It’s been a well-known fact, and an occasional topic here in this blog, that college faculty tend to identify as liberals much more often than as conservatives, especially in the humanities and social sciences where, in some disciplines, the Democrat-to-Republican ratio can be as high as 30 to 1. But as Inside Higher Education reports, a new Harvard study suggests that these ideological disparities might be overstated and that newer faculty are becoming less liberal:

The 72-page study -- “The Social and Political Views of American Professors” — was produced with the goal of moving analysis of the political views of faculty members out of the culture wars and back to social science. . . .

The authors present evidence that there are more faculty members who identify as moderates than as liberals. The authors of the study also found evidence of a significant decline by age group in faculty radicalism, with younger faculty members less likely than their older counterparts to identify as radical or activist. And while the study found that faculty members generally hold what are thought to be liberal positions on social issues, professors are divided on affirmative action in college admissions. . . .

The article goes on to describe the study’s summary that in general, college faculty strongly support abortion rights and gay rights, but split about affirmative action and generally agreeing that the relative lack of women in math and sciences is not due to outright discrimination.

Ultimately, this is one of those studies that will probably be used by both sides to support their own arguments in the ongoing debate over whether the overrepresentation of liberals among college faculty constitutes a problem. Those who answer yes will point to the continuing disparities over faculty political orientation and say there needs to be more balance.

On the other hand, those who do not think this is a problem would say that faculty are becoming more moderate and that in many ways, their liberal orientations do not necessarily translate into extremist viewpoints or inappropriate indoctrination of students.

In other words, this study is a very valuable and useful resource to inform these kinds of debates but inevitably, the debate itself will continue to rage on.