were contradictory:

About 80 percent disagreed with the notion that the "government should control what gets taught in the college classroom."

And 80 percent agreed with the idea that "the best way to ensure academic excellence is to make sure politicians don't interfere with research in colleges and universities." (Chronicle for Higher Education, subscription only)

That's the good news. Here's the bad news (at least if you believe in academic freedom; and I do):

. . . nearly 40 percent of the respondents disagreed with the statement that "professors who oppose the war in Iraq should be allowed to express antiwar views in the classroom." And 63 percent said public universities should be able to dismiss professors "who join radical political organizations like the Communist Party."

Finally, 57 percent agreed that "there's no room in the university for professors who defend the actions of Islamic militants."

What constitutes "defending the actions of Islamic militants" is an open question. Does the recent case of Juan Cole, a highly respected Middle East scholar, fall into that category? For many people it does, unfortunately, although it is a signally inapt description of his views (see some of the comments to our post defending Cole on Effect Measure last week).

If your academic professional career occurred after 1975, this might seem pretty upsetting. But it's been worse, even in my lifetime. By and large, opinions show fairly good marks for the academy. Fifth-three percent thought being a professor was "very prestigious," not as good as doctors (72%) but a lot better than lawyers (34%).

I'll take what I can get.