{"id":1578,"date":"2007-07-11T11:40:48","date_gmt":"2007-07-11T11:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/07\/11\/political-bias-of-faculty\/"},"modified":"2007-07-11T11:40:48","modified_gmt":"2007-07-11T11:40:48","slug":"political-bias-of-faculty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/07\/11\/political-bias-of-faculty\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Bias of Faculty"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a new Zogby Poll on political bias in academia<\/a> that should warm whatever it is that David Horowitz uses as a heart:<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

Nearly six in 10 – 58% – said they see it as a serious problem, with 39% saying it was a “very serious” problem.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That sounds pretty bad, but I suspect it’s really a non-story. Why? Look at the poltiical breakdown:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Roughly 35% of the population self-identifies as conservative, according to poll data from 2005<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It’s a sad testament to the effectiveness of the conservative noise machine, but I don’t think it’s much more than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… Continue reading Political Bias of Faculty<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}