Neil Gross, “Why are Professors Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care?” (Harvard UP, 2013)

New Books in Sociology · Apr 8, 2013 · 58m

Most people think that professors are more liberal, and some much more liberal, than ordinary folk. As Neil Gross shows in his eye-opening Why are Professors Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care? (Harvard UP, 2013), “most people” are right: academia is much more left-leaning than any other major profession in the U.S . But why is this so? As Gross points out, there are a lot of “folk” explanations out there, but none of them holds much water. Gross looks the data (a lot of which he collected himself) and searches for a more compelling explanation. It’s surprising: the fact that most college…