While reading about that ISI study mentioned below, I stumbled on a link to this essay over at the Chronicle of Higher Education by Jere P. Surber. It’s title: “Well, Naturally We’re Liberal.” It’s an interesting read, chiefly for its honesty. Professor Surber offers three reasons for why liberal-arts professors lean left. I like his first reason a lot: Envy.

Oh he doesn’t use the E-word, but it’s pretty clear that’s what he’s getting at. He writes (emphasis mine):

First, as the Times article notes, virtually all instructors in the liberal arts are aware of the disparity between their level of education and their financial situation. There’s no secret that the liberal arts are the lowest-compensated sector of academe, despite substantially more advanced study than business instructors and the equivalent of those in the natural sciences. Just as important, there are few opportunities for liberal-arts scholars to supplement their incomes by serving on government and corporate boards, filing patents and licenses, and, of course, obtaining generous research grants. You don’t have to be a militant Marxist to recognize that people’s political persuasions will align pretty well with their economic interests. It’s real simple: Those who have less and want more will tend to support social changes that promise to accomplish that; those who are already economic winners will want to conserve their status.
I don’t mean to suggest that issues of conscience beyond the confines of crass self-interest don’t play an important role for many in the liberal arts, but their basic economic condition virtually assures that those in the liberal arts will be natural-born liberals. Who, after all, would want to preserve a situation in which others who are equivalently educated and experienced — doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists, colleagues in other areas, and, yes, chief executives — receive vastly more compensation, sometimes by a factor of 10 or 100? I wonder what would happen to the academic political spectrum if liberal-arts professors were compensated the same as those in other areas. If an enterprising sociologist wants to conduct such an experiment, I’ll certainly volunteer as a subject.

His second reason for academic liberalism is intriguing, but also more annoying. He writes:

A second reason that liberal-arts professors tend to be politically liberal is that they have very likely studied large-scale historical processes and complex cultural dynamics. Conservatives, who tend to evoke the need to preserve traditional connections with the past, have nonetheless contributed least to any detailed or thoughtful study of history. Most (although, of course, by no means all) prominent historians of politics, literature, the arts, religion, and even economics have tended, as conservatives claim, to be liberally biased. Fair enough. But if you actually take the time to look at history and culture, certain conclusions about human nature, society, and economics tend to force themselves on you. History has a trajectory, driven in large part by the desires of underprivileged or oppressed groups to attain parity with the privileged or the oppressor.
Consider the Greek struggle against Persian tyranny, the struggles to preserve the Roman Republic, the peasant uprisings of the Middle Ages, the American and French revolutions, the abolitionist and civil-rights movements, and now movements on behalf of other groups — women, Latinos, homosexuals, and the physically impaired. As President Obama recently put it, any open-minded review of history (and perhaps especially American history) teaches at least one clear lesson: There is a “right side of history,” Obama said — the side of those who would overcome prejudice, question unearned privilege, and resist oppression in favor of a more just condition.
If you don’t study history, whether because it doesn’t pad quarterly profits, isn’t sufficiently scientific or objective, or threatens your own economic status, then you won’t know any of that. But most of those in the liberal arts have concluded that there really isn’t any other intellectually respectable way to interpret the broad contours of history and culture. They are liberal, in other words, by deliberate and reasoned choice, based upon the best available evidence.

Mmmm hmmm. This I find quite revealing in its arrogance and myopia. This is the liberal-arts equivalent of invoking the “scientific consensus,” only much dumber. If liberal academics are such close and obedient students of the best available evidence, how to explain their refusal — or, to be more charitable, longstanding tardiness — to acknowledge, the evidence supporting the superiority of markets, the evils of the Soviet Union or the flaws in various academic fads. To be fair I’m painting with a broad brush (but so is he). Still, as gross generalization, the idea that English, Philosophy, and Sociology professors have been at the forefront of following the evidence wherever it takes them is just hilariously absurd.

Professor Surber might respond that he’s defining liberal in terms of recognizing the “social justice” demands of oppressed minorities and other underprivileged demographics and not all the stuff they so clearly got — and continue to get — wrong. But that in itself is a very revealing definition of liberalism and a very selective use of facts. Again, the notion that liberal-arts professors have been at the vanguard of identifying and elucidating the “right side of history” is one of the most palpably absurd contentions an academic can make.

Third, humanities professors are liberal because they were educated in the liberal tradition, which thrives on an atmosphere of tolerence, open-mindedness, and decency and it is their vocation to balance competing values and norms in a sober and clear-eyed way.

I don’t know about you, but that is totally my impression of liberal-arts professors. A more open-minded bunch, brimming with tolerance for threatening ideas, you’ll never find (at least this side of the North Korean politburo).

Almost in an effort to prove his point, Surber sums up why he and his peers are liberal in a tour de force of openmindedness and intellectual generosity:

It is because we liberal-arts professors have a personal stake in our relative economic status; we have carefully studied the actual dynamics of history and culture; and we have trained ourselves to think in complex, nuanced, and productive ways about the human condition that so many of us are liberals. Most of us agree with President Obama that there is a “right side of history,” and we feel morally bound to be on it. Although we’d like to see some parity in compensation with our colleagues, we chose our fields with full awareness of the tradeoff. Part of our compensation lies in knowing that our studies can complement our standing on the “right side,” rather than having our basic commitments dictated to us by the limitations of other, narrower professions.
So all you journalists and researchers: Enough with this assumption that liberal-arts professors are liberal as a result of naïveté, as if our tweed jackets and pipes, as the Times article put it (how much of that do you really see these days?), render us ignorant of the ways of the world. Drop this idea that we were somehow coerced into being liberals by peer pressure or role models. And most of all, don’t condescend to suggest that we may just be, as one expert quoted by the Times did, free spirits (read: malcontents and misfits) who couldn’t cut it in the serious professions (like Dick Cheney, Kenneth L. Lay, and Jeffrey K. Skilling did?) and found our impecunious niche in teaching the liberal arts.
We’re here and mostly liberal by practical deliberation, factual investigation, and rational and moral conviction. We don’t mind the lower pay (well, not that much), but don’t demean us, when most of our conservative critics would be hard-pressed to make anything remotely approaching the same claims. Remember that one of our most vigorous critics, Sarah Palin, was reportedly unclear about significant events in American history (the First World War? Hmm, lemme think . . .) and had to be given grammar-school geography lessons by her campaign staff. But who knows, if Palin had more of a grounding in the liberal arts, she might have . . . nah!

It’s stunning that anyone would even suggest that liberals are condescending.