4 ms·

Would love to see some statistics on party affiliation of faculty at these universities as a proxy measure for ideological diversity.

COGlory 6y ago
I haven't thoroughly investigated this study or its methodology, but it doesn't seem very hard to believe: https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-i... >We looked up 7,243 professors and found 3,623 to be registered Democratic and 314 Republican, for an overall D:R ratio of 11.5:1.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  That kind of makes sense though - university jobs rely on government funding and it's usually the Republicans who (at least claim to) try to reduce government spending.
  - setr 6y ago
    https://news.gallup.com/poll/146786/democrats-lead-ranks-union-state-workers.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/146786/democrats-lead-ranks-uni... Across federal employees, that doesn’t seem to matter much. I also wouldn’t expect republicans to care so much that they’d put monetary source before job type/location — it’d be quite difficult to be a republican teacher and find a job that’s not significantly government-funded
pc86 6y ago
It's not a good proxy, at least not anymore, so I'm not sure why you would. Plenty of fairly conservative people had been registered Republicans for a long time up through and maybe including 2016. Maybe this was different in the 90's or 00's and may have worked then?
offby37years 6y ago
Heavily Democrat: - Of 12k donors from University of California faculty, only 6% donated to Trump, 94% to Biden - MIT, 5% Trump, 95% Biden - Stanford, 5% Trump, 95% Biden - Harvard, 4% Trump, 96% Biden - University of Colorado, 4% Trump, 96% Biden - University of Washington, 3% Trump, 97% Biden And so on: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-election-trump-biden-donors/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-election-trump-biden...
- mindslight 6y ago
  A straightforward conclusion from that data would be that universities are overwhelmingly conservative, having donated to the more conservative candidate. But really it just shows the futility of discussing things in terms of group affiliations when one of the major parties in the middle of an upheaval.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    A straightforward conclusion would be that you are spinning that data really hard to try to make it support your narrative.
    - mindslight 6y ago
      I didn't spin anything. The comment I was replying to said that 95% of faculty donations went to Biden. Biden was the conservative candidate - he respects institutions, supports gradual changes to the status quo, and goes to church regularly. What I was doing was being a bit facetious, by using the plain definition of the word conservative rather than the contemporary stretched definition referring to a movement that is better described as radical populism. And I obviously don't believe that colleges are full of conservatives - that was a reductio ad absurdum. My actual point is that it's foolish to be looking at that 2020 presidential race as a proxy for conservatism on college campuses, especially tolerance of conservatism, when the candidate calling himself "conservative" is nothing of the sort. Put another way, shunning Trump supporters is in no way shunning conservatives.

COGlory 6y ago

I haven't thoroughly investigated this study or its methodology, but it doesn't seem very hard to believe: https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-i... >We looked up 7,243 professors and found 3,623 to be registered Democratic and 314 Republican, for an overall D:R ratio of 11.5:1.

commandlinefan 6y ago
That kind of makes sense though - university jobs rely on government funding and it's usually the Republicans who (at least claim to) try to reduce government spending.
- setr 6y ago
  https://news.gallup.com/poll/146786/democrats-lead-ranks-union-state-workers.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/146786/democrats-lead-ranks-uni... Across federal employees, that doesn’t seem to matter much. I also wouldn’t expect republicans to care so much that they’d put monetary source before job type/location — it’d be quite difficult to be a republican teacher and find a job that’s not significantly government-funded

pc86 6y ago

It's not a good proxy, at least not anymore, so I'm not sure why you would. Plenty of fairly conservative people had been registered Republicans for a long time up through and maybe including 2016. Maybe this was different in the 90's or 00's and may have worked then?

offby37years 6y ago

Heavily Democrat: - Of 12k donors from University of California faculty, only 6% donated to Trump, 94% to Biden - MIT, 5% Trump, 95% Biden - Stanford, 5% Trump, 95% Biden - Harvard, 4% Trump, 96% Biden - University of Colorado, 4% Trump, 96% Biden - University of Washington, 3% Trump, 97% Biden And so on: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-election-trump-biden-donors/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-election-trump-biden...

mindslight 6y ago
A straightforward conclusion from that data would be that universities are overwhelmingly conservative, having donated to the more conservative candidate. But really it just shows the futility of discussing things in terms of group affiliations when one of the major parties in the middle of an upheaval.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  A straightforward conclusion would be that you are spinning that data really hard to try to make it support your narrative.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    I didn't spin anything. The comment I was replying to said that 95% of faculty donations went to Biden. Biden was the conservative candidate - he respects institutions, supports gradual changes to the status quo, and goes to church regularly. What I was doing was being a bit facetious, by using the plain definition of the word conservative rather than the contemporary stretched definition referring to a movement that is better described as radical populism. And I obviously don't believe that colleges are full of conservatives - that was a reductio ad absurdum. My actual point is that it's foolish to be looking at that 2020 presidential race as a proxy for conservatism on college campuses, especially tolerance of conservatism, when the candidate calling himself "conservative" is nothing of the sort. Put another way, shunning Trump supporters is in no way shunning conservatives.