Why Conservatives (And Even Traditional Liberals) Are Losing

Why Conservatives (And Even Traditional Liberals) Are Losing

This January 24, 2009 Des Moines Register article reports on a suit alleging political discrimination in hiring at the University of Iowa:

Professors at the University of Iowa law school denied allegations Friday that their decision not to hire a former student as a full-time writing coach was based on her conservative political views.

Teresa Wagner, a part-time writing instructor at the school, sued law school dean Carolyn Jones this week for lost income and emotional distress. The lawsuit alleges that Wagner, a registered Republican, was denied the writing coach position in 2006 due to her public views on abortion and euthanasia.

A faculty committee chose a less-qualified candidate with no prior experience in law or legal writing, the lawsuit claims.

"She just wants to make it known that conservatives need not apply," Wagner's lawyer, Stephen Fieweger of Moline, Ill., said. "Liberals talk about diversity, except when it comes to bringing in a different, conservative point of view."

A Des Moines Register review of voter registration records found that of the 50 full-time law school faculty members, 38 are registered Democrats and two are Republicans. Eight are registered with neither party and two are not registered in Iowa. A Register review in 2004 found that most undergraduate faculty members at Iowa's three public universities identify themselves as Democrats. The lean was greatest at the U of I, where there were eight Democratic professors for every Republican undergraduate faculty member.

The January 22, 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education has more detail, including:

To bolster her case, the lawsuit dissects the political affiliations of the approximately 50 faculty members who vote on law-school faculty hires; 46 of them are registered as Democrats and only one, hired 20 years ago, is a Republican, the lawsuit states.

Now, I don't know if she is correct about why she was not offered the job. Maybe this was just a coincidence. But some of the comments on the Chronicle of Higher Education article by those who have attended University of Iowa suggest that University of Iowa faculty is like faculty at many other universities in the U.S., including some at which I have been a student or adjunct faculty:

We shouldn’t be too dismissive of her claims, though they may ultimately be impossible to prove. Like most public universities, Iowa is indeed liberally dominated. When I was completing my Ph.D. in one of their graduate programs, I came across several telling experiences about the political leanings of the faculty. In one case, I was part of a hiring committee and every meeting to review applications began with about 15 minutes of very snide and outrageous commentary about Bush and the “religious conservatives” that make up so much of the “close-minded” student body. At another point, my wife’s brother (an undergraduate), went to a Political Science class the day after Bush was re-elected. The professor said, while showing a voting map of the U.S., that “Bush only won because he managed to capture the ‘ignorant vote,’ but you can plainly see that intelligent voters—most of whom live in urban areas—voted for Kerry.” He said this to undergraduates, a great number of whom come to the university from rural Iowa and other rural communities.

The harsh reality is that the hard left have become so dominant in the academic community that even what would have been considered "liberal" twenty years ago is now outside the pale of acceptable thought.

One of the academic historians mailing lists that I am got into a rather vigorous discussion of the significance President Obama's victory, a couple of days after the election--and there were professors arguing that the election just proved how racist America still is--because Obama didn't win a majority of older white males. Yet Obama receiving more than 95% of the black vote was not a sign of racism at all--that blacks voted overwhelmingly for Obama because they share Obama's views--even though on at least significant issues, gay marriage and abortion--blacks are strongly in opposition to Obama's position.

One of the reasons that the left is increasingly dominant among young people is that the left is so overwhelmingly in charge of education, especially at the college level--and they aren't going to allow that to change, if they have any choice in the matter. I'm not quite sure if there is a way to solve this political discrimination problem by law, but it certainly can't hurt for state legislatures to start asking questions of the university presidents. Questions like:

1. What percentage of your faculty (by department) are registered to vote in which parties? How does that compare to the general population of our state?

2. Do you have any members of your faculty in the social science departments that would by an objective measure, be considered conservative or libertarian?

3. Do you think it might be good if students enjoyed a diverse educational experience? Why is racial, gender, and sexual orientation diversity important enough to enshrine in your hiring practices, while political monoculture is not just acceptable, but apparently encouraged?

Until we get at least a significant minority of non-leftist perspectives teaching, we're going to continue down the road to a permanent hard left majority.