Bad Ideas and Bad Money

T. Zywicki is on again about the political affiliations of faculty at major universities.  Zywicki, latching onto a new study showing that university faculty are significantly more liberal than the general population, again suggests that this is a basis for calling for ideological diversity among faculty.  No doubt there will follow a complaint about discrimination against conservatives in hiring.  It is bad thinking.  Let is dwell a moment on some obvious problems with the conclusions.  (I don't have anything to say about the methodology - it is not salient to my point.)  Explain please how the political affiliations of mathematics faculty are relevant in any way to what they teach.  How does political ideology show up in course work?  Explain please how political ideology affects course content in philosophy of language.  Explain how a course on Joyce differs with the political ideology of the faculty teaching.  Believing that political ideology of faculty affects the content of chemistry courses is straight out of Mao. 

Ideological bias is an interesting topic, and it is certainly the case that some faculty distort their course offerings as a result of political ideology.  But surveys like this are worse than useless because they displace useful information. They tell us nothinig useful about bias about which we should care because they tell us nothing about the content of courses or provide evidence of any discrimination.