As Tim noted, Howard Kurtz reports today on the latest empirical study of political bias on

college campuses.

The

numbers are bad. According to Kurtz, college faculties “lean further to

the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have

imagined.” I was especially struck by the 87 percent liberal versus 13

percent conservative division on elite campuses. I haven’t yet seen the

original study, but it appears to include relatively conservative programs

like engineering and business (although even these turned up as liberal on

balance). Subtract those more conservative programs and humanities and

social science faculties at elite schools would appear to be over ninety

percent liberal. The study’s authors are cautious. They take these

imbalances as “preliminary” evidence of “possible discrimination” against

conservatives. Any conservative who’s been on a college campus lately

knows the score on that one.

John Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American

Association of University Professors, was delegated the unenviable task of

dismissing the survey. He pretends the faculty’s liberalism has nothing

whatever to do with the curriculum. Yeah, right. Of course Knight, the

man who supposedly safeguards academic freedom for all of us, neglects to

mention that academic freedom exists to nurture and protect a marketplace

of ideas. By that classic standard, real academic freedom no longer exists

in the American academy.

Another important finding here is that the leftward drift has gotten far

worse over time. Back in 1984, just a few years before Allan Bloom and

William Bennett began the war against campus political correctness, 39

percent of faculty members described themselves as liberal. Today the

figure is 72 percent (87 for elite schools). The actual content of the

campus culture wars may not have changed much in 20 years, but the larger

situation has changed. At this point, conservatives aren’t just outgunned

on campus, they are almost entirely excluded–especially on elite

campuses. Where is the next generation of conservative intellectuals going

to come from?