Political views of American academics

Template:New unreviewed article The notion of Liberl Bias in Academia is the perception that academia has a had an increasingly pronounced liberal bias. This has been a subject of controversy amongst academics and the general public alike. Whilst the debate whether leftist professors have secured an advantageous position regarding their professional development has intensified, the evidence put forward by both sides of the argument had remained largely empirical. Recent research has provided evidence in support of the argument that institutions of higher education do cultivate faculty bodies with predominantly liberal socio-political views.

Research

Prior to the late 1960's, speculation of the existence of liberal bias in higher education was based entirely on anecdotal reports and observations. Starting in 1969, a series of surveys and questionnaires were conducted throughout Canada and the US, which supported the previously untested speculations of the prevalence of progressive-style of teaching amongst the majority of professors. A Carnegie survey in1984 found that professors with liberal political views represented a slightly larger percentage of faculty than their conservative counterparts, constituting 39% of faculty as compared to 34% for conservatives. A 1999 survey conducted by the North American Academic Study Survey(NAASS) in the US found that professors with liberal socio-political views outnumbered their conservative counterparts by a ratio of 5 to 1, with the former constituting 72% of the faculty body and the later representing 15%. This shift to progressivism in institutions if higher education was not representative of the socio-political opinions of the general public. An opinion poll concluded that conservatives within the general public outnumbered liberals by a ratio of 2 to 1 in 1999, with the former constituting 37% of respondents and the latter a mere 17%.,