Neil Gross - Why Are Professors (and Scientists) So Liberal?

Host: Chris Mooney

We've all heard the claim: Academia is liberal. And it indoctrinates students.

It kills their religious faith and basically—or at least, so the allegation goes—transforms them into unkempt, pot-smoking hippies.

As it turns out, this claim is precisely half true. Yes, academia is really liberal. But no, this has virtually nothing at all to do with ideological brainwashing.

That's the provocative claim of a new book by Neil Gross of the University of British Columbia. It's entitled Why Are Professors Liberal? And Why Do Conservatives Care? And basically, it's a powerful data analysis to bandy about whenever Ted Cruz, or Rick Santorum, start talking about liberal academic indoctrination mills.

Neil Gross taught at the University of Southern California and Harvard University before joining the University of British Columbia faculty in 2008. Trained at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Ph.D., 2002), and holding a BA in Legal Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (1992), Gross has special interests in sociological theory, politics, the sociology of ideas and academic life, and the sociology of culture. He is the editor of Sociological Theory, a quarterly journal of the American Sociological Association.