Liberal academy

Liberal blogger states the following:

Yes, it's true that when you raise the intellectual bar high, as serious universities do, you get fewer right-wing kooks, but that simply doesn't mean there is political indoctrination going on at universities. The fact that the U.S. has moved farther to the right during the same time period when the universities have allegedly moved to the left ought to be taken as empirical confirmation of that point. For other plausible anecdotal evidence, see the discussion here.

He is missing the point. My opinion on the liberal bias in the academy is that it depends on what field one is in. For instance, WHILE the country has been moving to the right in the past 20 years, those departments that deal with majors people use in the real world: like economics, accounting, finance, and to a much lesser extent the sciences have also been moving to the right.

30 years ago economists believed in command and control and strong economic planning, both of which are strong staples of the "liberal" agenda. Today that is no longer the case. The broad consensus among economists is that private property, free enterprise, and free trade are all vital to the economic growth of a country. There are still plenty of liberals in my field. But they are much less radical than other professors (say in philosophy or in "critical studies"). So, in the end, it depends on what he means by "allegedly moved to the left". Those majors that attract liberals, like socialogy and certain segments of philosophy (the post-modernists) for example, remained liberals. Other majors moved with the country. What this professor is seeing is a small rightward shift in the ideology of the campus (liberal minded economists arguing for free trade? AHHHH, he says). Then when someone comes along and says "the academy is very liberal" he screams bloody murder.

(By the way, my political science department had a couple of highly intelligent conservatives. I know there are 2 and I think there are 3 or 4.)

PS-It doesn't help his point that he has to berate his opponents "as right wing kooks" and imply that they are stupid. He is a philosophy professor and should know and avoid an ad hominum when he sees it.