quote:

---

It's a fact, documented by two recent studies, that registered Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives make up only a small minority of professors at elite universities. But what should we conclude from that?

Conservatives see it as compelling evidence of liberal bias in university hiring and promotion. And they say that new "academic freedom" laws will simply mitigate the effects of that bias, promoting a diversity of views. But a closer look both at the universities and at the motives of those who would police them suggests a quite different story.

Claims that liberal bias keeps conservatives off college faculties almost always focus on the humanities and social sciences, where judgments about what constitutes good scholarship can seem subjective to an outsider. But studies that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why?

---

Read it here.
(and get thee a login ID here.)

[ 05 April 2005: Message edited by: Snuckles ]

So, I'm saying, "Let's throw their rhethoric back at them."

Surely you're not advocating that we have hiring quotas! Why should colleges have to lower the bar so that lesser qualified conservatives can be hired?

This could be fun.

[ 05 April 2005: Message edited by: Scott Piatkowski ]

quote:

---

Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why?

---

I think it's the business faculties that tend to get all the right-wing nuts.

[ 05 April 2005: Message edited by: DrConway ]

quote:

---

Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why?

---

Yeah, right, PitaPocket. Thanks for that.

quote:

---

Originally posted by PitaPlatter:

Because they go where the money is- The Business World.

---

[ 06 April 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Surferosad:
Well, if you're a christian fundamentalist, you can't be a geology professor. But I've met some very economically conservative geology professors...

[ 06 April 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Snuckles:

There is Keith Miller, a geology prof at Kansas State who is also an evangelical Christian. He isn't a young earth Genesis literalist however, he is best described as a theistic evolutionist.

---

quote:

---

One of my friends explained it this way: European history classes are a safe space for some students to construct an imagined past of uncomplicated racial purity.

---

But forty five seconds' sudy of the barbarian invasions of Europe at the end of the Roman period would make it utterly clear that racial purity is a joke.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Surferosad:
Well, if you're a christian fundamentalist, you can't be a geology professor. But I've met some very economically conservative geology professors...

[ 06 April 2005: Message edited by: Surferosad ]

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by PitaPlatter:

Because they go where the money is- The Business World.

---

{sarcasm}Oh, yeah, all those physicists make tons of cash in the private sector.{/sarcasm}

University faculty make pretty good gobs of cash. And so they should*--they do important research and help create the next generation of educated people. And they have a lot more independence than private sector scientists as a rule. It's one of the better careers around. Dashed hard to get into nowadays with all the poor sessional instructors being treated like piecework labourers, but that's a different story.

*(As long as we have an economy that creates big divisions based on money, anyway)

[ 06 April 2005: Message edited by: Rufus Polson ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Alix:

I've never understood this, but my uncle who is a mining engineer is also a fundamentalist Christian.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by swirrlygrrl:

Poli sci for me has always been a mixed bag. The worst right wingers I ever met were in the political theory. All convinced they would be the ultimate Philospher King, and had the true handle on the esoteric meanings of Plato, Bacon and Nietzsche, busy sneering about "men and women, exercising together, naked. *snicker* Things *dramatic pause* BOUNCING." Fuckers.

---

No kidding. I might even have had the same professor. The righties/conservatives tend to cluster in political theory (where reality is optional and secondary to being well-read) and international relations (proto-neocons). The one hard right non-theory prof I had was COnrad Winn, and he just opted out of talking about the class content, and instead focusing on how Arabs are bad.