Ask Lemmy

There are plenty of right wing academics but they are a minority. It probably varies by field too. In the core sciences that minority is probably the smallest and is greater in the humanities. My professor was a right wing scientist and we often clashed on values. I felt sorry for him at times because it would be his point of view Vs the entire research group. He is fundamentally a good person that can hold illogical and contradictory opinions that felt like they were emotionally based.

Are you confusing liberal with leftist?

The actual left begins at anticapitalism. American academia is full of liberals, who are right-wingers that believe in capitalism even though the most liberal controlled states proves it doesn't work. (Read: California's massive homelessness problem.)

One of physics professors in my uni loved Elon Musk, and has photo with Trump.

(Latter one for a presidential award they won, to give the benefit of doubt)

There are fewer right-wingers in academia, and they tend to work at schools with right-wing orientations. Turns out reality has a liberal bias.

That's the thing about right-wing populism. It relies on primitive instincts. It's a baseline. It requires no effort.

Rich people are smarter, otherwise they wouln't be rich. No don't tax them, they worked so much harder than anyone else to get there! Taxing them will only punish the imaginative and the resourceful, while incentivising the lazy and the worthless. I blame the immigrants because they work harder and for less money, and it's their fault that I also have to work harder for less! We need one more lane, that would relieve the traffic so much!

These takes always seem super OBVIOUS at first, and if you never bother revising them - you'll just be stuck with them. The longer you live with them, the firmer you'll latch onto them.

That's why it's so crucial for the rightwingers to dismantle the education system. They need you to be ignorant. Take things face-value.

Unaware. Go into accounting to find a bunch.

Reality has a left wing bias. They exist though and they're infuriating.

I'm sure there are some academics who are right wing and some uneducated people who are left wing. But for the most part it is generally true that academics are more likely to be left wing. To put it rudely, stupid people generally believe right wing talking points. Right wing worldview is full of contradictions an uneducated beliefs. People who are curious and bother to educate themselves about the issues are generally more likely to be left wing. Than again, I am left wing so of course I'm going to be biased towards believing left wing views are smart

It depends on the country, but there's a self-preservation aspect to academics leaning left. In the USA especially but not exclusively a major right-wing policy point has been defunding academia and publicly-funded research in general. Unless you're in a field that can reliably pull private funding, such as some branches of the oft-mentioned economics, voting and sharing right-wing talking points carries a major risk of getting your funding cut and leaving you without a job.

Current STEM researcher who also happened to have met a few academics on the right side of the political spectrum... I am very qualified to speak about this I hope. I'll try to use as unbiased language as possible

First of all, you are correct. It is generally true that most academics are left-leaning (obligatory not all, but you get the point)

In general, higher education attainment is associated with being left-leaning: academia is known to have extreme levels of education attainment (many jobs require a PhD). On top of it, academic jobs reward intellectual curiosity, do not tend to pay super well, tend to heavily rely on governmental funding... all of these are traditionally more associated with the political left or left-leaning. Still, there very much are right-leaning academics, they just don't tend to scream around a lot about it

There are notable exceptions however. Economics is quite famous for being politically balanced, although what economics treat as left/right-leaning might be a bit different from the general public. If I remember, business schools (yes there are business professors!) tend to be more right-leaning. This is a smaller field and a bit more anecdotal, but quite a few prominent meta-science researchers are right-wing nutjobs: the "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" guy and the NIH director Bhattacharya guy are both COVID deniers

There are also fringe scientists as some others have mentioned, but most people within their fields don't consider fringe scientists as part of the academia so to speak

Depends on what you call "academics". If you mistake phrase shifter courses like "business administration", "politics", or "law" as academic, then yes.

Probably people who are curious and want to learn how the universe really is, who climb to the highest levels of Perry's scheme of cognition, who use Sagan's baloney detection kit, rather than supernatural and unfalsifiable excuses, to understand the cosmos. It's part of the scientific method and great to learn new things, not mistakes but data for next experiment, and big claims require big proof, like defending a thesis should require. We are all waves of one ocean made of stardust, observing the universe, conscious elements billions of years old. DNA that survived all the extinctions so far, on the one habitable planet, and nothing to rescue us, but human cooperation.

If you want faith, it must allow room for doubt and mystery, rather than twisted to demand certainty and remain in Perry's low levels overall. They could study the neurochemical ways high-control groups hook people and keep them with unhealthy shame/blame/guilt, threat of exile, conditional belonging, solution for invented problem, punish/reward cycles, and maybe choose to escape. Good luck!

They certainly have a lot of lawyers.

They are fewer than those who lean left but they are there. And typically they tend more toward moderation that extremism. Quintessentially, they're moderate to liberal conservatives. Often times you'll find them more in business and economics related fields.

The main reason being that exposure typically gets a person to come out of their highly conservative nature and education as well to better understand how the world operates. It's not a 100% thing as there are occasional reactionaries in positions of scientific note but they're few.

There are many conservative universities and colleges in the US and all of the ones I know about are heavily tied to some religion.

• Liberty University is right wing as fuck and was founded by Jerry Fallwell. It was originally called Lynchburg Baptist university.
• Baylor is a right wing Baptist University
• Brigham Young University is right wing and part of the Mormon Church
• I suspect that other than the US Coast Guard Academy all Military academies and universities in the US are Right Wing as Fuck.

IMO:There are 3 type of "right wingers":

• The sheeps (the majority about 90%) they are less educated, easy to manipulate & very reactionary.
• The shepherds (the minority about 1%) they are highly educated, come from generational wealth & want to defend & multiply their wealth by influenving the sheeps.
• The sheep dogs (about 9%) they are highly educated & very oportunistic. They don't come from wealth and dream of wealth. Their only goal in life is to be shepherds one day. (Most likely they won't achieve it maybe one will make it to be uaed a champion that it's possible) but they will do everything to achieve it and thus work overtime for the shepherds & influence the sheeps as much aa poaaible.

So yeah, about 10% of the right wingers are educated. The majority still is less educazed and easy to manipulatw.

Being an academic means being open minded because when researching something, the outcome may be different from what you expected. In such cases do you concede that your initial theory was wrong or do you stubbornly continue to believe that you were right and keep trying to prove yourself correct?