#24 On the Supply of and Demand for Right-Wing Academics

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing lately about academia’s supposed "left-wing bias." And it’s true: academics, especially in the social sciences and humanities, tend to lean left. But this isn’t surprising. People with higher levels of education tend to be more cosmopolitan, more pro-immigration, more globalist. The trade-offs involved in pursuing an academic career — long training, lower pay than equivalent private sector jobs, and delayed job security — don’t usually appeal to people who prioritize wealth accumulation, at least in Europe and in the US outside the elite universities. The result is a self-selection process that tends to produce an overrepresentation of left-leaning individuals in the field. So, no, academia is not — and probably should not be — a mirror image of society. Most jobs aren’t allocated according to demographic quotas, and academia is no different. But this structural imbalance does create a unique kind of incentive.

We can think of academics as operating in multiple “fields” — as Bourdieu would say: academia itself, but also the media and maybe politics. As an academic, it may pay off within academia to be highly visible in the media or influential in policy circles, as universities are sometimes desperate to show “impact” beyond the ivory tower. Each field has its own rules of the game, and the strategies that may pay off in academia may pay off differently elsewhere.

Academics can seek to accumulate different forms of capital: academic credibility is acquired through good publications and research grants; media visibility through regular appearances in the media; and policy influence through holding significant positions within the state. The thing is, academia is what we can call a weakly autonomous field — the status of agents within the field can be decisively shaped by other fields. Having held a prominent job in government is sought after by universities to appoint someone as “professor of practice,” for instance. Academics visible in the media are a reasonably good way to advertise a university to future students, and sitting on a government expert panel looks good on the next research assessment report.

Pursuing the former can be called an internal upward strategy, while seeking to advance one’s career in academia through media or policy prominence can be called an external advancement strategy. There are trade-offs. It is difficult to do all of these well — publishing in top journals while also doing lots of media ...