Do "liberal" profs influence students?

The NYTimes reported on 2 November that a recent study determined that university professors have little influence on the political views of their students. I can think of several anecdotal bits of evidence against this, but that does not mean that the findings are not generally correct. I do think that many students who are leaning in one or another direction might attach themselves to professors who are already solidly in one camp and are then influenced by them to become more extreme--but this does not mean that little Billy went to college and lost his religion just because he had an atheist professor.

Even so, it troubles me that we need to have this conversation. Professors do not serve their students when they wander tangentially through all the failures of the Bush administration when the class is on, let's say, developmental psychology. As one of the interviewees in the article says, he is there to learn.

This is where professors are at fault then: not for corrupting the minds of their students (or improving them, if you see it that way), but for trying to influence them politically in the classroom. Even if they are ineffective, they still try. They treat the podium as a soap box for their personal views. Whether those views are liberal or conservative, they are unsuitable for the classroom. In such situations I have felt like interrupting and asking that the prof and the groupies wait until after class to have their political fest.

I do not demand some sort of blandly neutral classroom environment, and some subjects will inevitably become more political, or philosophical, or at any rate ideological. If a discussion arises that is relevant to current affairs, excellent. Go for it. Encourage student learning. But in these situations the professor should see himself as a sort of moderator, or guide, and not a leader for a particular camp. When profs, in their perceived position of authority, use that position to forward one viewpoint at the expense of another, the disagreeing students fall victim, again, to the tyranny of the majority.

In other words, the problem is not "liberal" professors: it is blatantly biased professors. Much of the time these happen to be "liberal." I blame the 1960s. But fortunately Marxism has gone out of fashion, and the old dogs are dying out. Give it another decade and things will be different.