Among 38 of Lakeland College’s full-time faculty members who responded to an Internet survey conducted by The Mirror, liberal professors outnumber conservative professors nearly two to one.
Before fall break, the Mirror sent a 16-question political survey to all 72 of Lakeland’s full-time faculty members. The confidential survey asked professors to respond to questions regarding their political and social opinions and requested but did not require them to respond to demographic questions. Respondents chose between five multiple choice answers for the social opinion questions: strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree, and don’t know.
Fifty-eight percent of the faculty members who completed the survey described themselves as liberal, while only 23 percent described themselves as conservative. Similar figures arose on the partisan front where 45 percent claimed to be registered democrats and 13 percent registered with the Republican Party.
The survey, conducted by The Mirror to coincide with next week’s mid-term elections, drew questions from what is, according to the Washington Post, the most recent comprehensive survey available, a 1999 survey by Angus Reid (now Ipsos-Reid), a survey research firm. The Mirror replicated the wording of the questions for Lakeland’s faculty after social and political questions Ipsos-Reid posed to professors from 183 colleges and universities.
The Lakeland faculty who were polled appear slightly less liberal than the average American campus, where 72 percent of those teaching are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, and 50 percent of the professors polled were Democrats compared to 11 percent Republicans, according to the national survey conducted in 1999.
The Mirror’s survey asked faculty to respond to questions regarding social issues. The survey found 68 percent of those surveyed strongly agreed or somewhat agreed “a homosexual lifestyle is as moral as a heterosexual lifestyle,” “women have the right to an abortion” (74 percent), “cohabitation prior to marriage is moral” (68 percent), and “the government should enact policy to reduce the country’s income gap” (71 percent). The faculty’s responses gravitated toward the beliefs that “the government should…guarantee its citizens’ employment” (73 percent) and “protect the environment at the cost of higher prices and fewer jobs” (95 percent).
The majority of American faculty members surveyed in 1999 strongly agreed or somewhat agreed to the majority of Lakeland’s survey respondents on the same questions concerning homosexuality (67 percent), abortion (84 percent), non-marital cohabitation (75 percent), America’s income gap (70 percent), government-guaranteed employment (64 percent), and the environment (88 percent).
Lakeland’s faculty also responded to questions regarding their voting during the past and upcoming elections. Seventy-four percent of faculty surveyed voted for Barack Obama while 24 percent voted for John McCain. The majority of faculty members polled promised to vote similarly for democrats next week, as 68 percent said they will vote to keep U.S. Senator Russ Feingold in office instead of Ron Johnson (24 percent). In the gubernatorial race, 66 percent of the faculty who responded said they will vote for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett over Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker (24 percent). Recent polls show Johnson and Walker, both republicans, have a slight lead.
Liberalism dominated among American academic divisions according to the 1999 study, when the most prominently liberal faculties were those centered in the humanities (81 percent) and social sciences (75 percent), and even amongst traditionally right-leaning business faculty (49 percent liberals to 39 percent conservatives).
In contrast with the 1999 indings that nearly three-quarters of college faculty are liberal, and The Mirror’s findings that depicts 58 percent of the group which was polled as liberal, a 2004 Harris Poll of the general public found that 33 percent of people think of themselves as conservative and 18 percent as liberal.
Female faculty surveyed reported themselves 65 percent liberal and 29 percent conservative while males surveyed were 52 percent liberal and 19 percent conservative. Seven faculty members described their political orientation as “Other” and wrote in independent, libertarian, or moderate.
Of the survey’s 21 self-described liberals, eleven were over the age of 50. Eight of the nine conservatives surveyed were under 50.
It is not possible to draw conclusions about the entire Lakeland faculty since just over half of the faculty participated in the self-selection survey.