Robert Maranto’s column “PC University: Data show ivory towers lean left” provides a deeply misleading assessment of sources and consequences of the political affiliations of faculty members.
Maranto cites a number of studies he commissioned to make a case that academia is biased against conservatives. He fails to note that in selecting the authors of the studies, he exclusively chose academics whose views were already identifiable as supportive of claims of ideological bias, and he failed to include any academics who have written critically of such views.
(Steven N. Durlauf is a professor of economics at UW-Madison.