Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?

Gross (sociology, Univ. of British Columbia) views the perception of political bias among academics as responsible for arousing conservative attacks. His work, based on extensive research, asserts that academic values are corrupted by the imbalance of faculty liberal views. His findings suggest that professors with liberal views work hard to promote objective analysis in their teaching and scholarship and that conservative intellectuals who fear radical faculty behavior target leftist academics to undermine confidence in the "liberal elite" and to further conservatism as a populist movement. He suggests that the idea that liberals choose academic careers and are shunned by conservatives is based on generalizations leftover from the radical Sixties, when campuses were viewed as the epicenter of liberal activity.