A while back, I was hallwaychatting with a couple of my colleagues when the question arose of whether there was anyone on the Wisconsin Sociology Faculty who would be voting for Bush in the upcoming election. When we could not come up with anyone in our 40 or 50 member department that seemed like even a plausible Bush voter, someone remarked that it was probably a good thing that the general public was not aware of just how massively ideologically uniform our profession is.* Yesterday, I told this story to an acquaintance of mine who is in the newspaper business. She replied that everyone she knew in her newsroom was voting for Bush, and for that matter the same was probably true for every newsroom she had ever worked in. She then noted that it was probably a good thing that the general public was not aware of this, either.
* Yes, I thought this was a little naive of the person to say as well. Then again, given the number of people who know I am a sociology professor and yet have asked me who I am for in this election, the overwhelming leftishness of sociology appears not as universally known as some might suppose. And, yes, as I have said in previous posts, I do not believe the ideological uniformity of sociology--even though my own political beliefs are consistent with it--is a good thing.
12 comments:
so much for the 'liberal media,' huh?
I'm sure they are all, um, moderate Kerry supporters. Maybe even Konservatives-4-Kerry.
Take a walk down the 300 hallway on the seventh floor of the Social Science building. On the east side of the hall (your left if you're facing the lake side), I think there is an emeritus professor from the department who has posted some sort of "thank you for your support" picture from the Convicted-Criminal-in-Chief and his wife.
I could be wrong, but, I think, given other things that have appeared on that same professor's door, that the picture is being presented as a kind of joke. At least that's how I've regarded it.
- one does wonder how the taxpayer's money is being spent and how much time politics consumes in the classroom instead of the 3 Rs
The matter of politics aside, I don't think many universities anywhere have ever conceived of their mission in terms of 3 R's.
I've never heard anyone argue, for example, that universities should only offer Reading, Writing, and Math as majors.
Gee, methinks I am sitting here wasting taxpayer money by, sitting. Last I heard, even those of us employed by state universities were allowed our first ammendment rights, freedom of speech, that kind of thing. Next thing you know, taking a restroom break, or a lunch break will be a waste of taxpayer money. Oh wait, that lunch break is already unpaid... Geesh....
And that would be jnsys posting, with the previous comment...
If Bush gets elected you get a big fat F then
I think it would be a great idea if all grading the university level were made a matter of majority vote Or, better, the votes of the Electoral College.
Incidentally, on the matter of what taxpayers are paying for, it is of course undeniably true that there is a lot of taxpayer money coursing through universities, although people typically exaggerate the extent to which their state universities are dependent on their state tax dollars (partly as a result of state universities having to learn to survive various cuts over the years). For example, here's a trivia question: right now, what percentage of Jeremy's salary/fringe benefits is being paid by tax monies provided by the state of Wisconsin. Answer: 0%.
Hmmm. It just so happens that I've been playing around with voting data a bit. Turns out that authors and journalists (combined) are about as likely to vote Democrat as are Jewish respondents, net of sex, race, age, election year, etc. Conversely, engineers are about as likely to vote Republican as are Evangelical Protestants. (Professors are just a hair more likely to vote Republican than are authors/journalists, but I don't have the cases to disaggregate the "professor" category by discipline.) KAW.
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