The Failure Of The Academy

Gideon Lewis-Kraus reviews Louis Menand's new book on the university:

[Menand] really does think that something is wrong. He concludes the book with a discussion of a study by two sociologists that shows how overwhelmingly center-left the politics of academics are. In the 2004 election, he notes, 95 percent of humanities and social-science professors voted for Kerry; zero percent voted for Bush. This is sure to be taken up by the few remaining culture warriors as proof of the disloyalty of the American professoriate. But Menand, in the context of a book about the trade-offs of professionalization, reads the situation differently. The fault is not with the politics themselves; academics are usually careful to keep policy out of the classroom. It is with the homogeneity. The system is simply replicating itself too smoothly.