David Horowitz -- whose college newspaper advertisement against slavery reparations set off controversies at campuses across the nation -- claims that the results of a new poll are proof of "a systematic political bias in hiring" at Ivy League humanities departments, but Dartmouth faculty and administrators disagree.
Horowitz had pollster Frank Luntz survey Ivy League humanities professors last November to assess their political views and compare them to similar polls of the American public.
The poll asked professors for their party affiliation and who they voted for in the 2000 presidential election. The poll also surveyed professors' opinions on taxes, missile defense, slavery reparations and other issues commonly dividing the left and right.
On numerous topics, the study reported, the professors' opinions were to the far left of the American public.
"As the survey shows, you have 40 percent of Ivy League professors identifying with the left-wing ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union]; zero identify with the Christian Collation," Horowitz said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
"You have a discrimination against conservatives, against Republicans, against Christians; there's no diversity."
Mary Kelley, chair of the history department, said that hiring decisions are not based on an applicant's political leanings. "One's political opinions are not an issue and are not discussed and are basically not known," she said. "We have two positions open now ... The last question they would ever be asked is 'Are you a Republican or a Democrat?'"
The study showed negligible differences between schools that have a liberal reputation, like Brown, and a more conservative one, like Dartmouth, Horowitz said.
"There are no conservative colleges," he said. "You had that guy [former College President James] Freedman for years " that idiot leftist."
Being vocal about conservative beliefs can also be detrimental to a professor's career, Horowitz said.
"There's a professional risk in appearing as a conservative. ... A professor that says the kind of things I say would have his job in jeopardy and would certainly be punished."
Dartmouth academic chairs and Dean of Faculty Jamshed Bharucha said that politics play no role in hiring or recruiting Dartmouth faculty.
"We don't keep track of the political orientations of our faculty; it's really not a concern for the administration. We don't screen faculty implicitly or explicitly for their political orientation," Bharucha said.
"By and large, the United States is a conservative country politically compared to almost all of Europe and other countries we compare ourselves to," Chair of the English Department Peter Travis said. "So when you go to the university, you tend to develop a more international perspective, and that tends to lean you towards the left."
"Literature almost always raises many questions about the status quo and does envisage a variety of different kinds of change. But the change could go in a traditional direction rather than in a revolutionary direction," Travis said.
The leftist bias in universities is detrimental to education because it has stifled free thought and intellectual debate, Horowitz argued.
"I was a Marxist as a student at Columbia. It was a freer atmosphere than exists at Dartmouth. I never felt uncomfortable in stating my views, even during the McCarthy '50s. If you're a pro-lifer or if you oppose affirmative action, your life could be hell on a campus today, and professors would be making it hell," Horowitz said.
Students should begin to push for more "intellectual diversity," Horowitz said. "People should demand from the administration an immediate inquiry. Is there a political bias in the hiring process?"
There is no bias, Bharucha said. "For every field, you find a majority orientation in one direction politically; you'll find another field where the reverse is true. I don't think in either case there's an actual bias in hiring or recruiting," he said.
Horowitz said he has spoken at between 130 and 140 schools, although he was only invited by a school official five of those times. "I invite Dartmouth to invite me," he said.
"I have pretty mainstream views. My views are virtually identical with, say, the views of John F. Kennedy. I'm portrayed as a right-winger, but so would Kennedy if he were alive today," Horowitz said.
Kelley had a different take.
"Most people would give him another identification and that's as a deeply conservative individual who himself has a particular slant and a particular agenda at hand. Which is perfectly his right. But then one could ask, how much does his agenda influence what he has to say, the same way he is suggesting that everybody else has an agenda?"
