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About a week before the unaffiliated Bruin Alumni Association, led by Andrew Jones, and their UCLAProfs.com website became big news, Independent Souces was already on the case, highlighting some of the most left-of-center statements by the UCLA faculty as compiled in the dossiers listed on the site.
Then, this week, lotería chicana gave the perspective of a long-time student in Westwood (Cindy is currently doing graduate studies there). She points out that Andrew Jones was fired as a columnist for the Daily Bruin as an undergrad after some questionable behavior during student body elections in 2002. She also reposts the "pay-for-dirt" solicitation email that went out to students from the organization.
Today's Current is mostly focused on academic freedom and provides some interesting statistics about the political affiliations of American higher ed instructors and how they've shifted over the past 20 years or so.
Our curious question of the day: what has caused this shift in political balance in the university setting?
Have conservative professors left the classroom? Are new conservative professors not being hired by the "liberals in power" at college institutions? Has there been a shift of conservatives from education positions to business positions? Are most faculties still filled with the same professors from the 80s whose views have skewed more liberal over time? Are conservatives with advanced degrees even looking to teach in higher ed?
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Conservatives increasingly don't even bother to go into PhD programs. In large part this has to do with the grip that postmodernism/poststructuralism has on so many fields. If you don't want to worship at the altars of Habermas and Foucault, you're going to be very uncomfortable. In the humanities, this serves to eliminate pretty much anyone to the right of Tom Hayden.
It's even a problem in the social sciences: As a center-left pragmatic Democrat, I find myself thought of nearly as a fascist by my critical theory-infatuated peers in the urban planning PhD program at USC.
There are over 1,200 faculty members at UCLA. This guy has 30 on his list and another 23 or so he's willing to pay students for for more information. What's the problem really?
I've heard that conservative academics go to think thans rather than work as researchers at universities.
Perhaps the increase in non-white and more women faculty has had a liberalizing effect.
Regarding Pete's comment, I'd like to see if there is a significant difference in educational aspirations between entering and fourth year college students identifying as liberal or conservative.