The Profs They Are A-Changin'

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Compiled by EVAN R. GOLDSTEIN

According to a recent article in The New York Times, the political makeup of academe may be changing. In 2005 more than 54 percent of full-time faculty members in the United States were older than 50, compared with just 22.5 percent in 1969. Patricia Cohen, a reporter for the Times, couples that with another intriguing fact: Recent studies suggest that younger faculty members tend to hold more moderate political views than their liberal elder colleagues. So will the impending retirement of aging baby boomers bring about less-left-leaning campuses?

Cohen writes that there are already signs that partisanship is declining. The sort of polemical exuberance that has long characterized political debate on campus — and about campus politics — is being replaced with civil dialogue. To wit: The Stanford anthropology department has reunited after fracturing into two bitterly opposed ideological camps in 1998. And the outspokenly liberal Cornel West, a professor of religion, is teaching a seminar on great books with his conservative Princeton colleague, Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence.

Judging by the responses to the Times article, however, the impact of the aging of the professoriate is far from clear.

Mark, commenter: It is possible to speak of an "aging" faculty (especially in the humanities) only if by "faculty" we mean "full-time tenured or tenurable faculty." If by faculty we mean instead "the men and women who actually run classrooms" the case is altogether different: The "faculty" in this latter sense is by no means "aging" or "graying," nor is it "moderating" in politics (so far as I can tell). … I suspect that any changes in sensibility, tone, or posture among college/university teachers — insofar as these changes are measurable — is due as much to the gradual phasing out of the tenure system in favor of contingent labor as it is to retirement of professors who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s. (The New York Times Online)

Eric Lenze, commenter: What about the larger question: What happens to university education and research when the graying faculty retire? In the two medical schools where I've been on the faculty, virtually all of the chairs, vice chairs, center directors, mentors, and researchers with sizable shops are over the age of 55. Can we expect an enormous vacuum in our educational and public research systems in about 15 years? Will we be talking about a retirement "brain drain"? (The New York Times Online)

Gary Becker, professor of economics, University of Chicago: One might think that aging faculties would tilt toward a more politically conservative faculty since older persons tend to be more conservative. However, as the Times article indicates, this does not appear to be true with regard to the faculty aging that is occurring now. Many older faculty members, especially in the humanities and social sciences, were active in the student and civil-rights movements of the 1960s and 70s, and have maintained a radical, often Marxist, orientation toward events and history. The tough competition for academic jobs gives younger faculty much less time for radical and other political causes. Moreover, younger faculty went to school after many of these cultural wars were over, and they have more moderate views, although most still consider themselves Democrats, and are usually anti-markets and anti-business.

Important new ideas in different fields come disproportionately from younger persons, and academic research is no exception. Significant advances not only in mathematics, but also in biology, … in economics, and even in the humanities have typically been made by younger rather than older persons. This means that while the aging of faculties at American universities adds greater experience, faculties have lost some freshness of approach that comes from having younger faculty. (The Becker-Posner Blog)

Paul Gottfried, professor of humanities, Elizabethtown College: Ms. Cohen's article is dazzlingly inconclusive. There is nothing she manages to prove, except the growing worthlessness of political terms of reference. How was a "radical" academic in 1968 more radical than a "moderate" academic right now? The ideological changes that the Left advocated in 1968 have not only been accomplished, but our government, media, and educational establishment have pushed us well beyond them. …

As a researcher of academic opinion who is not cited, Daniel Klein of George Mason University, has argued, multicultural, anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-traditional attitudes are now so entrenched in academia that one has to be cognitively challenged not to notice their pervasiveness. (Taki's Magazine)

Don Irvine, chairman, Accuracy in Media: Frankly I am not going to hold my breath for this supposed transformation to occur. As long as there is tenure the liberal left will remain firmly in control. (Accuracy in Media)

Richard Vedder, director, Center for College Affordability and Productivity: Why are the younger faculty on average somewhat less left-wing activists? Three explanations come readily to mind:

1) The proportion of faculty in the social sciences and humanities has declined relative to those in business, health-care studies, the sciences, etc. These latter disciplines are less politically oriented, and what politics there is tends to be more conservative.

2) Left-wing critiques of the world have been found wanting. The triumph of the West in the cold war is a triumph of capitalism over flaky dreamy socialism/communism, and the younger crowd is bright enough to see that.

3) Related to the second point, life is pretty good in America today (the alleged recession notwithstanding). It is hard to be angry about the world when most material wants are being satisfied, life is longer and less painful and tiring than at any other time in human history, and you live in a country that is universally considered the most powerful and significant on the planet. And college professors, despite the customary grumbling, live pretty well, with a large portion of them having household incomes over $100,000 a year. (Center for College Affordability and Productivity)

Craig Maier, blogger: Could this mean a new trend in the perception and self-definition of American academia? Truly, the inexorable conflict between radical countercultural ideologies and the vitriolic, anti-intellectual, and often paranoid ravings of conservative critics had to end some time. But what will this new generation bring? Will they mark a return to the civic republican style of the 19th century, when academics sought to steep students in great ideas to allow them to enter the public sphere? Or will they bring a bureaucratized, intellectually safe, glorified-high-school-teacher sort of existence to an industry — and I do not shrink from calling it that — that is struggling to justify its existence and costliness? (Media Nomad)