Zaring on conservatives in the academy

David Zaring posts on how schools have started to "look for Federalist Society credentials."

I have so far refrained from posting on the "is the academy too liberal" topic because I haven't seen any intellectual traction beyond arithmetic. In other words, the gross data seem obvious, and I haven't seen a reliable way to determine causation. Are academics "naturally" liberal, or are the conservatives chased off by hiring bias?  How do we determine that?

Zaring's post doesn't provide an answer, but it does provide an interesting slant: He assumes that these hires must be due to a conscious effort to hire conservatives (looking for "Federalist credentials") -- in other words, ideological bias. So, if I'm understanding correctly:  the fact that the academy is overwhelmingly liberal is not due to liberal bias.  But the fact that a few schools are hiring conservatives does indicate a growing bias for conservatives.

I can't speak for all of the schools Zaring lists, but I do have experience with two of them – GMU and Illinois. The idea that Illinois has either been scouting for conservatives or has become a conservative bastion is somewhat absurd. To be sure, Illinois hasn't applied an ideological filter, and has hired a couple of people over the last five years (during a time when we've hired somewhere around 16 people) who wouldn't be ashamed to be called card-carrying feddies. Is this what amounts to becoming a conservative bastion? If so, maybe the academy really is in trouble.

As for GMU – it's more clearly a "conservative" law school. I taught there until 2002, and my information since then is only secondhand. But I'll offer this observation: we can't say even GMU is discriminating on the basis of ideology unless we know about its opportunity costs. One hypothesis is that GMU is hiring good people who can't find jobs elsewhere because of their ideology – in other words, GMU's hiring is a product of discrimination elsewhere, not at GMU.

In short, before we can answer the question of why the academy is liberal, we first have to understand that political biases can be either liberal or conservative. 

Comments

[David Zaring]

Hey - sorry I missed this. I haven't mastered trackbacks. You can disagree with me if you like about Illinois. Just the view from my Shenandoah perch. But you have the thesis right - I'm claiming that right-wingers are increasingly viewed as an asset on law faculties, that some schools would like to get a few, and that some more schools would like to add one or two. Note I don't claim this is a bad thing, just that it's a thing; I make, as do you, no causation claims.