Data tells us that as a group, professors are about as self-identifying liberal as they come. In fact, according to an intensive survey ran by University of British Columbia sociology professor Neil Gross and Solon Simmons of George Mason University, “professor” is the most liberal major job group in America. According to the findings roughly 20 percent of professors identified themselves as “any shade of conservative,” a number much lower than a third of the general population. Meanwhile, two-thirds of professors considered themselves some version of liberal as opposed to 23 percent of Americans overall.

A recent Op-Ed in the Star Tribune sought to explain this pattern and its consequences. Just like the profession the article investigates, the arguement is rife with empirical evidence. Some scholars and pundits are quick to assume this underrepresentation of conservatives is congruent with other instances of underrepresentation, the product of discrimination. Neil Gross, however, claims the data shows otherwise. “If you look at surveys that have asked professors whether they’ve been discriminated against on political grounds… only something like 7 percent of those surveyed said they have been,” says Gross.

Graduate schools, the pipelines towards professorship, are also leftward leaning, which makes sense when observing the  higher proportion of liberal faculty, but also points the discrimination theory towards graduate school acceptance. To test this, Gross crafted an email based experiment to test how subtle expressions of political affiliation were received by various graduate programs. The findings? “Only the slightest hint—no significant evidence—of bias or discrimination.”

If discrimination isn’t the answer, many hypothesize personal reasoning—values, moneymaking, or personality—are behind the political disparity. Gross doesn’t seem sold on these theories, and offers a different explanation, a process of “political typing” that encourages self-selection. For a long time university culture grew along the lines of inquiry and as a challenge to existing systems of power and wealth, something that naturally shepherded in liberals.

So does this liberal lean matter? Gross doesn’t seem to think it distorts the legitimacy of academia. “In my field of sociology, people will say your politics incidentally will shape what you study, but it doesn’t necessarily shape what you find,” Gross argues. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, on the other hand, sees this as a major problem:

When a scientific community shares sacred values… a tribal moral community arises, one that actively suppresses ideas that are sacrilegious, and that discourages nonbelievers from entering. I argued that my field has become a tribal moral community, and the absence of conservatives, not just their underrepresentation, has serious consequences for the quality of our science.

The popular perceptions of academia as a home for liberals makes it seem unlikely it will change any time soon. Especially if Republicans continue to see this exclusion as an advantage by discrediting academia for having a bias. The closing thoughts of the Star Tribune’s Op-Ed eloquently summarizes the consequences of this enduring trend.

Unfortunately, the estrangement will serve only to reinforce the lopsidedness of university politics, undermine the confidence of a large share of the public in expert opinion, and jeopardize the role of the university in public life whenever conservatives are in power.

In explaining the purpose of a “whiteness studies” course—the kind offered at dozens of colleges and universities in the United States—Alex P. Kellogg of CNN.com writes:

The field argues that white privilege still exists, thanks largely to structural and institutional racism, and that the playing field isn’t level… educators teach how people of different races and ethnicities often live very different lives… The field has its roots in the writing of black intellectuals such as W.E.B. DuBois and author James Baldwin.

Still, “In the past, detractors have said the field itself demonizes people who identify as white.” So, then, how did the courses manage to continue, and why are they seemingly on the way out now?

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a sociologist at Duke and the University of Pennsylvania, tells the reporter:

Having Obama is, in a curious way, putting us behind… You have a growing racial apathy. People are telling you, I don’t want to hear about race, because we’re beyond that… But we still have a white America and a Black America.

Another sociologist, Charles Gallagher of Philadelphia’s La Salle University, said that he still has to convince his students that inequality exists. “Gallagher, whose latest book Retheorizing Race and Whiteness in the 21st Century was published last year,” writes Kellogg, ” is teaching intro to sociology and urban sociology classes this semester, and while neither is strictly about race, he says he will make a point to talk about modern day racism and white privilege.” Still, “he expects his students—and increasingly, some who are black—will be there ready to push back, particularly on the notion that race still determines your lot in life.” Gallagher asks:

How do we talk about race or racism in the United States if people think racism is gone?

The article moves on to discussing whether, rather than being privileged, whites, as some suggest, are actually racially oppressed. Charles Mills, a philosopher at Northwestern, argues, Kellogg says, “that whites in particular have a self-interest in seeing the world as post-racial. In that world, everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed… your success in life [is] not determined by race, but by how hard you work.”

Even as classes on whiteness studies instead seem to be dissolving into interdisciplinary race courses which take the time out to discuss persistent white privilege, academics tell CNN.com that “in the past, conservatives derided whiteness studies as anti-white, but the sharp vitriol against the discipline has largely subsided,” and the field “continues to evolve.” As Kellogg concludes, “While the filed is still little known in some corners, and criticized as being obsolete in others, proponents of… whiteness studies say that’s all part of progress.”

When Kelly Clarkson recently explained that she loves Ron Paul because he believes in states having rights, she had no idea the phrase “states’ rights” would stir so many negative memories.  As Fox News explained,

Even before the Civil War, “states’ rights” had become a byword for the protection of black slavery. And since the late Sen. Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 as a States’ Rights Democrat, or “Dixiecrat,” the phrase has sometimes been labeled a “dog whistle” for racist elements in the electorate.

Sociologist John Shelton Reed (UNC-Chapel Hill) wasn’t surprised that someone Clarkson’s age didn’t recognize the baggage “states rights’” carried.  Similarly, University of Georgia historian James Cobb noted,

“Any time I hear it, I get this sort of little twitch, because I associate it with Ross Barnett or George Wallace,” …referring to the governors of Mississippi and Alabama who, five decades ago, defied efforts to integrate their states’ flagship universities. “But members of the younger generation, it doesn’t have that kind of connotation to them at all. And whether this is to some extent the fault of those of us who are supposed to be educating the younger generations about their past, I can’t say.”

Both Ron Paul and Rick Perry (before he left the race) have used the loaded phrase recently.  Other candidates make a point to avoid it.

 Whatever reaction it evokes, Cobb, the Georgia historian, said the term has clearly lost much of its sting.  “It’s just become part of the lexicon, without any particular meaning,” he says. “It’s been historically decontextualized to the point that it can be thrown around by a lot of people without a second thought.”

Reed, the UNC sociologist, said that’s not necessarily bad.  “I do believe states’ rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while — like, 150 years or so…I’m professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me.”

Popular wisdom and those who defend the death penalty say that the most heinous crimes should be more harshly punished. But, as Lincoln Caplan points out in a recent New York Times editorial, this is simply not the case. Death sentences are far more random than that, as shown by a study of murder cases in Connecticut from 1973 to 2007.

The Connecticut study, conducted by John Donohue, a Stanford law professor, completely dispels this erroneous reasoning. It analyzed all murder cases in Connecticut over a 34-year period and found that inmates on death row are indistinguishable from equally violent offenders who escape that penalty. It shows that the process in Connecticut—similar to those in other death-penalty states—is utterly arbitrary and discriminatory.

The study revealed that, far from being blind, Lady Justice metes out harsher punishments based not on the egregiousness of crimes but more often on race and geography. These findings echo those of sociologists who have studied the death penalty, such as Scott Philips (as “discovered” in Contexts, Winter 2011). Philips examined how the victim’s social status affected whether a defendant was sentenced to death in Texas from 1992 to 1999. Results showed that if the victim was “high status” (e.g. white, no criminal record, college educated), defendants were six times more likely to be sentenced to death. Black defendants, though, whose victims tend to be of lower social status, were still more likely than others to be sentenced to death.

In light of such evidence and with the death penalty on the decline (some states, such as Illinois in 2011, have abolished it altogether) Caplan argues it’s time for this “freakishly rare,” “capricious,” and “barbaric” form of punishment to go.

In a brand new piece for Slate, journalist Libby Copeland marshals the social scientific evidence to ask whether, as in so many other areas of social life, looks matter in politics. It’s been, she writes, “conventional wisdom” since the televised Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960 (see clip above) that a candidate in the modern age simply can’t avoid the fact that their very face will affect their polling numbers. Put more provocatively, Copeland asks, “How much does Newt Gingrich’s face hurt him?”

What’s really intriguing here, though, is that the assumption, for the longest time, was that it was attractiveness or beauty that would confer an advantage to the aspiring politico. To be sure, “Attractive people appear to benefit in all sorts of situations, like in the workplace and legal situations. Heck, even babies are predisposed to focus on good-looking faces,” Copeland writes. But 2005 research from Princeton’s Alexander Todorov and other researchers asserted “voters appeared primarily drawn to faces that suggested competence,” not a Crest commercial smile and perfect symmetry. “The competent face shape,” Copeland gleans, “is masculine but approachable, with a square jaw, high cheekbones, and large eyes. When people say Romney just looks presidential, this is the image they’re summoning.”

In follow-up studies, political scientists went on to confirm the Todorov findings, but refined them, pointing out that it was mainly less-informed voters who watched a lot of television who demonstrated the “competent face” effect. Copeland goes on to explore some other studies in psychology and political science which subtly altered the images of real politicians (in one case, even blending it with the study subject’s own photograph—“After all, who’s more competent and trustworthy than you?” the author asks) to consider other ways that looks shape elections. She concludes:

Taken all together, these new studies suggest how a politician’s face appeals to voters, or doesn’t, can’t be boiled down to just one factor. Rather, voters look at a candidate and make a series of instant judgments based on a number of traits. Then… they listen to the candidate, they consider the issues, and they do all the things rational voters are supposed to do. Skin-deep inferences aren’t all that voters rely on, though they may have an outsized effect on the decision-making process.

Not only are we excited to spot Reynolds Farley’s Contexts article “The Waning of American Apartheid?” (Summer 2011) written up in the Emerging Ideas section of the Jan.-Feb. 2012 issue of the Utne Reader, we’re gratified to see the elegant treatment it’s received in this “Citings & Sightings” style piece. Further, the illustration (at left, by Peter Thomas Ryan, peterthomasryan.com) wittily gets at the heart of the matter. What more could an editorial team want?

In the piece, the author writes of Farley and his fellow researchers’ extensive longitudinal work:

The stats aren’t evidence of a racial utopia (50 percent of thse respondents hit the edge of their [neighborhood] comfort zone at a 50-50 split in racial composition), but from block to block, there does seem to be slow and steady progress toward a more racially integrated America.

To check out the original article, please visit contexts.org.

Though Facebook has been known to waste your time, Sociologist Hui-Tzu Grace Chou’s research found that it might also make you sad. Chou and Nicholas Edge interviewed 425 students, asking them whether they agreed on statements like “Many of my friends have a better life than me” or “Life is fair.”  They also asked them questions about their Facebook usage, according to an article on ABC News.

After controlling for gender, race, religion, and relationship status, the scholars found that the more time students spent on Facebook, the more they thought others were happier and had better lives than they did.

 Facebook photos generally depict smiling, cheerful people having good times, conveying a sense of happiness. Of course everyone likes to smile for the camera, so that good cheer may be inflated or false. As others view the photos, they may believe this conveyed sense of  intense happiness is real, making them think that their friends are much happier than they are.

As Chou noted, “We’re not aware of the bias we have… On Facebook we present ourselves at our best. People are affected and they don’t realize it.”

As viewers of the ongoing GOP debates already know, religion is a hot topic this voting season. But despite discussion and conjecture regarding a host of religious issues by voters, candidates, and pundits alike, Scott Jaschik points out (this week in Inside Higher Ed) there is little research to turn to in support of their claims.

According to an analysis of US-based and British political science research by associate professor of politics and international studies Steven Kettell, less than two percent of studies in the top 20 research journals in the field focus on religion.

Jaschik notes, “Of the small minority of articles that considered religious issues, the most popular topics are not likely to provide much help to those trying to follow the Republican presidential race this year. The most common topic was religious links to violence and terrorism, and the second most common topic was Islam.”

Although other social sciences, such as anthropology, history, and sociology, give greater attention to religious issues today, “[Kettell] argues that it is time for ‘political scientists to turn the tools of their trade’ to issues of religion.”

Find out how your income ranks in different parts of the U.S. with this interactive graphic from the New York Times. Needless to say, what earns 1% status in New York is not the same as in Flint, Mich. Data comes from demographic researchers at the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota.

A breakdown of the jobs of the 1%, featured over on Sociological Images, is part of the same Times package.