Dan Flynn

Does campus rhetoric about "diversity" translate into an appreciation of intellectual diversity? Not at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where intellectual orthodoxy reigns supreme.

A survey by the Rocky Mountain News of the political affiliations of college professors at the University of Colorado-Boulder reveals extreme political bias among the school’s faculty.

The survey of social science and humanities professors enrolled in the two major parties uncovered a Democrat\Republican ratio of greater than 32 to one. Of the 190 professors surveyed, 184 are Democrats and only six are Republicans.

In the school’s history department, for instance, there are 27 Democrats, no Republicans. In English, there are zero Republicans to 29 Democrats. Philosophy pitches a shutout as well, with a 12 to nothing Democrat advantage. Other departments that lock out members of the Grand Old Party include journalism, gay and lesbian studies, psychology, and values and social policy.

Of the 13 departments surveyed, the most diverse was political science. The field contained 14 Democrats, two Republicans.

"When you come to CU, you pretty much expect it to be liberal," explained Colorado University College Republican Chair Kelly Brady. "Unfortunately it is one-sided."

Students say that having a faculty with a monolithic outlook often leads to biased courses, a slanted guest speakers program, and a stifling of the free exchange of ideas. Brady told Campus Report that since she arrived on campus in the fall of 1996, she has seen a constant stream of leftist speakers deliver addresses on campus— Angela Davis, Michael Moore, Ralph Nader, etc.—but has yet to witness an event featuring a conservative speaker.

"Diversity is looked at from an ‘ethnicity’ point of view," Brady remarked, rather than the point of view of "a whole spectrum of beliefs and ideas."

A perusal of course descriptions and class syllabi reveals a plethora of references to leftist thinkers like Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Almost excluded entirely are right-minded thinkers like Adam Smith, Russell Kirk, and Thomas Sowell. Among the classes that students can enroll in are "Mathematics for the Environment," "Queer Theory," and "The Social Construction of Reality," which purports that "all things that construct the objective social facts of our social world are created, reproduced, maintained, and distributed by specific human interaction processes."

Surveys of the party affiliations of professors at other schools have yielded similar results as the one taken at the Boulder campus.

At Dartmouth, there is a 25 to one Democrat advantage. Cornell professors also shun enrollment as Republicans by a ratio of 25 to one. A 1994 study showed that among Stanford professors in the humanities who were members of the two major parties, nine out of ten were registered Democrat. A 1996 study at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill yielded a greater than ten to one advantage for Democrats.

In the history departments of the four schools combined, for instance, there were 110 Democrats and only three Republicans. The combined English total was 120 to six.