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I Think My Professor is a Democrat: Considering Whether Students Recognize and React to Faculty Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2009

Matthew Woessner  and
April Kelly-Woessner
Matthew Woessner
Affiliation:
Penn State University, Harrisburg
April Kelly-Woessner
Affiliation:
Elizabethtown College
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Abstract

Notwithstanding political science professors' concerted efforts to remain politically neutral in the classroom, we find evidence that students are able to successfully identify the partisan loyalties of their professors. Furthermore, we find that there is a tendency for students to drift toward the Democratic Party over the course of the semester, yet the direction of the shift appears to be unrelated to either the instructor's actual political loyalties, or to the student's perception of the professor's partisan preferences. Given that political science professors appear to exert no real influence on students' party loyalties, it is unclear whether efforts to diversify the field by hiring more Republican professors would actually reduce the “liberalizing” effects of higher education.

Type
Features
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 343 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 2009

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