US: Professor is a label that leans to the left

The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher IQ scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals - and so few conservatives - want to be professors, writes Patricia Cohen for The New York Times.

A pair of sociologists think they may have an answer: typecasting. Jobs can be typecast in different ways, said Neil Gross and Ethan Fosse who undertook the study - and occupational reputations affect people's career aspirations. The academic profession "has acquired such a strong reputation for liberalism and secularism that over the last 35 years few politically or religiously conservative students, but many liberal and secular ones, have formed the aspiration to become professors," they write in the paper "Why Are Professors Liberal?"

What distinguishes Gross and Fosse's research from so much of the hubbub that surrounds this subject is their methodology. Whereas most arguments have primarily relied on anecdotes, this is one of the only studies to use data from the General Social Survey of opinions and social behaviours and compare professors with the rest of Americans.
Full report on The New York Times site