Why We Need the Humanities by Donald Drakeman

Author:Donald Drakeman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

These data, which show that faculty members are well to the left of the public, may actually understate the prevalence of academic liberals, according to an analysis by Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter.27 The large ‘moderate’ category in the Gross and Simmons study was comprised of all respondents who self-identified as ‘moderate’, plus those who called themselves only ‘slightly’ conservative or liberal. Rothman and Lichter looked at the respondents’ scores on a values test, and they concluded that slight liberals and slight conservatives were both to the left of ‘moderate’, thus making the academic ‘middle of the road’, in their words, ‘actually well along the left fork of the road’.28 When the data were re-cast by Professors Rothman and Lichter based on respondents’ answers to questions about their positions on social and political issues, only those self-identifying as ‘strong’ conservatives—about 1 in 20 humanities or social science professors—were to the right of the public’s political center.29

The Rothman/Lichter interpretation of the data thus shows an even greater difference between academia and the American public, and they remark, ‘one out of four professors in the humanities and social sciences is by self-description a radical or activist, and one out of seven social scientists (including one out of four sociologists) a Marxist’.30 While radicals are in the minority, the professoriate clearly skews toward the left side of the political spectrum, and ‘[f]ormer Harvard president and Clinton treasury secretary Larry Summers has said that in Washington he was “the right half of the left,” while at Harvard he found himself “on the right half of the right” ’.31

The finding that professors are more likely to be politically liberal than the public has not gone unnoticed by those on the right. Whereas many conservative critiques of the liberal orientation of the professorate have focused on the potential effects on classroom education,32 my concerns relate to the degree to which research in the humanities may ignore, overlook or misunderstand center-right views because those social and political perspectives are found so infrequently among humanities scholars’ professional peers, especially at elite, research-intensive (and, therefore, opinion-leading) academic institutions.33 That is, studies have shown that women and men to the right of the political center make up just one in 20 humanities faculty members throughout all of academia, and they are much less common at elite universities than at less prestigious institutions; conservatives, therefore, comprise substantially less than one in 20 humanities professors at our best universities.34 As a result, it seems likely that serious engagement with politically conservative views, or even more moderate center-right views, may be difficult for humanities scholars at our leading universities for lack of intellectual sparring partners, if nothing else. With so few of their professional peers holding themselves out as right of center, it would not be surprising for academics at opinion-leading universities in these fields to overlook or discount the degree to which those political perspectives may be attractive to significant portions of the public.35

Academic preferences and public preferences

One of the risks

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