86% of university presidents cited the "perception of liberal political bias" was responsible for declining public support

86% of university presidents cited the "perception of liberal political bias" was responsible for declining public support (31 percent said it was "very" responsible).
My problem is it isn't just the "perception." It is their real bias.

Scary: Harvard Prof. Charles Ogletee just makes things up about the Ferguson case

Professor Charles Ogletree's statements about what happened in Ferguson even seems to make Chris Matthews uncomfortable.  The strong certainty by which he claims that Michael Brown was shot in the back and that he had his hands up and was trying to surrender is surprising.  It is concerning that a professor at Harvard Law School

Can someone name me one college where faculty have protested over a Democratic administration figure giving a commencement address?

From Fox News:

"An overwhelming number of the students were disappointed in Condoleezza Rice no longer being the commencement speaker after a small minority of the student body and intolerant faculty members at Rutgers University protested loudly over the past month ... A university should be a place where free ideas are exchanged and a diversity of opinions are encouraged," Coughlan said in the letter. 

Rice withdrew her name as speaker on Saturday following protests from a group of Rutgers University students, who staged a sit-in at a school administration building in New Brunswick last week to protest the school's decision to invite Rice to speak at the university's commencement later this month. Rice made the announcement via Facebook on Saturday. 

The school's Board of Governors voted to pay the former secretary of state under President George W. Bush and national security adviser $35,000 for her appearance at the May 18 ceremony, where she was expected to be awarded an honorary degree. 

But several faculty members and students wanted the invitation rescinded because of Rice's role in the Iraq War. Rutgers' New Brunswick Faculty Council passed a resolution in March calling on the university's board of governors to rescind its invitation. . . .

If the university is serious about free speech, they will pick someone who is viewed as even more conservative than Miss Rice. 

Jake Tapper points out that there was a case at the University of Notre Dame, though as he points out it was primarily something involving students.

WSBT correspondent John Paul reports that students attending the vigil reflected on their last days on campus, with some saying the protests have led to healthy discussions and debates, and that the attention hasn't taken away from their achievements. 

"It hasn't overshadowed it too much anyway," said student Brian Desplinter, who attended the vigil. "I think our student body on campus has handled the controversy particularly well, in contrast to some of the outside parties. . . .

University of California at Berkeley math instructor dares to cross union picket line to teach class

From Inside Education:

What could make a professor more popular than calling off class to support a social movement? At the University of California at Berkeley, an instructor has seen his email message to students about not canceling class go viral -- with largely positive reactions and some criticism as well. 

Alexander Coward, a lecturer in mathematics, emailed his freshman calculus class last week to confirm that class would not be canceled -- despite a union protest that drew the support of many professors and graduate student instructors who did call off class. 

"Whatever the alleged injustices are that are being protested about tomorrow, it is clear that you are not responsible for those things, whatever they are, and I do not think you should be denied an education because of someone else’s fight that you are not responsible for,” he wrote in the email. 

Members of the university’s largest employee union, which represents the university's service, skilled craft and patient care workers, were joined by some faculty members, students and staff in protesting what they consider to be unsafe staffing levels at the University of California’s hospitals and campuses’ health care clinics, said Todd Stenhouse, a spokesman for the union, AFSCME 3299. . . .

The tradeoff between good looks and intelligence in academia

This is an amusing discussion illustrating that there might be some trade offs in life.  

This is an academic institution?: Los Angeles City College censoring word "gun" from catalog

So much for the open discussion of ideas.  Los Angeles City College apparently is planning banning the word "gun" from course catalogs.

The word “gun” conjures up a mental image of a gun. Guns kill people. Conclusion: the word must be banned from the college catalog for Los Angeles City College, the immense tax-funded community college with multiple campuses. 

The NRA teaches a course on gun safety. That course is now banned. 

There will be no guns on campus, except in theatrical productions. 

If a book has the word gun in it, the book is not subject to the ban, but no mention of it must appear in the catalog. Otherwise, it would give the wrong idea. 

Scott Svonkin, the Vice President of the Board of Trustees, introduced the ban. He explained his position. The school must not teach students how to use guns. The faculty must promote gun control. 

“We should make sure that students don’t come to campus being afraid to run into somebody with a gun.” . . .

The motivation for the ban is summed up here.

“A course on gun safety is a real threat,” he said. “I believe that the NRA’s goal is to promote gun ownership, and that guns lead to deaths. So, not having the NRA teach classes, not having the NRA classes on our campuses, is a good thing.” . . .

Here was an example of something from 2009.

. . . Jonathan Lopez, who is working on his associate of arts degree at Los Angeles City College, quoted a dictionary definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman and cited several Bible verses during a public speaking class in late November, his suit says. His professor, John Matteson, interrupted, called Lopez a "fascist bastard" and refused to let him finish his address, according to the suit.  

The professor also refused to give Lopez a grade for the speech, telling him to "ask God" for his mark, the suit alleges. And when Lopez complained to college officials, Matteson threatened to have him expelled, the suit says. . . .

Academia Moving Further to the Left

63% of academics classify themselves as liberal or "far left"?  But my guess is that this really underestimates how biased they are because since they are around so many other left wing types I think that their ability to sense what is considered moderate is impaired.  From Inside Higher Ed:

Academics, on average, lean to the left. A survey being released today suggests that they are moving even more in that direction. 

Among full-time faculty members at four-year colleges and universities, the percentage identifying as "far left" or liberal has increased notably in the last three years, while the percentage identifying in three other political categories has declined. The data come from the University of California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute, which surveys faculty members nationwide every three years on a range of attitudes. 

Here are the data for the new survey and the prior survey:

	2010-11	2007-8
Far left	12.4%	8.8%
Liberal	50.3%	47.0%
Middle of the road	25.4%	28.4%
Conservative	11.5%	15.2%
Far right	0.4%	0.7%

Gauging how gradual or abrupt this shift is is complicated because of changes in the UCLA survey's methodology; before 2007-8, the survey included community college faculty members, who have been excluded since. But for those years, examining only four-year college and university faculty members, the numbers are similar to those of 2007-8. Going back further, one can see an evolution away from the center. 

In the 1998-9 survey, more than 35 percent of faculty members identified themselves as middle of the road, and less than half (47.5 percent) identified as liberal or far left. In the new data, 62.7 percent identify as liberal or far left. (Most surveys that have included community college faculty members have found them to inhabit political space to the right of faculty members at four-year institutions.) . . .

"Conservative Iowa Woman Sues Law School Claiming They Didn’t Hire Her Because of Her Politics"

Fox News has this story:

The trial of Teresa Wagner against the University of Iowa Law School is underway in Washington, D.C., after Wagner claimed she was passed over multiple times for a job based on her conservative political background; in the past, Wagner worked for pro-life causes such as the Family Research Council and the Right to Life Committee. . . .

Should professors who donate to Obama's campaigns note their donations when the media interviews them for comments?

Of course, if reporters asked academics if they have donated to Obama's campaign, it would greatly limit the number of academics that they could talk to about the race.  It isn't really a problem for donations to Republicans because there are very, very few of those (see here, here, here, here, and here).  From The Hill newspaper:

At least a half-dozen professors who gave political donations to President Obama have been quoted in news articles opining about his administration and the 2012 race for the White House. 

The findings of The Hill’s months-long investigation come as Republicans have been crying foul, alleging a media bias for Obama and against Mitt Romney.  

The Hill cross-checked academics who have been quoted in news articles with Obama’s donor list and eliminated those who worked in prior Democratic administrations. The half-dozen professors detailed in this article do not mention their political affiliations in their bios online. A similar search for Romney donors did not yield any results. 

The scholars say they didn’t tell reporters that they had donated to Obama, but would have had they been asked. It is not common practice for journalists to inquire about such political donations, however. 

Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute says journalists should ask about political contributions: “Reporters are trying to get an independent viewpoint. Increasingly, the audience is demanding to know how [reporters] get information. The audience would like to know this information.” . . .

The Hill then goes through some examples of academics who have commented on the race to major media without it being noted that they were donors to Obama's campaign.

Black Gallaudet College Official put on leave because she signed petition to let Marylanders vote on homosexual marriage

From Fox News: 

. . . Angela McCaskill, a 23-year veteran of the university, was placed on paid leave as the university investigates her support for traditional marriage.“It recently came to my attention that Dr. McCaskill has participated in a legislative initiative that some feel is inappropriate for an individual serving as Chief Diversity Officer; however, other individuals feel differently,” wrote Gallaudet president T. Alan Hurwitz in an email sent to the campus community. 

McCaskill’s attorney said they will hold a press conference on Tuesday — stressing that his client is not “anti-gay.” 

McCaskill was one of 200,000 residents who signed a petition to put “Maryland’s Question 6” on the ballot. The measure is a referendum on same-sex “marriage.”
The Washington Blade published the names and addresses of every person who signed the petition. An anonymous faculty member spotted McCaskill’s name in the newspaper and immediately notified authorites. . . .

From the Washington Post:

. . . By mid-afternoon Friday, more than 15,000 people had signed an online petition calling on the university for the deaf and hard of hearing to reverse itself and bring back Angela McCaskill, its chief diversity officer. The school disciplined McCaskill on Wednesday, saying her signature on a petition for a referendum on same-sex marriage was “inappropriate.” . . .   

Lee P. Washington, pastor of Reid Temple AME Church, one of the largest churches in the Washington region and a hub of social and political activity, encouraged Gallaudet to take back McCaskill, who is a member of his church. In a statement, Washington said that McCaskill and her family had withstood “threats and intimidation” related to her signing the ballot petition and being placed on leave.   

McCaskill was among more than 200,000 Maryland residents who signed a petition for a referendum on same-sex marriage. The public vote was favored by opponents of a same-sex marriage law that O’Malley signed in March. . . .

An interesting History of Government involvement in the Running of Harvard: The early years

I don't see how alumni control is responsible for American universities doing so well, though I can definitely believe that it is the lack of direct government control that is important.

. . . Harvard was established as a public institution in 1636 by the authorities of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Its value to Massachusetts is exemplified in the Commonwealth’s post-independence state constitution, ratified in 1780, which includes a section about the university’s function and boundaries. 

CommentsWhen Harvard alumni dominated the Massachusetts legislature, the university was given support and consideration. But, in the 1840’s, mass immigration, fueled by the Irish potato famine, altered the state’s demographic balance, enabling populists to gain control of the legislature. 

CommentsAlmost immediately, Harvard came under attack for being too elitist, too exclusive, and too expensive. Even its curriculum was challenged. Over the next two decades, the state increasingly impeded Harvard’s functioning by, for example, refusing to release funds and obstructing the appointment of professors. This behavior culminated in 1862, when the legislature blocked a university president’s appointment. 

CommentsIn response, Harvard requested that it be placed “out of the reach of ordinary political strife and change” and into the “hands of alumni who have the interests of education most at heart.” On April 29, 1865, this radical proposal scraped through the Massachusetts General Court (the state’s bi-cameral legislature), owing to intense lobbying and the goodwill generated by Harvard alumni’s distinguished service for the Union during the Civil War. Since then, Harvard’s Board of Overseers, has been controlled exclusively by alumni. . . .

Here is an interesting fact, though again there is no evidence that it is alumni control versus independence from the government that is responsible.

Today, 19 of the top 20 American universities in US News and World Report’s much-watched rankings are controlled by alumni (defined as 50% or more representation on the Board of Trustees). The only exception, the California Institute of Technology, has a board with 40% alumni representation. Of the top five, three (Harvard, Yale, and Columbia) are managed entirely by alumni, and two (Princeton and Stanford) are under 90% alumni control. Alumni run the show even at public institutions such as Purdue (90%) and Michigan (63%). On average, alumni make up 63% of the boards of the top 100 US universities, both public and private. . . . 

Richard Dawkins: Does this really pass as intellectual arguments?

Why would anyone who is interested in intellectual debate make these types of arguments?  Unfortunately, what Dawkins thinks passes as intellectual debate is the way that a lot of liberals in academia think.  What is gained by this type of attitude?

UPDATE: This was posted yesterday.

Other posts.

Why even posting such drivel? Something posted today.

Survey shows that some academics in social psychology would not hire conservatives

Anyone who has been in academia shouldn't find this too surprising.  From Inside Higher Education:

A new study, however, challenges that assumption -- at least in the field of social psychology. The study isn't due to be published until next month (in Perspectives on Psychological Science), and the authors and others are noting limitations to the study. But its findings of bias by social psychologists (even if just a decent-sized minority of them) are already getting considerable buzz in conservative circles. Just over 37 percent of those surveyed said that, given equally qualified candidates for a job, they would support the hiring of a liberal candidate over a conservative candidate. Smaller percentages agreed that a "conservative perspective" would negatively influence their odds of supporting a paper for inclusion in a journal or a proposal for a grant.   (The final version of the paper is not yet available, but an early version may be found on the website of the Social Science Research Network.) . . .

How the University of Chicago Press deals with the gun debate

UPDATE: I have been told that I misinterpreted the intentions of the qualifier at the beginning of the tweet on my op-ed piece.  This is part of an email that I received (there is no reason to reveal who sent this to me): "Here's why I think she did it and what I think she meant: As you know, when anyone posts anything on a hot-button political issue, people online tend to respond in knee-jerk fashion--basically, in this case, we'd see a lot of 'Guns kill people--John Lott's full of it.' What she was trying to say was, don't respond that way--click the link and read the op-ed."

Original post: I asked the University of Chicago Press to tweet a link to my piece in the WSJ given that piece was getting attention for my book that was published by the UChicago Press.  You will note that a couple weeks earlier the press had publicized an op-ed that pushed for gun control from Roger Ebert, who to my knowledge has not published a book on that topic through the UChicago Press.  More interesting was how for my post the press thought that it was necessary to add a disclaimer for the post, essentially asking readers not to get angry for them tweeting the link.

Regarding his piece in the NY Times that was published less than two days after the attack, Mr. Ebert writes:

Our gun laws are also insane, but many refuse to make the connection. The United States is one of few developed nations that accepts the notion of firearms in public hands. In theory, the citizenry needs to defend itself. Not a single person at the Aurora, Colo., theater shot back, but the theory will still be defended. . . .

He seems oblivious to the fact that guns were banned in the movie theater and that it was the good law-abiding citizens who obeyed the ban, not the criminal.  My guess is that Ebert wrote this piece on Friday, the day of the attack.  Ebert continues:  

This would be an excellent time for our political parties to join together in calling for restrictions on the sale and possession of deadly weapons. That is unlikely, because the issue has become so closely linked to paranoid fantasies about a federal takeover of personal liberties that many politicians feel they cannot afford to advocate gun control. . . .

There are no facts in Ebert's piece, though he is good at whipping up emotions.  While it is indeed true that some care about the loss of freedom, I would guess that most of the people in the middle of this debate care about safety, and given the number of Americans with guns, I think that I can show that would be the vast majority of gun owners.

Amazing statement from Professor Gerald Early defending Obama lying in his autobiography

See the discussion at 1:52 into the video. The written article that goes along with the video is at Fox News.

The Story presents more than three-dozen instances of material discrepancy where Dreams fails to align with the facts as Maraniss reports them. Case in point: Maraniss confirmed that Mr. Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, left his father, Barack Obama, Sr., a volatile bigamist, and not the other way around, as related in Dreams.
Dreams also related the tale of Obama's paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango, who was said to have been detained and tortured in a prison outside Nairobi for six months because of his brave defiance of British colonialists. But after a half-dozen interviews and other research, Maraniss deemed the tale "unlikely." . . .
Gerald Early, a noted professor of English literature and African-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, agreed. "It really doesn't matter if he made up stuff," Early told Fox News. "I mean, after all, it's like you going to a psychiatrist and you make up stuff, and the psychiatrist can still psychoanalyze you because they're your lies." . . .
told Maraniss that Obama had "greatly exaggerated" inDreams the details of another encounter between them. . . .

Good and Bad Economics Textbooks on Global Warming

A left wing environmentalist group has rated economics principle textbooks here.  My advice is the lower grades are actually the best textbooks.  Romney's economic advisors get an "A" (Mankiw) and a "C+" (Hubbard and O'Brien).

Surprise: Journal editors ask scholars to cite relevant articles from their journals in their research

This is a surprise? The fact that it is primarily younger authors who get the most suggestions slightly helps to differentiate it from the fact that editors might simply know the articles in their own journal best. The alternative might be the editors want to suggest articles that they know to everyone, but that they refrain from doing so to senior researchers who might react negatively. From USA Today:

Business, economics and related scholarly journal editors are coercing scholars into unnecessarily citing their own journals, a survey suggests, perverting the research record.

A system of "impact factors", tied to references listed in studies, pervades the scholarly enterprise, notes survey author Allen Wilhite and Eric Fong of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who reports the survey of 6,672 researchers in economics, sociology, psychology, and business research in the current Science journal. The survey covered journal editor behavior from 832 publications.

Overall, about 20% of survey respondents say that a journal editor had coerced extra citations to their own journal from them. Broadly, journals with higher impact factors attract more prestige, advertising and power in hiring and firing decisions in scholarly circles, the authors note, giving journal editors an incentive to extort added citations to their publications in the studies they consider for publication. "(T)he message is clear: Add citations or risk rejection," write the authors.

In particular, younger professors with few co-authors who need publications to keep their jobs reported the most pressure. Business journal editors coerced the most often, followed by economics, and then psychology and other social sciences. . . .

Sachs' amazing claims don't seem to hold water

The Economist Magazine points out that there might be a few problems with Jeffrey Sachs phenomenal claims.

Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University argues that if public investment and foreign aid are big enough, they will boost household incomes, spurring savings and boosting local investment. They should also “crowd in” external investment by improving infrastructure.

Unlike most economists, Mr Sachs can put other people’s money where his mouth is. He set up the “millennium village project”, taking 14 places in rural Africa with about 500,000 people and, since 2006, making them the subjects of a $150m project run by his university and African governments.

The project—motto: “no single intervention is enough…we must improve them all”—carries huge hopes. Touring a village in Malawi, the UN’s secretary-general says he saw the potential of technologies such as smartphones and drip irrigation “to advance human well-being in ways that simply were not feasible even a few years ago”. George Soros, a financier, gave the project $47m and predicted that it would transform entire regions. . . .

The projects’ backers claim extraordinary results: a 700% increase in the use of antimalarial bednets; a 350% increase in access to safer water; a 368% increase in primary-school meal programmes. On closer inspection, though, these numbers turn out to be less dramatic. . . .

Michael Clemens of the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank, and Gabriel Demombynes of the World Bank says that a randomised trial is needed to disentangle what the millennium programme is doing from what is happening anyway. In such a trial, each village would be paired with a similar one not getting the same help—and the results compared. . . .

Now a Kenyan economist, Bernadette Wanjala of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, has raised further doubts about the project. She interviewed 236 randomly selected households in Sauri who had been offered the benefits and 175 randomly selected ones who had not. In a study with Roldan Muradian of Radboud University, she concluded the first group had raised their agricultural productivity by an impressive 70%. Yet she found that the impact on household income was “insignificant”, and that there had been little extra saving or investment. The villagers had grown more food—and eaten it. They became better nourished, but this did not affect the wider economy. . . .

"What Passes for Debate Among the Left in Academia"

It would be nice if there was some real condemnation for these types of personal attacks in academia.

Donohue wasn’t willing to let Wilson’s dissent go unanswered, and the attacks became quite personal. In a debate carried nationally on National Public Radio, Donohue attacked Wilson as letting his alleged employment by the NRA bias his academic findings:

The lone dissenter [Wilson] was someone who was not an econometrician, who admitted in his dissent that he wished he knew more econometrics, and who had previously testified as an expert witness on behalf of the execrable NRA.

When later called on this claim after the debate, Mr. Donohue did not offer proof, but instead called on Wilson to prove that he had never gotten paid by the NRA. When asked for evidence, . . . .

David Protess founder of "Innocence Project" removed from teaching and forced to retire because of ethical problems

This is a pretty surprising event for academia: “You have the most lionized member of the faculty suddenly becoming somebody who is summarily removed from teaching with no notice and subjected to a kind of banishment." From the NY Times has this story about David Protess, a renowned journalist and professor:

But in a search of Innocence Project computers, the university turned up an e-mail from Mr. Protess to his assistant in 2006 that indicated the students’ reporting memos had been shared with the defense.

“My position about memos, as you know, is that we share everything with the legal team, and don’t keep copies,” he wrote, referring to Mr. McKinney’s lawyers.

But the copy of the e-mail he provided to university lawyers was altered to read, “My position about memos, as you know, is that we don’t keep copies.”

Mr. Protess said that he altered the e-mail to reflect the actual practice of the Innocence Project as he remembered it.

“Everybody assigns sinister motives to what I did, but my intent was not to mislead; it was precisely the opposite,” he said. “My part was due to memory failure about the extent to which I had shared student memos with the defense, and then I stubbornly stuck to that position when I felt ganged up on by everybody else.”

With the discovery of the e-mail, what had been a publicly united front broke down behind the scenes. At a hastily called faculty meeting at Medill on April 6, Mr. Lavine presented his colleagues with a PowerPoint presentation of statements and actions by Mr. Protess that the dean considered misleading, and asked for opinions. But by the time the faculty members got back to their desks, a press release had already been issued announcing Mr. Protess would not be teaching spring semester and making it clear he would not be welcomed back after that. . . .