Data Shows Universities Strongly Bias to Left
This article was originally published in Stuff. You can find it here: The recent controversy surrounding Don Brash's banning by Massey University has opened the lid on deep bias within universities, both in New Zealand and offshore. As any number of graduation speeches formulaically tell you the purpose of a university education is to “open minds”, “search for truth” and inspire students to think broadly and freely. In the “knowledge economy” we turn to academia for what we assume is scientifically rigorous, evidentially based, objective and unbiased knowledge about the world and how to solve its many and varied problems. Except of course that’s not actually the case. Six decades of research from the United States clearly demonstrate that universities and academics are frequently heavily biased and skew overwhelmingly to the political left. In the 1955 (ironically out of concern that right wing McCarthyism was negatively impacting academic freedom) Paul L...