Steven Douglas Maloney

It turns out that professors have little influence on the political views of students.  Parents, on the other hand, have an incredibly strong pull, which is why they are so good at convincing their children that Professors make people “more liberal” even though there is not a shred of evidence.  

Also lovely is the lamentation by George Mason economist, Dr. Daniel Klein:

The real issue, said Mr. Klein, who calls himself a libertarian, is that social democratic ideas dominate universities — ideas that play down the importance of the individual and promote government intervention.

Such “academic groupthink” means that the works of such thinkers are not offered enough, he argues. “A major tragedy is that they’re not getting exposed to the good stuff,” he said, citing the works of John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

First, where did you go to college where you weren’t exposed to those authors?  Second, there’s nothing like lamenting about a political theory curriculum whose problem is that it thinks government does something that economic theory doesn’t render superfluous.  I’m sure a psychologist would also lament the seminal works of political psychology not getting enough attention, etc.  

And finally, an amen to the following observation:

K. C. Johnson, a historian at the City University of New York, characterizes the problem as pedagogical, not political. Entire fields of study, from traditional literary analysis to political and military history, are simply not widely taught anymore, Mr. Johnson contended: “Even students who want to learn don’t have the opportunity because there are no specialists on the faculty to take courses from.”