There’s a new Zogby Poll on political bias in academia that should warm whatever it is that David Horowitz uses as a heart:
As legislation is introduced in more than a dozen states across the country to counter political pressure and proselytizing on students in college classrooms, a majority of Americans believe the political bias of college professors is a serious problem, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.
Nearly six in 10 – 58% – said they see it as a serious problem, with 39% saying it was a “very serious” problem.
That sounds pretty bad, but I suspect it’s really a non-story. Why? Look at the poltiical breakdown:
Predictably, whether political bias is a problem depends greatly on the philosophy of the respondents. While 91% of very conservative adults said the bias is a “serious problem,” just 3% of liberals agreed.
Roughly 35% of the population self-identifies as conservative, according to poll data from 2005, and 91% of them would be about 32%. Throw in the liberals, and you only need slightly less than half of the moderates to reach 58% of the general population.
Given that the liberal bias of college professors is an article of faith among conservatives, this total really doesn’t surprise me. Likewise, the other demographic breakdowns: men are more likely to see bias, but men tend to be more conservative than women. Whites are more likely to see bias, but whites tend to be more conservative.
It’s a sad testament to the effectiveness of the conservative noise machine, but I don’t think it’s much more than that.