Here we go again. The periodic "problem" of liberal dominance of academia is back. Indeed, it never left. David Horowitz has been bilking gullible wingnut contributors for more than a decade now by making this same complaint, most often in lurid McCarthyite terms. But Jonathan Haidt, a University of Virginia social psychologist celebrated in a recent New York Times column by John Tierney for insisting that the liberal bent of social science professors represents a "statistically impossible lack of [ideological] diversity," is no David Horowitz (or he wouldn't be worth discussing).
Again, Haidt's news is not new. Horowitz's ravings aside, we heard four years ago from a team of sociologists that "Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences." One study found, for instance, that Democratic-leaning psychology professors outnumber Republicans by a factor of nearly 12-to-1. Overall, when it comes to social science faculty, 72 percent identify as liberal.
What Haidt brings to the party is a new thesis. He insists, according to Tierney's reporting, that liberal social scientists constitute a "tribal-moral community" united by "sacred values" that hinder research and damage their credibility--as well as blind them to the hostile climate they've created for nonliberals.
Haidt adds, "Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation. ... but when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations."
Well, perhaps, though, it's just a hypothesis. And when you examine the details of his case they begin to look less impressive than Tierney tries to make them.
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