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I am neither a university nor 'academia'.
I am, however, still unclear about what your point is.
There is data that some ridiculous percentage of academics are on the left, and drastically so for liberal arts departments.
“Everyone knows” that they filter against conservatives (maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven).
Liberals deny this, so what’s the point of discussing it. Let the dismantling continue until corrections happen I guess.
> Scientists in the United States are more politically liberal than the general population. This fact has fed charges of political bias. To learn more about scientists’ political behavior, we analyze publicly available Federal Election Commission data. We find that scientists who donate to federal candidates and parties are far more likely to support Democrats than Republicans, with less than 10 percent of donations going to Republicans in recent years. The same pattern holds true for employees of the academic sector generally, and for scientists employed in the energy sector. This was not always the case: Before 2000, political contributions were more evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. We argue that these observed changes are more readily explained by changes in Republican Party attitudes toward science than by changes in American scientists. We reason that greater public involvement by centrist and conservative scientists could help increase trust in science among Republicans.
An example they give of the changes in the Republican Party are the Republican position on climate change. For a good illustration at just how much Republicans have changed just take a look at the 2008 Republican Party Platform [2].
They wanted to address climate change by reducing emissions and greenhouse gases, increasing energy efficiency, promoting EVs and natural gas powered vehicles, and create multi-million dollar prizes for technological developments to eliminate the need for gas powered cars or abate atmospheric carbon.
They also talk about the need for renewables to become mainstream and supported long-term energy tax credits to promote that.
Compare to today. Now they are opposed to nearly all of that. The current administration's position is the climate change is a hoax or scam.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01382-3
[2] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2008-republican-pa...
> maybe there isn’t hard data, but it’s pretty obvious to a lot of people, so I would say this is something that need to be disproven, not proven
Huh, wonder why this world view doesnt jive with academia.
When the ingroup is underrepresented the question is “how can we get more ingroup in”.
But when the outgroup is underrepresented it’s met with “maybe outgroup just isn’t as good”.
Eg. women in tech, men in nursing; conservatives vs liberals in academia.
Contrast that with women in tech or men in nursing and it becomes obvious why the comparison isn’t valid: women want to be good technologists, not to reject the validity of technology or say we should all go back to the Amish lifestyle (that desire is common to senior developers of both genders). Male nurses want to be good nurses, not claiming that their gender means they can commit medical malpractice.
Also the whole idea that they are self selecting out is absurd. There are many flavors of conservative, not just the ones you see on Ali G show or whatever.
This is not religious thinking? You’re arguing based on faith and claiming the rest of us have to prove there is no tea pot floating in orbit on the other side of the sun