<p>Interesting story on this, front page of today’s NY Times under the headline “On Campus, the 60’s Begin to Fade as Liberal Professors Retire”:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/arts/03camp.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/arts/03camp.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin</a></p>
<p>They’re not taking about the 65+ cohort but the 50-65 cohort, the older members of which are just now reaching retirement age. It’s a typical journalistic account, nothing in the way of statistics, just anecdotal evidence from interviews of 3 or 4 people in the Wisconsin-Madison sociology department. But I guess the premise of the story is that if old lefties are retiring and being replaced by younger self-identified “moderates” even in Wisconsin’s sociology department, it must be a real trend.</p>
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<p>I think this is just flatly false. Tenure is tenure. It’s almost impossible to remove a tenured professor from his or her job for any reason other than criminal activity or gross malfeasance. I challenge you to cite a single instance of a tenured professor being ousted because of his or her conservative political views. It just doesn’t happen. On the faculties I’ve been on, conservatives have always been in the minority but there have always been some, and they’ve always been just as outspoken about their political views as any liberal member of the faculty, without fear of retribution, and certainly without fear for their jobs. Overwhelmingly, that’s the norm in American academia.</p>