Conservative column too liberal with numbers | News, Sports, Jobs – Evening Observer

Stephen Kershnars column (Dec. 15) headlined, Left has an advantage with higher learning cited very specific statistics from numerous studies purporting to show the overwhelming preponderance of Democratic vs. Republican professors and administrators in higher education, especially in Ivy League schools and several institutions he refers to as their peers, a situation he clearly finds both alarming and distasteful.

While I do not share his concerns about the political affiliation of these or any other college faculty members, I am truly curious to know how the statistics for these studies were gathered. I doubt very much that it is legal to ask for this information in a job application or interview, or that most applicants would see any necessity to volunteer it.

I was also unaware that political party membership is a matter of public record. If it is, did the researchers for these studies actually comb through voter registration rolls to identify every Republican and Democratic employee of the many colleges cited in Kershnars column? I find this unlikely in the extreme, calling into question the veracity of the studies Kershnar cites and his resulting conclusion that American colleges are some kind of hotbed of liberal indoctrination of todays youth.

I dont know what the college experiences were like for any of this papers other readers, but I dont recall any of my professors ever teaching their courses in a way that attempted to sway my political thinking. Perhaps thats because I graduated from the University of Georgia, rather than any of the elite institutions whose purportedly liberal biases so alarm Kershnar.

Questions of universities political bias aside, I think the important point here is for readers to always question not only sources of information, but the legitimacy of research techniques for any studies cited in them. As a principal of mine once said in reference to a state mandate for reading teachers to use research-based techniques: I can do research in my basement. In other words, not all research or conclusions are equally valid.

Mary Rees is a Dunkirk resident.

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Conservative column too liberal with numbers | News, Sports, Jobs - Evening Observer