Why are professors liberal?

Abstract

The political liberalism of professors-an important occupational group and anomaly according to traditional theories of class politics-has long puzzled sociologists. This article sheds new light on the subject by employing a two-step analytic procedure. In the first step, we assess the explanatory power of the main hypotheses proposed over the last half century to account for professors' liberal views. To do so, we examine hypothesized predictors of the political gap between professors and other Americans using General Social Survey data pooled from . Results indicate that professors are more liberal than other Americans because a higher proportion possess advanced educational credentials, exhibit a disparity between their levels of education and income, identify as Jewish, non-religious, or non-theologically conservative Protestant, and express greater tolerance for controversial ideas. In the second step of our article, we develop a new theory of professors' politics on the basis of these findings (though not directly testable with our data) that we think holds more explanatory promise than existing approaches and that sets an agenda for future research.

Political Diversity in Social and Personality Psychology

“…Similarly, Jacquet (2011) speculated that "there are very few conservatives in social psychology possibly not because it's a hostile environment but because the field of social psychology self-selects for liberals and might even create them." We do not doubt that self-selection may play some role (see Gross & Fosse, 2012), and we agree that the field's liberal tilt is, on logical grounds, not enough to conclusively show a hostile climate or discrimination against conservatives (although such large statistical disparities are legally considered prima facie evidence of discrimination; Teamsters v. United States, 1977). We therefore investigated whether conservative social-personality psychologists do indeed experience a hostile climate and whether the more liberal might be willing to actively discriminate against their conservative colleagues.…”

In-Home Firearm Access among US Adolescents and the Role of Religious Subculture: Results from a Nationally Representative Study

“…Maintaining tension with social institutions has been a hallmark of contemporary conservative Protestantism in America (Smith et al 1998 Darnell and Sherkat 1997;Sherkat and Darnell 1999;Sikkink 1999;Johnson, Scheitle, and Ecklund 2016). This tension may come from the -institutional reputation‖ that mainstream educational and scientific institutions are involved in liberalizing and secularizing society (Gross and Fosse 2012;Wuthnow 1988, 154-72). Many conservative Protestants place trust in God in opposition to confidence in science, and view scientific knowledge as a form of sinful hubris (Hood, Hill, and Williamson 2005;Noll 1994).…”

Les sous-cultures politiques du savoir

“…Au contraire, étude après étude, des auteurs ont montré que, ayant à se placer sur le spectre politique, les professeurs d'université se situent en règle générale plus à gauche que le reste de la population appartenant à leur stratification sociale (Gross et Fosse, 2012 ;Schuster et Kinkelstein, 2006). Le milieu d'origine n'a aussi qu'un faible impact sur leurs choix partisans (Nakhaie et Brym, 1999).…”

“…Pour saisir les orientations intellectuelles des enseignants, il est préférable de considérer avant tout leurs domaines d'enseignement et de recherche (Ladd et Lipset, 1972), les disciplines étant un des plus importants facteurs de division politique à l'intérieur de l'enceinte universitaire. À ce sujet, Ladd et Lipset ont conclu il y a longtemps déjà que l'âge et la discipline représentaient « by far the most powerful discriminating among opinions on campus activism within the American professoriate 5 » (Ladd et Lipset, 1971, p. 120), et les recherches récentes n'ont fait que confirmer cette assertion (Gross et Fosse, 2012).…”