The lack of conservatives among humanities and social science faculty is problematic

Conservative faculty? Where?

by Michael R. Strain



I recently came across the graph above, put together by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and coauthors. The graph is featured on the website HeterodoxAcademy.org, and is described here:

American universities have leaned left for a long time. That is not a serious problem; as long as there are some non-leftists in every field and every department, we can assume that eventually, someone will challenge claims that reflect ideology more than evidence.

But things began changing in the 1990s as the Greatest Generation (which had a fair number of Republicans) retired and were replaced by the Baby Boom generation (which did not). As the graph below shows, in the 15 years between 1995 and 2010 the academy went from leaning left to being almost entirely on the left. (The 12% in the red line for 2014 is mostly made up of professors in schools of engineering and other professional schools; the percent conservative for the major humanities and social science departments is closer to 5%).

HeterodoxAcademy.org was founded to call attention to this trend and the problems it is causing for scholarship, particularly in the social sciences and related fields (such as law and public policy).

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