College Perspective

 The tension in the air is unmistakable. Hundreds of police officers clad in riot gear brace for conflict. An angry mob approaches, their chants growing louder and louder with each step. As the distance between the groups shrinks, the anticipation mounts. The officers and protestors lock eyes, neither side willing to show any sign of weakness. There is no backing down now. The campus of UC Berkeley more closely resembles a battlefield than an institution of higher learning. Entire sections of the campus are closed to prevent violence from erupting between crowds. The massive increase of police presence and additional security measures in preparation for the angry crowd “came with a $600,000 price tag” (Panzar). What could have possibly prompted such an intense, hostile protest involving hundreds of students? A Conservative attempting to give a lecture on campus after being invited by a student organization. Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, was protested with such fervor because students accused him of being a racist white-nationalist. Even more concerning, the attempted silencing of Shapiro is far from an isolated incident, but one example of an increasing trend where students protest speakers that they don’t like. The inability of students to tolerate alternative political perspectives, to the point of violence, is a direct consequence of ideological uniformity within universities, which creates a mischaracterization of the ideological composition of society at large. The fact that students feel morally justified in deciding who should be allowed to share their opinions, especially at a public university, is a surface level manifestation of a deeper-rooted issue. Ideological uniformity within university faculty has contributed to the politicization of the academy, which results in a decreased quality of education and scholarship. 

As a political science major and a lifelong consumer of political information, it is difficult, if possible, at all, to separate the world of politics from my own day-to-day life. My inability to distinguish the political from the personal has not been improved by recent polarization and the subsequent encroachment of politics into our society at large. Additionally, I would classify myself as a classical-liberal, which is a perspective that I find not shared by most within the world of the university. This ideological disconnect between myself and those around me is aggravating at times but allows for a unique perspective within the academy. Hopefully, this paper, which is an attempt to share my perspective, will help illustrate how the ideological uniformity within universities is undesirable for the entirety of academia and society at large. To ensure the claims I make are understood in the precise way I intend, clarifications of definitions are in order. Oxford Languages defines ideology as “a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy”. In this sense, the ideology that dominates the university is that of the left. There are several key components to this ideology, which include: a belief in the power of the central government to enact social change; the desire to achieve greater “social justice”; the preference of equity over equality; and the preference of equality over individual liberty. While it is impossible to correctly identity the ideology every professor subscribes to, the closest reasonable approximation is professor voter registration. A study headed by Mitchell Langbert, an associate professor of Business at Brooklyn University, investigated the ratio of registered Democrats versus Republicans at forty leading universities in America. The study revealed that out of the 3,937 professors that were registered to a party, it “found 3,623 [professors] to be registered Democratic and 314 Republican” (Langbert) for a total Democrat to Republican ratio of “11.5:1” (Langbert). Out of the five departments that were analyzed, the Democrat to Republican ratio was highest in the field of History at 33.5:1 (Langbert). The overrepresentation of a single ideological perspective within university faculty is detrimental to the ability of the academy to remain politically impartial for two reasons; namely, an increased susceptibility to bias and departmental decisions achieved via a majoritarian consensus.

Non-STEM professors’ perceptions of information in an academic context are susceptible to ideologically biased interpretations in two crucial ways. First, the study “Perceived Importance of Information: The Effects of Mentioning Information, Shared Information Bias, Ownership Bias, Reiteration, and Confirmation Bias”, conducted by a Lyn Van Swol, a communication specialist at the University of Wisconsin, reveals instances of increased susceptibility to bias within group communications. Van Swol discovered that when individuals exchange information within a group context, they “often fail to…consider information contrary to their opinions” as well as displaying “a confirmation bias toward information that supported their opinion” (Swol). So, information that is communicated in a group setting is more easily dismissed by individuals who don’t already agree with the information being shared. Secondly, according to a study titled “Neural Bases of Motivated Reasoning: An FMRI Study of Emotional Constraints on Partisan Political Judgment in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election”, lead researcher Drew Westen identified that “neural information processing related to motivated reasoning appears to be qualitatively different from reasoning in the absence of a strong emotional stake in the conclusions reached” (Westen). Motivated reasoning refers to implicit emotion regulation where the brain “converges on judgements that minimize and maximize positive affect states associated with threat to or attainment of motives” (Westen). These findings are extremely consequential when considered alongside the fact that “the central and final procedure for rendering the most important decisions [within departments of universities] is democracy among tenure-track professors” (Klein). Essentially, major decisions within a university’s departments, such as hiring, promotions, and curriculum, are left to “departmental majoritarianism” (Klein). Therefore, departments’ group-oriented decision-making structure is likely to allow the group context bias, mentioned above, to influence the decisions made without anyone realizing it. Additionally, the scholarly enterprises of non-STEM professors differ from STEM professors in a crucial way. Subjects such as history and sociology involve concepts that are intimately correlated with professors’ deeply personal beliefs and values, which creates impartial scholarship incredibly difficult, as opposed to subjects such as physics and chemistry. Thus, motivated reasoning is likely to influence non-STEM professors’ scholarly pursuits, especially when an overwhelming percentage of colleagues within a department share a common ideological orientation. This is not to say that university faculty are consciously hiring professors and promoting scholarly pursuits that align closer with the majority’s ideological persuasions. However, it would be naive to ignore the reality, grounded in human nature, that those involved in hiring new departmental members “will tend to support candidates who share their fundamental beliefs, values, and commitments” (Klein). For example, if a department is considering two equally qualified candidates for a professorship position, the decision is more likely be made in favor of the individual who appears more reflective of the ideological underpinnings of the other department members, due to the phenomena mentioned above. Due to the disproportionately high concentration of leftist professors within university faculty, the decision-making structural framework within the academy, as well as the influence of motivated reasoning and the perceived importance of information in groups, is likely to perpetuate the dominating leftist ideology within the department. 

            The domination of the leftist ideology within universities is not inherently problematic in it of itself. If colleges’ chief purpose of furthering the pursuit of knowledge and providing students with an education was unaffected by the ideological composition of their faculty, the beliefs of faculty would be irrelevant. However, this is not the case. The ideological domination of the left within universities has essentially blurred the line between politics and facts, to the extent that universities are able to present political perspectives as axioms, as opposed to one possible perspective amongst others. My first encounter with Cal Poly came in the form of SLO days, a weeklong orientation designed to assimilate incoming freshman into Cal Poly’s community and culture. My wide-eyed excitement to begin college was brought to an abrupt halt when the first topic discussed by my group’s orientation leaders had nothing to do with classes, professors, or anything involving college, whatsoever. Instead, Cal Poly decided the first thing incoming freshman should “learn” is that gender and sex are completely disconnected phenomena and that gender is a spectrum. Contrary to the official perspective of the University of Cal Poly, this is not an unquestionable factual statement. However, do the domination of leftist ideology throughout Cal Poly, an obviously political perspective can be presented as unquestionable reality. Because Cal Poly’s faculty is composed of a particular ideological persuasion, opinions that are rooted in the ideology are confused for a self-evident reality because there isn’t any significant representation of differing ideologies. This same phenomenon is responsible for the students at UC Berkeley protesting Ben Shapiro, which lead to “nine people [being] arrested, four of them carrying banned weapons” (Panzar). Because political perspectives are presented as objective reality, students confuse their opinions for unquestionable truth, leading to the depiction of Shapiro as a dangerous dissenter undeserving of the right to speak publicly. If ideological uniformity within universities is not acknowledged and addressed, political polarization will continue to worsen and the likelihood of our society, especially students, regaining its ability to engage in productive civil discourse will continue to diminish.    

I’m not arguing that phenomena mentioned above are part of a coordinated effort of professors to intentionally create a lack of competition between ideas within universities. Rather, the ideological uniformity evident through the voter registration of professors is reflective of an intersection of structural failures within universities and our human nature to be “drawn to people who are more like-minded” (Lynch). Ultimately, these interacting conditions increase the likelihood of university’s ideological homogeneity, which directly counters the foundational mission for universities. In Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, Martha Nussbaum claims that the chief function of a liberal education is that it “liberates the mind from bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensibility and alertness” (Nussbaum). The disparity between the mission of liberal education mentioned above and angry student protests of speakers who students disagree with is evidence of the unmet potential of the American higher education system. The dominant, self-perpetuating ideology within universities create a distorted worldview, where people who don’t subscribe to the same ideals that characterize the academy are depicted as dangerous, as opposed to simply holding different beliefs. In a time where academics continually tell society they must acknowledge their implicit racial bias, they are usually hesitant to acknowledge the documented bias in their own backyards. In a time where “Americans owe over $1.71 trillion in student loan debt” (“U.S. Student Loan Debt Statistics for 2021”), students deserve the absolute highest quality education universities can provide. In a time where political polarization is tearing our society apart, our educational elites should treat their own ideological beliefs with the same level of skepticism they display towards differing ideals.

C.S.

6/4/21