I would like to respond to Dr. Stephen Morris’ letter printed in the June 13, 2014 edition of the New Hyde Park Herald Courier in which he addressed the percentage of liberal faculty in American higher education.
As Dr. Morris pointed out, a recent UCLA Higher Education Research Institute survey found that approximately 63 percent of full-time faculty identified as liberal (50.3 percent) or far left (12.4 percent).
An additional 25.4 percent identified as centrist, while a meager 11.5 percent identified as conservative and 0.4 percent identified as far right.
To Dr. Morris, this is proof of liberal bullying and intolerance in the higher education system.
However, I believe this is a reflection of conservative self-exclusion from that system.
Over the past several years, the conservative landscape has become fervently anti-intellectual.
Conservative leaders shrug their shoulders and say, “I’m not an expert,” or, “I’m not a scientist,” when asked to confront serious issues, like climate change. When provided with actual data that doesn’t suit their own beliefs, they either discount expert opinion as biased or point to statistically irrelevant minority opinions.
If you were a conservative who bought into this anti-intellectual culture, where gut feelings trumped decades or even centuries of research and study in any particular field, would you be inspired to become a college professor?
The door is wide open.
No one is conspiring to exclude conservatives from the field of higher education. If they don’t feel a career as a professor is compatible with their political views, they only have themselves to blame for being underrepresented.
Matthew Zeidman
New Hyde Park
