Are universities left‐wing bastions? Professors are more liberal & left‐leaning than other professionals, but there is a diversity of opinions which is similar to what professionals would find in other occupations

Are universities left‐wing bastions? The political orientation of professors, professionals, and managers in Europe. Herman G. van de Werfhorst. The British Journal of Sociology, December 10 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12716

Abstract: Universities are accused of being left‐wing bastions, unwelcoming to conservative and right‐wing professors. However, we know little about the political orientation of professors in comparison to other professionals, which would be the right comparison group if we want to know whether universities are potentially hostile environments to conservatives. Examining culturally and economically oriented political orientations in Europe, it is demonstrated that professors are more liberal and left‐leaning than other professionals. However, there is no greater homogeneity of political orientations among the professoriate relative to other specific professions, suggesting that there is a diversity of opinions which is similar to what professionals would find in other occupations. One exception concerns attitudes towards immigration, on which professors have more liberal orientations and comparatively low residual variance around that more liberal mean. Importantly, the difference between professors and other professionals is not so clear within graduates from the social sciences, but emerges more clearly among graduates with a medical, STEM, economics or law degree. An important political cleavage exists between professionals and managers, a group of similar social standing.

4 DISCUSSION

The evidence for the left‐wing bastion hypothesis is mixed. Overall, when we examine the average positions of different occupational groups, we see a pattern that is in line with sociological theories positing a central role to occupations for the formation of life styles and political orientations. In particular, we find evidence for a relationship between the dominance of cultural and economic capital for the political orientation of occupational groups. Professors and artists stand out as having a more left‐wing/liberal orientation than most other professions (as can be predicted from their dominance of cultural capital), and especially CEOs and small business managers stand out as more conservative and right‐wing (fitting the dominance of economic capital in these occupational groups). Also in line with this idea is the average position taken by engineers and medical doctors, groups for which none of the two types of capital can be considered dominant according to Bourdieu (1984).
However, with regard to the residual variance, as a measure of homogeneity within occupational groups, the pattern is less clear. Professors do not stand out as having a low dispersion of orientations. If universities were exclusionary organizations where diversity of opinions is undesired and conservative scholars are excluded, one would expect this would have resulted in a high level of homogeneity of opinions. The fact that that seems not to be very clearly the case is reassuring for the contemporary debates on ideological diversity in higher education.
Also, when we split out the results by fields of study, professors with a humanities degree are more left‐wing and liberal on most indicators, but this is not the case for professors with a social science degree. Importantly, professors are more tolerant to immigration than other professional graduates of three fields that are usually not seen as left‐wing bastions: the (para‐) medical field, economics/business, the STEM fields, and law. This finding fits less well with the “conflict of the faculties” noticed by Bourdieu (1988); the professoriate is comparatively more liberal in the powerful fields (compared to non‐professors). So, overall graduates from the humanities and social sciences may be more left‐wing and liberal (professors or not), but this is not an organizational feature of the universities, as Bourdieu seems to have suggested.
A common explanation for the more liberal orientation of professionals (including professors) relative to managers concerns their attachment to education. While the evidence is mixed on the question whether education has a causal effect on political orientations (Cavaillé & Marshall, 2019; Hillygus, 2005; Lancee & Sarrasin, 2015) people with higher levels of education, and educated in the social sciences and humanities, identify typically more strongly as left‐wing in the political sphere. The more left‐leaning orientation of more educated individuals is consistent with several well‐known explanations for the formation of political values. These include the theory that intelligence is an important driver of occupational group differences in political orientation (especially on cultural issues, Carl, 2015), the theory that education socializes values especially in the social and humanistic sciences (Stubager, 2008), and the theory that consensus in orientations results from scientific wisdom rather than bias (Fuller & Geide‐Stevenson, 2014).
To further illustrate the relevance of education, it is worth emphasizing that we used model predictions of occupational group differences for respondents with a college degree, and almost all predicted outcomes are above zero (indicating above the overall average on the z‐standardized variables), except for the support for economic redistribution. Also managers and workers in other social classes with a college degree have above‐average scores on a liberal and left‐wing political orientation.
While we cannot test the theory that conservatives are reluctant to take up an academic career because of their atypical political orientations, the results point to the possibility that universities form an unwelcoming environment to conservatives (Gross, 2013; Rothman, Lichter, & Nevitte, 2005). Even if there is the same level of variability within the universities as elsewhere, the mean difference implies that societies’ intellectuals responsible for teaching the next generation have a more left‐leaning orientation than the rest of society. Whether this is worrying from an educational perspective is yet another question—there is no evidence that professors bring their political orientation into the classroom.