Those Liberal Professors
Two people recently released a paper on the
Social and Political Views of American Professors which shows a strong liberal bias (and one that has probably existed since the early seventies), particularly in the social sciences. It is worth reading (or at least skimming).
Unfortunately, while they do a lot of cross-tabulations, they do not do any linear regression models that would allow one to get a multi-variable analysis of what is going on (perhaps they have plans to do that later - as this is only a "working paper").
While the faculty are liberal, it would be interesting to do an analysis of university administrators, and a seperate one of trustees. I suspect that administrators would be more politically balanced (though probably still liberal, particularly at liberal arts schools), and that trustees would be strongly conservative biased.
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Conservative Trustees
The Chronicle of Higher Education did a survey of trustees (2007):
"Of the survey's respondents, 42 percent said they were registered Republicans, and 28 percent said they were Democrats. (Among presidents, it's basically the opposite: 41 percent Democrats and 19 percent Republicans.)"
http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i36/36a01101.htm
It's interesting that the university presidents are more likely to be Democrat. And frankly the trustees aren't as conservative as I thought. This could explain how student activism manages, at times, to be very effective. While universities are very undemocratic, administrators are more likely to give in to student demands than other institutions of power (corporations or the government).
Of course if you take into account how the US political spectrum is skewed to the right by global standards (ex. a recent Globe and Mail online poll, from Canada's main newspaper, had 80% of the respondents saying they'd vote Democrat in the 2008 US election. Or you could take the fact that the Canadian conservative party supports single payer health care, and isn't actively opposing abortion rights.), the university presidents are probably moderate to slightly conservative, by global standards.