<p>I don’t think the liberal bias of professors is <em>damaging</em> to students, mostly because it is expected (most public school teachers are liberal, so many students are already used to it). I think it might be annoying or frustrating or stifling, but this would apply to any professor who had a perceptible bias of any type.</p>
<p>I do think the liberal bias may be damaging to the reputation of the profession of professors, as evidenced by the myriad publications critical of it, due to such bias being somewhat anathema to what is expected from a university education if various viewpoints on a subject are ignored.</p>
<p>I must add that the idea that the majority of elite colleges do not have a liberal bias, is not supported by anything I’ve ever read or heard. Granted, I have not read or heard everything.</p>
<p>Well, a lot of times, and I studied lit, at one of the best grad programs in the country, “critical practice” is pretty biased. Interestingly, if you are relatively bright, you soon recognize that all this even does is reveal to you the ideology of the critic, and by the time you leave, you think it’s an interesting exercise in the fact of the bare proximity of communication and how little we really understand each other outside of easily recognizable and screamingly loud tropes, even when they are supposedly subtle. We seek pattern so relentlessly, we barely recognize our own original thoughts. Well, anyway, that’s what I figured out. My professors would argue that we are far more discerning than I would.</p>
<p>My daughter sticks to ancient history simply because the bias is minimized. She is a libertarian, and she was appalled by the biases in the one poli sci class she took, to the point where her professor actually told her, in writing on a paper, that being a libertarian is an invalid position and not an available option in the United States and she would have to choose between the Democrats and the Republicans.</p>
<p>She isn’t at a school with an overly Liberal student body. But the bias in the humanities is strong. </p>
<p>She can think for herself. She told the professor she would choose between what she wanted to choose between thankyouverymuch. But not all kids come to college with this ability to argue with authority, and they swallow a lot of ideology whole before they are able to recognize it as ideology and not fact.</p>
<p>All that said, the prof still gave her an A. So the teaching is biased, but the grading was not. fWIW.</p>
<p>I tend not to believe there is much in the way of facts involved in the study of history. In my opinion, it is interpretation of events. Emeraldkitty mentioned some ancient historians upthread. They were interpreting events. In the 19th century American colleges taught these historians in a particular way. Today they are taught in a different way. The 19th century way is more traditional (at this point in time) but no less interpretive. It is not fact. ymvv</p>
<p>Do facts exist in economics? If so, why do we keep having one crisis after another throughout history? What about political science? Are there really political science facts?</p>
<p>Even in science it seems to me what we believe today is a very different story than what people accepted 50 years ago or 100 years ago as fact.</p>
<p>I really question the idea that college is supposed to teach a set of facts.</p>
<p>they swallow a lot of ideology whole before they are able to recognize it as ideology and not fact. Yes, but it works many ways. What a kid may bring into the class, as well. The kid who can’t encounter another ideology without feeling defensive- using the earlier example, when they recoil, eg, at “I am a Marxist-” also needs to examine his own stand. </p>
<p>But, I think we’re talking about kids who can weigh. The process, not simply the perspective of the professor. Liberal can include a lot of tolerance, when there is examination behind another’s position. As can conservative. Labels can be too broad. That can be counter-intellectual, in cases.</p>
<p>My son was surprised to find himself the only atheist in a philosophy class at Tufts - he felt everyone was making all sorts of unwarranted assumptions! One of my favorite history teachers the year I lived in France would often preface something “I’m not a communist, but in this case I think their interpretation of the events was correct.” That was a big change from high school where I don’t think I got the Marxist interpretation of anything!</p>
<p>I have no question at all that college is not supposed to teach a set of facts. But I also think it is more simplistic than you are, as a thinker, ahl, to not recognize that the filters we are given sometimes become the way we see. I strove to give my kids the ability to make their own filters, but I was highly educated in this, and I know our K-12’s aren’t doing a good job with this, for the most part.</p>
<p>So, I question when professors don’t state their bias, and fight their own bias in grading.</p>
<p>In the case of my daughter’s prof, she was good. She suggested D publish the paper since the argument was excellent. But, this is not always the case. Either the student who can write the paper or the professor who can read it openly.</p>
<p>alh - I’d prefer not to call out the specific course / professor, as I don’t want to get into a discussion of this particular professor by name. Hope you understand. I actually don’t think it’s one of those you linked to, but I’m not 100% certain of the course number.</p>
<p>Also, I’d like to point out that the bias I just referred to was not “conservative” or “liberal” but the bias that all we can choose from is what is already the “system” in place. </p>
<p>“I do think the liberal bias may be damaging to the reputation of the profession of professors, as evidenced by the myriad publications critical of it…”</p>
<p>By a bunch of folks from the Manhattan Institute? The Ludvig von Mises Foundation? Friends of Bill Bennett and his $30 million dollar gambling debts?" Opinion pieces masquerading as news in one of Rupert Murdoch’s rags? Rants from Shaun Hannity?</p>
<p>It doesn’t follow. </p>
<p>There are 600+ Christian colleges in this country. When you add their faculty together with all the so-called conservative professors at colleges around the country, it would be hard to find a liberal majority of faculty. But you might find an east coast majority, since the weighting of graduate education in the U.S. is so Atlantic Seaboard-bound. Couple that with the huge number of students who major in business-related disciplines, with business-related faculty, many of whom come from a conservative business world…</p>
<p>There are maybe four or five dozen faculty in the entire country who are with me.</p>
<p>In microeconomics, there have been plenty of controlled experiments to discover and model economic behavior. Macroeconomics is a different story, in that whatever action or inaction is taken (e.g. legislative or central bank actions or inactions) without the benefit of a control to compare against (what would have happened under some alternative action or inaction), or previous experiments on the same situation.</p>
<p>In political science, you know the results of who is in the government, etc… What may be more controversial is how or why the winners and losers (of elections, civil wars, etc.) won and lost.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why anyone has his or her panties in a twist about a professor telling poetgirl’s daughter that being a libertarian is an invalid position in the United States currently, and that libertarians have to choose between Republicans and Democrats. That’s pretty much a truism, and could be applied to anarchists, greens, monarchists, fascists, communists, and theocrats as well. None of those positions is per se “invalid”, but they might as well be invalid as a practical matter if you are going to participate in American politics in any meaningful way. The only thing interesting about libertarians is that they could go either way, while most of the others tend not to have much trouble choosing sides between the two dominant parties.</p>
<p>“So, I question when professors don’t state their bias, and fight their own bias in grading.”</p>
<p>So I’m a Freirian when it comes to this stuff, and it should start in first grade. On the first day of school, and then with frequent reminders, teachers should say how much they are paid (in ways students can understand), who pays their salaries, who hires and fires them, who orders them to teach what they do, who writes the textbooks and publishes the textbooks and makes money off the textbooks, who built the building, who profited off the building, where the chairs and tables came from, and how it comes to be that a teacher can be assigned to teach something to a person s/he has never met.</p>
<p>Then, with the remaining time, they can talk about their personal biases.</p>
<p>(By the way, I am not joking: Freiriean educators do this all the time. But you don’t find many of them in the land of the “free”, and the home of the liberals…and conservatives.)</p>
<p>thank you JHS, for bringing up the most important thing about Bias in the United States University, though I could do without the whole “panties in a twist” rhetoric, and it is this: there is so little true distance between a liberal american and a conservative american that the “true” bias is simply for the status quo. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t say that ancient history is all about facts . . . As everyone has been saying, everyone has their biases, and that includes historians. If it’s “ancient history”, that means it’s been filtered through a whole series of biases, again and again. That doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to study, it’s just something to be aware of.</p>
<p>One fairly recent example of this would be the War of 1812, where both Americans and Canadians claim that they won. Hmmmm . . .</p>
<p>On the subject of biases, feminist philosophy talks about “the god trick”–that is to say, people pretending they are totally objective and without bias, like they are floating above the world as a god instead of being part of the world. If you are a human being, you have biases.</p>
<p>" As everyone has been saying, everyone has their biases, and that includes historians. If it’s “ancient history”, that means it’s been filtered through a whole series of biases, again and again."</p>
<p>Anyone who thinks ancient history isn’t the subject of intense political debate (and biases showing) today hasn’t looked at recent reappraisals of Julius Caesar.</p>
<p>People have a different way of viewing bias and a different openness when the culture is ancient. But, these were core classes, and when presented with ancient history or modern history, D chose, inevitably, ancient. She also believes that all history is just a narrative art form, frankly, but that the further in the past, the less people believe it must be true.</p>
<p>Everyone has their biases. Of course. Prefering the narrative art of telling ancient history to the narrative art of telling modern history is also a bias. Preferring other majors altogether is a bias.</p>
<p>We have a bias in everything. Even being American gives us biases we don’t understand. When we argue with one another, it is still a different argument than it would be with someone from a different cultural bias, even if we think we don’t agree with each other.</p>
<p>A great professor knows his or her biases. A good professor knows he/she has some and is blind to some others. Most professors think they are teaching kids “how” to think for themselves when they are really attempting to teach kids how to think like they think.</p>
When my S was enrolled in a British elementary school, he came home to tell me they learned that day in class that during the American Revolution, the colonists were traitors to the British Crown</p>
<p>Multi-culturalism: I’m going to display my ignorance by admitting I don’t understand what some conservatives find so objectionable about the concept. Can I get some insight here? Why are major colleges and universities taking a hit for valuing it as a concept/aspiration? Please define it as you see it, and delineate its faults. Thanks.</p>
<p>Patriotism: Why do some conservatives believe they are the sole keepers of the flame called Love-of-Country? Really? Do they really believe liberals (and college professors in particular) don’t love America? If so, why? I’ve been reading this thread with great interest. So glad it’s been respectful and civil (for the most part) thus far. Carry on.</p>