http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/education/18faculty.html?oref=login&pagewa
nted=print&position=

http://tinyurl.com/5m9ke

 One of the studies, a national survey of more than 1,000 academics, shows
that Democratic professors outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one
in the humanities and social sciences. That ratio is more than twice as
lopsided as it was three decades ago, and it seems quite likely to keep
increasing, because the younger faculty members are more consistently
Democratic than the ones nearing retirement, said Daniel Klein, an
associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University and a co-author
of the study.

[snip]

One theory for the scarcity of Republican professors is that conservatives
are simply not that interested in academic careers. A Democrat on the
Berkeley faculty, George P. Lakoff, who teaches linguistics and is the
author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," said that
liberals choose academic fields that fit their world views. "Unlike
conservatives," he said, "they believe in working for the public good and
social justice, as well as knowledge and art for their own sake, which are
what the humanities and social sciences are about."

Some non-Democrats prefer to attribute the imbalance to the structure of
academia, which allows hiring decisions and research agendas to be
determined by small, independent groups of scholars. These fiefs, the
critics say, suffer from a problem described in The Federalist Papers: an
autonomous "small republic" is prone to be dominated by a cohesive faction
that uses majority voting to "outnumber and oppress the rest," in Madison's
words. 

________________________________________________________
John D. Giorgis         -                  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"We have one country, one Constitution, and one future that binds us." 
                              -George W. Bush, 11/3/2004
________________________________________________________


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