'WHY ARE PROFESSORS LIBERAL?'
WHY ARE PROFESSORS LIBERAL? - (KEVIN MACDONALD, Cal State
, LB)
Abstract
Recent research on the political attitudes of social scientists is reviewed indicating strong
liberal bias and willingness to discriminate against professors with non-liberal attitudes. I
argue that the liberal tilt of academia is the result of the rise of a cohort of Jewish academics
in the 1960s whose political attitudes reflected mainstream attitudes within the Jewish com-
munity but were well to the left of European-Americans in general. The academic world is
hierarchical, with elite institutions able to dominate the image of ideal professors and sup-
press or marginalize non-liberal views. Since the 1960s Jews have been strongly overrepre-
sented among academics, especially in the social sciences and especially at elite institutions.
The body of the paper shows that this transformation had the characteristics of successful in-
tellectual movements pointed to by Gross and Fosse (2012): (1) those involved in the move-
ment had a complaint (anti-Semitism, cultural exclusion); (2) they were able to form cohe-
sive, effective networks; (3) they had access to the most prestigious academic institutions.