My Americana. XXVI. Professorial leftism (2)
Cont. from http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/102438.html
In the previous essay of the series, the story was how the dismantling of the class system, with its rigid hierarchy and guild ethics, resulted in ballooning of professional’s incomes eventually resulting in meritocratic inequality fully replacing the one generated by the class system. The harbingers of this change were the generation of the New Deal with its attitude of sticking it to the system. When this cohort reached the position allowing it to become part of the system, it carried the destructive attitude with it. The status was replaced by the monetary reward leading to income inequalities negating the social agenda of this cohort.
Now, to the academia. It is mind boggling how little introspection exists concerning the nature of academic leftism. The problem is perhaps that people who are supposed to study such matters are in the social sciences, which is the outflank of the academic left, and their "explanations" tend to be that (i) they ARE very smart and (ii) very smart people ARE the left fringe. You can substitute "smart" by "socially conscious" or having “curious and courageous academic mind”; the logic remains the same. (The problem with "smart" is that it is difficult to explain why the fraction of "smart" people on the campus rapidly decreases when one moves from the social sciences to natural sciences to engineering to economics to business sciences). I am uninterested in this sort of explanations, but I am interested in the general question - why the academia is so far from the country on the whole. This was not always the case, although the slight bias can be traced back to the 1880s. There was some bias in the general direction of the progressivism (not necessarily left progressivism), but it was nothing as dramatic as it is today.
The qualitative change occurred very rapidly in the 1950s and it coincided with two related developments. One was the G.I. BIll that allowed veterans to become students. In the US, 30% of the relevant age cohort was enrolled; in 1970 it was 50%; then it stabilized. The post-1948 wave caused the dramatic expansion of postsecondary education system. This expansion resulted in the colossal demand for staff. In natural sciences and engineering, this demand was partially satisfied by the brain drain. In the humanities and social sciences the situation was different. A course in government administration taught by a German ex-patriot simply would not do. There was demand for (specifically) domestically grown academics. How were these exponentially expanding universities/colleges staffing themselves on such a short note?
In the 1950s, the New Dealers suddenly found themselves without jobs in a world no longer interested in their social agenda. My impression, based mainly on the stories and memories of (now elderly) people who remember the 1950s, is that this maladapted group got absorbed right into the expanding academia. Some add that it was destined to become so by the prevalent anti-Communism attitudes making other occupations difficult. The academia offered a safe haven. Its liberalism was increasing through the first half of the 20th century, but in the 1950s, the academe changed completely, starting with the expanding state universities but rapidly involving the elite private universities that fed from the same pool of talent.
It was the 1950s that tipped the balance. As soon as that happened, the system became self-perpetuating (see below), but its shape was defined there and then. The conventional wisdom (catering to the bloated self-image of the baby boomers) is that the transformation occurred later, at the end of the 1960s, when the radical baby-boomer entered the universities. The bent was already apparent in the 1950s, and the rebels went through a system already sympathetic to (if not nurturing of) this rebellion. It is fully sufficient for a single generation to form the bias that can perpetuate itself without censure and discrimination (which also took place). The main reason is that left academia attracts students of the certain kind and only such students go on to join its ranks. Another consideration is that since the expansion of the universities had ended in the 1970s, the baby boomers presently account for the largest fraction of professors (at the height of their career) so their generational views are dominant on the campus.
How does such a system perpetuate itself? I think that these two young sociologists have the correct explanation. They do a very good job of showing empirically that the ideological explanations of the left and right are incorrect. The probable answer is in the typesetting. Here is a brief summary, a longer excerpt is hidden.
... given the way the American academic profession was institutionalized and its twentieth-century history, it has acquired such a strong reputation for liberalism and secularism that over the last thirty five years few politically- or religiously-conservative students, but many liberal and secular ones, have formed the aspiration to become professors. These commonplace aspirational differences, combined with more occasional downstream assessments of organizational fit, are the main proximate causes of the preponderance of liberals in academe today. http://www.soci.ubc.ca/fileadmin/template/main/images/departments/soci/faculty/gross/why_are_professors_liberal.pdf
...over the years sociologists have advanced numerous hypotheses to explain the liberalism of professors. Political sociologists in the 1970s and 1980s engaging the “new class” problem suggested that professors belong to the broader occupational category of “social and cultural specialists,” which also includes “artists, writers, journalists … and social scientists [outside academe].” The group’s liberalism reflected high levels of education and the experience of having come of age in the 1960s. Others saw its political dispositions and sympathies to be a function of class location and interests, variously understood. For still others the liberalism of professors and of the professional classes generally evidenced the rise of a “new political culture” in the advanced industrial democracies characterized by new cross-class alignments and concerns. Finally, some social scientists today suggest the faculty’s liberal tilt may reflect discriminatory hiring and promotion practices.
...We argue that the professoriate has been “politically typed” as appropriate for and welcoming of people with broadly liberal political sensibilities, and as inappropriate for conservatives. This reputation leads many more liberal than conservative students to aspire for the advanced educational credentials that make entry into knowledge work fields possible, and to put in the work necessary to translate those aspirations into reality. For example, while it is possible that attaining an advanced degree would make women even more liberal than it makes men it seems more plausible that liberal women are simply more likely than their conservative female counterparts to pursue advanced degrees and become professors, perhaps because conservative women have other life priorities or different sensibilities about appropriate career tracks. Similarly, the fact that verbal ability matters greatly and positively in conjunction with advanced education suggests that liberals with academic potential are much more likely to pursue advanced degrees than are conservatives with academic potential, and that the most liberal of the former are more likely to become professors. We theorize that, in a related process, very religious students tend to steer clear of academia because it has a reputation for secularism, which further contributes to the liberalism of the professoriate. When it occasionally happens that conservative students do form the aspiration to become professors, they are likely to run up against barriers involving both self-concept incongruence and negative judgments from peers and occupation members.
...adolescents and young adults have limited cultural exposure to a wide array of occupational models, their social circumstances constrain the number of options they seriously consider pursuing and the strategies they undertake to pursue those options. Along parallel lines, we argue that for young people whose political identities are salient, liberalism and conservatism constrain horizons of educational and occupational possibility.
...the general thrust of our approach is away from the influential idea that class and class interests play a major role in shaping the politics of American professors today. Class interests do not appear to explain the bulk of professorial liberalism. The class backgrounds of American professors contribute little to explaining their politics. In other unreported models we find that when class background is measured as father’s SEI, it increases rather than decreases the gap, since professors tend to have higher social class origins. That many professors have parents with graduate degrees, who might value cultural more than economic capital, explains away only a minute portion of their liberalism. While professors do have more liberal economic attitudes than other Americans, it is their social attitudes that are truly distinctive. One could construct an argument as to how such attitudes would have a basis in class interest, as Lamont did by suggesting that liberal social views among new class workers reflect efforts at differentiation from the business classes. But beyond the fact that such an argument represents a watering down of the classic assumption of direct connection between material conditions and political views, our models show that class differentiation pressures, at least as measured as lack of confidence in American business, do not help to account for professorial liberalism.
...that many American professors are public employees who have a direct economic stake in liberalism does little to account for their politics. We do not agree with the claim that the reason professors are removed from class politics is that, no matter their individual class backgrounds and interests, their training gives them a broader, more perspicacious view of society. Instead, we think that class exerts a relatively modest influence on American professors’ politics because processes of occupational recruitment tend to draw into the professorial ranks academically-minded liberals whose political identities, in conventional liberal-conservative, Democratic-Republican terms, happen to be far more salient than whatever class-political identities they may have (however much class may be inscribed in their other social practices).
...How might the American professoriate have acquired its reputation for liberalism, becoming politically typed? This is a complex historical question tied a variety of developments that we do not have space to broach, but we argue that the answer has much to do with “public dramas” over secularization and academic freedom that accompanied the birth of the American research university and that reflected on the ground processes by which long-term dynamics such as institutional differentiation played themselves out; with the diffusion to the U.S. of social-critical notions of intellectualism that had their origins in Dreyfus-era France; with the fact that higher education was a crucial mobilization context for a number of left social movements in the 1960s and 1970s, which further enhanced the institution’s liberal reputation; with concerted cultural efforts by American conservatives, especially from the 1950s on, to build a collective identity for their movement around differentiation from various categories of “liberal elites,” not least liberal professors; with restricted opportunities for Americans on the far left to enter other institutional spheres; and with self-reinforcing processes by which self-selection into the academic profession by liberals resulted in a more liberal professoriate whose reputation for liberalism was thereby maintained or enhanced.
...Turning briefly to a final aspect of the theory, we consider how it might begin to explain political variation among professors-in particular variation across disciplines and institutions. We theorize that, within the general constraint that more liberals than conservatives will aspire for advanced educational credentials and academic careers of any kind, liberal students will be far more inclined than conservatives to enter fields that have come to define themselves around left-valenced images of intellectual personhood. Over the course of its twentieth century history, for example, sociology has increasingly defined itself as the study of race, class, and gender inequality-a set of concerns especially important to liberals-and this means that sociology will consistently recruit from a more liberal applicant pool than fields like mechanical engineering, and prove a more chilly home for those conservatives who manage to push through into graduate school or the academic ranks. In terms of variation by institution, our theory would explain the greater prevalence of professors with left/liberal views at elite institutions by noting that elite schools are under strong pressures to hire scholars who are not only productive, but will also be seen by their peers and other constituencies as leading academicians who embody the qualities and virtues definitive of the academic role. To the extent that that role has been socially defined as tied to liberal politics, elite institutions-simply in offering positions to scholars who are seen as exemplary-will end up with a more liberal professorial workforce.
Why are professors liberal?
In the previous essay of the series, the story was how the dismantling of the class system, with its rigid hierarchy and guild ethics, resulted in ballooning of professional’s incomes eventually resulting in meritocratic inequality fully replacing the one generated by the class system. The harbingers of this change were the generation of the New Deal with its attitude of sticking it to the system. When this cohort reached the position allowing it to become part of the system, it carried the destructive attitude with it. The status was replaced by the monetary reward leading to income inequalities negating the social agenda of this cohort.
Now, to the academia. It is mind boggling how little introspection exists concerning the nature of academic leftism. The problem is perhaps that people who are supposed to study such matters are in the social sciences, which is the outflank of the academic left, and their "explanations" tend to be that (i) they ARE very smart and (ii) very smart people ARE the left fringe. You can substitute "smart" by "socially conscious" or having “curious and courageous academic mind”; the logic remains the same. (The problem with "smart" is that it is difficult to explain why the fraction of "smart" people on the campus rapidly decreases when one moves from the social sciences to natural sciences to engineering to economics to business sciences). I am uninterested in this sort of explanations, but I am interested in the general question - why the academia is so far from the country on the whole. This was not always the case, although the slight bias can be traced back to the 1880s. There was some bias in the general direction of the progressivism (not necessarily left progressivism), but it was nothing as dramatic as it is today.
The qualitative change occurred very rapidly in the 1950s and it coincided with two related developments. One was the G.I. BIll that allowed veterans to become students. In the US, 30% of the relevant age cohort was enrolled; in 1970 it was 50%; then it stabilized. The post-1948 wave caused the dramatic expansion of postsecondary education system. This expansion resulted in the colossal demand for staff. In natural sciences and engineering, this demand was partially satisfied by the brain drain. In the humanities and social sciences the situation was different. A course in government administration taught by a German ex-patriot simply would not do. There was demand for (specifically) domestically grown academics. How were these exponentially expanding universities/colleges staffing themselves on such a short note?
In the 1950s, the New Dealers suddenly found themselves without jobs in a world no longer interested in their social agenda. My impression, based mainly on the stories and memories of (now elderly) people who remember the 1950s, is that this maladapted group got absorbed right into the expanding academia. Some add that it was destined to become so by the prevalent anti-Communism attitudes making other occupations difficult. The academia offered a safe haven. Its liberalism was increasing through the first half of the 20th century, but in the 1950s, the academe changed completely, starting with the expanding state universities but rapidly involving the elite private universities that fed from the same pool of talent.
It was the 1950s that tipped the balance. As soon as that happened, the system became self-perpetuating (see below), but its shape was defined there and then. The conventional wisdom (catering to the bloated self-image of the baby boomers) is that the transformation occurred later, at the end of the 1960s, when the radical baby-boomer entered the universities. The bent was already apparent in the 1950s, and the rebels went through a system already sympathetic to (if not nurturing of) this rebellion. It is fully sufficient for a single generation to form the bias that can perpetuate itself without censure and discrimination (which also took place). The main reason is that left academia attracts students of the certain kind and only such students go on to join its ranks. Another consideration is that since the expansion of the universities had ended in the 1970s, the baby boomers presently account for the largest fraction of professors (at the height of their career) so their generational views are dominant on the campus.
How does such a system perpetuate itself? I think that these two young sociologists have the correct explanation. They do a very good job of showing empirically that the ideological explanations of the left and right are incorrect. The probable answer is in the typesetting. Here is a brief summary, a longer excerpt is hidden.
... given the way the American academic profession was institutionalized and its twentieth-century history, it has acquired such a strong reputation for liberalism and secularism that over the last thirty five years few politically- or religiously-conservative students, but many liberal and secular ones, have formed the aspiration to become professors. These commonplace aspirational differences, combined with more occasional downstream assessments of organizational fit, are the main proximate causes of the preponderance of liberals in academe today. http://www.soci.ubc.ca/fileadmin/template/main/images/departments/soci/faculty/gross/why_are_professors_liberal.pdf
...over the years sociologists have advanced numerous hypotheses to explain the liberalism of professors. Political sociologists in the 1970s and 1980s engaging the “new class” problem suggested that professors belong to the broader occupational category of “social and cultural specialists,” which also includes “artists, writers, journalists … and social scientists [outside academe].” The group’s liberalism reflected high levels of education and the experience of having come of age in the 1960s. Others saw its political dispositions and sympathies to be a function of class location and interests, variously understood. For still others the liberalism of professors and of the professional classes generally evidenced the rise of a “new political culture” in the advanced industrial democracies characterized by new cross-class alignments and concerns. Finally, some social scientists today suggest the faculty’s liberal tilt may reflect discriminatory hiring and promotion practices.
...We argue that the professoriate has been “politically typed” as appropriate for and welcoming of people with broadly liberal political sensibilities, and as inappropriate for conservatives. This reputation leads many more liberal than conservative students to aspire for the advanced educational credentials that make entry into knowledge work fields possible, and to put in the work necessary to translate those aspirations into reality. For example, while it is possible that attaining an advanced degree would make women even more liberal than it makes men it seems more plausible that liberal women are simply more likely than their conservative female counterparts to pursue advanced degrees and become professors, perhaps because conservative women have other life priorities or different sensibilities about appropriate career tracks. Similarly, the fact that verbal ability matters greatly and positively in conjunction with advanced education suggests that liberals with academic potential are much more likely to pursue advanced degrees than are conservatives with academic potential, and that the most liberal of the former are more likely to become professors. We theorize that, in a related process, very religious students tend to steer clear of academia because it has a reputation for secularism, which further contributes to the liberalism of the professoriate. When it occasionally happens that conservative students do form the aspiration to become professors, they are likely to run up against barriers involving both self-concept incongruence and negative judgments from peers and occupation members.
...adolescents and young adults have limited cultural exposure to a wide array of occupational models, their social circumstances constrain the number of options they seriously consider pursuing and the strategies they undertake to pursue those options. Along parallel lines, we argue that for young people whose political identities are salient, liberalism and conservatism constrain horizons of educational and occupational possibility.
...the general thrust of our approach is away from the influential idea that class and class interests play a major role in shaping the politics of American professors today. Class interests do not appear to explain the bulk of professorial liberalism. The class backgrounds of American professors contribute little to explaining their politics. In other unreported models we find that when class background is measured as father’s SEI, it increases rather than decreases the gap, since professors tend to have higher social class origins. That many professors have parents with graduate degrees, who might value cultural more than economic capital, explains away only a minute portion of their liberalism. While professors do have more liberal economic attitudes than other Americans, it is their social attitudes that are truly distinctive. One could construct an argument as to how such attitudes would have a basis in class interest, as Lamont did by suggesting that liberal social views among new class workers reflect efforts at differentiation from the business classes. But beyond the fact that such an argument represents a watering down of the classic assumption of direct connection between material conditions and political views, our models show that class differentiation pressures, at least as measured as lack of confidence in American business, do not help to account for professorial liberalism.
...that many American professors are public employees who have a direct economic stake in liberalism does little to account for their politics. We do not agree with the claim that the reason professors are removed from class politics is that, no matter their individual class backgrounds and interests, their training gives them a broader, more perspicacious view of society. Instead, we think that class exerts a relatively modest influence on American professors’ politics because processes of occupational recruitment tend to draw into the professorial ranks academically-minded liberals whose political identities, in conventional liberal-conservative, Democratic-Republican terms, happen to be far more salient than whatever class-political identities they may have (however much class may be inscribed in their other social practices).
...How might the American professoriate have acquired its reputation for liberalism, becoming politically typed? This is a complex historical question tied a variety of developments that we do not have space to broach, but we argue that the answer has much to do with “public dramas” over secularization and academic freedom that accompanied the birth of the American research university and that reflected on the ground processes by which long-term dynamics such as institutional differentiation played themselves out; with the diffusion to the U.S. of social-critical notions of intellectualism that had their origins in Dreyfus-era France; with the fact that higher education was a crucial mobilization context for a number of left social movements in the 1960s and 1970s, which further enhanced the institution’s liberal reputation; with concerted cultural efforts by American conservatives, especially from the 1950s on, to build a collective identity for their movement around differentiation from various categories of “liberal elites,” not least liberal professors; with restricted opportunities for Americans on the far left to enter other institutional spheres; and with self-reinforcing processes by which self-selection into the academic profession by liberals resulted in a more liberal professoriate whose reputation for liberalism was thereby maintained or enhanced.
...Turning briefly to a final aspect of the theory, we consider how it might begin to explain political variation among professors-in particular variation across disciplines and institutions. We theorize that, within the general constraint that more liberals than conservatives will aspire for advanced educational credentials and academic careers of any kind, liberal students will be far more inclined than conservatives to enter fields that have come to define themselves around left-valenced images of intellectual personhood. Over the course of its twentieth century history, for example, sociology has increasingly defined itself as the study of race, class, and gender inequality-a set of concerns especially important to liberals-and this means that sociology will consistently recruit from a more liberal applicant pool than fields like mechanical engineering, and prove a more chilly home for those conservatives who manage to push through into graduate school or the academic ranks. In terms of variation by institution, our theory would explain the greater prevalence of professors with left/liberal views at elite institutions by noting that elite schools are under strong pressures to hire scholars who are not only productive, but will also be seen by their peers and other constituencies as leading academicians who embody the qualities and virtues definitive of the academic role. To the extent that that role has been socially defined as tied to liberal politics, elite institutions-simply in offering positions to scholars who are seen as exemplary-will end up with a more liberal professorial workforce.
Why are professors liberal?