Neil Gross is a sociology professor who has been writing for several years about the two questions in the title of his new book Why Professors are Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? He claims to have engaged in objective, unbiased scholarship, but his low opinion of those people he's analyzing is often evident. Moreover, he too readily accepts liberal notions about the professoriate and too readily dismisses conservative/libertarian arguments. In short, what he has written is a book that his fellow liberals will probably point to whenever they encounter criticism that the faculty is heavily politicized: "Oh, but Neil Gross disproved all of that."
Gross has filled up a lot of pages, but I find that the argumentation is flimsy, bordering on dishonesty. In today's Pope Center Clarion Call, I write about the first of his two questions. Next week, I'll examine the second.
