Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?

Neil Gross

“Persuasive… It offers a thoughtful riposte to ad hominem attacks on contemporary universities as hotbeds of radicalism.”—Publishers Weekly

“Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? offers a thoughtful, rigorous, and readable study of the causes and effects of liberal attitudes among college professors. Reading this book gave me an entirely new way of thinking about the interactions between political views, social attitudes, and life choices. Gross deserves a wide hearing.”—Andrew Gelman, Columbia University

“A major contribution to debates about the politics of academia. Neil Gross blends cutting-edge research with old-fashioned reason to explain the cultural and economic forces that send liberals into the professoriate. This is a smart, surprising, and important book.”—Eric Klinenberg, New York University

“Neil Gross’s work is crucial for anyone who cares about higher education and who also cares about the facts.”—Louis Menand, Harvard University

“In this engaging book, Neil Gross uses a dizzying range of evidence to take apart many common beliefs. He shows—among many other things—that professors are less liberal than pundits claim, that today’s younger professors are less radical than older ones, and that it is not so much that academia turns people liberal as that liberals are attracted to academia. The book cements Gross’s reputation as one of the most interesting sociologists of his generation.”—Mario Small, University of Chicago

Related Links

• In the Chronicle of Higher Education, read Neil Gross’s response to a study showing that college students are more politically engaged than their age-matched counterparts
• In the New York Times, read Gross’s rebuttal of the theory that going to college makes students more liberal
• View more HUP titles on Higher Education