Thread by @JeffreyASachs

In THREAD #1, I examined the question of whether there is a partisan or ideological imbalance within the academy (spoiler: there is), and what the causes might be (spoiler: it's complicated). You can read it here:

https://twitter.com/JeffreyASachs/status/1042814243949764608

This thread is trying to figure out whether, if the imbalance exists, we should care. Sunstein worries that it's going to impact faculty research and student learning. Is he right?

I'll let the good people at @HdxAcademy field the research issue.

heterodoxacademy.org/resources/libr…

But what about students? Does the imbalance impact them? Are they *gasp* being INDOCTRINATED by CULTURAL MARXISTS?! It's a popular theory, one made not too long ago by cool kid's philosopher and noted Manafort sockpuppet @benshapiro in his book "Brainwashed" (2004).

(Side note: run, don't walk, to this review of "Brainwashed". Or, to put it in terms even Twitchy will understand, "Liberal scholar DESTROYS Ben Shapiro with FACTS and LOGIC.")

ilaaup.org/news/IllinoisA…

Let's cut to the chase. Scholars are overwhelmingly unified on indoctrination: IT. DOES. NOT. HAPPEN. The problem is that most folks compare college graduates to the general population. Since the former are much more liberal than the latter, they assume that college is to blame.

Do I really need to spell out the problem with this logic?

If you really want to know what's going on, you need to compare college grads to non-grads with similar demographic profiles. When you do, you find that political ideology is more or less baked in before students even set foot on campus.

See, for example, Mariana and Hewitt (2008), Campbell and Horowitz (2015), and Dodson (2014).

smkeng102.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/7…

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

amazon.com/Professors-The…

Dodson's piece is especially cool. Using HERI data and comparing the same students as freshmen and seniors, he finds that faculty contact actually made students more MODERATE, not more liberal. You know what does make students become more liberal? Socializing with their peers.

Campbell and Horowitz go further, using GSS data from 1994 to compare within families themselves. College grads, it turns out, have identical political ideologies to their non-matriculated siblings. What do you got to say about THAT, Shapiro?

Now none of this means college has zero impact on student beliefs. For example, matriculation is associated with greater support for civil liberties and gender egalitarianism (Campbell and Horowitz 2015; Bryant 2003).

link.springer.com/article/10.102…

Granted, some social conservatives may find that last bit alarming, but take note: college graduation is also associated with *increased* religiosity. Yes, you read that right. But don't take MY word for it. Take Mark Regnerus's.

academic.oup.com/sf/article-abs…

So there you have it. College does NOT indoctrinate students. It's fiction. A lie. A rightwing myth.

But hold on. Maybe that's just because profs are bad at it. In other words, maybe faculty are *trying* to indoctrinate, they're just really bad at it. That's possible, right?

I guess so, but there's no real evidence for it. On the one hand, some studies show that students are fairly good at guessing their professor's ideology, suggesting that faculty may be bringing their own beliefs into class with them.

jstor.org/stable/4064753…

However, perceptions of bias depend heavily on the race and gender of the student, with white men much more likely to cry bias (Linvill and Havice 2011), especially when the prof is a woman or Latino (Anderson and Smith 2005).

researchgate.net/publication/23…

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

Finally (and here's the kicker), students consistently rate their professors as being *more moderate* than they actually are (Woessner and Kelly-Woessner 2009). In other words, the more "extreme" the prof, the greater pains he or she takes to disguise bias!

Oh, and the biggest factor in whether students perceive bias is likability. If a conservative student likes his prof, he thinks she's conservative. If he doesn't, she's a liberal. Same for liberal students. This finding is robust.

jstor.org/stable/20451790

politicalsciencenow.com/professor-favo…

Very last point (I swear): even if profs are pretty good about disguising their bias in class, maybe they punish conservative students with bad grades. That's possible, right?

Nope.

In fact, Kemmelmeier, et. al. (2005) show that profs in "liberal" departments (HA) are fairer in their grading than "conservative" ones (HE), even after controlling for student ideology and ability.

wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/marku…

Unsurprisingly, quite a few conservatives were outraged and confused by this last finding. You can watch the NRO crowd grapple with it here, raising all kinds of objections...

nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/…

nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/…

...all of which have been addressed by Musgrave 2014. The findings stand: there is no anti-conservative bias in grading. If anything, Democratic graders are slightly more unbiased than Republican ones.

scholar.dickinson.edu/cgi/viewconten…

This matters. When I wrote my skeptical take on the Campus Free Speech Crisis, the only thing that really gave me pause was the high % of conservative students who censor due to fear of bad grades. Turns out there's no need. Attn. @JonHaidt

niskanencenter.org/blog/there-is-…

So, how did @CassSunstein do?
Faculty imbalance = A
Anti-conservative discrimination = C
Student indoctrination = F (there isn't any)

But what are the broader lessons? One more thread:

You can read it here:

https://twitter.com/JeffreyASachs/status/1042822495806603264