One of the most enduring images of academia is the left-leaning professor who abuses his or her position to force feed students with their liberal biases. While it is certainly true that some scholars make headlines by endorsing viewpoints that are far beyond the pale of mainstream thought (Wade Churchill and his comparison of 9/11 victims to Nazis comes to mind) the providers of higher education are often painted with a broad brush. Not all of them have such a proclivity for the inflammatory. Still, some activists have been pushing for legislation that would regulate academia to ensure that university students are shielded from liberal indoctrination.

Among the most vocal proponents of such legislation is Civil Rights activist-turned-neo-con David Horowitz, who is leading a quest for state legislatures to pass an “Academic Bill of Rights” to eradicate what he perceives as an intellectual imbalance in academia. Among other things this bill seeks to guarantee that hiring and tenure decisions are in no way based on political or religious beliefs, that students will not be graded on their political or religious beliefs, and that course content and assignments will reflect diverse concepts and views. He came close to succeeding in Harrisburg last year when he convinced Rep. Gibson C. Armstrong (R., Lancaster) to call for a panel to investigate the State University system to see if public university students in Pennsylvania to protect students from the political biases of their professors. Last November after a lengthy inquiry, the panel declared that it could not find any pattern of faculty imposing their political views on students and that no legislation was necessary.

Several months earlier and on the opposite side of the nation a University of California Los Angeles alumnus and founder of the Bruin Alumni Association (no affiliation with the UCLA or the UCLA Alumni Association) named Andrew Jones made headlines by offering UCLA students a bounty of up to $100 for proof that any professor was promoting a liberal agenda in their classroom. Jones later retracted his offer after learning that it violated campus policy, but he has vowed to continue his quest to ferret out the liberal bias in academia. Incidentally Jones was once employed by Horowitz, but was fired for encouraging students to file false reports that they had been attacked by leftist activists.

The stated objectives of Horowitz s “Academic Bill of Rights” sound like admirable goals, but is Horowitz addressing a real problem or is he being quixotic? Is academia really dominated by a liberal agenda? Does it really lean left? And if so what threat does that pose, and is government intervention the solution? At face value Horowitz may have a point. A number of recent studies have confirmed what many people have long suspected, that university faculties, particularly those in the social sciences and humanities (i.e. history, political science, anthropology, English) are more often than not left-leaning. But what is the significance of these statistics? Do they mean, as Horowitz s Bill of Academic Rights implies, that hiring or tenure decisions are influenced by political ideology? Do professors abuse their positions to enforce their own views? How much do a professor s political views affect their teaching?

The main reason for the disparity in academia might surprise many conservatives. It is based on market forces. The simple fact is that no one goes into academia for the money. There are far more certain and easier paths to financial success, especially for someone inclined to spend a good chunk of time as a graduate student accumulating nothing but student loans. Academia requires a number of personal sacrifices, and so it typically attracts people who are motivated by something other than their economic self-interest. I am willing to bet that if academic salaries were on par with other professions that require a graduate education (say law or medicine) it would go a long way in creating a more politically diverse pool of potential faculty.

I am not aware of any studies on the political leaning of the average graduate student in the humanities, but my own experience as a grad student in history would suggest that it is probably towards left. Faculties are sustained according to the law of supply and demand, so when a pool of qualified candidates for an opening leans mostly towards the left, someone who leans towards the left is probably going to be hired. Decisions like this are based on probability, not politics. Horowitz s Bill of Academic Rights suggests that the shortage of conservative professors is deliberate, when in fact it is circumstantial.

But is it possible that a graduate student with right-leaning views might be overlooked in hiring decisions in a kind of unspoken “conservatives need not apply” policy? Mr. Horowitz s concerns about this do not seem to be founded on how academic hiring really operates. Before attaining my current position I spent four years on the job market during which I have applied for more than 100 openings and had more than a dozen interviews. Not once were my political and religious views part of the decision to hire or, more often, not to hire me. Not only was I never asked for my political or religious opinions even indirectly but I was never given the opportunity to express them. The focus throughout the hiring process remained my record as a teacher and a scholar.

My experience is not just anecdotal; there are safeguards at every level of the hiring process to prevent ideological discrimination. The American Historical Association (the professional organization that acts as the main forum for job searches in history) explicitly states in its policies

Candidates should be evaluated exclusively on professional criteria and should not be discriminated against on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, religion, ideology, political affiliation, veteran status, age, physical handicap, or marital status, except in those cases in which federal law allows specific preference in hiring.

The only exception I ever saw was for private Christian universities which would only consider candidates who submitted a “statement of faith.” Other professional organizations enforce similar standards, as do all public and the majority of private universities themselves. Furthermore there are grievance procedures both within the profession and at the federal level for candidates who feel that they have been discriminated against for any reason including their political or religious views. Thus Horowitz s Bill of Academic Rights offers no new protection for academics with a non-liberal ideology.

But what about tenure decisions? Isn t it possible that conservative professors might be punished for not conforming to a liberal agenda by being denied tenure? In order to deny someone tenure, that department must have an airtight case that a candidate has not met the minimum qualifications. These are based on their record as a teacher and scholar and are measured primarily by student evaluations and publications. Regardless of how a tenure committee feels about a candidate, the burden of proof is on them if they decide not to recommend granting it to a particular faculty member. It would be very difficult if not impossible for a qualified professor to be denied tenure on the basis of their political or religious views alone, and if such a case were ever to occur the decision can be challenged a the university and in civil court. Again, the Academic Bill of Rights is superfluous.

But let s say that a professor gets along fine with her or his colleagues politically (chances are, after all, that they are all liberal). Isn t it still possible that s/he might abuse their position to cram their political ideology down the throats of unwilling students? Again, the existing system already accomplishes what Horowitz wants to enforce through government intervention. Students have the opportunity to anonymously evaluate their professors at the end of every course, and these evaluations are a crucial part of hiring and tenure decisions. If a professor inappropriately promotes a political or religious agenda in their courses, students have a way of complaining about it in a meaningful way without the fear of retaliation. Furthermore, students who feel that their grades were unfairly affected by their political views have the right to contest their grades before the university administration. Just like with hiring and tenure decisions, there are already policies in place to ensure that grading decisions are based strictly on merit. So the Academic Bill of Rights not only offers no new protections for faculty, it offers no new protections for students. Horowitz is tilting at windmills.

Academia is a marketplace of ideas, and just as people can vote with their wallets students can vote with their feet. If students are offended by a professor s political views or how s/he expresses them in class, they have the choice not to take her/his classes. Websites like RateMyProfessors.com make such decisions easier than ever before. A professor has nothing to gain by alienating students; empty class rosters can be very damaging to a career. In this case, conservatives who are concerned about a liberal bias in academia could do no better by their own principles than to allow the “invisible hand” of the market do its work and allow this particular marketplace to remain deregulated.

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