Progressive Teachers

The Klein and Western opinion piece does not meet my standards of rational discourse, but then I'm just a lowly community college professor. No one cares what my colleagues' political affilations might be. The claim that having large percentages of the professors at an institution sharing the same party registration creates a "one-party system" is nonsensical on its face. What would the party registration of Fortune 500 CEOs look like? And if it was lopsided to Republicans, what would that prove?

An even shakier claim is the conclusion of this piece:

At campuses across the country, the lopsided faculty steer political discussions in a predictable direction -- to the left.

What Klein and Western did is get lists of the names of Stanford and Berkeley faculty and then comb voter registration lists in the nine Bay area counties to match names and identify party affiliation. This is a project that conservative activists have been engaged in around the country for the last year or so. That data tells you nothing about what happens in a classroom, or in a scholar's publications. If Klein does his economics that way--cite one set of data to create the appearance of "rational discourse" and then draw a completely unrelated conclusion to fit his ideological bias--we'd probably end up with an economy where taxes are regulary cut while spending is increased without regard to current and future debt levels. Hardly a position any serious conservative would espouse.

But why just select Stanford and Berkeley? Because they have international reputations? Why not include data from their home institution, Santa Clara University? Or nearby San Jose State University? Or equally nearby Mission College, De Anza College and West Valley College? Or would that be too much work for rational inquiry?