I’m not sure I need to build my liberal cred being a minority, a first generation immigrant, a New Yorker, and a woman, but I will anyway. I campaigned, donated, and voted for Obama twice and have probably voted democratic in very national election I have been able to to vote in. I’ll (unhappily) vote for Hillary, and so will my entire family (though my parents really did like Bernie during his run). In fairness, I was President of the Young Republicans in high school, voted for many Republicans while I lived in New York City (to create some political balance), and am a registered Republican in the state of Utah where I live, since it is a heavily Republican state with a lot of strong Republican candidates and I want to be able to attend the primary elections and have a say in who my local leaders are.
That said and my leanings somewhat clear to you, I am writing this post about what I see as potential liberal bias in the legal academy. This post poses several questions that are intended to be thought-provoking rather than damning to academics or prescriptive on some sort of solution.
According to a recent op-ed by Nicolas Kristof of the NY Times, there is ample evidence that the vast majority of academics are liberal. I am not sure the same data has been shown in the legal academy, but I would not be surprised if it is too far off. Kristof cites four studies that show that Republicans in the humanities are in the minority at between 6-11% and in the social sciences between 7-9%. A sociologist, George Yancey, conducted a survey in which 30% of academics said they would be less likely to support a job seeker if they knew that person was a Republican. The bias is even worse for evangelical Christians, where in the same survey 59% of anthropologists and 53% of English professors would be less likely to hire someone if they knew he was evangelical.
Michael Bloomberg addressed the Harvard graduating class in 2014 and discussed liberal bias in his talk. He pointed out the irony of the political shift over time, “In the 1950s, the right wing was attempting to repress left wing ideas. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species. And perhaps nowhere is that more true than here in the Ivy League.” Indeed, this is probably worse in the Ivy League than in other places. In the 2012 presidential race, according to the Federal Election Commission, 96% of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Obama.
I’ve heard some of this in the past, and thought, so what? Maybe academics are just smarter than the average citizen (this is certainly biased too) and so what if they are more politically aligned with the left? Maybe the Republican party needs to change in order to capture more academic values (whatever they are)? I definitely think there may be some validity to this argument, but I think there are problems with the current system.
For one, censorship of conservative speakers has been a prominent problem in the last few years. Conservative speakers have been uninvited to speak at Johns Hopkins, Brandeis, Haverford, Rutgers, Smith, Swarthmore and many other universities simply because some students did not agree with their message. This censorship may also demonstrate a certain homogeneity of thought among academics that could be dangerous. If we pride ourselves in being open to all ideas, examining principles carefully and trying to come to the “right answer,” it would be more fitting if we were open to a broader range of ideas, rather than the ones that were approved as a majority view.
And more on a personal note, I’ve had colleagues who have been nervous about their job talks seeming too “conservative”, being ashamed that having clerked for a conservative judge (who they may not have agreed with) has created a scarlet letter for them in academia, going through lengths to hide their religious affiliation, and most depressing of all, having not written about topics they have researched about for fear that they didn’t fit with the liberal norms of their faculty.
Just two quick anecdotes from my own research that I hope many of my colleagues do not share experience with. In one study I did with an economist early on in my career, we discovered (in looking at bail and violent crime) that when released on bail young black men commit more violent crime than any other age group, race, or gender, and preventatively detaining them before trial would cut down on a lot of violent crime. I would never advocate this due to constitutional prohibitions against race-selective detention, and other moral and philosophical problems with this concept. The thing I want to highlight though is how nervous I was about this finding. My coauthor and I didn’t know what to do with this. We felt racist finding it, we were nervous to highlight it in our paper (and didn’t), and I didn’t want to let it even influence my opinion or future work. But why? Shouldn’t knowing that a certain subset of the public commits a massive disproportion of violent crime be important to me as an empirical criminal law scholar? Do others in my field deserve to know this? Could this not necessarily help make America safer if we tried to understand the root of this statistic?
I had a similar experience when I looked at whether judges were “racist” in their bail determinations and determined (surprisingly) that they actually weren’t detaining enough black people if their focus was on preventing violent crime. This finding as well I massaged and explained in a way that would not make me seem like a racist or conservative or someone speaking out of the norm. I never hid the finding or misrepresented anything, but I hated feeling that I couldn’t just state the facts of what I found empirically without worrying about the perception of how I would be perceived by my colleagues. I don’t know what to make of these experiences. I worry that I may have an implicit liberal bias that may be getting in the way of helping me to be objective and find truth. And I worry that it is not just me that may feel this from time to time.
Fellow academics, I would love your feedback and thoughts on this issue.
Posted by Shima Baradaran Baughman on August 4, 2016 at 11:41 AM
Comments
Liberal bias? People couldn’t even use the word “race” in half the meetings I attended at SEALS. I suffered through elusive references to “some communities” or “others” that might be impacted by certain policies. This is in an era of mass social movements based on the notion that white supremacy is pervasive. I maintain that there is a libertarian bias in the legal academy, not liberal.
Posted by: Truth | Aug 11, 2016 12:45:07 PM
The problem is difficult to root out, for the reason David Schraub mentions. The things one finds interesting are inevitably influenced by one’s own ideas and interests. At a law school, often for benign reasons, that fact of the human experience leads to a preference for the papers and talks of liberal professors—they simply seem more interesting. This isn’t unique to legal academia; a military historian I know has said the same thing about his field.
If conservatives are represented in the decision-making process (e.g., hiring), they can at least help raise this issue, which should be of concern to all. Including liberals like me.
Posted by: anon | Aug 11, 2016 12:43:38 PM
Thank you, Shima. There are a number of us who don’t feel we can even raise this issue, especially pretenure. And yes, we definitely shy away from certain topics due to the fears you describe. Universities need to do a better job standing up for true academic freedom.
Posted by: BA | Aug 11, 2016 11:39:00 AM
I also think “banned speakers”, like “fired professors”, is a poor metric to look at because it is (a) generally agreed to represent a prima facie breach of academic freedom, (b) still blessedly rare, and (c) takes inputs (speaking invitations, faculty hirings) as given. If most college speakers are liberal, it is likely that most banned speakers would be liberal too — but this would not show a “conservative bias”.
Yet nor would the inputs necessarily show a “liberal bias” either. Unlike banning a speaker, we are comfortable making evaluative judgments on the who we hire/who we invite front — there’s no intrinsic academic freedom problem with picking academics whose arguments we think are better. But there’s still a potential bias problem if our appraisals of whose arguments are better are inflected by partisan considerations. So it requires a more nuanced and sensitive judgment than simply going by the numbers.
(As is nearly always the case, the Israel/Palestine example is decidedly unhelpful. I have no doubt that many “pro-Palestinian” academics have been advised to softplay their stance, I know for a fact that many “pro-Israel” academics have received the same advice. Both sides have their horror stories — Salaita was unhired, Ami Ayalon had a chair thrown at a window when he was speaking — both sides dismiss the other’s stories as either justified or aberrational. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict brings out a lot of fair-weather friends to norms of academic freedom, free speech, and nondiscrimination).
Posted by: David Schraub | Aug 9, 2016 11:57:18 PM
From a recent law review article on the role of Olin Fellows in the legal academy: “The Federalist Society provides resources on getting hired in the legal academy, which they encourage John M. Olin Fellows to utilize. One such program is Professor Lisa Bernstein’s ‘bootcamp’ on ‘academic hiring for Fed Soc minded people.’ She ‘strives to deliver a hard message to people’ that no law schools want to hire conservatives. . . . the Fellows with whom I spoke had mixed views on this kind of programming (some thought that it hurt their self-confidence, but others welcomed it as a needed reality-check). . . “
http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/39_3_Cady_F.pdf at 940.
Posted by: Anon E. Anon | Aug 8, 2016 1:11:13 PM
The liberal bias in legal academia is obvious and undeniable. I was on the job market recently and had two articles I could have used as a job talk. Many professors advised me against using one that could have been seen as conservative for that very reason. If everyone thinks there is a liberal bias, this has a real effect on what people write and present, especially pre tenure.
Posted by: Anonprof | Aug 7, 2016 11:48:48 AM
As a general rule, insisting (as salaita did) that any world leader would gleefully wear a necklace made out of the teeth of children will result in termination or withdrawal of a job offer.
Posted by: YesterdayIKilledAMammoth | Aug 6, 2016 6:36:21 PM
Kevin Jon Heller, You are as always that I’ve read your posts, obsessed with Israel. And in being so fixated clearly misrepresent facts. salaita wasn’t “fired”, he wasn’t hired. On Finkelstein, DePaul explained the denial of tenure on his shoddy ad hominum attacks in his writings. The University said nothing about his position on Israel. The false analysis some make is that Finkelstein was fired, Finkelstein attacked Dershowitz personally, Dershowitz supports Israel, therefore Finkelstein was fired because he opposed Israel.
Although I’ll grant you that both were anti-Israel, Finkelstein went so far as to support the terrorist group Hezbollah, and Salaita showed strong affinity for the genocidal Hamas. They became the poster boys of anti-Zionists claiming privilege in the academy for the State of Israel. And their champions on the left conveniently overlook their support for terrorist groups. But for each one of them, there are a tremendous amount of other people in the academy who rightfully criticize Israel or go overboard with their criticism. Your finding conspiracy under the adverse decisions on those two men is deeply misguided.
Posted by: Peter Crisp | Aug 6, 2016 6:07:59 PM
Blowspon, when Prop 8 was passed by a small margin, it was deemed quite notable by various people that African-Americans by significant numbers voted for it.
I have repeatedly seen it noted that African-Americans, who many conceive of as simply liberal, often hold various conservative views based on their religious beliefs. They would otherwise vote Republican more if it wasn’t for the overall understanding that it is simply not in their interest to do so given the state of that party.
A basic point of the discussion here is bias and assumptions. The fact that a black law student specifically holds conservative views would be quite relevant. It might not be “thinking” well to assume that just because you are black that you would be liberal and pro-SSM, but lots of people (as seen by the shock after Prop 8) do make assumptions.
Posted by: Joe | Aug 6, 2016 12:45:44 PM
That’s a dumb answer joe
No thinking person makes that assumption
And no thinking person includes the student’s race for that reason
You know why james did
Posted by: Blowspon | Aug 6, 2016 12:08:00 PM
I think the race of the person suggests that there are complicated lines here, Blowspon — the assumption of some is that a minority of that sort (this sounds a tad stereotypical, but this is the point really) would be open to same sex marriage. But, as we saw with Prop 8, the lines there are more complicated. The religious beliefs of African-Americans are split just like they are for a range of groups.
The possible complex variables in the research suggested in the comments underline this.
Posted by: Joe | Aug 6, 2016 11:57:13 AM
Hey James
Why did you feel the need to note the race of the student in your parable?
Posted by: Blowspon | Aug 6, 2016 8:16:41 AM
I’d like to add that the students are hurt by this too. A few years ago, a young African-American 1L confided in me how upset she was by our law school’s approach to “discussing” the same-sex-marriage issue. Over the course of her first year in law school, she had been made to feel “like a bigot” (her words) simply because of her deeply held Christian beliefs. In and out of the classroom, faculty and invited speakers propounded one and only one perspective. What could have and should have been an opportunity for genuine debate and reflection was instead little more than an undertaking in rank indoctrination.
Posted by: James | Aug 6, 2016 7:15:17 AM
And then they were off-topic.
Posted by: YesterdayIKilledAMammoth | Aug 6, 2016 2:06:28 AM
“Such (indefensible) disinvitations are vastly outnumbered by the number of censored liberal speakers who criticise Israel and support BDS. (Or who are fired for criticising Israel, like Steven Salaita, or denied opportunities, like Norman FInkelstein.)”
Vastly outnumbered? What’s the basis for that claim? Liberal speakers on campuses are a dime a dozen. They overwhelmingly outnumber conservative speakers, and conservatives don’t try to ban them. One of the California state university campuses tried to prevent Ben Shapiro from speaking and DePaul has just banned him. A high level dean at Dartmouth is on record as saying that conservatives are not nice people, And don’t even think of writing “Trump 2016” at Emory or Pitzer or writing a Facebook post saying All Lives Matter if you go to U of Houston or Purdue.
As for supporting BDS, that isn’t a conservative/liberal issue. Many liberals support Israel and don’t want anything to do with BDS.
Posted by: AYY | Aug 6, 2016 1:26:31 AM
Thank you, Edward Cantu, for providing Exhibit A for my point. Shima, these people are not interested in honest empirical research because honest empirical research has a potential of producing results they dislike. An honest empiricist, like Sanders, has no idea which way the data will turn out before s/he starts the work. So, only the dishonest quacks, or the suicidal, or the uber-technical math types are willing to touch these topics. I am the latter, and even I would not touch them. If you are none of the above, stay away. Write about copyright or administrative procedure or some such. The gang of innumerate but vicious quacks (see the comment above) will destroy you.
Posted by: empiricist | Aug 5, 2016 10:53:03 PM
“Just see what they’ve done to the honest and well-meaning Rick Sander.”
Yes, the same Rick Sander who has stated that he had for years *supported* affirmative action, but came to conclude that it hurts minorities the way it’s practiced. He doesn’t sound like raging a right-winger to me, but everything is relative; relative to what? The answer is the OP’s point.
Posted by: Edward Cantu | Aug 5, 2016 8:18:24 PM
Shima, I am a senior empiricist at a major law school. I strongly recommend that before starting a new empirical project on any topic related to race or ethnicity, you talk to trained empiricists who can help you design every technical detail properly. This is the area where, if you make an innocent mistake in research design, coding, or data processing, you will be vilified and terrorized by left-wing ideologues, and have your career irreparably damaged. Just see what they’ve done to the honest and well-meaning Rick Sander. Of course, this is exactly what they are trying to accomplish — to suppress empirical research that has a potential to deliver the results they don’t like. The only way to survive in this cesspool is to be super-careful in every technical detail, and super-formalistic and mathematical in exposition. Do not say a word about policy implications and such. Do not even squeak about something being constitutional or moral. Let your data analysis speak for itself, and shut up promptly.
Posted by: empiricist | Aug 5, 2016 5:15:30 PM
TheTruth, it’s interesting how your “contextualization” is presented as just that: “it’s complicated, because of these other realities, and if you had a greater appreciation for these subtle but pernicious realities, you probably wouldn’t think there is a liberal bias based on the events you discuss.” Of course, that claim of “contextualization” (usually accompanied by such terms as “systemic” or “structural”) is probably the single best example of how liberal bias usually manifests in academia. Never mind that in a more open intellectual community people could reasonably disagree about the existence, severity, or implications of the things you list, thereby altering what it means to correctly “contextualize.”
What is considered “enlightened common sense” in a given community usually reveals the biases therein.
Posted by: Edward Cantu | Aug 5, 2016 1:15:57 PM
It’s helpful with “The Truth” says something. Sometimes, you have to weigh various things. But, with that label, you are safe.
Posted by: Joe | Aug 5, 2016 11:51:14 AM
Excellent point, Kevin. In fact, there may be a severe definitional issue when saying “liberal.” If anything, there’s a “moderate,” or libertarian, bias in the legal academy. I’m sure that progressive professors, who support Palestine, openly oppose “white supremacy,” not just racism or implicit bias, and support reparations, don’t think that the legal academy is “liberal,” maybe libertarian. And, being a “minority,” or rather a person of color, doesn’t qualify you as a spokesperson for liberal-ness.
And, your previous findings may seem problematic to you, but when your findings are contextualized to factor in systemic racism, elimination of social services to black communities during Reagan and Clinton, the history of narratives around black criminality, the purposes of the criminal justice system, etc., your findings don’t necessarily lead to the conclusions you suggest.
Posted by: The Truth | Aug 5, 2016 11:13:36 AM
Finkelstein’s not really the best example. He’s taken a shellacking from both sides.
Posted by: YesterdayIKilledAMammoth | Aug 5, 2016 4:49:48 AM
I think it’s the most problematic kind of cherry-picking to build an argument that there is a liberal bias in the academy on disinvitations to conservative speakers. Such (indefensible) disinvitations are vastly outnumbered by the number of censored liberal speakers who criticise Israel and support BDS. (Or who are fired for criticising Israel, like Steven Salaita, or denied opportunities, like Norman FInkelstein.) So does that mean there is actually a conservative bias in the academy?
Posted by: Kevin Jon Heller | Aug 5, 2016 2:52:56 AM
I too am a minority who has voted for Obama twice. With that said, this line struck me:
“I am writing this post about what I see as potential liberal bias in the legal academy.”
Potential? It seems to me that the liberal bias in the legal academy is pretty obvious and has been for a while. Extreme circumstantial evidence for this is a subsequent line:
“The thing I want to highlight though is how nervous I was about this finding. My coauthor and I didn’t know what to do with this. We felt racist finding it . . . .”
You felt racist *finding it*. I believe you. Either you’re utterly irrational or the intellectual community in which you operate inspires self-censorship. And I don’t think you’re utterly irrational.
Posted by: Edward Cantu | Aug 4, 2016 6:45:02 PM
http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/39_1_Lindgren_F.pdf
Here’s an article attempting to measure conservatives in legal academia. I’m not a statistician, and it seems like he’s kind of opaque with his methodology, but it’s probably the best we have right now. It seems he’s often squirreling between different groups for his comparisons of under/overrepresentation.
Posted by: Louis Ancillon | Aug 4, 2016 1:50:13 PM