Minorities and Majorities in Academia
Although few would dispute the progressive predominance in higher education, some data are illustrative. For example, the 2022–23 UCLA Higher Education Research Institute faculty survey found that 56 percent identified as liberal or far left, 32 as “middle of the road,” and 13 percent as conservative or far right. In 1990–91, by contrast, 45 identified as liberal or far left, 40 as moderate, and 18 percent as conservative or far right. Gallup surveys during this general time period reveal very different levels and trends among the American population, and General Social Survey data also indicate a growing ideological divide between the public and the professoriate. A recent study of faculty political contributions to federal candidates and committees found a 94–1 ratio of Democratic to Republican donations; the dollar value ratio was 21–1 in favor of Democrats, and the party registration ratio of faculty donors was 8.4–1 in favor of Democrats.
Scholars have devoted much thought to what majority and minority status entails in American politics and policy. The précis is that minority group members are at a disadvantage, and this can be the case even if the majority is not deliberately acting in ways that harm minority interests. Academics have developed concepts such as unconscious or implicit bias to argue that discrimination can occur without intention. According to the American Psychological Association, “Implicit bias, also known as implicit prejudice or implicit attitude, is a negative attitude, of which one is not consciously aware, against a specific social group.” A key tenet of critical race theory is that racism can become embedded in institutional practices, leading to “racism without racists.” While such concepts are debated, they have undeniably found a wide audience in the academic world.
Progressive scholars and activists also tend to embrace arguments based on disparate impact, whereby group differences in outcomes are interpreted as strong, if not conclusive, evidence of discrimination, which can then justify government intervention. During the Obama administration, for example, racial disparities in suspension rates led the U.S. Department of Education to issue a Dear Colleague Letter pushing school districts to revise their discipline policies.
In other words, progressive faculty members in an overwhelmingly conservative academia would have a range of conceptual tools that could be used to question whether the status quo was biased against progressives. However, today’s progressive faculty and administrators have no incentive to bring these concepts to bear on a status quo in which they, by all measures, dominate. My guess is that this argument has never occurred to most—a progressive academic world feels as natural to faculty as water does to fish.
But if individuals naturally favor people like themselves, the ideas they value, and the research methods they find useful, then we might not be surprised if groupthink were to influence which scholarship is valued and consequently funded, published, and rewarded.
To like-minded individual decision makers, it might seem perfectly natural that a faculty hiring committee of progressives ends up hiring a progressive. Or that a set of progressive peer referees recommends that a university press publish a book on a topic of interest to progressives. Or that a panel of grant proposal reviewers finds value in a research topic that addresses progressive priorities. They may well believe that rejected candidates, manuscripts, and grant applications all deserved their fate because they did not meet objective criteria. But these decisionmakers would do well to heed the late physicist Richard Feynman, who reportedly said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
The more subtle problem with the contemporary university’s promotion of progressive ideas and individuals is that it is likely to exhibit a growing number of deficits and absences in teaching and research. An absence is more difficult to detect than a presence. While it is easy to see that higher education is filled with centers and programs that focus on progressive priorities, a greater problem may be knowledge disappearing from the academy because it is out of fashion, is politically incorrect, or does not advance a Critical Something Perspective. This is more applicable to the humanities and social sciences than to STEM fields, but it is a challenge for everyone in higher education to ponder.
