To the Editor:
Steven Teles deplores the underrepresentation of conservatives in the humanities and social sciences (“Why Are There So Few Conservative Professors?,” The Chronicle Review, July 1).
But the disparities are even greater in the natural sciences. In 2009, a Pew survey of members of the AAAS found that only 6 percent identified as Republicans, and there is no reason to think this has changed in the subsequent 15 years. One obvious reason for this is that Republicans are openly anti-science on a wide range of issues, notably including climate science, evolution, and vaccination.
The absence of Republican scientists creates a couple of problems for Teles. First, Teles’ proposed solution of affirmative action is particularly problematic here. Around 97 percent of all papers related to climate change support, or at least are consistent with, the mainstream view that the world is warming primarily as a result of human action. The view, predominant among conservative Americans, that global warming is either not happening or is not due to human action, is massively underrepresented.
The same is true across an ever expanding range of issues that have been engulfed by the culture wars. It seems unlikely that Teles would advocate enforcing a spread of opinion matching that of the U.S. public in these cases.
Second, it is hard to see how discrimination is supposed to work here. By contrast with large areas of the social sciences and humanities, it is difficult to infer much about natural scientists’ political views from their published work, except to the extent that anyone working in fields like biology and climate science works on the basis of assumptions rejected by most Republicans. Republican chemists or materials scientists would have no need to reveal their political views to potentially hostile colleagues.
Explaining the shortage of Republican scientists (and academics more generally) does not require a complex story about anticipated discrimination, like the one offered by Teles. Careers in academe require a high level of education and offer relatively modest incomes. Both of these characteristics are negatively correlated with political conservatism. The outcome is no more surprising than the fact that Democrats are underrepresented among groups with the opposite characteristics, such as business owners without college degrees.
As Teles observes, the disparity between the views of academics and those of the legislators who fund them is a major problem for U.S. higher education, and ultimately for the United States itself. But this is a reflection of the fact that conservatism, in the form it currently takes in the country, is inherently hostile to the intellectual values of a university. Until conservatism itself changes, this conflict is not going to be resolved.
John Quiggin
Professor of Economics
University of Queensland
Brisbane, Australia
