DIVERSITY PROBLEM: American Academics Have Moved Sharply To The Left.

What might account for the pronounced rise in the number of self-identified liberals at the expense of moderates and conservatives, starting in the mid-1990s? The Heterodox Academy post speculates that “things began changing in the 1990s as the Greatest Generation (which had a fair number of Republicans) retired and were replaced by the Baby Boom generation (which did not).”

This probably tells part of the story, but we suspect there is more going on here than organic generational replacement. One possibility is that the story told in the graph represents the legacy of the “canon wars“—the intense battles over humanities curricula between traditionalists and multiculturalists that took place during the 1980s and 1990s. Despite some consequential traditionalist protestations, like Allan Bloom’s blockbuster 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, “its generally agreed,” as Rachel Donadio has written, “that the multiculturalists won the canon wars.” The multiculturalist victory had at least three consequences: a reduced emphasis on what was traditionally called “the Western canon” in general education classes, the expansion of the “studies” departments (African American studies, gender studies, Jewish studies, Chicano studies), and the implementation of “harassment” codes that, in practice, were more often used against people who opposed the multiculturalist project. Whether or not you approve of these developments, it’s easy to see how they could have made scholarly minded students with traditionalist leanings less inclined to get a PhD and enter an academic humanities or social science department (the Heterodox Academy posts notes that most of the conservatives in the chart come from STEM departments and professional schools).

I think that trustees, state legislators, alumni, and others should look into remedying this.