fdr. it was pretty neat political work. so i like to read about the process. i read more policies on history because i seem to learn better with history. >> let us know what you're reading this summer. send us a tweet at booktv. send us an e-mail at booktv at c-span.org. up next, a panel on the political leanings of professors in the united states. this is about an hour and a half. >> okay, we are going to get started, everyone. thank you for coming tonight. i am the director of the institute for public knowledge. on behalf of the institute for public knowledge at nyu, also public books, which is our very

new web review publication, we are delighted to be here for the launch and panel discussion of the new book by neil gross, "why are professors liberal and why do conservatives care?." this is obviously a topic with great sensitivities and interest. those of us who are interested in the politics of academia, more broadly, there turns out to be great difference of opinion as to the simple things like whether professors are liberal. clearly there are disagreements about why professors turn to politics that they do have. he comes to this work not as a partisan. he is not here to tell us the right way that the academy

should be organized. he comes here as a social scientist, really interested in trying to understand the situation and explaining how he got here as best as he possibly can. i am on record as having strong feelings about the book. i am on record on the back of the book. i should a sugar-free myself more than i said already. but what impresses me is you see in my network in an unusual way. he is unbelievably careful. establishing just where professors should be situated politically. he gets to the heart of where academics tend to start. and how we should think about the culture and politics that play some people in the academy.

i am not sure that there are liberals. but they say oh, they are liberal because liberals tend to be smarter. [laughter] many people think well, if you are a conservative, you probably care a lot about money or you have different kind of values. so clearly, that explains it. we have people here and we cut through all of this in the book. we offer an account of why the

university system works the way it does. we are going to start tonight with neil gross himself. he's quick to provide a summary of the big arguments. then we have an all-star panel. we have paul starr of princeton university and someone who is used using such assigned to engage the biggest and most significant in our time. especially in political terms. so i think that there will be an exchange that is valuable between him and paul starr. then we have the outgoing dean of the columbia journalism school.

nick, too, he is not shy about engaging in political questions. people have a variety of viewpoints and i think that he is committed to an american style of journalistic objectivity that includes strong political stances as well. there's nothing that prevents us from doing that whole-heartedly tonight. i look forward to this terrific conversation. i have asked all the speakers to come and i will moderate this afterwards. so without further ado, neil gross, welcome. [applause] >> thank you very much for that

really nice information introduction. i would like to acknowledge this address. what i am sure will prove to be this outside. i would like to talk about the outline of my book. over the last 15 years or so, much has been written about the politics. one includes the 101 most dangerous academics in america. and we have a reply to liberal

bias in higher education. differences in politics and arguments aside from an books have in common that they have impassioned critiques are defensive about higher education. they argue that things need to be changed or nothing needs to be changed. my book does not belong to this genre. it deals with the same spectrum of issues. the goal of the book is simply to provide the most curious. "why are professors liberal and why do conservatives care?." i make my way through a bit of social data. in a manner that i hope will be acceptable.

there is a nationally representative survey of more than 1400 people teaching in american colleges and universities. it focuses on political views and there are in-depth interviews that we have conducted with 57 faculty members teaching in the department of sociology and economics and english and engineering. including political life stories and politics of research. i commissioned the in-depth interviews on the same subjects of the 69 residents of wisconsin and colorado. states of controversy around professors in college. it is fielded regularly since the 1970s.

this includes large surveys to identify the predictors of graduate attendance and i have conducted political bias in the graduate process. i have spent time tracing these times in the past in the ivory tower. what i find? well, first, although conservative claims run amok and are overblown, we are quite liberal here in the united states. there are variations in political times. there's an applied field like engineering and business. that hasn't been said. overall, this rate is one of the most liberal occupations of united states and has been for decades. 9% of protesters consider

themselves on this radical wing in some shape or form. a large majority of professors vote democratic and elections for national office. professors are split on their own political orientation whether or not to reveal that to their students.@x the intellectual contact can sometimes have even when this is the case, most professors

endeavored to be open.@x i found that some of the leading theories are limited. it is in their best interest tox do this. for example, it would benefit@x academics quickly and@x@x professionally to spend more onx higher education and scientificx research. this includes the democratic party.@x@x this includes liberal and conservatives.@x a fourth theory highlights common effectors and@x personalities.@x here's there is model support for some of these theories.@x

my colleagues and i send e-mailx to directors of graduate studiex for asking about this series.@xx liberals are overrepresented because there is discrimination against conservative students.@x it plays a key role in@x explaining why professors tend to be liberal.@x@x@x we began to develop a reputation early in the 20th century for@xx liberalism. the emergence and@x@x modern fox coinciding with the@x@x@x@x@x@xx productiveness@x that became@x@x institutionalized over time.@x@x if you are an economically talented student on the left, becoming a professor is something you might actually

consider as you search@x for a@x career path that aligns with@x@x your political identity.@x@x@x@x especially if you are a talented student on the right, you would never seriously@x contemplated x @xreer in higher education.@x@xx in this way, liberals are pullex @xd stared in a process that@x@x serves to include class, valuesx @xd all these things come into@x play.@x@x@x@x@x@x@x as an account in which the dynamics of identity loom@x@x especially@x@x large.@x@x@x@x@xx i consider various pieces of@x@x evidence that supports such an@x account.@x@x@x finally, why do conservatives care and the sense of@x having@x mounted@x concerted campaigns in recent@x years against the@x@x@x liberals?@x part of the answer is obvious. liberals would be upset as wellx most professors were@x@x@x@x@x@x conservative.@x@x@x@x@x@x

this includes symbolically.@x@xx part of the reason is perhaps@xx less obvious. i tried to show how criticism ox liberal professors became a@x@xx mainstay of discourse in the@x@x 1950s.@x@x@x@x@x@x@x a notable aspect, one that@x@x@x continues to echo in@x the wordx of newt gingrich and others, itx is the idea that liberal@x@x@x@x professors are part of a corrupt culture of the lead, bent on pushing the country in ways that go against nature. i argue that this remains useful to the right. because it identifies the way@xx that we are opposed.@x@x@x@x@x @xis helps us as a populist@x@xx enterprise and an important move, given the economic@x@x@x@x strength that mayor conservatives have been able tox draw.@x@x including moral and political@xx

implications. i do not attempt anything like@x that in the book. maybe we will have a chance to talk about these implications. [applause] >> you had mentioned the most@xx @xngerous@x professors.@x@x i was so disappointed not to@x@x have this list.@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x >> and i have these invitationsx and this is actually@x the secox on the subject, i asked myself@x to talk about this as a liberalx

and a sociologist.@x@x@x@x@x@x@x first, what i want to do is givx you the sense of my context.@x@x which of these developments@x@x ought to be a part of.@x@x@x@x@x a great deal of american society, not just our politics have become@x organized and notx differentiated on ideological@xx topics @x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x there is the self-selection@x@xx that leaves @x@x@x@x @x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@xx

these@x have become more @xlopsided goix towards this.@x this is from voting data,@x@x@xx becoming a moral lopsided@x@x@xx situation.@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x@x

>> we are switching and church hopping and stopping as it is sometimes called. the other two are not part of any religion at all. what is happening is that first of all there has been one of the

best political viewpoints on religion. if you ask people whether they think this is a very strong predictor, this was not true. thirty or 40 years ago, it had been a part of this overtime. the choices that people make about this, it is an indication of political view. we have polarization that is taking place every day. we can see this also in the

field and we have journalists. we have americans who watch the news at work and they were not clearly differentiated by partisan viewpoints. now, of course, with cable television, people are watching news and separating themselves, fox, msnbc, and almighty did that same pattern here. this is a self-selection. one example of that the economy. an area that has been studied by

economists. it includes those do their years. it is more likely to become major in the social sciences and we are more likely to have business or engineering and then over the course of college years. the ones that chose the social sciences, they become more liberal than the conservatives. and this is exactly the same pattern observed in other areas. this is something we can observe for american life. this includes a source of different occupational times.

and as a result, liberals and conservatives are nominating different institutions. this reports surveys of corporate ceos and i would call this 95% republican. this includes our top military officers. again, overwhelmingly republican. then in the institution. there may well be mutual influence going on, especially when you want to get ahead. i don't think we should be shocked or surprised that we are

everyday missing this reason. i'm not surprised that conservatives care about this. they like to control universities as well. what do they do? is entirely passive. and they have created their own appearance. they have done that through this. it includes intellectuals focusing single-mindedly on the

path. and i think in a way, this is opposed to academics who feel bound by the constraints of their discipline. this has to do with conservative colleges, many of them are found on a religious basis as colleges and universities. conservative institutes and organizations exist in this. we have the james madison center by professor robert george. it includes these values and the parallel structure.

this is a pattern of power where there is separate innovation. separate professional societies with liberals and conservatives. this is a pattern that has existed in many other societies. something of a surprise in the united states. it is now a general pattern. it is a little bit different because it goes back a long way. as i understand this, it has a two-part explanation. the first part is a self-selection by the reputation

of the academy i see that we are missing these choices based on the reputation of academic careers. when you have to ask about where it comes from. the second part is historical. there are changes in the past, going back to the year that the new deal. it is a more liberal direction. but the question that the book leaves unanswered is that if the

academic world was earlier in a more conservative way, how did liberals take control of that? how did they change that? why today i conservatives unable to change that may not what happens in these earlier times that brought about political change in the character that has not happened now. the book also mentioned others in the academy. those that explain why conservatives and liberals make different choices. we have a great conservative

economist who studied in 1949 for the exceptionally able man who accepts the society of multitude of other avenues of influence and power. conservatives have equal talent and they may choose to go into this. into the military or other field. conservatives almost always have better things to do. now, these two explanations explain the directions. the first account is one that emphasizes distinctive episodes university. they have led us to develop this. the other explanation suggest that an anticapitalist society,

conservatives are more likely to go into the military. i think this is where it would've been very difficult to get evidence about other societies. or is there a more general pattern. this is true in many other places. consequently i am inclined we will not make it depend on the history of the american

university. as i finish up, the nyu institute. to talk in a theory on intellectual conservatism. there is no reason why anyone else would remember what i said. indeed, i did not remember.

we have culture, education, and things intensify. this includes the domestic equivalent of the war. the american cultural landscape is almost entirely in possession of this. so much so that the left exercises its dominion and rule of political correct us. the lessons here include commentary. now includes the academy, the literary, the publishing roles, the democratic party.

it is intolerably repressive and the source of evil in the world. it failed on almost every level of cultural life. this picture is wildly inaccurate. we have an internal war going on against those who they think are the enemy of american culture. the conservatives were, as i recall, the same people who decry the law. generally speaking, american liberalism and conservatism are cut. it is liberal in the philosophical sense. and it is conservative in

practice. but the breach is why today. this includes the family breakfast table. it is not a good time always. but it is a good time to be an intellectual. [applause] would like to do in brief a marxist be a little bit more anecdotal. i did not work full-time in the university until i was 40 years

old. i was able to follow this in my book. we have a fairly high level from the inside. so by the way, in the aforementioned book about the 101 most dangerous academics, two of the 101 of them, the faculty members, even though we have a faculty of only 35 people, it is pretty good. i also want to mention 10 years or so ago. when i was trying to decide about making this rather

dramatic light switch of becoming an academic. we had dinner and we call counsel about whether this was a good idea and what i should do when i went there. so i am grateful for that. i admire the book a lot, especially for being very calm and careful and rigorous. putting that possible theory to test. i will give you is a theory and anecdotal impression. so i hope that it is somewhat useful. number one, being in colombia for these last 10 years, universities are overwhelmingly liberal. there are a few conservatives

around colombia. we have actually had conscious hiring at the journalism school. we have learned that it is not just a lot of other people. do you all remember the incident of the president at npr losing her job over an operation, we were an attempted group for this. i think the reason we are so much in the crosshairs is the idea that journalism also is the liberal profession and if we were to talk about where this influence comes from, this is the hypothesis of our school. so we have that e-mail that showed up at our school several times to do these kind of ambush interviews with people.

things like that, the bill o'reilly show, i'm kind of used to things. i'm used to that part of the debate. >> it is a different year. >> yes. [laughter] >> the game of the business school. that is right. ultimately, the game of the law school. part of what is going on here is

a little bit frustrating. part of a self enforcement technique. a lot of the liberalism of universities include communicating and what do you tell jokes over, things like that. sort of assuming that if you mention the name george w. bush, it is just like oh, no one says anything. what argument are you making exactly that george w. bush. you know, assuming that we are on our side. in terms of that ideology of this, where does it come from? i have found the series of the allies, intellectually, as described in the book by neil gross, more persuasive than he did.

that is my anecdotal impression. i do believe that there is a class interest. it is noteworthy to me as an outsider, obviously. but if you walk into what is supposedly a private university, it is unbelievably dependent upon government and it is almost a government agency. over one third come from federal government directly. that badly understate the case because the university is so dependent upon federally guaranteed student loans that if they went away, the whole university would go away. there really is a phenomenon. the minute president obama took office, he hugely increased funding in regards to the economy.

and academics had a very inspiring speech at the national academy. you know, it is an accidental that when democrats are in power and liberals are in power, universities and institutions and academics individually do better. i do not think that is irrelevant to the explanation of why academics are liberal. i also would like to curl a little bit with the selection theory. up to the point, it has been persuasive. on two points. one is the point that paul made. which i will elaborate on in a minute. it is very u.s. specific. it does not explain, unless you want to say that self-selection has heard globally. it has done so for many centuries. why in general academics are a

left element in societies all over the world. they are are some exceptions. another is a profound question about human nature. i think people are less ideological and motivated and how they come across in this book. i would venture to reach that there is a hypothesis or the reason most people become academics is not because they think that i am first a liberal and i want to find a happy and professional home in which i can be a liberal. but instead, because, and you guys can tell me if i am right, they actually want to be academics. then they go into elements, they have this embedded liberalism in

them. they choose to become academics, journalists, social workers. in these liberal fields because they are drawn to the field. maybe i am being anecdotal. but most people i know who are academics did not start from the premise and say that i want to find a comfortable place. it is almost like, to use an analogy that may or may not work or had with cultural identifications. people who are religiously observant, those who i know, including my wife, they will say

that i have to live in a place where i can be that. or some of my friends who are gay, they go through a conscious process that say that i want women a place where it's easier to be gay and not a place where it is hard to be gay. but i am offering the thoughts that relatively few people may feel that way by being a liberal or a conservative. a couple of other points. one thing as an alternate hypothesis -- this is not entirely fair because it does not encompass all the cultural variables are in left is miller associated with the state and

the writers were assisted with the market. this includes the political consensus. most other countries put the needle more towards the state. so my thoughts are that coming from the outside to the academy, was very surprising to me is just a little is here tonight.

it is more career determinative in the realm of the institution that the paycheck is written on. academic disciplines are actually, you know people are always making one of academics for being impractical, this includes an important aspect of mobilization. therefore as a hypothesis, i would like to offer that one reason that they are liberal in america is subject to growth. ..

one other thing i want to follow up on and that has to do with threats to universities. there's a good discretion at several places in the book of the idea that conservatism will guard the university with alarm, much as liberalism -- well, the word "corporate" to a liberal audience is bad, something going on there that isn't -- we don't know exactly what it is, and that is the way the word academic balance is in conservative circle. you see the wall street journal during the investigations of university because they know something is up and "the new york times" doing investigations of corporations for the same

reason. but i think that conservative attacks on universities isn't a conspiracy, but i think there's a real threat to universities, and -- but i don't think it's primarily ideological, but i say that waylon -- that by way -- what i see about being in the university is the main threat -- theirs wonderful passages in the book describing the development of the research university model as the model of higher education. what people inside the system don't see as much as an outsider like me is, nobody gets that there is such a thing at the research university model. universities have huge amounts of stakeholders and the variety of stakeholders have been fabulous at creating that. so all the parents who want their kids to go here, the

students who go here at universities unlike nyu and columbia, the sports fans, they don't know there even is such a thing as a research university, and i think universities have not done a good job of communicating that part of their function to the world, and as market values and business values become evermore aascendent in american society, there comes the argument -- saw this in the university of virginia a while back -- that universities should be run more like businesses. teach skills. shouldn't have academic tenure, academics shouldn't do research at all, they should just teach and only teach practical things. all these attitudes are in some way conservative, i think, but they're not conservative in the

david horowitz ideological sense. and i do think that they are really moving into universities in a beg way, especially the more vulnerable, less rich universities. so, it's not -- i think the focus on an ideological thread can obscure the business practice tall thread to the essential nature of universities, and that i think is very real. so, i'll stop there and hope we can talk back and forth. thanks. [applause] >> thank you to nick and to paul. before we open it up to the group, i want to give you a chance to respond to a few things, and it strikes me there is some commonalities in the two sets of comments, particularly it would be interesting for you to address the issue about the

question of how american this and is how we should think about the politics of the professors and other places and how that shapes the way we should understand the situation here in the united states. i think nick's last point about globalism of the academy is original and interesting, and worth chewing on, and it does strike me that we'd be letting ourselves down if we didn't address these bigger questions about the state of the university today. essentially, nick, you talked about the way the university flourishes when there's a democrat in office, and i think that is true, but i remember a few years ago when barack obama made a speech at ann arbor, proposing the possibility that if universities continued to raise tuition in the way they would, he would cut the amount of federal financial aid available, which was a great threat to the fiscal situation in universities across the country, which build in the

notion there will be a certain level of increase in tuition every year. boards of trustees throughout the country and administrators in every university went nuts thinking, this is a real assault. talk about cutting the budget for the nsf is one thing but this is a major assault, and clearly one of the issues in the united states today is this motion that universities have become prohibitively expensive. and that we can no longer justify asking students to take on the debt loads that they take on. so, the privilege of the university researcher in the research one university is set in contrast to the vulnerability of the undergraduate who leaves with 50 or 60 or 100,000s in debt. you have a very volatile. situation so at some point we need to talk about the current situation, which strikes me as a

quite difficult one. but, neil, spend a few minutes responding, and then please do come join the conversation. >> well, thanks. great communities, and certainly very interesting. i'll try to address them quickly so we do have time for questions. so, i take paul to have raised two major points, and the first really helpful discussion about the self-selection dynamics and political segregation in american society, and then second the question of whether this is a uniquely american story. so, with respect to the first, i don't know if i want to do more than just say that i agree. i mean, i think there clearly is evidence of this rice -- rise of political self-degradation. part of what motivated the book for me was the sense this was happening in a number of

different spheres and university might be a possible site to figure out some of the small-scale dynamics driving it. i well say that social scientists, although attentive to these changes, i think have not always thought of them as driven by dynamics of identity, as driven by an interest not in maximizing on particular sets of values but on being an environment where one feels comfortable and at home with others who are similarly like-minded, and certainly part of the goal of the book is to encourage sociology to spend more time thinking about this. we think about other forms of identity but conventional politics is a kind of social identity we ought to be addressing more and particularly now. on the question of whether this is other instinctually american story, this is a terrifically

important question. i don't address it in great deal day in the book in part because we don't have great data. we do have some data from comparative social surveys and those data indicate that the professors in many country does tend to be less, and as you mentioned, paul, we are perhaps more select on some issues like gender and less on growth of the welfare state. so, why focus so much on the american story? the account i try to offer in the book, i talk about the birth of the professorat. and the story goes back to a period of the secularization of american higher education in the second half of the 19th 19th century, and this was certainly important in shaping the contemporary university but it was part of a broader process

in institutional differentiation where church and state separated and other spheres of society began to separate out as well. now, with respect to the secularization of higher education, this happens in most -- all societies but not all at once. it happened in very much of a back and forth zig-zag fashion. and the story played out very, very differently in france, for example in germany in england, in the u.s., with lots of demonstration effects, where what would happen in one country, germany, would influence what would happen in another country. the account i offer in the book, abbreviated though it is, is a story of a common set of broad -- secularize. >> leading to changes in the composition of the professorat, and trying to stamp them with different political mixes but

nevertheless occurred differently in different national contexts and that's my account. it's one of broad commonalities with respect to institutional change, but a slight different trajectories. on nick's really good points as well, i'll just say a couple of things do class interests play a leading flow i think they do play some role. two pieces of evidence in the book on the question whether this explains the bulk of this. first of all, if class interests really did explain why professors are liberal you might expect more change over time in academic views, for example, as someone goes through graduate school and realizes they have a career ahead of them in academia and then commits themselves to that career and deciding where their class interest lies, they would become further ensconced

and enmeshed in liberalism, and they don't. the evidence suggests there's not that much change over time in people's political views. people who are more liberal in college are more likely to aspire to become professors. maybe there's some shift. and second, you expect that occupation would be more liberal the more dependent they are on public dollars, and the fact that higher education contains the fact that the professorat contains a greater proportion of people who are public employees doesn't do very much to explain it. it's a great theory in principle and there's probably some value in it, but the data aren't to my mind convincing on it. i just want to address this second point before i come around to the question of the real threat today, and that's the question of whether academics seek out jobs because they want to be in a liberal

environment, and the answer that it try to give in the book is not quite that simple. i think you're absolutely right. i think most academics go into it because they're passionate about their fields, about history, biology, sociology, and certainly for a minority of academics, although political motives are mixed in but it's just a driving passion in the field and a sense of empowerment that leads people into academia. the theory i try to sketch is more one in which political identity shapes one's horizon of possibilities. so that if you're on the left, you imagine -- as you're thinking about different careers you include higher education in your list of possibilities because you feel at some level that there's going to be some sense of a shift, and if you do contemplate corporate work it feels not right to you, and people may have this at various levels of awareness but it's a

sense of identity that drives it. so i think it does happen but often times it's much more of an -- here's where i'd like to see sociologists and commentaries in politics in general attend more to this question of politics as identity. peopling can make choices not out of a desire to maximize on a set of values but out of a sense of wanting to be immersed in an environment where they experience a sense of congruent. so i'll just come back to the questions of the state of higher education today. i see this as a time of real threat. i'm not sure that the threat is entirely ideologia. i think you're right about that. nick. i think that the pressure for vocationalism poses a very serious threat and it's also the case at least some of those who are pushing a vocational agenda

for higher education are doing so on the basis of the perception that higher education leans very far to the left and this is a great opportunity to make sure that they get their comeuppance and replace the research university with liberal leanings with something quite different. i will say that there is more divergence here among conservatives than might be imagined there are interesting threads of conversation happening now between traditionalists conservatives and libertarian with the traditionalists saying, we're not comfortable with this new emphasis on vocationalism because it squeezes out the teaching of the western tradition, traditional liberal arts education, and would say they want to resist those urges so see what happens in the coming years but during periods of institutional crisis, many different possibilities rise to

the fore. i'm a bit pessimistic but i think that there's reason to suspect that concern about the liberalism in the public -- at least driving some of those efforts we see, particularly in states like florida, texas, and elsewhere. >> thank you, neil. let me open it up right now. rather than raise your hand, come to the microphone, please. please try to ask a question. >> a couple issues come to mind, one of which is i recall reading michael savage talk about how he intended to be an academicment he found the community and the environment of academia inhospitable to his point of view. in that context, what it seems

to me is in academia as well as the greek life on campuss there is very much a sense of clannishness, and a class issue that you have to do a certain amount to pledge that fraternity, whether it's a fraternity of the greek community or the fraternity of academia, and so those who are -- have achieved some prominence there are going to naturally promote and accept those who reflect their own values. so i would suggest that -- >> we need a question -- >> -- it has to do not so much with self-selection bus a certain kind of privilege you have in academia where you're not testing your views against the marketplace. you can go to the marketplace and help somebody make money even if you don't agree with them and if you're helping them make money and they hire you on,

you don't have to validate their point of view. their social point of view. social engineering, which drives policy in academia. the question has to do with the point of view that it's more of a fraternal thing. you have to go through so many steps to do dissertation, have an adviser, ultimately get his recommendation to a get to a point where you're able to join that fraternity. so it's not much self-selection but selection by those who already pledged the upper reaches of academia. >> thank you. >> well, i mean, i think that there are various ways of expressing those points that you have just raised. i mean, one is to say that part of this is driven by dynamics of social networks. if you are in the network and send untiles of being in the network you're more likely to be

included in it and at higher levels and pushed upwards. i think the other way of making the point is to make the claim that many conservatives do that there's really a kind of implicit bias or discrimination going on here and that is that if you're not part of the group, you're not being included. i guess i don't doubt that some of these factors play some kind of a role. i mean, others have made the argument, i think quite well, that if you're a young conservative scholar, there are a few places on campus, at princeton, where a young conservative student where you might look to for inspiration for an academic career, but in terms of hooking up with advisers who can put you toward graduate school and so on, at least in some displains, so those kind of network dynamics probably play some kind of a role here. as to this claim of bias or

discrimination, just to briefly rehearse the arguments in the book, when we conducted this field experiment for which we took a lot of flak, and sent e-mails from fake undergraduate students to director0s of graduate studies and the leading programs in sociology and n the united states, and each person got two e-mails, one mentioned the students worked on the mccain or obama campaign and the other didn't mention anything about politics and each were tailored for the fields. and we analyzed the responses we received or didn't receive, and we found very, very tiny levels of support for the obama students relative to control, but not enough to be statistically significant. the question is it a good test of bias? i think around some of the questions it's not a terrible test. i think what it suggests is that

despite the liberal lengs, academics are professional, try not to let their politics interfere with the selection, and on the whole i think this doesn't drive the process. i think there aren't enough conservatives interested in academic careers that they are being kind of negatively selected by academics of -- i think these points have some value but not to the -- the whole enchilada. >> the question has in mind the social sciences. doesn't seem to apply very well to the natural sciences or the many professional schools. medicine, business and so forth, and so if really if discrimination were the operative mechanism we should usee a concentration of liberals in those fields where political

views would be salient but in the other feels, when someone is studying geology, i don't see how it would come up. but we do see still more liberals even in these fields where political views are not a salient aspect of the graduate application, much less a doctoral dissertation. >> paul, forgive me if i'm wrong but i'm hearing implicit in your comment a stronger cultural view, that there might be something in the pursuit of open-ended knowledge. you don't know where the questions are going to lead you. you're open to any possible answer. that you think somehow predisposes someone0s liberal towards the academy. i'm wondering if i'm hearing that right. >> i really -- i mentioned this quotation from a -- that people with more conservative views are likely to find a better avenue

for their talent in business and law and these other fields, and that probably -- we're talking here about people of high abilities. that's what this discussion refers to. i think that tends to drain off the most able conservatives into other lines of work, and so then you get the more elite, doctoral degree granting institution dominated by liberals and that has an effect further down. this can really account for a great deal of the difference. >> that not because of some cultural orientation toward money or professional success and some other realm as opposed to towards knowledge. i'm just pushing because i'm trying to figure out where this comes from. i think you partially answered but i'm wondering why did hayak say that? why is it that conservatives

have attraction toward these other domains? >> because they are more at ease in those environments. in business in the military. people on the left are -- can make their way in those worlds but may feel discomfort. >> next question. >> thank you. i'm an historian so i'm going invite you to talk about the past and the present if you would. first, to remind you that at least from my perspective, while there's great diversity among conservatives there also is among this category called liberals. radicals were never terribly comfortable, especially in the '60s with liberals and there was a book at corporate liberalism and it's an opportunity to talk about how

the category has changed over time and to acknowledge there's some real differences even in what possibly is constituted liberalism. many people have problems with the central conservative jim of -- conservatism and libbal rhythm. and to the present, corporate libballism and liberal administrators who are abdicating that, and second is to open up the question, even though you're writing about professorat to talk about the politics of the present, is to remember or think a little bit about how does the conversation change, we think about teachers more generally and the assault on the teachers in the most recent election and what that suggests about the politics towards people in the teaching profession more generally. >> i think i might be the only person in the room who actually

new clark kerr. i learned about him very -- wrote about him expansively in a book i published in the '90s. he kind of brings up where you're talking about -- he thought of himself as the perfect example of a liberal. and was completely shocked to find himself under attack both from the left and from the right. you have to remember that the free speech movement and ronald reagan running for governor and firing clark kers were very closely linked in time. i think kerr's problem gets back too he was a labor economist, and the ultimate rational man, and he believed -- most universities these days, i would say, function on the principle that we do not make clear and transparent to all of our public

what we're for and what we're up to. we're the blind man and the elephant story. we deal with different stakeholds who think we're something else and we don't bring then together. kerr, by writing what is called the master plan and getting it through the legislature has the dream that he could take all the functions people want from a university and build them into a kind of 18th century french machine that -- whose purposes were transparent, and he made them so apparent that everybody couldn't -- he lost the consensus around it. he thought by making them transparent, simmized, he would get the consensus, but instead just generated resentment. maybe part of it was the times. but i don't think it's fair to call him corporatist exactly, as much as sort of over-organized and lacking instinctive

political since. so his idea was there would be a three-part class system and everybody in california -- this seems like ancient history, not that long ago -- everybody in california could go to higher education for new tuition. that's early 1960s. that was a really dramatic thing to be able to claim in the history of the world. historic. but the price you paid was there was a class system. the university of california, a few universities at the top, and the research model and then the much bigger cal state system, which could not grant ph.ds, and which only taught skills to the middle class, and then there was the community college system to -- and everybody was in their box and there were chutes and ladders to get in between them.

so that's -- well, i'll stop there. there's a bunch of other things to say about what you're saying. >> i don't think we have ever built a true consensus around higher education system, and we're suffering because of that now. >> since we're recalling the 1960s, when i was still an undergraduate at columbia, i co-ed didded -- co-ed edites an article called "the liberal university under attack." the assumption was the attack from the left. we didn't even consider at that time that appoint the idea that it could be under attack from the right. and now if you had a book with that same title, the liberal university under attack, it

would be understood totally differently. >> there is another thesis. i wonder if you consider this much thatting their moment of the great expanse of the university system, not just in the united states butanals europe in then 1960s and '70ss there were a lot of liberals and progressives who went to graduate school in the humanities and social sciences so there's some possibility that there's institutional capture or class dependence that structures the university during a moment of expansion. there's an interesting data point in your book which is that the recent generation of academics tends to be much less progressive and liberal than those that are now retiring which opens up the possibility that maybe some of this ideological warfair is for not. the university might come more in line with american public's opinion more generally, and i do wonder if there's some historical cop continue generalization city. >> on the point of k through 12

education it's more of what i was talking about. it's all so-called school reform or education reform which i have written about. it's the productivism applied to education. there's a real difference between whether you think education is to teach people how to do things that will make them more efficient in the world and whether you think it's to stand apart from the world, teach people to think for themselves, have some critique, to create a realm for studying and thinking about and doing things, that may not have a practical application. those two attitudes map somewhat on to conservative and liberal predispositions and in that sense there is a conservative assault, but i think, as i said before, it's more in practical than ideology. >> let me just say to poll up on that, there's a lot of talk

about the problems of credential inflation when such a high proportion of young people are getting bachelors degrees. what does a bachelor's degree mean? i think that's an issue but an issue related to the point you raised, as more and more people get bachelors degrees and as higher education ceases to be such an exclusive domain, the respect people have for professors may well change. that is, that professors may increasingly come to be seen, at least not at nyu or columbia but at large, not research-focused public universities, as teachers, as a kind of extension of high school teachers and then we expect pressures on them and attitudes towards them to be very similar, increasingly similar to what we expect with respect to teachers. >> and they're starting to be much more pressure for pub outcome measure, accountability

measures with professors. >> my initial question was, if in the research you did, between the below the label of liberal versus conservative, what -- if you saw a difference between the label or the theory and the practice. does the presumed politics sit up here and then a sort of very different specific set of practices gets lived out within the setting that maybe would be surprising in these two parallel institutions that were being described, maybe there are commonalities that if we had better communication across different -- could be work out and i would also be interested to hear what you have to say further on the notion of instrumentallization of education and so, what are -- there's some not terrible arguments about teaching people how to do things or make things, and then -- but it seems to tip over into outcome-based testing, which is kind of scary. so i'd be curious -- we haven't

talked about the students. we talk about the professors, but students entering these situations, what should we hope for them or hope they get out of it? >> well, i'm not sure about the hope portion. thanks for those questions. those are great. let me respond by making two points. first, i want to commend you a book by a sociologist at uc san diego, write about the rise of think tanks, focuses on right-wing think tanks but think tanks across the spectrum, and one of the point he makes is think tanks are attends some respects to higher education -- are at odds to higher education but many of them have connections to higher education institutions. think tanks go back and fort

between think tanks and higher education so he nicely describes them aspirate but not completely unrelated universes. i just want to raise an entering counterfactual. suppose that conservatives in the period of the real expansion of think tanks, the post war peered, the '60s, the '7s so, post that they had perceived higher education to be a place that was more open to them. and -- those on the left -- could have done to create that perception. would there have been as much pressure on the right to forge these other kinds of knowledge creation institutions, and had they not done so, would fingers on the right have been more disciplined by the disciplines than they currently are? would american politics look different as a result? it's hard to answer those kinds

of questions but i think it's worth thinking about. >> hi. of course i haven't read your book -- i shouldn't say of course bought i have read -- >> it's on sale at the book. >> yes. i i'm struck by the fact that somehow we're accepting the idea that professors and universities are liberal. given that the data you presented was that 50 to 60% were, and 50% is half. so, -- then given the fact -- so you get up there between 50 and 60% it is not an overwhelming data set for liberalism and yet given you also are not really just looking at included in the

50 and 6 0% is centrists and people that liberals like me would call liberal, and it seems to me what you're really -- your point is that they're not conservative as opposed to they're liberal. and i think that -- that point needs to be stressed more particularly when you point out that an overwhelming majority of professors, both democrats -- again, many of us who are liberals don't see the democratic party as the bulkhead of liberalism. there are many conservatives. so, i would like you to talk more about that. i and i did want to quickly point out that there is a wonderful difference in working in a think tank, namely, you don't have to teach any classes, you don't have to help anybody

get their ph.d. you don't have to apply for grants. the money is just there. so, -- the sense that the think tank supplies the -- if you're hired, there's money to do your research. so, my question is the one -- >> before you answer we're going to take one last question because we should wrap up. if you have a question, ask it now and then i'll let the speakers respond. >> well, i guess my question is, or my belief is that one goes to school to learn how to think for themselves, not necessarily to learn what other people think and mimic them. so, if liberals or conservatives are teaching that process, then nobody has any fear in terms of the outcome. i just want to make a statement about the fact that i grew up in

a republican home, which is kind of weird because my parents were first-generation americans, and poor, and i became a democrat. and -- but my parents grew up in a very different era. and the republicans and democrats have changed somewhat in the structure. so, i guess my last question, which is, if there's so many people teaching people to be liberals how come we ended up with so many conservatives. >> let's start with nick and then paul and then give neil the last word. >> well, i -- this is a whole other point that really hasn't come up, but maybe a little bit of a non sequitur, but this whole idea -- as i said the institution i lead is really in

the cross hairs of the point as much as anybody, i think. the idea that we bring in these innocent centrist students and brainwash them and when they leave they're liberal, kind of per your book, our students who come from foreign countries around the world to a quite small school, are way to the left of the faculty on entry, and if anything we try to brainwash them -- i wouldn't say to be centrist but to be more respectful of the process of objectivity that both of my sociologist colleagues have demonstrated tonight. objectivity which gets trashed a lot, what i mean is you should try to remove personal passion from your careful consideration

of something when you're going to write about it, you can re-insert it later but there some shoo be a moment when you're trying to look at the facts or the data and in an intellectually way. most people say i want to go to journalism school to call attention to the plight of x category of people, usually a category they themselves belong to, and so that may be off your point but it's worth saying that the whole hypothesis that students are to the right of the faculty, particularly these days, may not be true, but conservative theory depends on that. >> just one final point and that is this question today about the relationship of academics to the

democratic or republican parties to liberalism and conservatism, depends very much on the particular way in which parties and ideologies have evolved over the last several decades. so, when nick was saying the democrats are better for universities, i was thinking, well, in this stays, nelson rockefeller expanded state university system enormously in the state of new jersey, tom cane and krisy witman were very good for higher education. it's not true that all republicans are hostile to higher education. just not -- it happens today that the republican party has kind of set itself against the academic world, and if you look at the data on views of science, has been a sharp shift among conservatives toward a more --

toward more hostility toward science. but these are particular conditions today. they don't have to exist forever. they could change again. and so we shouldn't just take this as being intrinsic and inevitable. >> thanks. again, really great questions. thank you for them. maybe i'll just conclude by responding to the, are professors really liberal point? but perhaps in a broader way. this is a question i get a lot, and a lot of my -- something a lot of my interviewees themselves voice. i have to say that the data are pretty convincing on this. 50 to 60% on the left, and on a wide range of social and political attitudes hold views that are to the left, not only of the american public but of

the public with higher education. and that's a lot. i mean, the american public is not that liberal. in terms of substance and in terms of -- they're more liberal with respect to political self-identity but 50-60% is a lot. a higher percentage one finds in nearly any other occupation. there can be local variation. i think it's time that we own this. i think it's time that folks in higher education frankly acknowledge the liberalism of the academy because the right knows it and has no doubt about it, and i think our inability to own it and -- make strong case for why higher education should continue to exist in a country in which there are really significant conservative presence and exist in something like its current form. make a case for that. we need to make a strong case

that most professors are on the left, social scientists scientid humanists especially and scienceties as intel we need to make a case that doesn't shape our findings and we can do research which is objective and balanced and neutral. we need to make a case that the science done isn't shaped by partisan interest. part of what drives the conservatives' skepticism towards science that paul spoke of is a sense that the institution of science is -- has been infected by political values and i think we can make a case on all those areas. so i think that a kind of frank acknowledgment of the actual politics of professors can do nothing but help us, and i certainly hope that this book

will at least draw attention to that and to the problems that higher education is currently facing, at least some of which has something to do with perceptions of academics. >> i'm tempted to make a couple more cases but i'm going leave you and let this debate move to the next level because clearly this is not the last conversation about this. i expect a lot more debates about higher education and what it does well and what we need to do differently. and clearly we can all think of those things. i want to thank nick and paul and especially neil for writing this book. hopefully this is not the typical conversation that you get about higher education. this is the kind of conversation we can have here in the university where we have really good, careful research and the capacity to step outside of partisan politics and think seriously about tough questions. neil, i think the conversations

are testament to your really fine book, which i hope you'll read, and so on behalf of my colleagues at the institute for public knowledge, nyu and also public books, thank you for being here, and neil, look forward to the next book now. thank you. [applause] >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. here's our primetime lineup for tonight.

>> there is no word the process food industry hates more than the a word, addiction. i do try to use it sparingly because they can rather convincingly argue that there are some differences between food cravings and narcotic cravings, technical thresholds. however, when they talk about the allure of their foods,ing their language can be so revealing. they use words like cravable, snackable, more-issueness. >> salt, sugar fat, is our book selection of the month.

>> the old adage you want to move the mouse, you have to move the cheese. if -- there'ser in been strong -- focusing on technology. it's not lost on us that the last group of people that are going to come in and advocate in a budget crisis for technology over health care or over programs for seniors, don't exist. people don't line up with stickers. they don't line up in buses coming down to city hall or city government demanding more information technology. and so the challenge for governmental leaders is to realize its potential and its possibility, and its meaning and its purpose. that said, does it surprise any

of you that last week, in big headline in "the los angeles times," the department of motor vehicles just gave up on a six-year effort to update it's 40-year-old technology for the issue yawns of licenses. -- i-anses of licenses. we have spent have the money and it's not half way turn and they just ended it. it isn't a surprise to any of you -- talk about scandals in government that the court system in california identified a $260 million upgrade that was to be complete in 2008. $260 million. today the estimate is $1.9 billion to connect 58 counties and their case management system, with no expectation in sight that it will be done before 2015. the payroll upgrade in

california, the contractor was also just fired, got less attention a week ago than the dmv. the big retirement system, consolidating 49 data centers into one, the cost overrun at $228 million and everyone now is more upset with the consolidation than they were previously. yet we fixate on something all of you know in california and that is we had few extra million dollars in the recreation and parks department that we didn't spend, but the money is still there and it wasn't used. there's been hundred office articles on that and not about billions of dollar0ss of waste and ineefficientty and i argue corruption for those who service that industry but not service it well. >> the state parks money they didn't even know the money was there. it certain of went underground or disappeared. >> no one is pleased with that and dedid he evers a lot of

attention but my gosh, think about all the other examples, and i can go on and on. >> government is not working as it should be -- >> it's not focused. and so where do the citizens come in? where does the town square come in? >> so increasingly, my argument in the book is there's this new digital divide taking shape and it's less and less -- five years ago if i was on your show, and i was and we were talking about free wi-fi and dealing with socioeconomic issues of technology and approving access to broadband and high speed in public housing units. increasingly that's beginning to take shape with the cost of the devices dropping. the cost not only as relates to access here in america but you see the access reasons the rest of the world, 63% of people in india have access to cell phones. only 37% access the toy --

toilets. but with government, this divide continues to get wider and wider and wider. you can shop 24 hours a day, seven days a week, have something delivered and then you. >> to the dmc, you go to your local building department you go and engage to pay a parking ticket and you realize that divide, and so my fear is this. citizens are now more engaged peer to peer, more engaged directly as we move through a framework of not just social networks but mobility, the localization on services and now the access and ubiquity of the cloud. we're stuck with this old top-down i.t. cartel mindset i say lovingly. this notion that we could build these systems and servers in a world where now you have this on-demand resource, the cloud, and you're always getting the next best iteration. you're renting, not even buying, and yet we're still building in

government. no longer relevant to the world we're living in. >> you say the cloud is going to transform everything. but when you talk about engame. of citizen to citizen we're talking bat virtual engagement, aren't we? >> engagement now, when i talk at the time peer to peer, i think that donors, kick start, i could go on and on. people are saying, i'm fed up with love government, -- local government and haggling, filibuster, sequestration, who made that word up? but i want to solve problems and engage. i want to make a difference. particularly the wracker generation, the mel lenal -- millenial generation, the generation of choice, the net generation, world where -- >> digital natives and you have faith and confidence in them but i must tell you in many respects, aside from wanting to commit themselves because of

course i work with them at a college professor and so forth, and i'm -- you've been around them to a great extend in your tam pains but perhaps maybe some of your confidence is inflated in term office optimism about their commitment -- many see apathetic. they care about environmental issues and fixing government, reforming government, a lot of them have kind of checked out, out of apathy. >> i'm not for fixing government but as a means to deal with our great challenges. this generation is more apathetic tan any other generation in history. this generation is more engaged to volunteering and the data bears that out. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. what are you reading this summer? book tv wants to know.

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>> happened in the senate, most notably for three consecutive years we didn't consider a budget resolution. i served on the budget committee for eight years and throughout the budget history since 1974, there's been years in which the budget resolution has not passed but three consecutive years and this is the fourth they finally passed one in the senate...

with you. >> from the 2013 writers symposium, our panel discussion continues with dave mcintyre, james rice, and retired colonel john kauffman. this is about two hours. >> first of all, president schneider, doctor warren, i would like to thank you for coming here. i think that this is going to be a very worthwhile