{"id":19183,"date":"2010-01-20T10:54:35","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T15:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=19183"},"modified":"2013-12-15T04:25:30","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T09:25:30","slug":"why-are-academics-so-liberal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/01\/20\/why-are-academics-so-liberal\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Are Academics So Liberal?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The stereotype that professors are more likely to be liberal than people in other occupations was confirmed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/18\/arts\/18liberal.html?ref=todayspaper\" target=\"_blank\">a recent study<\/a> by sociologists Neil Gross and Ethan Fosse:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/01\/20\/why-are-academics-so-liberal\/popup-v2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-19185\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-19185\" title=\"popup-v2\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/01\/popup-v2.jpg\" width=\"366\" height=\"439\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The study measured a number of reasons why college professors may be more liberal.\u00a0 Among others, they argued that already liberal people may be drawn to academia because they perceive that academics are liberal.\u00a0 That is, just as women are drawn to teaching and men to construction work because these jobs are gendered, academia is a politically-typed job that draws people who identify as liberal already.<\/p>\n<p>They also speculate that the relative low pay, given the high educational attainment that the profession requires and high status that it brings, may lead professors to lean towards democratic principles of economic redistribution.\u00a0 They write:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Deprived of economic success relative to those in the world of commerce, intellectuals are less likely to be invested in preserving the socioeconomic order, may turn toward redistributionist policies in hopes of reducing perceived status inconsistency, and may embrace unconventional social or political views in order to distinguish themselves culturally from the business classes (quoted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/2010\/01\/18\/liberal\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think this is a fascinating and provocative question, even given Gross and Fosse&#8217;s excellent work, and one that I&#8217;ve wondered about many times.\u00a0 Thoughts?<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The stereotype that professors are more likely to be liberal than people in other occupations was confirmed by a recent study by sociologists Neil Gross and Ethan Fosse: The study measured a number of reasons why college professors may be more liberal.\u00a0 Among others, they argued that already liberal people may be drawn to academia [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[209,85,293,76],"class_list":["post-19183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia","tag-politics","tag-social-construction","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19183"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60535,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19183\/revisions\/60535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}