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In a recent survey of the ideological persuasion of
1,643 full-time professors at 183 colleges and universities, three eminent
scholars, Professors Robert Lichter of George Mason
University and Stanley Rothman and
Neil Nevitte of the University of Toronto,
found that nearly three-quarters of college faculty call themselves liberal. In
the study of classical languages and literature, the humanities, they counted
81 percent and in the social sciences 75 percent. Even among engineering
faculty they found 51 percent and in business faculty 49 percent. But the
greatest number of liberal professors taught in the departments of English
literature, philosophy, political science, and religious studies where some
80 percent of professors called themselves liberal. At elite universities the
ratios were even higher; according to the survey, 87 percent of faculty were liberal.
Few terms are as vague and misleading as
"liberal." It may connote such attributes as progressive,
freethinking, fair-minded, unbiased, and enlightened. Throughout the 18th and
19th centuries Classical liberalism espoused individual freedom, stressing
not only human rationality but also the importance of individual property
rights, natural rights, the need for constitutional limitations on
government, and especially freedom of the individual from economic restraint.
During the 20th century when new theories held sway, such as E.H.
Chamberlin's "monopolistic-competition theory," Thurstein
Veblen's "institutionalism," and John Maynard Keynes'
"macro-economics," many liberals were taught to search for labor oppression and exploitation. They became New
Dealers, Fair Dealers, and New Republicans and called themselves "new
liberals."
New liberalism grew and flourished concurrently with
public education. They acted upon and reinforced each other. Most Americans
now believe that a system of free public schools under local and state
control is essential to the welfare of all. In the beginning a common school
instructed just the first two or three grades in which pupils were taught the
fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Soon thereafter the first
eight grades were deemed essential. In the 20th century, the high school
became the education birthright of every American. Since World War II many
Americans also look upon four years of college instruction as part of public
education. In fact, most Americans now view public schooling as a common
right for all children from nursery school through college. And if the survey
by Messrs Rothman, Lichter, and Nevitte
is correct, most college instructors and probably also school teachers are
liberal.
Educators have shaped American economic and
political thought since the very beginning, They
have led the way from traditional liberalism with its emphasis on natural
rights and individual freedom to present-day liberalism with its concern for
social reform and economic redistribution. And if it is true that there has
been a "leftward shift" on campuses during the past two decades, we
must brace for similar moves in public policy . They
may even lead to a political command system with a myriad of economic
regulations and controls, with rampant inflation and price and wage controls.
We had better brace for more to come.
Democratic government is ruled by public opinion
which is shaped by eminent thought leaders like those mentioned above. But
why should they point in the direction of a command system with all its parts
and attributes? Why should they find such grievous fault with economic
freedom and the unhampered market order that enabled the population to
multiply and lift its standards of living far above all others? This writer
who spent most of his productive life among college professors can think of
just two motivational forces that spring from human nature.
The market order that gradually evolved during the
18th and 19th centuries released much vitality and energy. Setting the people
free from age-old barriers and restrictions, it enabled some individuals to
create business enterprises, to organize, manage, and own them. A new breed
of entrepreneurs arose, competing with each other, innovating and improving
their enterprises. They created business capital which is personal wealth.
Successful entrepreneurs became very wealthy, which created much envy and
resentment not only among workers from whose ranks they had come but also
among the old landowning aristocracy. Envy is a passion strongly rooted in
the human heart.
The envious individual may do things that do harm
not only to others but also to himself provided it
reduces the inequality between them. The envious may appeal to and search for
equality which is social justice to him. It has been the call of most social
movements since the Industrial Revolution. Driven by envious voters, envious
legislators may pass "envy restrictions", impose "envy
taxes," and use envy as the basis of their calls for social justice. In
1934 the Roosevelt New Deal proposed personal income tax rates of up to 83.8
percent and death duty rates on individual property of 86.88 percent. In
World War II, it raised the top income tax rate to 91 percent. Surely, envy
was a powerful driving force of the New Deal.
Many college professors are great specialists in
their given fields but rather poor dilettantes in economics. They may be
puzzled and incensed by the visible wealth of a young manufacturer who, as a
college dropout, never mastered English grammar nor cared about algebra and
analytical geometry. In contrast, the professors attended several schools
from first grade to graduate school, earned a number of academic degrees,
titles, and honors, but their salaries may amount
to mere fractions of the profit earned by the young entrepreneur. Having
heard about monopolistic competition, labor
exploitation, and conspicuous consumption of the capitalists, young college
professors readily join the ranks of academic liberals.
Surely, many professors, legislators, and thought
leaders do not rail against their neighbor's
conspicuous consumption and are not consumed by envy passion. They are brave
or fortunate men who are able to bear envy. Yet they are social-justice
liberals because they have been, and may continue to be, the recipients of
public largess which they cannot deny their fellowmen. They may be grateful
beneficiaries of public funds in the form of state education, generous
scholarships, loans and grants to improve teaching in sciences, mathematics
and foreign languages, and to develop audio-visual aids. They may have been
the beneficiaries of federal grants to public and private schools, to
elementary and secondary schools in "headstart
programs" to improve the educational opportunities of poor children. They
may be beneficiaries of "affirmative-action" policy favoring ethnic groups, that is, African-Americans,
Hispanics, and Native Americans. Or they may be the graduates of publicly
funded "charter schools" with "school-voucher programs"
that provide public funds to pay for education at a school of choice. Most
professors at public as well as private colleges are the proud graduates of
well-known state universities and recipients of their degrees. As the
grateful beneficiaries of so much public largess they cannot logically deny
the same benefits to their students. They cannot refuse generous public
benefits to the disabled, the unemployed, and the poor. They are morally
obliged to join the welfare state and wage the "war on poverty."
The schools of a country are pointing to the future.
The survey of 1,643 full-time professors is hinting at more "leftward
shifts" to come. We
must brace for similar
moves in public policy.
Dr Hans F. Sennholz
www.sennholz.com
Dr. Sennholz is President of
The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York and a
consultant, author and lecturer of Austrian Economics.
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