We have to hand it to David Horowitz and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni - they're making a dent in shaping public perception of higher education in a manner that bears no relation to reality and works to support their policy agenda. Leaving aside such arcana as the unreliability of internet polling and problems with the actual wording and context of the particular questions, a just-released Zogby poll (reported on at InsideHigherEd.com) showed that 58% of poll respondents think that "political bias" in higher education is a "serious problem," despite legislative inquiries and our own work that have demonstrated that the issue of political bias in college classrooms is far from systemic.
As we looked further into the poll results, we were struck by the vast disparities in perception between different demographic groups (particularly when they were broken down by ideology). The numbers seemed so... familiar. And then it hit us. In order to convince the public that they "need" so-called "intellectual diversity" legislation or an Academic Bill of Rights (measures which would inject legislators into curricular and pedagogical decisions about what occurs in college classrooms), Horowitz and ACTA have been running plays straight out of the right-wing public relations playbook that has been used to convince the public of such things as the existence of a "liberal" media, the need for "individual retirement accounts," the "on-going debate" around human-caused climate change, and most spectacularly, the "necessity" of invading Iraq.
Let's consider the "evidence" that's been presented to make the case that there's a problem with "liberal bias" in higher education. Horowitz in particular has been particularly egregious in "cherry-picking" stories (regardless of their accuracy) that support his narrative of faculty indoctrination. In fact, we've developed something of a cottage industry in debunking Horowitz's smears. Meanwhile, ACTA has churned out methodologically suspect reports which they cite as "scientific" proof of political bias in college classrooms. Sound familiar?
Meanwhile, sympathetic (sycophantic?) news outlets have been eager to publicize sensationalized and decontextualized accounts of indoctrination and feature "experts" who parrot claims of indoctrination. Add to this the fact that a story showing that students are being challenged and learning in colleges is hardly considered newsworthy, it's little wonder that public opinion is skewed towards perceiving a political bias problem in higher education.
This isn't to say that all's peachy in the ivory tower. It's not. Over the last few decades there's been a massive disinvestment of public resources in higher education, and colleges have come to rely on a dedicated but overworked and underpaid contingent faculty workforce who simply aren't provided with the institutional resources necessary to provide for a high quality undergraduate education, which may explain the Zogby poll's finding that 46% of respondents feel that the quality of higher education has deteriorated in the last 25 years.
As we mentioned up front, if there's one thing right-wingers do well, it's create public perceptions of "problems" (which is especially easy to do when you're raking in millions of dollars in conservative foundation cash). However, if the last six years has taught us anything, it's that reality's "well-known liberal bias" has a way of catching up with such hyperbolic claims. We have no reason to believe that the same won't occur with claims of political bias in higher education as we more closely scrutinize the polling data.
cross-posted from Free Exchange on Campus