Always had an inkling that nothing your professors said had an effect on you?

You’re right!

At least according to recent research conducted by, well, professors who try to have an effect on their students.

My favorite news source not ending in “-vanian,” The New York Times, recently published an easy-to-read summary of recent research. The research takes on conventional wisdom by demonstrating that professors’ godless, socialist viewpoints don’t translate to students. Quoting the article: “Three sets of researchers recently concluded that professors have virtually no impact on the political views and ideology of their students.”

Still, I can’t help but think that the article (Read it! Seriously!) is pointing out the obvious.

Of course our professors’ political (”liberal”) agendas don’t really affect us. Who’s got time to absorb the vast liberal conspiracy when you’re sitting in a 200-person lecture with your head nodding and your blood-shot eyes struggling to stay open? College students barely show up to class enough to absorb a professor’s view on the topic at hand, let alone something completely unrelated.

Do conservatives really believe that our professors stand in front of the lecture hall or seminar table and talk about raising taxes, killing babies, and losing wars?

I’ve never heard a political discussion lead by a professor outside of the Political Science department. Generally, if it’s not on the syllabus, it doesn’t get discussed. Furthermore, critics of academia forget that young people are caught up in idealism and all that jazz; we tend to be liberal regardless of our professors.

The research, though, does reveal something important. It shows the ridiculousness of the Sean Hannity crowd, a group that actually thinks our world-class professors are sitting in their offices plotting ways to brainwash us into an anti-American frenzy. We’d like to think this myth isn’t important, but consider that during the presidential campaign this crazed belief turned a humble education professor named William Ayers into public enemy number one.

Professors teach and research. This leaves very little time for them to corrupt us into their crazed liberal ideology.

The studies confirming that professors’ political views have little effect on their students will hopefully help silence academia’s critics on the right.

Maybe then we’ll get really lucky and the country’s hatred of intellectualism (you may know it better as “elitism”) will be quelled, from Hyde Park to the Wharton School.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.