Left Wing Bias in Academia

During my first semester of university, I attended a module entitled ‘Critical Thinking for Professionals’. The main critique of this module was to never take anything at face value and to always analyse a situation or topic before arriving at a conclusion.

However, students face an up-hill task to perform this kind of analysis in third level education institutions. Generally, only one type of political ideology is presented to them by lecturers. This being a left-wing perspective. According to a Times Higher Education (THE) survey, under 12% of higher education staff in the UK planned to vote for a right-wing or conservative party in the 2015 general election [i](Morgan, 2015). While this would not be of concern if there was a corresponding consensus in the general public, the fact is, over 50% voted for a right-wing party or candidate.

The statistics become increasingly alarming when it is seen that third level faculty of a conservative disposition in the humanities and arts accounted for only 5% of respondents in their discipline.

At the very least, one would think the scales would be tipped with regards to staff in the areas of business and law. While this occurred to a certain extent, the figure was still less than 20%, the highest right-wing representation in any discipline of higher education [ii](Carl, 2017).

Getting to the point, why is this of importance? If a substantial majority of third level staff are endowing students with one type of ideology, then we could be in danger of young people being intolerant to different ways of thinking. This can be seen clearly in the United States of America, where demonization from both sides of the political spectrum exists and which has led to barriers being erected between both sides and extreme opposition to nearly every proposal that is put forward from the opposite side [iii](Moses, 2017).

In the video below, Jordan Peterson discusses the differences between people on the left and right and the importance of dialogue between both sides of the equation (watch for one minute):


[iv](Peterson, 2017).
From this, I draw the conclusion that for our society to function at an optimal level we need a diversity in political opinion and ideologies at all levels of society, and this includes our third level institutes. Professors and lecturers must have a broad range of beliefs and perspectives, so students can begin to evaluate the positives and negatives of different ideologies. This diversity will also cater for the understanding that constructive discourse between both sides of the political spectrum is essential to having a balanced economy, free from extremist policies and procedures as this will help to avoid group polarisation [v](Kalloch, 2008).



[i] Morgan, J. (2015). Almost half of sector to back Labour, THE election poll suggests. [online] Times Higher Education (THE). Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/almost-half-of-sector-to-back-labour-the-election-poll-suggests/2019944.article [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017].
[ii] Carl, N. (2017). Lackadamia: Why Do Academics Lean Left?. [online] Adam Smith Institute, p.4. Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56eddde762cd9413e151ac92/t/58b5a7cd03596ec6631d8b8a/1488299985267/Left+Wing+Bias+Paper.pdf [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017].
[iii] Moses, J. (2017). Building Bridges, and Reducing Anger: Liberal-Conservative Dialogue in the United States. Master. SIT Graduate Institute.
[iv] Peterson, J. (2017). 2017/06/15: 12 principles for a 21st century conservatism. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyw4rTywyY0 [Accessed 21 Oct. 2017].
[v] Kalloch, A. (2008). Sunstein: Lack of ideological diversity leads to extremism<br />. [online] The Harvard Law Record. Available at: http://hlrecord.org/2008/11/sunstein-lack-of-ideological-diversity-leads-to-extremism/ [Accessed 21 Oct. 2017].

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Free Speech is in Danger in Universities

Image
[i] (English-Speaking Union, 2017) Free speech in universities is in serious danger of being infringed upon in universities across the Western world. This trend is becoming ever more obvious with speakers at universities having to cancel their events because opposition to their ideas and topics by students and other interest groups [ii] (Nolan, 2017). This has been a dogmatic issue in the United States (US) for some time [iii] (Lukianoff, 2016), but this censorship exercise has begun to spread to the United Kingdom (UK), and now to Ireland. In recent years, impediments to free speech in UK universities have grown to a head with events such as sombreros being banned from campuses, abortion debates being cancelled, and the statue of Cecil Rhodes being removed from Oxford University because of his links to the apartheid regime in South Africa [iv] (Espinoza, 2017). Such actions shield students from the realities of real life and universities are doing their patrons ...
Read more

Unconscious Bias Training Making People Increasingly Biased

Image
Since 1998 the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a test measuring “the strength of associations between concepts (e.g., black people, gay people) and evaluations (e.g., good, bad) or stereotypes (e.g., athletic, clumsy) [i] (Implicit.harvard.edu, 2017) has been used to determine an individual’s so-called biases towards certain social groups [ii] (The Guardian, 2009). However, it is folly to draw the conclusion that a test whose results rely on the reaction time of participants to associate words with people of certain social groups [iii] (Tierney, 2008) can accurately predict their unconscious biases. In fact, it has been proven that the result of an individual can change each time they take the test. In other words, the test has low retest reliability [iv] (Singal, 2017). Even an advocate for the test stated that “If a bathroom scale says you weigh 210 pounds today and 160 tomorrow, you might feel skeptical about the scale” [v] (Nordell, 2017). Indeed, the evidence sugg...
Read more