Documentation to "My Case"

By Tibor Gasparik

My Web blog, “Discrimination in Academia” (http://suny-stonybrook.blogspot.com/) was first posted in June 2005, while I was still listed as Research Associate Professor at the Department of Geosciences, Stony Brook University. In retaliation for posting the blog, my name was removed from the departmental Web site and I was booted out from my office. This escalation in my persecution forced me to file a lawsuit against the Stony Brook University on August 11, 2005. In support of my case, I started posting under “Links” articles relevant to the case. Two articles are from 2003, two from 2004, four from 2005, and four from the first half of 2006. In contrast, I was able to find over 60 useful articles since August 2006. This clearly demonstrates a decisive level of increase in the interest among the general public to finally address the long-neglected issue of discrimination against conservatives in higher education. Following are the summaries of the most relevant articles in support of my case.

“The Campus Blacklist” from 2003 by David Horowitz (Link 1) is one of the first accounts bringing to the attention of the public the discrimination against conservatives on American college campuses, based mainly on his personal experience from visiting “more than a dozen universities” and talking to students. He could not find a single conservative faculty member at Tulane Law School, and only one at Duquesne Law School. Students at U. of Michigan could not identify a single conservative among their faculty. “At Bowling Green, conservative professors were isolated in a research center that has no teaching responsibilities.” This “absurd under representation of conservative viewpoints on university faculties obviously does not happen by random process. It is the result of a systematic repression (and/or discouragement) of conservative thought and scholarship at so-called "liberal" institutions of higher learning.” Horowitz also pointed out that “it is virtually impossible for a vocal conservative to be hired for a tenure-track position on a faculty anywhere, or to receive tenure if so hired.”

A survey of 32 elite colleges and universities conducted in 2003 by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (Link 2) and based on voter registration records showed that the overall ratio of Democrats to Republicans was more than 10:1. It was 30:1 at Brown, 23:1 at Bowdoin and Wellesley, and 21:1 at Swarthmore. They could not identify a single Republican at 4 elite schools. The same was true for administrators.

Another study by Rothman, Lichter and Nevitte (Link 5), based on 1999 data from the North American Academic Study Survey of 1,643 full-time faculty at 183 four-year schools, showed that 50 percent of the faculty members surveyed identified themselves as Democrats and only 11 percent as Republicans. The disparity was even more pronounced at the most elite schools, where, according to the study, 87 percent of faculty was liberal and 13 percent conservative.

Steven Lubet, a self-admitted liberal, offered these “possible explanations” for the near absence of conservatives in academia (Link 3): “Perhaps fewer conservatives than liberals are willing to endure the many years of poverty-stricken graduate study necessary to qualify for a faculty position. Perhaps conservatives are smarter than liberals, and recognize that graduate school is a poor investment, given the scant job opportunities that await newly minted PhDs. Or perhaps studious conservatives are more attracted to the greater financial rewards of industry and commerce.”

On November 4, 2004, Newsday reported in its centerfold how Long Island voted in 2004 presidential elections (Link 4). In the postal district of Stony Brook University, 2,065 votes went to John Kerry, while only 475 to George Bush. This was extreme even by New York standards.

Klein and Stern (2005) reported the results from a major survey of academic social scientists (Link 7) and confirmed that academic social scientists vote overwhelmingly Democratic. The Democratic to Republican ratio is upwards of 20:1 in anthropology and sociology, and least lopsided, about 3:1 in economy. “The Democratic domination has increased significantly since 1970. Republicans are disappearing from the social sciences.”

Cardiff and Klein (2005) reported the results of a survey of voter registration of tenure-track faculty at 11 California universities (Link 8). Across all departments and institutions, the Democrat to Republican ratio is 5, while in the liberal-arts fields, the ratio is higher than 8. Even in hard sciences and math, the average ratio is 6.3, and it is 9.9 at UC Berkeley, 8.3 at UCLA, 7.7 at UCSD, and 6.5 at Caltech. At UC Berkeley, the ratio is 8.3 for full professors, 30 for Associate Professors and 64 for Assistant Professors, apparently reflecting progressively worsening climate for hiring conservatives with time. Cardiff and Klein ask, “if ideology plays no role in hard and applied sciences, what are we to make of” these ratios.

In “The Pit of Academic Bias,” Art Eckstein summarized in January 2006 the evidence for academic bias and potential discrimination against conservatives in hiring and promotion in academia, based on a debate between two teams of professional social scientists (Link 9). He pointed out the 3 claims made in the Rothman-Lichter-Nevitt article (Link 4): 1. Liberals and leftists outnumber conservatives and rightists on American university campuses by a very wide margin, 2. The higher one goes towards the elite schools within the hierarchy of American universities, the fewer conservatives there are, and 3. This shift has occurred over the last 15 years. Rothman-Lichter-Nevitte did not allege a vast conspiracy against conservatives throughout academia … nevertheless, the implication was that, overall, conservatives who feel discriminated against in hiring and promotion are on good ground.

One response from academia was to accept the findings as true but to offer various explanations for what had occurred. At SUNY-Albany, Ron McClamrock, a tenured professor of Philosophy, argued, “Lefties are overrepresented in academia because on average, we’re just f-ing smarter.” At Duke, the response of Robert Brandon, the Chair of the Department of Philosophy, was similar; he reasoned, “If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire.” At UCLA, John McCumber, yet another tenured philosopher, argued that the statistical disparity was to be explained not by political discrimination at all, but because “a successful career in academia, after all, requires willingness to be critical of yourself and to learn from experience,” qualities he did not believe conservatives, and especially registered Republicans, possessed.

The leaders in denying the significance of the Rothman et al. statistics have been the group from the University of Pittsburgh. They deny that personal politics can be a factor in the hiring of faculty because politics are rarely directly discussed in job interviews. That latter point may often be literally true, but others pointed out, it is equally the case that there has emerged a “faculty culture” of assumed liberalism, especially in the humanities and social sciences, which plays a subtle but crucial role in the hiring process. The team is explicit about their alternative explanation for the dearth of conservatives on American university campuses: it is that the under-representation of conservatives at American institutions of higher education nationwide, and especially at high-quality institutions, is because conservatives simply don't want to teach at high-quality places: “We offer self-selection as the likely culprit.”

Eckstein makes two points in reply to this self-selection theory purporting to explain the current dearth of conservatives in academia: 1. It has always been the case that the world outside the university paid better than faculty positions did. And yet in the period from 1875 to 1960 it was not the case that liberals and leftists ever predominated in university faculties. Indeed, even as late as the 1980s liberals and conservatives were about equal in numbers on faculties. 2. “It’s a great life to be a professor.” It is hard to believe that most people, conservative or liberal, would “self-select” themselves out of such an idyllic existence, in return merely for the much higher pay but also the much higher daily pressures, the ever-demanding and intrusive bosses, and much shorter vacations of the business world.

The team from the U. of Pittsburg offers two explanations for the increasing absence of conservatives at elite institutions of higher learning. They suggest first that conservative academics actually prefer rural and out of the way places where, for one thing, they find a congenial “ideological climate” to the vibrant and cosmopolitan life of the major cities where the most prestigious universities are located. The “conservative academics probably WANT to live in the middle of nowhere with yahoos like themselves.” But even worse is the second fundamental reason: “Many conservatives may deliberately choose not to seek employment at top-tier research institutions because they object, on philosophical grounds, to one of the fundamental tenets under-girding such institutions: the scientific method.” Apparently, conservative academics voluntarily and naturally avoid teaching at top-flight institutions where the dreaded scientific method, and thinking about complex problems, is required.

In “Discounting the Facts” (Link 10), Jacob Laskin comments on the criticism from the left of the book “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America” by David Horowitz, which is, according to Laskin, “a collective profile of 101 professors designed to show a systemic corruption in the university – promotions without merit, teaching outside a professor’s expertise, conflating political activism with scholarship, and ethnic bigotry.” Included among them is a professor from Stony Brook University, Michael Schwartz, who was singled out for his “Marxist obsession with class conflict and ruling class oppression” and his activism against the war in Iraq.

“How many Ward Churchills?” (Link 11) is a study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in reference to one of the professors singled out for criticism by David Horowitz in the book “The Professor.” Ward Churchills deserved this by calling the victims of 9-11 “little Eichmanns.” Not having a PhD, nor scholarly accomplishments, Professor Chirchill was apparently hired on the false claim of being a Native American. The topic of the study is: “Is there really only one Ward Churchill? Or are there many? Do professors in their classrooms ensure a robust exchange of ideas designed to help students to think for themselves? Or do they use their classrooms as platforms for propaganda, sites of sensitivity training, and launching pads for political activism? Do our college and university professors foster intellectual diversity or must students toe the party line?”

Mike Adams in “Professors Condemn Political Activity” (Link 12) offers a testimony on how a conservative professor is treated by their liberal colleagues, stating: “This year, during annual peer evaluations, one of my liberal colleagues has apparently punished me for expressing my belief that liberals punish conservatives for their belief… The backstabbing - by liberals who want to construct an Utopian society, no less – got so bad in my department a few years back that we had to amend the process to force people to justify any negative evaluations of their colleagues… Professors are often judged on the basis of politics rather than competence.”

In “Don’t Think Outside the College Box” (Link 13), Debra Saunders pointed out that while “slightly more than half of the public voted Democratic in the last presidential election, some 80 percent of higher education's social scientists voted Democratic. In that universe, you would expect the left to demand changes in university hiring practices so that academia would nurture greater diversity so as to better represent the American community. In the real world, academia has become a solid bastion of the Left, as demonstrated by two articles in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Critical Review (Links 7 and 8). The Critical Review articles bared two disturbing trends: First, left-leaning academics are more orthodox than right-leaning academics. Second, as Klein succinctly put it, "It's going to become more lopsided in the future." So the future could see state universities morph into today's UC Berkeley, where Cardiff and Klein found 445 Dems to 45 Repubs. Groupthink will further marginalize any free thinkers. If you think outside the box, you work outside the institution. That's where academia is heading.

John Plecnik, a 21-year-old law student at Duke University, testified in “Who's Looking Out for Campus Conservatives?” (Link 14): “The dispute as to whether liberal bias on campus exists has become, pardon the pun, academic. Last year, the Duke Conservative Union crosschecked their school's faculty listings against voter registration rolls and found the ratio of Democrats to Republicans was 32-0 in the History department, 11-0 in Literature, and 18-1 in English.”

In “Diversity Double Standard” (Link 16), George Leef writes: “In education, you would think that diversity of ideas would be at least as, if not more important, than skin color or sexual preferences. But when it has been pointed out that college faculties tend to be very homogeneous when it comes to their beliefs on socio-economic questions, the response from the higher education establishment has mostly been that it’s a threat to academic freedom even to discuss the matter. No need for “all colors of the rainbow” when it comes to points of view on the proper relationship between state and society. Many academic departments are intellectual monocultures, with hiring preferences by those in authority filtering out any new professors whose opinions are much different from the norm. They think that is perfectly fine.” He suggests that, if colleges and universities are really interested in diversity, the academic departments should begin to write their job postings with language like “Libertarians and other intellectually underrepresented minorities are encouraged to apply.”

Walter Williams in “Red Sea of Academe?” (Link 18) addresses “…a puzzling observation, given the leftist bias at most college campuses…” that “…there are actually only a few communists among academics” and suggests that “while academic leftists are not communists, they are anti-anti-communists. In other words, they have contempt for right-wingers, conservatives or libertarians who are anti-communists.”

In “A New Kind of Affirmation Action” (Link 19), Hanna Stearns writes: “In the partisan world of higher education, free speech is fast becoming less a right and more a memory for political and religious groups on campus. In the 1970’s, university administrators became increasingly concerned by the marginalization of certain minority groups on their campuses. Universities across the country took affirmative action to ensure that every point of view had ample opportunity to be heard. In much the same way as in the 70’s, another ideological minority is being shut out today: conservatives. Perhaps it is now time for a different kind of affirmative action, the affirmation of the majority, which has become the minority on college campuses.”

In “UC-Santa Cruz and The Loss of Public Trust” (Link 22), Leila Beckwith writes: “Universities, both public and private, exist for the benefit of society and do not exist in the absence of society’s largesse. These facts form the basis of an important social contract: For its part, the university provides the public with education of its citizens and advances in knowledge, along with assuming responsibility that its scholars will carry out their mission with the utmost academic integrity. In exchange, the public provides the university with many of the resources it needs to survive.” She asks: “But what happens when a university does not uphold its side of the bargain: when its faculty does not adhere to standards of academic integrity; when professors knowingly limit the flow of knowledge because of their own ideological biases; when education becomes political indoctrination? In these cases there is an abuse of public trust, which threatens to diminish the social contract so critical to the university’s existence.” Leila Beckwith documents such an abuse of public trust in three examples from the UC Santa Cruz.

John Gravois starts his article “Academe in a Time of Crisis” (Link 23) with the words: “Five years ago, academe braced itself. In the days and weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11, when title logos like "America Under Attack" still loomed over newscasts, some scholars said they could already feel the free exchange of ideas constricting… Many professors feared the start of a new McCarthy era.” The question one has to ask is “Why?” At a time, when the general public was still totally in the dark about what had been going on at the American universities and colleges, the professors knew and feared that they had been doing something for which they could potentially face a McCarthy-kind of reprisals.

David Horowitz introduced his series of articles on “Indoctrination” (Link 24) with the words: “Three years ago, I began a national campaign for academic freedom designed to promote the restoration of academic standards, including intellectual diversity, in institutions of higher learning.” By this time, “the refusal to hire conservative academics had led to a vanishing presence of conservative faculty members in many … disciplines. The net effect was to deny students access to alternative - and particularly - conservative ideas… The curriculum was thus transformed into a program of indoctrination.” Since his access, being a university outsider, was limited, the series is based on “research of faculty-provided course descriptions, syllabi and reading lists that are available to the general public.”

Charles Mitchell in his article about a conservative professor Mike Adams, a “Campus Heretic” (Link 26), has this to say about conservative professors: “They’re not just outnumbered. They are also unwelcome. And they know it.” As a consequence, “conservative professors—which are extremely rare in the first place—can seem even scarcer than they are, because many of the few that exist keep their heads down. They hide their beliefs. Why? Because they know that that is much safer than speaking their minds.”

The New York Sun editorial “Merit at Columbia” (Link 29) criticizes Columbia’s Teachers College for deriding merit, favoring instead a kind of left-wing indoctrination. “Teachers are taught that merit is an "ideology" that exists to justify discrimination.” Shibley and Lukianoff (Link 30) write: “At Teachers College, students are required to have a "commitment to social justice" - a requirement so subjective and politically loaded that it can only be enforced in a way that judges students on whether they have "acceptable" political views… Telling students the specific political beliefs they need to have in order to graduate is thought control, not education.”

“A Profile of American College Faculty” (Link 32) is a major study by Gary Tobin and Aryeh Weinberg, published in 2006 by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, and based on online survey of 1,269 faculty members from 712 different colleges and universities. Major findings include: faculty political ideology is overwhelmingly liberal; faculties are not representative of the American public; faculties are ideologically critical of America and business and supportive of international institutions; faculty political culture is self-perpetuating; dominant faculty culture can lead to censorship. They find that only 16% of faculty identify as Republican versus 46% who identify as Democrat. In 2004, 25% voted for George Bush, while 72% for John Kerry. Recommendations include: universities should work to create an environment with no overwhelming political culture; public grants should not fund political agendas; trustees should take a more active role in tenure decisions; hiring and promotion processes should be free of political ideology; administrations should ensure protection against ideological intimidation and discrimination; the state of high education should be a topic of research and debate.

In “Redeeming the Wayward University” (Link 49), Daniel Pipes addresses the issue: “Should outsiders try to influence the hiring and tenuring of university faculty?” and argues in favor. “Educational institutions may appoint whomever they wish, but they cannot expect immunity from public criticism. Precisely because academe offers unique job security, public evaluation of untenured academics has a potentially vital role. As for tenured faculty, robust public criticism can keep them in line by embarrassing them and hurting their credibility. The ivory tower exists at the sufferance of those who subsidize it. Professors ultimately cannot ignore the parents, alumni, legislators, and government bureaucrats who pay their salaries. And as those stakeholders increasingly become aware of the professors' failings, they can begin to demand improvements. Concerned outsiders should track university developments, including personnel decisions, so as to begin the process of redeeming the university, that grand and noble institution temporarily gone astray.”

In “Higher Education and the Democrats” (Link 63), Don Irvine brings to the attention of the public the latest report from the Center for Responsive Politics covering the 2005-2006 election cycle to prove “that academia is full of leftists or Democrats.” The Center reports that the education industry gave over 12 million dollars to candidates, with 69% of that amount going to Democrats and just 22% to Republicans. Yet that is only the average. At the University of California, for instance, employees gave $406,290 to rank number one on the list, with 87% of the donations going to Democrats. They were followed by Harvard University, where 90% of the $314,917 contributed went to Democrats. Other schools in the top ten in terms of total donations were the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, with donations to Democrats at 94%, 88% and 88% respectively, while at the College of William and Mary there were no donations to the GOP. The American Federation of Teachers representing 1 million teachers, school staff, higher education faculty and other public employees contributed 99% of its donations to Democrats since 1990 (Link 64). Irvine concludes: “By and large the report only confirms just how out of step academia is with the general population. Future students, beware!”

On December 17, 2006, Phil Orenstein published an “Update on NY Academic Bill or Rights” (Link 70). The bill was introduced in the NYS Senate as S6336 early in 2006 sponsored by 10 Senators, which followed by the sponsorship of the same bill in the Assembly as A10098 by 6 Assembly members. The stated purpose of the bill is “to ensure that students enrolled in institutions of higher education receive exposure to a wide range of scholarly viewpoints, and to recognize the academic rights of faculty members.” The bill “…ensures an academic environment for both students and faculty members that allows freedom of political viewpoint, expression and instruction” and it requires that institutions of higher education set up a viable grievance mechanism.

The need for outside legislation has been proven by the fact that university staff and administrators are reluctant to deal with the lack of intellectual diversity and rampant political indoctrination in the classroom and the curriculum. After publicly declaring his intention to strengthen intellectual diversity on State University of New York (SUNY) campuses and give the matter a fair hearing, SUNY Board of Trustees Chairman Thomas Egan failed numerous times to make time for the issue and encourage a fair debate when it was brought to the table by SUNY trustee Dr. Candace deRussy. In March 2006, SUNY trustees once again had had an opportunity to formulate a statewide policy to encourage intellectual diversity and protect the academic rights of students and professors from viewpoint discrimination, but again they rejected all attempts to seriously look into the matter.

The legislative lame-duck session failed to act on the bill in 2006. It is good news that the bill is almost certain to be re-introduced in 2007. The word from Assembly sponsors is reassuring. Assemblyman Seminerio’s Chief of Staff Jody Rickert said that the Assemblyman, the chief sponsor, would certainly reintroduce it. As a conservative Democrat, he is a strong ally of the academic freedom movement having experienced the abuses first hand. With the recent escalation of incidents of campus censorship and bullying of students and speakers with divergent viewpoints, this bill is now even more necessary for safeguarding intellectual diversity and basic constitutional rights on college campuses.


References (Links):

1. Horowitz, D. (4/18/2003) The Campus Blacklist. FrontPageMagazine.com

2. Horowitz, D. and Lehrer, E. (2003?) Political Bias at the Administrations and Facilities of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities. A Report of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture

3. Lubet, S. (12/21/2004) Conservatives Complain About Campus Shut-Outs. Detroit Free Press

4. Huang, P., Neville, L. and Ruzhanskaya, M. (11/4/2004) How Long Island Voted. Newsday

5. Kurtz, H. (3/29/2005) College Faculties A Most Liberal Lot, Study Finds. The Washington Post

7. Klein, D.B. and Stern, C. (2005) Professors and Their Politics: The Policy Views of Social Scientists. Critical Review 17, nos. 3-4

8. Cardiff, C.F. and Klein, D.B. (2005) Faculty Partisan Affiliations in All Disciplines: A Voter-Registration Study. Critical Review 17, nos. 3-4

9. Eckstein, A. (1/12/2006) The Pitt of Academic Bias. FrontPageMagazine.com

10. Laksin, J. (6/15/2006) Discounting the Facts. FrontPageMagazine.com

11. How Many Ward Chirchills? (5/2006) American Council of Trustees and Alumni

12. Adams, M. (6/30/2006) Professors Condemn “Political Activity.” Townhall.com

13. Saunders, D.J. (8/3/2006) Don’t Think Outside the College Box. San Francisco Chronicle

14. Plecnik, J. (8/9/2006) Who’s Looking Out For Campus Conservatives? TheRealityCheck.org

16. Leef, G. (8/18/2006) The Diversity Double Standard. Popecenter.org

18. Williams, W. (8/28/2006) The Red Sea of Academe? Washington Times

19. Stearn, H. (8/30/2006) A New Kind of Affirmation Action. The Cornell Daily Sun

22. Beckwith, L. (9/13/2006) UC-Santa Cruz and the Loss of Public Trust. FrontPageMagazine.com

23. Gravois, J. (9/14/2006) Academe in a Time of Crisis. The Chronicle of Higher Education

24. Horowitz, D. (9/15/2006) Indoctrination U: Colorado. FrontPageMagazine.com

26. Mitchell, C. (9/22/2006) Mike Adams, Campus Heretic. The Family Security Foundation

29. Staff Editorial (10/12/2006) Merit at Columbia. The New York Sun

30. Shibley, R. and Lukianoff, G. (10/16/2006) Thought Control at Columbia. New York Post

32. Tobin, G.A. and Weinberg, A.K. (2006) A Profile of American College Faculty, Vol. 1: Political Beliefs and Behavior. Institute for Jewish & Community Research

49. Pipes, D. (11/29/2006) Redeeming the Wayward University. FrontPageMagazine.com

63. Irvine, D. (12/8/2006) Higher Education and the Democrats. CampusReportOnline.net

70. Orenstein, P. (12/17/2006) Update on NY Academic Bill of Right. Democracy Project