NCPA - Daily Policy Digest - Few College Professors are Republicans

NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS
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Few College Professors are Republicans

A recent survey issued by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the American Enterprise Institute reveals that the overwhelming majority of college professors are registered Democrats, and that they teach in disciplines where politics matters the most. It has prompted considerable comment.

It found that:

More that 90 percent of professors who work in the arts and sciences departments at leading colleges and universities belong to either Democrat, Green or Working Class parties -- with very few registered as either Republican or Libertarian.

Among history professors at the University of Colorado at Boulder, only one out of 29 was a registered Republican -- and among 19 political science professors only two Republicans could be found.

At the University of Texas at Austin, of the 109 professors whose political affiliation was identified, 94 were Democrats and 15 were Republicans.

At Brown University, 54 professors whose political affiliations were recorded in primary registrations last year were Democrats, compared with three Republicans.

Comments on the imbalance range from "worrisome" to "a national outrage." Said one critic, "Faculties that won't brook intellectual dissent in their own ranks feel more comfortable indoctrinating students than educating them..."

But some observers predict that notoriously rebellious college students will probably emerge from liberal classrooms as confirmed libertarians or conservatives.

Source: Ellen Sorokin, "One-Party Campuses," Washington Times, September 5, 2002

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