Ashlee Geraghty

Ms. Thomas

UWRT 1104

21 March 2019

The Elephant in the Classroom: Politics in Higher Education

“It’s important to note that schools can be political without being partisan. Pushing partisan

politics is a huge overstretch of power and, quite legitimately, does not belong in classrooms.

Schools need to prepare students for political engagement in a nonpartisan way, even though the

“real world” of politics is increasingly partisan and polarized.” - Jennifer Rich, assistant

professor at Rowan University

Politics is a topic some people try to avoid at all costs, or the beginning of a never ending

conversation. There is so much controversy and grey areas that the term “I don’t mean to get

political” comes up in numerous conversations, especially where education is concerned.

Personally, I enjoy discussing politics whether I agree with the person or not. I enjoy hearing

different sides of the argument when the other person is knowledgeable about what they are

talking about. Throughout my years in education, and my first year in higher education, however,

I have witnessed both subtle and blatant promotion of certain political parties over another. It has

become frustrating when professors and other students want nothing to do with your thoughts

and views just because they don’t agree with it. With such polarity between both political parties,

the issue with harsh persuasion does not stop outside of the classroom. Throughout research,

many have concluded that the liberal party tends to dominate most public college campuses
between the professors and student body. So this has made me wonder: What political bias are

college professors suggesting to their students?

Bias is simply defined as favoring one thing over another. By creating a political bias in

the classroom, this can alter a student’s ability to think freely and independently about their

political views (Hagar, 2017). This issue only intensified after the 2016 election, when both

parties became so divided. Researchers believe that many young people felt pressured

throughout this time to pick a stance on an certain issues, creating one of the most polarized

college freshman classes in a century (Glatter, 2017). The repercussion of this, however, may be

that younger people are listening to people with influence over them (i.e. professors, parents,

friends, etc.) causing them to become passionate about something they may not know a lot about

or may not be aware of both sides of the argument.

An issue I kept enduring with my research that also plays a key role in the persuasion of

young adults is the political bias of the media. It has become no secret that many television

reporters, staff writers, and editors of mainstream media sites have strong political views,

whether conservative or liberal, and they have the platform to share these views. When I was

conducting research I tried very hard to use mostly neutral sources, which is a struggle when it

comes to researching a topic that has anything to do with politics. While researching and pulling

facts from different sources, I realized how relevant this is to my topic. People have the power to

use the news to become informed on the most current events, but what people may not be

completely aware of is the bias many sources have. Often times, the same news source is used,

giving them minimal exposure to other sides of topics. Being aware of this issue, I experienced

difficulty when it came to finding credible sources throughout research.

 The same power that the media holds, is also held by many college professors. Professors

are believed to have a credibility to their students. They absorb what they’re being taught,

whether they agree with it or not. According to ​Inside Higher Ed​, the field of academia is

typically dominated by the Democratic party. A study conducted of 1,417 randomly selected

college faculty was surveyed about their political views show that 46.1% identify themself as

moderate, 44.1% as liberal, leaving conservatives as 9.2% (Jaschik, 2017). Throughout personal

experiences, I can say I have noticed a definite left leaning bias in not only in college classrooms

but as well in high school. However, something I never look at was the science of the ideology of

politics and education. College professor Kathleen Donovan breaks down party affiliation by

finding reasoning behind it. Donovan is a professor at St. John Fisher College in the Political

Science Department, Legal Studies Program, and Statistics Program. In the TED Talk “Liberal

Bias in Academia”, she addresses the issue of liberal bias on college campuses. Many

conservatives argue there is “liberal brainwashing” taking place at college, and Donovan goes

beyond the surface of what she thinks is really occurring. She first goes into discuss why people

affiliate themselves with a certain party. Her answer for that was it has to do with the biology

make up of a person and their ideology. She uses this to argue that colleges are mostly liberal

because most of the liberal population tend to go to college as opposed to conservatives. This

creates little political diversity in the classroom, only offering a minimal amount of viewpoints.

While I like the perspective that Donovan brings to the issue of little representation of

conservatives in the academia field, I do feel that her interpretation is a slight generalization.

Before conducting research, I believed that conservatives were completely underrepresented on

college campuses, however, now I have learned that there has been a recent increase in the

percentage of conservatives attending college (Jaschik, 2017).

A major concern with one party dominating in education is how this affects the

professors grading if there appears to be a bias. From ​The Chronicle of Higher Education​, an

article was written ​ t​ itled “Is Political Bias in Grading a Myth?” This piece first starts off by

discussing the discomfort conservative students may feel in the classroom when it comes to

voicing their political views, with the fear of their views affecting their grade in the class

negatively. I can think of time where I felt that this happened to me. I wrote a final paper for an

LBST course last semester on the Inauguration speech of Donald Trump. I spent a few days

writing this paper, which was more time than many of my classmates spent on their paper, and I

kept my political views separate from my writing. When I got my grade back on that paper, I was

disappointed with my final grade. I feel as if I spent so much time and effort researching and

writing this paper only to receive a subpar grade. Was it because I brought in politics that did not

agree with the professors views? That I do not know as I did not receive feedback on this paper

due to it being the end of the semester. This was my own personal experience with the college

grading system, however a study conducted by a graduate student at Georgetown University

shows different results than I found. He used the randomized grading of an essay with the

prompt ‘describe the characteristics of the Democratic and Republican parties’ to find out

whether or not their was bias in the way professors grade. The people grading them were

surveyed on their political views and the findings were very telling. Grades seemed to align with

the graders non political traits such as gender, experience level, and type of institution.
 To take this issue to a more local perspective, I surveyed students at UNC Charlotte to

see whether or not they are aware of this issue. I asked questions such as ‘Where would you say

you stand politically?’ ‘Have you ever felt as if a professor were trying to persuade you with

their political views?’ ‘How often do you witness a political discussion in a classroom setting?’

and more. The responses that I received were answered about the same way I thought they would

be, despite only having 12 responses. There was a pretty equal representation of conservatives,

liberals, and unaffiliates that responded to my survey and on average everyone in the same

political party answered similar if not the same. Liberals tend to be a little more blind to the

problem, maybe because they are less affected by it than other parties. People who put their party

affiliation as liberal tended to say that they’ve never seen professors discuss politics and that they

usually agree with their professors political views. Conservatives and moderates usually

answered similarly. They’re responses followed that they have witnessed political discussions in

the classroom, they have felt a professor trying to persuade them, people have looked them

differently after finding out their political views, etc. These findings reflect what I believe about

the political bias of colleges and universities.

My hope for writing about this issue is that it will really make people think about their

actions when it comes to politics. On college campuses this is a huge issue in this day and age

with such controversy streaming on the news and students and professors with such strong

opinions. It’s okay to disagree with people, we’re human and it’s inevitable, but it is not okay to

put down others opinion just because it does not match yours.
 References

Hagar, Sheila. “User Account.” ​NewsBank,​ 12 Apr. 2017,

infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=&sort=YMD_date%3
AD&fld-base-0=alltext&maxresults=20&val-base-0=%22politics%2Bin%2Bclassrooms%22%2
B&docref=news%2F163BD31913267B28.

Strauss, Valerie. “Teachers Are Told Not to Get 'Political' in the Classroom. What Does That
Actually Mean?” ​The Washington Post,​ WP Company, 17 Jan. 2019,
www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/01/17/teachers-are-told-not-get-political-classroom-w
hat-does-that-actually-mean/?utm_term=.ba5a224482b4​.

Donovan , Kathleen. “Liberal Bias in Academia | Kathleen Donovan | TEDxSJFC.” ​YouTube,​

TED Talks , 30 Jan. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwk7a_n5LcM.

Jaschik, Scott. “Research Confirms That Professors Lean Left, but Questions Assumptions about
What This Means for Conservatives.” ​Research Confirms That Professors Lean Left, but
Questions Assumptions about What This Means for Conservatives,​ 27 Feb. 2017,
www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/02/27/research-confirms-professors-lean-left-questions-ass
umptions-about-what-means​.

Glatter, Hayley. “College Freshmen Are More Politically Divided Than Ever.” ​The Atlantic​,
Atlantic Media Company, 2 May 2017,
www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/05/the-most-polarized-freshman-class-in-half-a-ce
ntury/525135/​.

Harris, Adam. “America Is Divided by Education.” ​The Atlantic,​ Atlantic Media Company, 7
Nov. 2018,
www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/education-gap-explains-american-politics/5751
13/​.

Johnson, Steven. “Is Political Bias in Grading a Myth?” ​The Chronicle of Higher Education,​ The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 Feb. 2019,
www.chronicle.com/article/Is-Political-Bias-in-Grading-a/245694​.