Conclusions about faculty political affiliations faulty

As one of the political science faculty members canvassed by Scott Brooks in preparation for his column of Nov. 21, I would like to offer a critique of the work he produced (“BU’s political science department tilts students to the left,” pg. 11). My critique is not so much about his thesis as it is about the analytical errors he makes along the way.

Mr. Brooks takes one piece of evidence – the contention that most of the political science faculty are registered Democrats – and extrapolates from this evidence the conclusion that the department is pushing students politically leftward. This conclusion is not justified.

Note that I am not saying that his conclusion is necessarily incorrect. I suppose it is possible that my colleagues’ courses are nothing more than clever fronts for a clandestine campaign to brainwash students into a liberal cabal that will storm Washington and retroactively declare George McGovern to be the winner of the 1972 presidential election. But I doubt this is the case.

The central point is that Mr. Brooks has made a connection between the way a professor votes and the way a professor teaches, but he has not presented sufficient evidence to back up this connection.

In response to his initial inquiry, I asked the following questions:

“Let’s say you learn that 75 percent of the political science faculty are registered Democrats. What meaning would you ascribe to this piece of data? Would you suspect that this has some impact on what courses get offered, or on what materials are assigned, or on how lectures are presented? Or is this just ‘man-bites-dog’ trivia? What is so important or interesting about the partisan leanings of the political science faculty?”

Professors inevitably have to make choices in their teaching regimen. I cannot say that professors never skew these choices according to an ideological predilection. Nor, for that matter, can I say that this is always a pedagogically illegitimate thing to do (even though it’s not my cup of vanilla chai). If Mr. Brooks believes that it is illegitimate, that’s his business. But if he wants to argue that it is happening at BU, the only way he can make this argument properly is to undertake to prove it via the collection and analysis of hard data.

He fails to do this. Instead, all that he submits as “proof” is a solitary account of a student who has been assigned Karl Marx three times but has never been assigned Edmund Burke. One lonely anecdote does not establish that the faculty is systematically trying to purge “Reflections on the Revolution in France” from the political science canon.

The Marx-Burke example is not merely anecdotalism, it is also sloppy anecdotalism. While Burke has few academic applications beyond the study of political theory, “The Communist Manifesto” is a seminal work in the development of a major political movement (this is true whether one regards Marx’s work as a political tour de force or as a steaming pile of psycho-economic claptrap). As such, it can be assigned in several contexts: political theory, politics and literature, even political economy. What courses did Mr. Brooks’ student take? Did he take classes in which Marx is a logical fit but Burke is wholly irrelevant, such as a course on Russian history? We are never told.

Mr. Brooks’ column is unfortunately typical of most accusations of political “bias,” be they from left or right, from gadfly or institution. Bias is an easy charge to press but a hard rap to prove, and playing the bias card is the political equivalent of crying wolf. Even on the occasions where bias does exist, the preexisting litany of unfounded alarms tends to blot out the truth more effectively than active attempts to conceal it.

Finally, let me provide the answer Mr. Brooks would have received from me had he not ignored those questions I asked him (this astounding inattention to his research makes his “findings” even more dubious). As I have told virtually all of my students, I follow the example set by Jim Lehrer, moderator of the presidential debates. Lehrer feels that voters are entitled to be free of any doubts about his objectivity; consequently, he does not vote. Although I believe that someone can be a great teacher while having a defined set of political affiliations (indeed, many of my departmental colleagues prove this every day), I believe that the best way for me to make my civic contribution is to assure my students that I am fastidiously neutral as a political science teacher. For this reason, I am not a member of any political party, and I do not vote.

Some of my colleagues (and members of my family) have criticized me for setting a bad example for my students, since I am sacrificing a right that people surrendered their lives trying to secure. Yet just when I am tempted to agree, something inevitably reminds me that my credibility as a teacher is under constant threat in a cynical world which conditions modern students to assume that every speaker has a subversive angle, and that all speech is corrupt manipulation. Mr. Brooks’ conjectural column is this year’s model.