University of Oregon grad student and ODE columnist Dan Lawton has a good article on his personal blog about the lack of ideological diversity in journalism schools and the potential problems that causes.
The article is part of an ongoing project by Lawton on diversity in higher education. I’ve been interviewed for it a couple of times, and there will be a short documentary forthcoming. All in all, it promises to be very interesting.
Using his public records kung fu, Lawton discovers that, of the thirty two full-time faculty in the UO journalism school, none are registered Republicans. Even adding in adjunct faculty, there are only two Republicans. As Lawton notes, “You could walk into a head shop in Berkeley and find a bigger conservative presence.”
Lawton further notes that:
According to a study performed by UO economist Bill Harbaugh in 2006, there are 15:5 registered Democrats in the total UO faculty for every one Republican. The Oregon Daily Emerald reported that 96% of contributions during the 2008 election cycle went to Democratic candidates; in 2004 the figure was 100%.
The leftist leanings of academia is nothing new, but in an industry that prides itself on its objective, fair coverage of events, you have to wonder (as Lawton does) how well journalism students are served by an almost completely Democrat faculty. (Of course, given the press’ fawning over Obama, maybe they’ve just given up on that whole “objectivity” thing anyways.)
As a J-School student myself, I’d like to say that almost all of my journalism professors at the UO have been courteous, smart and highly professional, even if they disagreed completely with my politics (which comes up more often than you’d think in journalism classes). The only exceptions were part of that select, special group of people you inevitably meet in the course of your life who – politics and ideology aside – are just plain assholes.
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I suggest you read this:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20061222-000001.xml