The Divided Academy: Professors and Politics

...Academics, the authors contend, comprise a distinct political stratum of American society...

...With the advent of "post-industrial society" and the growth of a "knowledge-centered" economy, the conclusions of The Divided Academy are quite significant...

...Statistically speaking, professors are the most liberal of American occupational groups: a substantial majority of academics consistently vote Democratic and well over fifty percent recorded an early opposition to Vietnam policy...

...Yet there are intriguing disciplinary differences even within the social sciences...

...By studying an extraordinarily large sample of 60,000 college and university professors, the authors have come to conclusions about the American academic mind which point directly to a powerful intellectual culture...

...Of those professors coming from liberal homes, 81% classified themselves as "left" or "liberal" while college seniors...

...Recently, however, social scientists have spoken of a "new class," a political stratum composed primarily of intellectuals, of professionals who shape climates of social thought through the authoritative exercise of ideas and opinions...

...Indeed, family political disposition betrays an influence throughout the university, with a strong correlation existing between the politics of professors as undergraduates and their fathers' political persuasions...

...Some theorists have written of a corporate and military "power elite...

...If we are to understand the politics of the emergent age, we must understand those who may act as stockbrokers in an increasingly important marketplace of ideas, and it is with the specific influence of these men of ideas that future studies must contend...

...Class analysis of the professoriate al fails to explain liberalism solely in ten of socioeconomic background...

...Ladd a, Lipset find no major correlation betwe economic background and political oric tation, though the social background professors seems to have some signi cance...

...Although mathematicians, for example, tend to be political moderate, those at elite universities tend consistently to the left...

...Why is it that intellectuals overwhelmingly subscribe to liberal positions...

...While 51% of academics under 30 say they are very liberally disposed, only24% of their colleagues over 60 share their inclination...

...that is, professors who are liberal on national issues tend to be similarly liberal on campus issues, while those who are nationally conservative tend also to be campus conservatives...

...If one breaks the faculty into its component disciplines, however, it turns out that sharp divisions split the academy...

...Age, too, appears to be a factor in determining political outlook...

...44% of the political scientists did so—small testimony to the influence of sul ject matter on political opinion...

...If that influence can be assumed, however, one can be assured that Ladd and Lipset have painted a convincing and accurate picture of the social and political posture that such intellectuals will most likely adopt...

...Professional environment also makes an important contribution to academic politics...

...Of all the professors, those in the social sciences come closest to that "capacity for criticism, for rejection of the status quo" and that passion for "new knowledge, new ideas, new art" which the authors loosely associate with intellectuality...

...Such questions must be answered before one can truly understand the sociology of knowledge and the role of ideas in modern society...

...Furthermore, faculty opinions tend to be ideologically consistent and consciously linked together...

...To cif one case, 56% of the sociologists inte viewed agreed with the proposition the American universities are racist, but on...

...Furthermore, those professors who were liberal (and intellectual) as undergraduates were also the most likely to enter liberal and intellectual disciplines...

...In The Divided Academy, Everett Carll Ladd, Jr...

...Overall, the averaj liberal professor is alienated neither fro his job nor from the outside public, b enjoys a comfortable income, job securit and a high level of professional and pu lic esteem...

...But who are the intellectuals and what are they really like...

...The authors suggest that professors who engage in critical, abstract, and "intellectual" disciplines tend to the libThe Divided Academy: Professors and Politics by Everett Carll Ladd, Jr...

...Scholars disagree on these questions, and until we have more precise definitions and descriptions of intellectuals, it will be difficult to say much about their power and influence...

...others have addressed themselves to an emergent managerial class...

...Furthermore, in exposing a major intellectualstratum, the authors have revealed correlations and raised questions on which future inquiry must rest...

...For one thing, it is diffict, to say whether intellectuality is, strict speaking, a cause or merely a freque: concomitant of liberalism...

...Although it is not the purpose of tl authors to cast the last word on tl causes of intellectuality or of liberalisr...

...In some past studies of the universit scholars have attempted to employ cla analysis in suggesting that professori liberalism derives from personal alien tion and failure...

...In short, several factors—subject matter, social background, age, and university environment—combine to accompany and/or determine political disposition and intellectual bent...

...Universities and elite colleges are significantly more liberal than other schools, both because they attract liberal professors and because they provide the research-oriented environment conducive to intellectuality...

...In son senses, conservatives too can be intelle tual...

...and Seymour Martin Lipset McGraw-Hill $17.50 eral-left, while professors in fields which employ existing knowledge and have practical application tend to the conservative side of the academic spectrum...

...Those professors, for example, who called for immediate Vietnam withdrawal were more likely to support relaxed college admissions standards for minorities than were those professors favoring American military victory...

...Those in the critical and individually-oriented behavioral sciences, like psychology, tend to favor social action and reform more than do their systems-and institutionally-oriented colleagues ineconomics and political science...

...and Seymour Martin Lipset have sought to address this problem by analyzing in detail at least one stratum in the community of American intellect...

...What are the central contributing factors to intellectual inclination...

...For this reason, The Divided Academy is a book not just about professors, but about the analysis of social strata...

...exact connection between a professor politics and the "intellectuality" of h discipline, however, is by no means easi established...

...Ladd and Lipset, ho' ever, show that the most successful at most satisfied academics are general also the most liberal...

...Ladd and Lipset are saying, therefor that the American university is a • "d vided" rather than united academy...

...The Alternative: An American Spectator June/ July 1976 37...

...Professors in the social sciences are most liberal, those in business and engineering most conservative (64% of the former call themselves "liberal" or "very liberal," but only 23% of the business professors do so), and the other disciplines arrange themselves on a continuum in between...

...The younger professor, for example, is more likely than his older colleague to support such issues as the unionization of faculty and the liberalization of academic hiring policy, attitudes which derive largely from the combined motivations of apparent self-interest and youthful "idealism...

...Professors from minority grout for example, tend to be quite liberal, p, titularly Jews—a circumstance whi 36 The Alternative: An American Spectator June/ July 19 may be due in large measure to the cultural and intellectual tradition furthered by the Jewish household...

...Ladd and Lipset have offered a style of criticism which may lend itself not only to future analysis of the professoriate, but also to analysis of other segments of American society...

...Ladd and Lipset do offer some conch sions which lend themselves to tl analysis of both of these factors...

...Professors tend to support such causes as busing and the legalization of marijuana far more than the general public...