Once upon a time, in the flourishing cultural centers of medieval Paris, Oxford, and Bologna, an institution emerged dedicated to the pursuit of truth: the university. This institution evolved from schools called studia generalia, which were attempts to educate monks and clerks beyond what they had received at cathedral or monastic schools. The universities were self-governing, often receiving their charters from popes and monarchs. They were granted significant independence and freedom, as long as they didn’t teach atheism or heresy.
Ironically, the restrictions placed on medieval universities – to avoid atheism and heresy –would amount to “religious extremism” and “authoritarian dogmatism” by today’s standards. Conversely, the “heresy” forbidden in modern academic institutions is anything derogatorily termed “medieval.” A complete reversal has occurred.
If censorship or discrimination occurs in today’s universities, it normally targets the traditional, conservative, or Christian thought from which the universities blossomed in the Middle Ages.
How widespread is this bias?
Let me start with my own experience. I did encounter bias while in college and graduate school. From lectures, to classroom and faculty lounge chatter, to reading lists and syllabi, to the posters on the walls – everything leaned heavily to the left, with a strong neo-Marxist and postmodern flavor. I did not feel free or comfortable to publicly express my conservative views as the overall atmosphere opposed my beliefs.
Yet with the exception of one or two incidents, I did not experience discrimination from professors even once it was clear where my political, religious, and philosophical allegiances lay. I had a good relationship with my professors, and they were intellectually honest enough to take seriously the conservative ideas I surreptitiously introduced into papers and class discussions. I am unaware of any case where my grade suffered from views I expressed in my academic work.
That said, navigating my way to my degree sometimes felt like crossing a room covered in shards of shattered glass. When I spoke up, I did so strategically, often keeping remarks to myself.
All this is only one individual’s experience, of course. A more complete picture of bias in academia is presented in a recent article for “The Telegraph,” where University of Buckingham professor of politics Eric Kaufmann runs through startling statistics revealing the leftward slide of academia since the 1960s.
In 1969, more than 40% of American academics were liberal, while just under 30% were conservative. That’s a relatively even split.
Fast-forward to 2016. A study by Mitchell Langbert and colleagues “found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by almost 12 to 1 across five different fields at leading universities.”
Another study from 2018 found that relatively few sociology professors consider themselves conservative. Additionally, the well-known predominance of Marxist-inspired Critical Theory across academic disciplines bolsters our case for the preponderance of leftwing ideologies in the universities.
The power wielded by this liberal majority in academia does descend, at times, on the heads of conservatives. As Kaufmann notes, the sociologist George Yancey found in 2011 that almost 30% of sociologists admitted they were less likely to hire a Republican. Kaufmann himself discovered that 40% of social scientists would not hire a Trump supporter.
This environment discourages conservatives from pursuing careers in academia. Kaufmann’s survey of master’s students in social sciences in U.S., Britain, and Canada unveiled that “one of the leading reasons why conservative students said they would not consider a career in academia is that they believed their political beliefs would not be a fit.” Seventy percent of conservatives already embedded in academia report that their departments are hostile to their conservative views.
So yes, a liberal bias does appear to be present in today’s academia. But is it a problem for universities to be biased? Yes and no.
Maybe the idea of a completely “unbiased” academia is a fantasy, even an absurdity. After all, the original universities heavily favored Christian belief and were intolerant of deviations from it. For a university to have no bias would require that it abandon its mission of pursuing truth and cultivating learning. Every university should favor the truth, or it’s unworthy of the name.
The question is not whether universities should be biased, but what bias they ought to have. They ought to be biased in favor of the truth, no matter who’s saying it. The problem facing universities today is that the intellectual left claims a monopoly on truth – even while frequently and paradoxically denying the very existence of truth.
This favoritism has become a closed system that declines to engage in self-interrogation or self-criticism, alternately mocking and hyperventilating over challenges to the prevailing orthodoxy, while marginalizing any other potential avenues to truth.
Liberal intelligentsia believe they’re fulfilling the mission of a university and engaging in serious intellectual work advancing the good of human society. And some of them are.
But to truly conduct intellectual work, to make real progress, one must remain open to new ideas and perspectives penetrating one’s own intellectual bubble. The honest academic should not fear this, but welcome it, using challenges to either correct his or her own thinking entirely or at least refine and strengthen what was already believed.
Medieval university classes operated largely by means of disputations in which two opposing thinkers debated a contentious point so that, through this onerous process, both could come to a better understanding of reality. A certain divergence of opinion was central to the system.
A truly great mind understands the importance of healthy debate for exposing weaknesses in his own thought and correcting imbalances. A great mind remains open to hearing truth, even from his political adversaries or those he considers beneath him. Intellectual arrogance, on the other hand, is the beginning of foolishness.
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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.
Image Credit: Harrison Keely, CC BY 4.0
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