[url]http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/773671/posts?page=1[/url]

The comments attached to the article are really harsh. I've studied and worked here at the UW since '93 and my experience is quite different. Yes, this campus is hugely liberal, and the city too, but there is balance. I would in fact be so bold as to say there are as many conservatives as there are liberals among the academicians I've worked with and gotten to know here. There's a remaining portion who are just nuts and I can't figure out their political slant.

Even the students here aren't sheep. They're genuinely interested in learning about things that they've judged ill, and often can be converted if you put forward good arguments.

ROTC students are treated well here, well enough at least... everyone on this campus should get expect to get ragged on a little for various reasons, and ROTC students don't deserve any different.

Then there is this:


Geez! Tell me if I'm right, this guy is saying that academicians have the skills of a menial worker, but still manage to get $100+k jobs, and devise this grand scheme to indoctrinate students with a system that will allow low-skilled people to flourish.

I was once a file clerk, and I can say wholeheartedly that the professors I filed stuff for were far more qualified and able than me in so many ways.

Maybe the guy who wrote that didn't go to college, but I think most of us who have spent 4yrs in college know that the 10-15yrs of studies academicians have done don't amount to just menial skills!

Of course I can't deny that there are some shitty people out there (like there is in every field) but largely the people who teach your children are well meaning, well educated, and are respected by their students.

I work in the Economics department, and there is a grand total of one open socialist among the faculty! There's a group of men here who regularly have a few beers on friday afternoons, and when I joined them once we made a toast to capitalism. There is also only one guy here who is strongly opposed to globalism. So no, this place is not filled with left wing extremists.

One last thing in my rant. Do people know how academicians performance is judged? Research, that's all. Not how they teach. Not by their conservative or liberal values (as someone suggested!). But by what they've created and what got published. What gets published determines who rises to the top and who merely remain tutors.

I would suggest looking up a particular academicians website to see their journal articles. Run through them and decide for yourself whether these people are stupid and inferior, or whether they just happen to have a different opinion than yours. For every Noam Chomsky on a university campus, there is a David Horowitz to duke it out. And you can't try to silence the Chomskys without silencing the Horowitzs.


Ok rant over.

Thanks, sesae_ram for some much needed perspective.  The clincher is that academics suceed or fail primarily based on their publication record - not political views.

Of course there are the few cases where people do get promoted or tenured based on personal connection, or prefereential treatment - but this is NOT a systematic thing, and is relatively rare.

It is interesting to me, however, that there are so many more self-declared democrats in academia than there are republicans.  I had a conversation about this the other day with a colleague at another university.

I honestly do not know why it is.  It is NOT because the "establishment" wont hire republicans or conservatives.  A person's political leanings are not known or relevant to hiring decisions, so it's not a deliberate thing.

Is it that republicans are less interested in academic careers?  Why?  Because they have less patience for the long, unpleasant and impovrished life of a graduate student it takes to be come an academics?  Maybe because they realize that you can make more money in the private sector?  Maybe because they are more self-interested, and not interested in research for research's sake or teaching?

I have no idea, but it is a really interesting question.

majority of republican voters are college educated, majority of democrap voters are NOT college educated.
i know a lot of people here like to shit on universitys because of there liberal attitudes, well guess what when your 20yo you ARE LIBERAL ANYWAY, college is just a meeting place for 20yo's and a few professors that cant make it in the real world or prefer to spend there life in the pursuit of education (life long students).

people grow up, mature and learn the ways of the world, in this process somewhere they start to turn more conservative (when they develop something they arent willing to lose)

fact of the matter is that there thousands of colleges and universities, and only the top party and most liberal schools get any attention because they are so far off the spectrum.
you will always hear about UC berkelys bullshit, but never will hear about the 50+ other state campus's in the UC and CS systems that are NOT super-liberal, there are more moderate campus's than there are liberal.