Faculty Bias On Display

[DFW HOYA]

Tuesday's HOYA shines a light on the growing imbalance of partisanship among the faculty.

Some of these professors' comments, even for someone like myself who does not financially support either candidate, range between mildly condescending and outright smug. Such comments reflect poorly of the faculty at this university.

www.thehoya.com/news/092104/news1.cfm

[showcase]

Campus Republican leaders said they were disappointed by the findings and called for administrators to take action to diminish the political imbalance.

“The administration ought properly, and immediately, to rectify this gross disproportion of political opinion with measures of reform which embrace a true diversity,” Jady Hsin (COL ’07), president of the Georgetown University College Republicans, said.

Hsin called on the university to reverse an “ill-conceived and profoundly shallow commitment to diversity” that he said has created an environment in which faculty can, “knowingly or otherwise, masquerade liberal opinion as incontrovertible fact.”

Affirmative action for conservative thought. I had no idea that conservative thought had been so repressed. The horror...

Rather than rehash the merits of this can of worms, I'll dwell on the aspect of the article that I found most peculiar:

Perhaps the Democratic Party’s strongest financial backing was found in main campus and law school faculty, university administrators and Georgetown-affiliated lawyers and fundraisers. What little strength Republicans could muster from campus employees came largely from Medical Center and Hospital physicians and professors.

Two questions: 1. What the heck is a "Georgetown-affiliated lawyer," and 2. Why are such lawyers and fundraisers even considered in calculating the grand total? What relevance do they have to a discussion of whether a professor's bias is or can be imparted to his students? While I can accept the validity of the professors-are-biased-and-that's-bad premise, since the ill flowing therefrom is at least plausible (even if I think the argument itself is fatally flawed), I can't even begin to imagine what perceived malevolence is being concocted by these heavily Democratic "Georgetown-affiliated lawyers" in some dark room in Healy as they presumedly twist the ends of their moustachios.

As for the heavily Democratic fundraisers, that may be a problem, but not related to bias. I suspect the biggest GU givers are not lining up behind Kerry this election, so it would only make sense to send out someone with whom they would have more in common.

[Jack]

This issue has been debated ad infinitum by bin and others on the old blue & gray board as I recall, but let's just be clear that to the extent it is a problem, it is not specific to Georgetown. It occurs throughout higher education and particularly at the most elite schools. As the article notes:

"A 2002 survey of Ivy League universities found that while 84 percent of professors voted for Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 presidential elections, 9 percent voted for then-Governor Bush. A scant minority — 3 percent — of respondents in that poll identified themselves as Republicans."

So let's lay off bashing Georgetown specifically on this one DFW. I see a bias on display, but not necessarily from the faculty.

[TrueHoyaBlue]

I have to say, I'm somewhat disappointed by the journalism displayed in this article. While there is an overwhelming disparity in the amount of money donated, the only thing that it proves is that there faculty (and to a lesser degree, staff) have donated more money to Dems and Kerry, than GOP and Bush.

While the dollars discrepancy is large, it has no direct correlation to partisan feelings on campus (though those studies may have been done in the past). It simply says that more faculty and staff feel strongly enough to donate to Dems than to Republicans. That said, it is quite likely that these dollar amounts come from less than 10% of the 4000 or so faculty and staff members of the university.

In fact, the only dollar figures that can possibly be traced to actual numbers of people are the Kerry and Bush figures, which (because of the $2000 individual contribution limit) tell that at least 39 employees donated to Kerry and at least 2 donated to Bush.

While 39 to 2 is a large ration, this example underscores the fact that the Hoyas article shows simply a correlation between the GU employees who combined the most passion with their available money. All the while ignoring what is most likely a "vast middle."

It is interesting that the reporter would track down the dollar figure from the FEC but would fail to report on how many people actually donated. Did it go against the thesis of the article, or was it just considered "not important."

My two cents, anyway.

[SFHoya99]

How shocking! Who knew academics and educators to be liberals, in general! Lawyers supporting democrats!

Next up: Huge bias towards Republicans amongst Christian Fundamentalists!

Seriously, is anyone surprised by this?

[Cambridge]

Best post ever SF! Seriously, I never understand this constant outrage and furor over something so ridiculous. I mean I had plenty of professors on both sides of the political spectrum and some of my best classroom experiences were with professors who were definitely on the opposite side. I am a liberal...could you tell with my cambridgehoya moniker hahaha...but one of my best classes was with a former CIA director of intelligence who was definitely far to the other end of the political spectrum. Sure we had spirited debates, but it forced me to research far more thoroughly. I mean, I had to have air tight facts or he would shred me. He never graded based on his biases or preconceived notions. Incredible. My point is stop bemoaning the politics of someone, that is merely a facet in a persons worldview. Instead worry about whether we have good academic teachers. IF the professors can inspire debate and urge students to find their own voice, it doesn't matter what side of the aisle they come from.

[DFW HOYA]

Jack said:

So let's lay off bashing Georgetown specifically on this one DFW. I see a bias on display, but not necessarily from the faculty.

Not so. My stated concern was not on the results, which are not wholly inconsistent with other schools. My concern was the faculty comments that (paraphrased) that because the adminsitration is perceived as anti-intellectual and insensitive to the poor, that has rallied large scale support to Kerry. I don't buy it.

What I do buy is that many of the GU faculty that were a part of the Cold War era have retired and that those recruited in the place come from institutions where faculty are comfortable wearing their politics on their sleeves. That would have been a more honest response than these half-hearted attempts at academic rationalization.

There's value in a diverse faculty of opinion. I no more want to see a faculty that is 93% for Bush as 93% for Kerry. Georgetown is not as well served by a the kind of urbane academic so set in their views that they follow a NY Times mindset of the world, or as Daniel Okrent wrote, "if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans)...then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world."

[TrueHoyaBlue]

DFW said:

There's value in a diverse faculty of opinion. I no more want to see a faculty that is 93% for Bush as 93% for Kerry.

I agree. All that I'm saying is that this article doesn't indicate 93% support among the faculty, only among that unreported number of whom have donated politically in this cycle.

Essentially, this non-article is like having 4 Georgetown students buy an I-pod and one student buying a Rhapsody mp3 player, and declaring that 80% of Georgetown students prefer Apple over RealNetworks. It may be the case, but the study doesn't prove it.


Are there more Democrats on Georgetown's campus than Republicans? Probably

Is it a 93% breakdown? Probably not (I would guess that there are a significant number of undecideds, and that even the straight Kerry-Bush breakdown is not quite 93-7).

Does this article offer anything beyond one set of dollar figures? No.

This just strikes me as a particularly light article from which to launch an argument.

[Cambridge]

I wouldn't worry too much. Yes, I believe Gtown is more democrat than most comparable institutions, but only in name. Sure, more people at Gtown are Dems in name, but a large part of that has to do with demographics than politics. Think about who our average student is stereotypically white, upper middle class, irish catholic from the NY/NJ area whose parents probably grew up in Brooklyn or the Bronx. Those demographics will skew anything towards dem (in name at least) despite the fact that our students are often much more conservative than student bodies at similar schools. Just because a sampling of faculty seems to be supporting Kerry over Bush isn't going to change the politics of the campus. Besides, if anything the student body is becoming more and more conservative as the years go by...perhaps in response to the liberalism of the faculty. As is often the case, more often than not, students rebel against the current tone and often do so creatively and with vigor.

[Nevada Hoya]

Quite the opposite is true at my parish (the devout Catholics that Daniel Okrent [via DFW] talk about). We have been getting three page articles each week in our bulletins about how to vote in the election. The first one in the series was right out of the Republican National Committee (which I indicated to the pastor, because the article had no attribution of any source) of why it was a mortal sin to vote for Kerry and why even after the illegal war in Iraq that Bush was still worthy of your vote. The other articles have "mellowed" compared to that one, but I have written two letters to our pastor, indicating why I thought the articles (at least the first) was wrong. Essentially, they were taking away your voting rights. That is much worse than anything happening at Georgetown on this issue.

[Cambridge]

Wow, sounds like my good old home in Virginia. I thought the bible thumpers had a monopoly on these kind of activities. hahaha. I mean, I guess it's kinda endearing that the WASPs can finally accept the Catholics if it gets their guy elected. [wiping a tear from the corner of my eye] I feel like it was just yesterday they wouldn't let us play on their gold courses...[sigh] and now look at us, best buddies.