I Think My Professor is a Democrat: Considering Whether Students Recognize and React to Faculty Politics

Abstract

Notwithstanding political science professors' concerted efforts to remain politically neutral in the classroom, we find evidence that students are able to successfully identify the partisan loyalties of their professors. Furthermore, we find that there is a tendency for students to drift toward the Democratic Party over the course of the semester, yet the direction of the shift appears to be unrelated to either the instructor's actual political loyalties, or to the student's perception of the professor's partisan preferences. Given that political science professors appear to exert no real influence on students' party loyalties, it is unclear whether efforts to diversify the field by hiring more Republican professors would actually reduce the "liberalizing" effects of higher education.Fe a t u r e s : I T h i n k M y P r o f e s s o r i s a D e m o c r a t

Professors’ Politics and Their Appeal as Instructors

“…Professors in American universities tend to be more politically liberal than the population overall, raising concerns about indoctrination among generations of conservatives (Bloom 1987; Buckley 1951; Horowitz 2010; Shapiro 2010) and mainstream media (Friedersdorf 2012; Shields and Dunn 2016; Wooldridge 2005). Research suggests that these concerns have been overstated because university faculty have been found to be more politically diverse and less radical than some portrayals suggest (Gross and Simmons 2014); faculty ideology has little, if any, effect on student ideology (Mariani and Hewitt 2008; Woessner and Kelly-Woessner 2009). Still, less is known about whether the expression of professors’ political ideologies is welcome among students who, nationally speaking, tend to self-identify most often as moderates, then as liberals, and least often as conservatives (Eagan et al 2017).…”

Politics and the Pedagogue of Late Antiquity

“…Dictating ideologies to our students would contradict almost every tenet of good pedagogy, as we are aiming to enhance our students' ability to think for themselves, even if that means they come to conclusions different from our own. 23 23 Even if we were inclined to political proselytizing-as many critics of higher education charge-research shows that such "advocacy" is ineffective: the presumed political ideology of instructors has less influence on college students' political views than parents, family, and news media (Gross and Simmons 2014; Woessner and Woessner 2009;Mariani and Hewitt 2008).…”

How (and What) Political Theorists Teach: Results of a National Survey

“…Similarly, the question of professors' partisanship or advocacy in the classroom is a perennial source of con cern and debate, both within the profession and between professors and students. For example, see the recent work by Matthew Woessner and April Kelly-Woessner (Kelly-Woessner and Woessner 2006;Woessner and Kelly-Woessner 2009). Respon dents to the survey largely disavowed any intention of encouraging students to adopt particular views, with 70.7% saying that ''imparting particular views or beliefs'' is either of little importance or unimportant, and with only 10.7% saying that that goal was either very important or important.…”