Posted by Todd Zywicki:
Intellectual Orthodoxy at Berkeley and Stanford:
Dan Klein has a [1]newspaper column summarizing his research findings
on the intellectual orthodoxy at Berkeley and Stanford in the Palo
Alto Weekly newspaper.
From the article:
The popular vote for President went 48 percent Democrat and 51
percent Republican. This nearly one-to-one national diversity is
unlike colleges and universities, where a one-party system
prevails.
We have conducted a scholarly study of voter registration and find
that among Berkeley faculty the Republicans are outnumbered 10 to
1. At Stanford the ratio is 7.6 to 1. Lumping both together gives 9
to 1. Talk about a lack of diversity! If this were a gender, race
or ethnic-background study it would be considered almost evidence
of discrimination.
Most striking, is that the faculties are becoming less intellectually
diverse over time. At Berkeley, tenure-track hires at the Assistant
Professor level are 30 to 1 Democratic to Republican and at Stanford
it is 12 to 1. For Associate Professors, at Berkeley it is 64 to 1 and
at Stanford the ratio is infinite--Stanford does not have a single
Republican among its Associate Professors (and 40 Democrats).
Dan says that if this was a gender, race or ethnic-background study,
it would considered "almost" evidence of discrimination. I think this
understates the case--if the ratio of men to women hires at Berkeley
was 30 to 1, that would almost certainly constitute a prima facie case
of discrimination. Or to put it more practically, if this was the
ratio of male to female hires at Berkeley, I don't think a
hypothetical plaintiff would have too much trouble finding a lawyer
who would take the case on contingency.
And to think that one reason that Larry Summers is in hot water
because only 4 of the last 32 tenure-track hires at Harvard were
women. I'm sure Stanford's students and faculty would be overwhelmed
with joy at an 8 to 1 ratio of Democratic to Republican hires.
You can find the longer version of Dan's research on his homepage
[2]here.
References
1.
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/2005/2005_02_23.guest23blues.shtml
2. http://lsb.scu.edu/~dklein/
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